It's Wednesday afternoon and time for Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm your host, Mitch Ewan. Our sponsor is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, which is a program of the University of Hawaii's College of Social Sciences with financial support from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. I'm very pleased to welcome our guest today, Chuck Collins. Aloha, Chuck. What's up? What's up? He's the founder of the Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance, my favorite subject hydrogen. We had to get that in there. So Chuck, welcome to the show. Thank you, Mitch. I'm just going to give a little bit of a background on Chuck. Chuck, it actually lives on Maui for his leads, efforts, and energy efficiency and renewable energy project development. He actually has 25 years in the energy industry, and I met him when he was with the US Department of Energy. He's also worked for energy services companies called ESCO and a large mechanical contracting company. So he also works with a variety of nonprofits and serves on a number of boards that work to advance zero emissions and clean energy resources in Hawaii and across the Pacific. So welcome again, Chuck. And first of all, tell us a little bit about the Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance. Who are you and what are your objectives? Sure, Mitch. Thanks for the opportunity today. The Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance is a nonprofit based on Maui. We're focused on providing green hydrogen resources, so production of hydrogen from renewable energy resources here in the state of Hawaii. We're focused on educating folks about hydrogen, why it's important and the benefits of it, hoping to change or gear some policies in the right direction to kind of open up some opportunities here and then seed some projects to show a lot of folks about the cool things that hydrogen can do and the different types of applications that hydrogen can fill. Well, that's all music to my ears. Anytime I hear hydrogen, somebody talking about hydrogen projects, especially green hydrogen, which is the next big thing. It's not the next big thing. It isn't the big thing right now. And also policies because we're part of the energy policy forum. So that's something that we're very interested here. So just for a start, tell us about your membership. Sure. So the membership is really comprised of large and small private organizations. So manufacturers of hydrogen products, fuel cell products, those types of things, smaller companies with patents or patents pending on unique hydrogen or fuel cell type applications or technologies. We also have governmental organizations as part of the group. And then there's a kind of a cadre of alliances across the globe for not only clean energy, but also green hydrogen. In the past year, Mitch mentioned that he met me a long time ago when I was at the Department of Energy. You know, a lot of us, a few of us have been working in this industry for a long time. And I can tell you in the last few years, we've seen a lot of these alliances and groups pop up similar to our own. And it's been important to reach out to these groups and talk to them so that we can lay the land on who's out there, who's doing different things in different areas of the globe and how we can help each other move this ball forward. So how many just back of the envelope kind of a calculation, how many organizations are out there now around the world? You know, you mentioned that you have this kind of global membership way. So what is the level of activity out there and how do you see, you know, say in the last two years or so, how has the green hydrogen been developing the industry? Well, I think because of a number of different convergent reasons, you know, number one, we take climate change, you know, here in Hawaii, we don't have the same issues as some other places like Shanghai and Los Angeles have where we wake up every day and the air is dirty, we have a very, you know, we breathe it, we see it, we smell it, we feel it. We don't have that problem here in Hawaii, you know, typically the emissions blow away. And so a lot of the companies that we are focused, you know, that we have in our group are focused on sort of, you know, advancing the ball forward for, you know, cleaner projects that reduce emissions, not only at transportation level, but on a grid level as well, right. And so some of these alliances have different what we call opportunity fuels throughout the globe. So here in Hawaii, we're very blessed with a lot of solar and wind resources. We also have a lot of ocean resources around us. Well, that's not true everywhere else. So does that mean that these other places in the globe can't do hydrogen? No, not necessarily. They're just going to have their own approach towards it. So certain things that we do here in Hawaii can be transferred not only to other remote Pacific Island type places, but other remote applications as well, whether they're Pacific, you know, tropical environments or whether there's harsh remote environments. And so a lot of our company member companies sort of are pushing, you know, a lot of them have products in the world today that are commercialized and getting into real market products today. Others are kind of research focused. So their projects are more for, hey, what can we do to drive material costs down? What can we do to, you know, improve economies of scale so that full scale fuel cell and hydrogen projects can be more economically viable and competitive? Great. Can we have slide number four up? So I want to talk about your education program and title that leading by example. So tell us about your education program and leading by example. Well, you know, really there's, you know, when a lot of folks, whether you work in hydrogen or not, a lot of folks, when they hear the word hydrogen, there's two things that they think of, both of which are not very pretty pictures, right? They think of the, you know, typically the Hindenburg or hydrogen bombs or very explosive events that are not kind to humanity, right? Well, hydrogen is really not that at all. In fact, if you look at the Hindenburg, you know, it was the material that the coating of the balloon was made of that actually caught on fire, not necessarily the hydrogen itself. So one of the goals of the organization is kind of rebrand hydrogen as a very safe fuel that has a place in today's economy that is not really anything to be necessarily afraid of in any kind of irrational way. I mean, gasoline is a lot more explosive, if you will, than hydrogen is, right? So we just want to kind of get that word out. The other thing we want to do is seed projects. So there's a lot of good projects out there, whether it's, you know, your hydrogen fueling station on the Big Island or some other, you know, advanced projects that are going up the military here in the state. We want to talk about this project and talk about, hey, did you know this is out here? Did you know that you can now fuel a vehicle off of this? Did you know how much it costs? So kind of get the word out to try to push projects forward, not just educate about hydrogen, but also educate in a targeted way that really pushes project development forward. Because that's really what our members are most interested in, is developing projects for their products. Right. So let's talk a little bit about policy as well, because we are the policy form, so we're very interested in policy. And you were a member of the legislative brief, I guess it was only what the week before last now, where you had a chance to talk to the legislature. So tell us a little bit about, you know, your policy program and leading by example. Well, policy is one of these strange areas that, honestly, as a, you know, a young aspiring teenager, I never really probably wanted to get as involved in policy as I have been over the years. But it really, energy policy is a fascinating tool because it connects a lot of these R&D projects and labs, as well as commercially ready products to the marketplace. There, policy is a connector, if you will. And so if we never really create the policies to sometimes push the products forward, the products don't really sometimes make their way into markets because of, you know, lease cost purchasing or those types of things. So policy oftentimes says, hey, look, we believe in the environment, we're gonna protect the environment, right? And so then downstream of a policy that says, we're gonna protect the environment, we need to then do things that actually accomplish that. So zero emissions, transportation, zero emissions grid, those types of things, right? But that comes from a policy standard. So policy, you know, there's very small fixes that can be made sometimes in hydrogen, how to measure hydrogen, right? So gasoline is often measured in gallons, right, hydrogen's measured in a completely different way. The vehicles that we drive are typically measured on a fuel standard of how far we can drive per gallon. Hydrogen is really not, hydrogen vehicles are not really measured the same way. It's how far you can get on a tank, right? So there's certain things that I think the industry needs to clean up, possibly from a policy perspective. So we here in the state can put our, sort of plan our flag and say where we stand so that the market can kind of rally around that point and assist us with achieving, whether it's our climate objectives, zero emissions, zero cost energy, whatever those objectives are, those markets and those marketplace players can help us get there. So Chuck, you know, I don't wanna put you on the spot but, you know, having been familiar with Hawaii for a long time, have you found any gaps in our policy that could be helpful to the hydrogen industry in developing a hydrogen economy here? I do, you know, Mitch, you know this about me. My background is really in stationary projects, what I call grid projects. Sometimes people delineate those into utility scale projects or building level projects but I like to call them all grid projects because really at the end of the day, they're all interconnected by the grid or to the grid, whether it's by the utility company or by a customer. And so one of the places that I see in a gap for hydrogen and fuel cells is combined heat and power and onsite cogeneration. We talk a lot about hydrogen for transportation but we do not talk about hydrogen for buildings. There is a very, very compelling case from an energy efficiency standpoint for providing heat and power from a single point of the source off of an opportunity fuel such as hydrogen here with our high rates and our sometimes difficult, you know, getting fuel from one point to another and also the resiliency benefits of having onsite localized, combined heat and power cogeneration projects. That's one area where I think we could do a lot better in. We're about combining, you know, if we look at a grid application, combining, you know, the long-term energy storage, masses of energy storage using hydrogen combined with batteries, which traditionally provide like near term, say four to 11 hours worth of backups storage whereas hydrogen can provide up the days or months of storage. What are your culture thoughts on that and what kind of policies might be out there that can help introduce that to Hawaii? One of the things, one of the movements we're seeing particularly on the US mainland right now is what's called, when you have an overproduction of renewables, typically what's happened is is they've given that they've sold that or given people money to take that electricity. As we approach that here in the state of starting to increase our penetration of solar and wind and these what's called intermittent renewable resources, sometimes the demand doesn't exactly track the supply of these intermittent renewable resources. So one way to deal with these intermittent renewable resources is storage. And you can store it, you know, sometimes whether it's electrochemical storage or hydrogen, sometimes you can do it with heat, right? So store them all in a bunch of hot water tanks. I mean, those types of things, right? But it's about really utilizing your grid in a very smart way that not only, that kind of realizes that there's a nexus between electricity, thermal energy, water and transportation and really realizing that the more we keep corporate interests separated here in this state, the longer it's gonna take us to really realize and achieve a nexus between those areas. Can you explain that a little bit that last thought about corporate interests separated? What's the situation there? And what's the solution? Or how do you think that should work out? I can only speak from example. You know, I've worked with utility companies that have owned gas and electric resources. It's been a little easier to get a heating rebate out of them where I'm converting an old electric boiler to a gas boiler. Hey, look at that. Now I can get an energy efficiency rebate out of it. Here in this state, if I'm switching an electric boiler over to a gas boiler, Hawaii energy doesn't rebate on that because it's fuel switching. But maybe, just maybe there's system benefits to that that we should actually look at, right? So sometimes shifting resources is a good thing. And we actually want to incentivize that. And sometimes we're stopped by doing that at the lack of incentives, which really tracks back up to where the incentives come from. So here in this state, the renewable, the energy efficiency incentives that Hawaii energy gives out are a part of the public benefits charge that comes from electricity bills, right? So there's a disconnect there between gas rate payers, right? So it's not to say that combining the two companies is the fix, but I can tell you, based on my experiences working across the eight states on the West Coast, that working with what we call integrated gas and electric utility companies, it can often be a lot easier to do some innovative things such as hydrogen or fuel storage or electric storage or really any of those types of things. So looking at Maui, I mean, I know a lot about the big island, I know something about Oahu, not too much about Kauaii, but you live on Maui. So what are the, where do you see the opportunities out there on Maui for a hydrogen economy? You know, one of the things that really bothers me every day is that a lot of our, I don't, you know, Maui electric could probably give me an exact number to this, but I wanna say 99% of our electric lines are above ground. Our propane, we don't have a pipeline here on Maui that transports propane to critical sites. If we have a major event here on Maui, we're in really, really bad shape for a very long time. Hydrogen can help fix that through, because again, producing closer to the source will have benefits, because you can use that fuel closer to the point where you actually need it. Instead of having to transport a fuel, you know, we have about a month's storage of propane here on Maui and on the outer islands. And you know, I should probably clarify that this propane situation is not only true on Maui, but it's also indicative of the other islands as well. Oahu is the only island that has a pipeline. The other islands are propane, and they're all served by vehicles, trucking them around, right? So again, we talk about resiliency. We're not in very good shape here on Maui. When we talk about energy efficiency, we do a lot better here on Maui. We have very, very few of these, what I referred to earlier, these stationary combined heat and power projects, whether they're propane fired or hydrogen fuel cells, which we have none. So there's areas definitely where we could do a little bit better on Maui, but I can tell you, one of the things that really scares me the most is the resiliency aspect. So I've heard that there's a lot of wind that's curtailed on Maui. Like you have great wind resources and you have a lot of wind turbines there. What's the situation there from your understanding? Well, that was the talk of the town for a few years. You know, we were very excited to get our first wind farm here on Maui and you know, all the people over in KIA and Wailea side could see all the bright red lights shining up at night up onto the poly, which was something we had truly never seen before on this island. So the Nimbis, you know, got their day, but hey, that's okay. And so what happened was, as loads started to shift, demand started to decrease, energy efficiency really started to take off a little bit. The generators, the fuel generators that Maui Electric owns were really running on pretty low idle. And so, and turning them off actually costs more than shutting the wind power off. And so for a little while, yeah, we were actually turning the wind power off, not literally, but yeah, we were just not accepting the wind into the system, but then that's been recently fixed, I believe through the PUC. Yeah, I think the wind farms are getting or the utilities are getting much better at managing the grid. So there's not as much curtailed energy as there used to be, because I recall, you know, when we went to the farm on the big island, they were curtailing stads of kilowatt hours, and they were looking at, you know, maybe producing hydrogen with it.  So there's hardly any wind that's actually curtailed now on the big island. Yeah, we've, in this particular wind farm I was talking about has recently installed batteries. And so they've basically fixed that problem by shedding or shifting the load to a different, or a supply at a different time. Yeah, let's shift to slide six. So we want to talk about, you know, projects and leading by example, this is one of your slides. So maybe you want to talk through, you know, what are the projects and how do we do by example and what your thoughts are on this? So the Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance is really an education-based advocacy group and nothing I can tell you in my 25 years of energy speaks louder than actual projects. Projects that people can visit, people, projects that people can write about, projects that people can go online and see the actual output for on a real-time basis. These are the types of things that get people excited. These are the types of things that start to become replicable because people start to see things and they say, hey, you know what? I didn't know that was possible. Does that actually work? How can we get one of those? The questions just start to roll from there. But without these real projects in place, it's all just conversational. It's all kind of limited to research. You know, I get a lot of conversations of when I do, talks about the Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance, one of the main talks I get is, Chuck, is hydrogen ready? We hear a lot about the talk about it still being in the research phase. Well, I can tell you it is not. In the 25 years I've been working in energy, I've seen, I mean, it wasn't 2000. I saw a fuel cell or wastewater plant. Mitch, you probably know a lot. There's a fuel cell energy up in Washington State, right? I mean, there was a fuel cell energy model 0001. I mean, I saw a fuel cell at a post office in Anchorage. I've seen those fuel cells at universities in California. These things are out there. They are ready to go and we just need to get them out there more. The more we get them out there, the project costs will drive down. Equipment costs will drive down. People will become more familiar with how to install these things and operate them. The cost will go down. The other thing that our friends Mitch and some others are working on is material science. So getting away from things like platinum and palladium and getting to polymaterials that act like platinum, but don't necessarily cost as much, right? Take two again, try to drive these costs down. If you take this conversation about hydrogen and fuel cells, relay it 15 years ago to where we're talking about solar. Do you remember all of you out there when and where, how many solar projects you could point to 15 years ago? How many probably on one hand probably, right? Now look at how far we've come. We expect the same type of thing to happen in hydrogen and fuel cell, but possibly quicker. I was on a webinar this morning and now hydrogen gave a pitch. You probably know Steve Samansky well. Photon on site, but now they've got bought out by now. And he had some two interesting graphs showing the cost of wind and solar were both around 40 cents a megawatt hour, which translates to four cents a kilowatt hour. And he had another graph showing that their objective is like if by 2024, they will be able to produce hydrogen for a dollar and a half a kilogram, which is that includes the capital cost of the equipment and the cost of the actual electricity. Electricity makes up about 70 to 80% of the cost of the hydrogen. So the real key for green hydrogen for hydrogen is to get that electricity cost down. Do you like the comment on that? Yeah, we're working with a number of partners who are interested in providing a full scale microgrid to powered system to provide hydrogen production. Yes, we don't want to, what we, one thing we don't want to do is add to the grid for production of hydrogen, right? We don't, you know, we have a Kahluwai power plant that's pretty dirty. It's expected to go offline here in a few years, but the electricity it puts out is not exactly carbon free. So we don't want to take grid power over the next couple of years and necessarily produce hydrogen out of that. We're open to working with Maori Electric on them owning it, but we just don't want to take that power plant to produce hydrogen. That's not really what the group's about. So, and we don't have to. We can take solar with a battery, install it off grid and produce hydrogen with the prices of where solar is at today with pricing. It's actually very exciting. Talk to us a little bit about membership. How do you become a member of the Hawaii hydrogen alliance and how much does it cost? What's the process for becoming a member? So we have three tiers of membership, mainly depending on your level of involvement in the hydrogen industry and how badly you want to be involved with projects here. The advocacy group that we have, the Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance is really geared towards, again, developing projects in the state. It's basically a matchmaking service where we take, you know, Mitch, you know this well, doing business in Hawaii is all about relationships. It's all about who you know. And, you know, I'm from Maui, I know a lot of the people here in Maui, I know all the major facility managers and all that. So what we're gonna do is we're just gonna take these hydrogen companies with these great products and try to find homes for them, right? So the way, so if you have companies with products that are interested in projects, we have one kind of set of membership guidelines for them. We also have a different set for groups that just wanna receive our newsletter or do things like that or kind of be in touch and kind of keep an eye on us and see what we're up to. The easiest way to do that is to visit our website, www.hawaiihydrogenalliance.com or email directly admin at hawaiihydrogenalliance.com, either of which we'll get you directly to the folks that you need to help you through that. So I'm just kind of stepping back a little bit. So do you have any interesting projects? I mean, what is the menu of projects without sort of giving, obviously giving away any secrets here, but what is the level, projected level of activity in Hawaii? Is this gonna be like a good market for people and do you perceive that? We are seeing a strong interest, you know, not only we're sifting through it pretty quick, you know, we know what's a real opportunity and what's not. And so we're really focused on, if I can show my cards a little bit here, we're really focused on the ocean and ag waste. We've a very strong agricultural community here in the state and we wanna help support them with their products. We really want to help support them with their products. I'm gonna say that like six times because I really want the Department of Agriculture and all their companies to really understand that. There is a nexus between what we are doing and water and energy. I mean, this all comes together. So we want to help them with their products and their operations. The ocean, you know, let's talk about the ocean. JFK, JFK was very resounded when he made the statement that if we can get to desalinating the ocean, we have really done something. I'm showing my cards when I talk about ocean desalination. We have water shortages here on Maui.  So, you know, again, this kind of leading you down the path there of a couple of the projects that we're working on. But we also have, you know, some companies that are kind of doing things the outside the box way. So traditionally, ocean desalination has been very strong for hydrogen production. You need to clean up the water before you take the hydrogen out. Otherwise, it's just very, very inefficient. Well, we have companies now with products and patents that don't need to do that. Very, very exciting stuff. And of course, they see Hawaii and the Pacific Islands and the Pacific region as a home for them to kind of build their business. And we'd love to help them do that. Okay, so we got about 30 seconds left. I told you it would go fast. So I gotta turn it over to you, Chuck. Do you have any parting comments that you'd like to make either to your members or to people that are interested in becoming a member? Now's the time to do things differently. The hydrogen economy is coming. Green hydrogen is coming. It's gonna provide base load power for transportation and grid resources. The renewable resources that you see are very, very helpful and they have helped move the ball forward for on a whole for renewable energy. But base load power is yet to come. Hydrogen will provide that. On behalf of the Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance, we appreciate the opportunity today and great talking with you again, Mitch. Okay, well, thank you so much. Our guest has been Chuck Collins, founder of the Hawaii Hydrogen Alliance and that's our show for today. I'll be back again next Wednesday with another show. And so this is Hawaii, the state of clean energy signing off Aloha.


Hi, this is your host, Sableem Bhartia, and welcome to a brand new episode of our series, TFR Topic of the Month, a.k.a. T3M. And this month's topic is platform engineering is DevOps there. And today we have with us Narayanan Raghavan, Senior Director of Site Reliability Engineering at Red Hat. Narayanan, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me here. Today's discussion is going to be quite interesting. It's about the cultural changes, the evolution of the terms, jargons, practices, tools that we talk about DevOps, SREs. We have not talked about DevSecOps yet. We will throw that also in the mix at some point. And platform engineering. Before we jump into this topic, I want to just set some like ground so that folks do understand where we're coming from is that we are seeing this discussion in the market in a, hey, DevOps is dead. Now we are talking about platform engineering. If I ask you, what kind of cultural or organizational restructuring you are seeing within the industry, within the market in terms of disciplines like DevOps, SREs and platform engineering. And then we'll talk about what is driving this discussion. In terms of cultural evolution and as a result, in fact, to the organization itself, first thing I'll say across DevOps, SRE and platform engineering, the one common theme is culture, right? So if you, that's the key focus from my perspective is if you don't have that right culture, none of these functions can flourish. And what I mean by that is really boils down to what are your principles?  Because guess what? Whether you're a DevOps engineer or an SRE or a platform engineer, there are going to be failures. There are going to be escalations. And knowing that it's okay to fail and learning from it, that's going to be important. Assuming positive intent because we're talking about a blameless culture across all three and being able to have a concrete conversation around the challenges and opportunities that's absolutely critical for any healthy organization. Communication, that's a key and I don't have to stress that at all. And the last thing I'll say is being able to disagree and commit, right? And what I mean by that is you can have tons of conversations, it's software, you can rearrange the bits any number of ways but preventing analysis paralysis is going to be key. Across DevOps, SRE and PE, the speed with which you move, part of it is going to be required. Whether you're a platform engineering team or SRE team or what have you, the pace with which especially in this day and age things are moving, it's going to require changes. It's going to put teams in positions where they fail, they're gonna have to regroup, decide on a path and move forward, right? With that said, a lot of companies, at least companies that I've interacted with, they're still trying to figure out what makes sense for them. And in all honesty, I think it boils down to the particular company, the maturity level of the company, the lifecycle that they're at and the size of the company itself, right? So some companies are specifically focused on, there is a need for an SRE function. There are others that are focused on SRE and platform engineering, right? So again, it really depends on your culture, it really depends on your maturity level and really also depends on your scale. Excellent. I actually touched upon a lot of points that I was going to ask you a question for, but when you're talking about three courses, I think it's like, you said three Cs, commitment, culture and communication, that's great there. Now, as you're talking about now, some companies may look at SRE functions. Let's just also look at it that, because once again in the ecosystem, the discussions can lead in different directions. Is it SRE versus DevOps versus platform engineering or is N, okay? Or before we go there, let's also, I would really appreciate if you can define platform engineering, how different it is from DevOps so that will make things very, very clear. Okay, so let's start with platform engineering. Platform engineering really boils down to the speed and consistency for rapid application development using building blocks. And what I mean by that is building blocks are discrete software component microservices that are common across all of your development teams. In other words, your development teams can actually use those building blocks to build whatever it is that they're building, whatever application it is that they're building. They don't have to worry about those building blocks.  So your development teams can focus on the business logic that runs on top, right? From an SRE perspective, the focus is on reliability, scalability, performance, security of your entire fleet, right? Regardless of whether your fleet runs on, on-prem or any of the hyperscalers doesn't matter. SRE is about those functions across your fleet. DevOps is then about breaking down silos between your development teams and operations team, trying to get them to work together well. So they can then focus on speed and continuity of that application lifecycle itself. So from my perspective, those are the three different categories, definitions, et cetera. But let me also focus on the skills that are required for each of those functions. Because I think that's where you start to see separation. Across all three, and I almost want to draw, you know, a two by two matrix, but across all three software engineering is a key skill.  The second skill is systems engineering skill. SREs and platform engineers absolutely require systems engineering skills versus DevOps. The third skill, and this is where SREs stand out, is crisis management, right? When you manage a fleet at scale, you're going to have escalations, you're going to have issues. Being able to manage that crisis calmly, that's a skill, right? Being collected, being thoughtful about what your next steps are. When you're going through that escalations, that's a skill. DevOps, from a DevOps perspective, I wouldn't say crisis management is a skill you need. From a platform engineering perspective, I'd probably say it's a maybe. Soft skills, these are communication skills. That's the next piece.  And then for platform engineering, specifically product management skills, that's the one thing that stands out because a platform engineering team is really building a platform. You're building a platform for an internal audience, in this case, all of your application development teams. And because you're building a platform, you better know and understand what are the use cases that you're solving for, right? So you need a product manager in that space versus in SRE or DevOps, you really don't need that. You don't need that role. The term that we keep hearing, and I want to throw it at you as well, is DevOps dead? So from your opinion, is it really dead? I think we all know the answer, but I would love to hear your take on that. No, DevOps is not dead. I think it really comes down to, again, every company, every culture, the size of the company, the scale of your fleet, the maturity level of your teams, et cetera. DevOps is just the beginning of a transformation towards scale, towards reliability, towards consistency, towards automation, towards self-service, and building a set of capabilities or building blocks that can apply consistently to all of your teams. So I'd say DevOps is just the beginning in many ways, and as teams mature, you get into, do I need SREs, do I need platform engineers, et cetera. So for a company, a large company with multiple application development teams, chances are they're reinventing the wheel when different teams are building applications. At that point, the need for platform, a consistent development platform, development tools, QE tools, that becomes important, right? So investing in a platform engineering space at that point in time makes a lot of sense. As the size of your fleet increases, reliability becomes critical, and even if your fleet is not big, reliability is critical for any production system. So as the criticality, I probably should say it that way, as the criticality of your application increases from a business perspective, the need for reliability, the need for performance, latency, scalability, et cetera, that only goes up, and that's where you need SREs. As these teams are evolving, we are also hearing a lot about developer experience. I want to ask you, first of all, how would you define what is developer experience? It's more than just the flavor of muffins that they want. It's also a lot of other things. And where does it fit into this platform engineering? The way I think about this is platform engineering helps improve developer experience, right? Platform engineering is focusing on a set of tools, set of building blocks, a consistent platform that all developers in the organization can rely on, so they can focus on building the business logic, the applications that are required for your respective businesses. So from my perspective, developer tools goes right into the heart of platform engineering itself. They're large organizations and they're small organizations. Everybody is on their journey, they're in different stages of their journey. Sometimes smaller organizations, they get intimidated when they hear all these new terms in the world, not only term like Kubernetes and other service mesh, but also platform engineering, they're like, it's called SREM. Hey, what do we do about that? So can you share some advice? How they should approach it? They should, should they approach it as, probably we should embrace this term platform engineering, how they should start looking and ask a lot of questions that what we need, why we need it, and then embrace some of these practices. What is the right approach? So the first thing I would say is, I think as an industry, we need to stop relabeling people. So if I have an operations engineer, relabeling somebody in SRE or a platform engineer does not magically bestow upon them SRE skills and platform engineering skills, et cetera. And I think first and foremost, teams, companies have to realize and recognize that just because you called some team or called somebody something, doesn't automatically mean you have a DevOps team or an SRE team or a platform engineering team. With that said, I think there are specific, there's tools, processes, people, skills that teams can focus on to build people, right? To upskill people, to give them tools necessary to do their jobs well. And for me, culture is also part of it. Like I said earlier, the principles you have within your team absolutely matter for the health of that team. If you are fostering innovation in a part of innovation is letting people fail and being okay with failure, celebrating failure, that is important, right? Hard skills, whether it's Kubernetes or Golang or whatever the skill is that makes sense for your respective organization. Being able to invest in it and build consistency with it, that's going to be important, right? One of the things I'd say that we did here at Red Hat is basically upfront, at least within the SRE teams, upfront say we don't want a bunch of random scripts lying around if we are writing code and when we write code, it's going to be in one of these two languages. So bringing that consistency is going to help once you start thinking about scale, right? And it also makes it easier because you don't have siloed knowledge, you don't have hero worship. The last thing I'll say is there's also training, right? Training in soft skills, training in hard skills. And that really boils down to investing in the people that we have and identifying people who have the potential to step into either a DevOps role in a SRE role or a platform engineering role. Narayanan, thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about this topic. And I would love to have you back on the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me again. It was great.


What is up you guys welcome back to another one if you are new to the channel I am Goldpony and today we are doing a mod that has been well overdue Been wanting to do this really should be the first or second mod that you actually do to a car once you get it But before we get started haven't started staying a source up yet today. So let's do a quick cold start And so what is up you guys and welcome back good to see all your smiling faces once again a couple things I wanted to mention real quick one. I am a review channel I do car reviews and every now and then I'm going to be doing some vlogs on staying a source So if there was any confusion whether I'm just moving to a straight vlog channel or if I'm going away from car reviews That is the complete opposite. I'm still going to do primarily car reviews But now that I have staying a source want to share it with you guys because I'm obsessed with this car So I'm going to be doing some stegosaurus vlogs from time to time But now before we continue on pulling it to rudders here because I am all in empty. So let's get some gas All right, so we are back and actually it was when I was filling up there yet another person complimented not so much the car But the color the need for green on the car there That is one thing I have noticed since I got this car is the color Everybody thinks it's like aftermarket or a wrap or something. It's definitely one of my favorite things about this one one of those guys that thinks like Sports cars or pony cars muscle cars, whatever I think they should be vibrant like race red or need for green velocity blue all those bright colors That's really where it's at with this type of car But any yo second thing I wanted to tell you guys since everyone's been asking me on Instagram and YouTube sunglasses They're boosted shades. So I wanted to support a company that supported car. So boosted shades. It's you know boosted turbo charge That's why I went with them. But so I digress where we are going today We are going to get stengosaurus's windows tinted finally It's really something that I have always done for every single car I've owned whether it be a completely stock civic Or my g35 or my dc5 and tegar. I've always gotten the windows tinted So question is because they have not asked me and I have not told them What percentage am I gonna go with and so I suppose we will all find out shortly Felt his window tinting. We are here 11 59. Okay. So I'm only a half hour early. That's pretty early All right, so before we go in you guys They're gonna be nice to do a little before and after here So here is the before we'll see if we can get the same spot afterwards here I will do a cool little after shot After this is 25% you guys definitely pretty big difference here I think the back definitely looks the best here just because of the angle of the Rear window there, but there is the before and after so let's go out and do some uh, let's do some b-roll Okay, so probably the first question I asked them and I always ask whenever I get my windows tinted because I don't know if the answer ever changes Is what is the illegal limit versus what is the legal limit? And the answer that they gave me is really police officers can pull you over for any type of tint If they feel it is too dark and these laws may very well differ from state to state I remember in the past when I lived in mariland 35% was kind of that magic number where you didn't have any issues and 20 or 25% was the point where you were Illegal and that is what I went with today was the 25% because I've had 35% on A couple of my previous cars and it just wasn't enough it it looked tinted But you can definitely still see inside not that i'm hiding or concealing anything I really just wanted to do this for the looks because it looks a lot better with The black stripe with the black emblems with the black lighting tint that I put on this thing So overall I just thought it looked a heck of a lot better and that's why I did it now The question is I have tinted five or six of my vehicles in the past So quite a bit just about every single one for the most part I've only been pulled over for my tint once and that was when it was the 20 or 25% I forget but other than that it's been pretty much smooth sailing I remember having 25% of my cars before And I went years before trading it in and never got pulled over for it So hopefully that is going to be the same deal on my bright need for green 2019 Mustang But we shall see anyways another thing I wanted to mention when I was there I saw a Mustang with a 35% tint So if you were thinking of tinting your own car, let me show you guys a quick little comparison here Between the two here is what the 35% tint looked like on that blue Mustang that we saw there In comparison here is the 25% on Stangosaurus You can't actually see into the 35% tint So that is why I went with the 25 and again I've had it in the past I've been completely happy with the 25 So that was my thought process for this one If I get pulled over for it so be it because actually Belches was probably the least expensive tint that I've ever gotten on any of my vehicle Surprisingly, usually I pay around $2.50 or somewhere in that ballpark to get the windows tinted But I'll know if it's because it was a Mustang and it's smaller windows Or it was a little less than $200 on this one So I think that was a very fair deal I am very happy with it It's open now since we are in downtown Hanover And we got some cool cityscape backdrops I figured Why not take a couple pictures for Instagram So if you are not following me yet on Instagram it is at the Goldpony21 Let's do that Oh my gosh we have some awesome backdrops here Here we go Instead of the whole cityscape thing didn't really work out There was a cop that spotted me and ended up following me around for like 10 different turns in downtown Hanover So that was kind of funny But good news is he didn't pull me over despite the fresh tint And I was so happy that he didn't But so I decided to get out on the main road and just leave that alone So now we are at a public park where we are free to roam about And not get pulled over hopefully That is about it for this one I am going to end this one with a couple of b-roll shots of stegosaurus here And again I will be back doing car reviews day in and day out As often as I can at least With some stegosaurus thrown in there as well in case you were interested But that is about it for this one you guys Thank you so much for watching Be sure to like the video and subscribe And I will see you guys in the next one Stay Gold


وصل الله على سيدنا وحبيب قلوبنا وشفيع نفوسنا أبل قاسم محمد وعلى ألبيته الطيبين الطاهرين المعصومين لا سيما بقيت الله روحي وأرواح العالمين اللتراب مقدمه الفداء ومع بعض المنصولين، ألبيته والألبيت ومحاولين السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته شاء الله وإنهاء المطلق بسوء المتحدة بشكل مرحب وعينة سنة سنة سنوات سنكون مقابلت على الوصول والتفاق ونحن سنجد في نظر أهمية التي يوجد فيها مدينة من أهل البيت وصلاوات على محمد وقالي محمد الأشياء بالتطبيق هو one of the most important because when you find that on the first level when we say كنو دعاتو لنا بغير ألسنتكم the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you carry yourself the way you associate with people from the same gender and people with the opposite gender will give a great indication of your faith and a great indication of who you are what your moral values are your characteristics and your personality and that would be the first level in which you would gain people towards the message of أهل البيت the message of Islam now the second barrier or the second stage in which comes forth or comes down to once you've gained particular persons attention by your actions, by your movements is the speech process the way you present Islam verbally therefore that's what is important in the topic for tonight as we would like to look at how to go about talking how is it we should go about discussing the religion of Islam and how not to discuss the religion of Islam now let's look at it first and foremost from a religious perspective as you let's look at it from our imams and remember we said in the first instance كنو دعاتو لنا بغير ألسنتكم but then when your tongue is tested let's say before we go up and discuss into a faith dialogue dialogue within one another on a very basic level and a humanitarian level let's say let's take the stuff that is haram let's say for example the غيبة, the نميمة these kind of issues how should we go about it because we always fall into the trap of being associated or being in a particular group of people in which will be discussed a particular person in a negative manner or a نميمة that will be negative whether it be positive or negative remember the نميمة is haram just as غيبة is haram let's look at it and how the imams look at it what happened when someone comes to the imam to do a نميمة let's look at the reply of Ali ibn Abi Talib as in someone comes forth because you remember there's two sides one side is the person that's actually saying the غيبة or the نميمة however he wouldn't have that person if he didn't have an E to listen to him so the second player or the second person that has a vital role is the person that's being told and how their reaction is now let's look at Ali ibn Abi Talib a person comes to Ali ibn Abi Talib and he says what he said such and such person has said something ill about you such and such person has said something ill about you look at the reply of Ali ibn Abi Talib he's heard the نميمة he looks at the person he says we will look into if you want what you have said we will look into it he says you have three options now he says what's my options he says if you're truthful in what you have said we will make sure that you are lowered in our eyes your rank will be lowered you will be nothing towards us he says why he says because you've done an act which Allah is displeasing Allah it's نميمة he says that's the first he says what's my second option he says if you are lying we will prosecute you because that's a lie he says what's my third option he says that you seek forgiveness and we will forgive you he says oh Ali ibn Abi Talib he says I seek forgiveness he says go look at that now we find it nowadays how can we say to ourselves someone comes to us and says something فلان says such and such about you فلان you'll begin to curse that فلان you'll go find out that فلان what did they actually say drove them to say that who else says this particular issue about you look at Ali ibn Abi Talib Ali ibn Abi Talib says what what did we say if you're truthful we will lower you if you're lied we'll prosecute you and if you seek forgiveness we'll forgive you that's the issue that's within one another giving us the idea of dialogue dialogue if you take the root word in the Latin language it literally means to see in the other person's point of view or the other person's spectacles so when you come towards a dialogue remember to have an open mind that's the first reference to have an open mind is to actually look at what the other person is saying and then you can deliver that which you have if in a particular instance of dialogue we have one issue or one person screaming at another who's going to be learning what there's no level of respect between the two there's no understanding علامة طبقائي once had a debate with a Christian man a French Christian man and it's a massive book beautiful book entitled الشيع now this book I and I myself I looked at the first two pages and I ended in the dictionary with me that's the depth of knowledge that was discussed but let's look at how they started this discussion remember one of our great علماء against a Christian man how did they start off علامة طبقائي takes off his puts it down he looks at the Christian man says don't think that I'm a scholar or whatever it may be or you may be scared of me intimidated he says no let's have a dialogue like two human beings but not just any normal human beings we want to show our level of respect to one another he says do not be intimidated he takes off his علامة puts it down he says let's have a human being talk to another human being let's have our morals up high and have a dialogue in which we do not disrespect one another let's provide facts and figures in which we can look at this particular issue that we're discussing in depth that's the dialogue another Imam you remember who's ever seen the series for Imam رضا عليه الصلاة والسلام the series I think 30 CDs in which the I think the 25 CD looks into the مناظرة where المأمون brings forth the best of the best in the lands the highest ranking atheists the highest ranking Christians the highest ranking Jews at the time to see is this really the son or the grandson of the prophet of Islam does he say that he has the knowledge in which he has so he comes forth the people told Imam رضا عليه الصلاة والسلام he says if you go towards this and you attain victory you will have written your doom because the man will kill you however if you don't go no one will know the position of the أهل البيت so he goes every single word that comes out of the Imam's mouth in that مناظرة is something we need to learn is something we need to read is something we need to look at when we having dialogue with the other schools of thought and in the other sects as an example let's look at the Christian and the atheists and then I'll move on Insha'Allah to look at inter racial dialogue he goes at the Christian man and the Christian man comes forth he was the first to approach the Imam and he looks at him and he says to the Imam he says what do you say what do you say about your prophet in comparison to ours why do you think that your prophet is the best in comparison to ours look at the Imam look at how he replies because remember knowledge and application the previous nights he knows what they are how they think what they believe in so the Imam uses it to his advantage he narrows down the Christian in a particular corner look at the reply of the Imam he could have said anything he could have said anything from the Quran وعليكم سلام he says to the Christian man he says we believe that our prophet is the greatest of prophets the Christian man says why is he the greatest of prophets he says because he prayed the most that's the only thing he says at the start he says because he prayed the most then the Christian man he speaks out he says how dare you say such a thing he says why what have I said he says how can you say that's anyone prayed more than our Lord وَلَا يَا دُبِلَّهْ جُزَسْ كَرْسْتِ he says how can you say that the Imam's already got him in a corner what was his reply he says if you say that he is your Lord can you answer me and tell me who is he praying towards look at that position he narrows him down he says can you tell me if he is your Lord if he is your God why is it that he's praying why is he postrating if he is your Lord the person be quiet goes back another person comes forth he answers and he answers an atheist comes by the name of I believe Amoran al-Sabi if I'm not mistaken and he comes towards the Imam and he speaks to the Imam and he begins to attack the Imam and he says tell me about God and this is something when we look at توحيد this is it's so detailed the reply of the Imam that we can take it into different particular sections and analyze every single wording of the Imam look at how he replies because how he distinctly gives us the image which is توحيد the atheist tells him he says tell me about your Lord and the Imam begins to tell him he is known through his أسماء this is all the characteristics then he says a question is our we in Allah or is Allah in us look at that think about it actually like let's comprehend this he asks a question are we as creation created inside something which is the Almighty or is Allah inside us is he everywhere within us he asks this to the Imam and everyone begins to ask themselves he says yes that's true are we in Allah is Allah in us what's going on we can't comprehend it look at the reply of the Imam he looks at the man he says tell me about the mirror tell me about the mirror he says what do you want to know about the mirror he says are you in the mirror or is the mirror in you look at that detail are you in the mirror or is the mirror are you in the mirror or is the mirror in you because you can see yourself it's a reflection that we see we're not in the mirror the mirror is not in us but we can see ourselves isn't it the person begins to come up with arguments and everyone knew that the Imam already had him is a ring on his finger and that's imagine just that in itself in the aspect of Tauheed that we can analyze that Allah's reflections if you look at the mirror images of Allah's mercy Allah's justice the ethics that Allah wants who is Allah's mirror images on earth that he wants except for Muhammad and Ali Muhammad that's the beauty of it when we look at perfection it's different from looking at imperfection when you have two glasses in front of you and this is the idea of role models when we have to take from role models how to act and react in certain situations when we have the perfection let's say a clear glass of water a clear glass of water not a speck in it perfect Allah says that's water and the effect of water should be the effect of the mu'mineen it purifies all that around them and that's intertwined with wudu intertwined how you should be feeling in wudu how you should be purified in a thought process when making wudu before even making it the mu'min is like water now imagine our imams our imams now imagine our imams our mu'min clear water that's our role models the role models of other schools of thought the role models of other sects they say to themselves yes it's water we tell them they have such and such mistake they have committed this atrocity they have committed this particular act of injustice this act of kufr they say that's okay overall they're good people now I want to ask you if you have a clear cup of water nothing in it and you have a cup of water that you put a bit of dirt in let it be one grain of dirt when you mix it doesn't it become cloudy therefore it's not clear anymore is it it doesn't show you the path to Allah as clear as the clear one does it when the radio you open it the closer you are to the frequency the more clear it becomes isn't it the further you are the more shaky the less you know the more the things become appearing to us as half balanced not the complete picture we hear one word and another word is very shaky another word shaky we hear another word out of context the imams are always on the correct frequency the imams are that clear cup of water if we hold on to them we are holding on to the rope of Allah SWT and when we know such people when we look at their ethics we look at how they acted in society how they acted and reacted within one another when they're angered when they're happy when they're in a state of sorrow when they're in a state of happiness everything was perfection when they're happy we can see that they used to give out when they were in a state of oppression when they didn't have anything to give they would even give from themselves that give whether it be دعاء whether it be how did the Quran write down in a verse in the Holy Quran when they fasted for three days without food or water and they gave three people that came towards their doorstep knocking and they had nothing to eat they gave everything that they had towards them when they were oppressed Imam Zain Al-Abideen after his father was murdered he finds a person clinging on to the Kaaba crying and crying and he goes towards him he says what's wrong he says Allah will never forgive me he says what's the matter he says I was one of the people that went out and killed Imam Hussein let's look at this because we can analyze how they're always perfect whether they've been oppressed whether they're happy whether they're sad from this particular instance he goes towards him he says what's wrong he says no Allah will never forgive me why because I've killed or I've been amongst the people that have killed Imam Hussein he says I will let you know look at the reply of the Imam he says I will let you know of something to do that Allah will forgive you your sins and he says what is it he says pray Salatul Ghafaila he says what's that Imam teaches him he says Salatul Ghafaila he says when you recite the first raka is el hamd and you recite from the Quran and the second raka is also and you recite from the holy Quran two raka are very simple one take 5 minutes whether noon in the first in the first raka 3 minutes and he says I'll give you this I've gifted you this you've killed my father but I'll give you this information لأننا نحن من المنزل أننا نحن مرسي يجب عليهم هذه الصلاة يقول لزينا بلوكساتهم يقول لهم why have you given him this they've killed your father يقول I am a hujjah on this earth when someone asks through me I give him nothing but perfection I give him what Allah has entrusted me but he replies by saying what he says because Allah will not give him the blessing the tawfiq to pray these two raka'at because of his actions that's what I want to get at when Allah سبحانه وتعالى gives us the month of Ramadhan he gives us before it two months to prepare for Ramadhan the month of istighfar and the month of charity the month in which we can account for our sins and replenish them so that when we come to the month of blessing which is Ramadhan there's no actions that will guard us that will not allow Allah سبحانه وتعالى to take our deeds like that person that wasn't given the tawfiq to pray those two raka'at between Maghrib and Aisha'a we don't want ourselves to fall under that trap that's why we have to ask Allah first and foremost for forgiveness for our sins give from what Allah has given us towards those that have nothing so that Allah may forgive us if we have sins and on the final level when we do our deeds we make sure when we do it with the right hand our left hand doesn't know when we pray Salat Al-Lail you don't come the next morning and you tell everyone well I'm thirsty why are you thirsty haven't you had Suhoor he says no I've been in Salat Al-Lail all night and I've missed Suhoor you don't in that particular instance make sure whatever you do whether it be charity whether it be Salat Quran you do it with your right hand your left hand doesn't know make sure you do everything in secret Allah سبحانه وتعالى will appreciate it more why do you think Salat Al-Lail has such a high significance because you do it when no one is watching only Allah سبحانه وتعالى you don't have lengthy ركو it's in Sujood while everyone is watching there's a story about a scholar that was in a mosque he had the door open so he thought to himself that someone's come in I must make sure that my Salat is perfect so he extends his ركو he extends his Sujood make sure his بسم الله his heart throughout the mosque it echoes he finishes he does the Taslim right, left he does the Shajat Al-Shukr and he sticks himself this person is going to think wow, what a scholar he looks around and he finds out that the cat has made its way into the mosque he sticks himself what have I done give us an idea that what look at the concept of Riyadh look at the concept which we have to learn that when someone is watching we become elevated how about when the Lord that created you is watching when the Lord that created you is the one that will be accounting and you will be accountable and insha'Allah in the nights of ليل قدر when Ali ibn Talib was struck we want to talk about Salat its importance its application and its effect through the genes that will follow and insha'Allah I end on this mana I end on this note and insha'Allah this brings us to the conclusion for the series of knowledge for this Ramadan insha'Allah and we will continue with a new series tomorrow and we pray to Allah on this note that he wipes out the sins which hold us back from gaining the rewards of Ramadan that he wipes the sins in which hold our du'az hold our A'mal hold our Salat from reaching the roof and may Allah accept all the du'az and the A'mal and the Siyam and the Salat and the Quran of everyone here with the blessed صورة المباركة الفاتح but before it through your loud الصلاوات على محمد وقال محمد


George is back. Did you miss me guys? Tell me in the comments below. I've been gone for one week and I've had my team create videos introducing themselves and I'd love to know whether you want to keep meeting the team Tell me in the comments below and we'll keep introducing more people if you say you like to meet them and My trips have taken me to Palawan. Palawan is a island in the Philippines 7,000 islands in the Philippines and I've been now to two that's 6,998 to go and We explored the potential of working with the Chamber of Commerce and the people in the seven universities as a Source for new graduates. There's six thousand new graduates from Palawan every year And we're going to evaluate whether they are good potential for adding to our development team So we can make more cool stuff for you Do you want to hear more about this? Tell me in the comments below and I'll keep you up to date if you're interested And we have a new leadership team for the gamers channel go to youtube.com slash gamers And there's a whole schedule where every single day. There's a new show There's a large team behind the gamers channel now and we're going to create some awesome content both from the community Where we upload the best videos from partners and outside of freedom as well and scheduled programming shows that are really focused on game news and Podcasts and things that help you interact with everybody and our staff on the gamers channel If you want to join gamers go there and apply We will submit the best videos to the channel to help promote you on YouTube comm slash gamers Freedom points a lot of you still think freedom points are live They're in beta guys beta means we're still testing That means all the freedom points you are earning are just like a beta in a game That is still going through testing and when the game launches There's a character wipe and the same thing with freedom points. There will be a freedom point wipe So please don't complain that hey, I've got a hundred ten percent revenue share redeemed And I didn't get a hundred ten percent revenue share. It's because it's all in testing So there's no live hundred ten percent revenue shares yet We first need to calibrate everything and fix all the bugs a few of you have figured out that you can gift Negative freedom points to give yourself unlimited freedom points, which we never thought of Kudos to you for being creative. Those are the kinds of things we need to catch while in beta That's why the points don't count yet And when we fix all these bugs and reward the people who are creative for finding things like gifting negative freedom points With some real freedom points when we launch then they will be live. I hope this helps you understand about freedom points Let's talk about Indiegogo Indiegogo.com lets you fund raise money for your projects Would you like us to feature Indiegogo projects from within the network? I've already committed to featuring one project, which is a internet TV Effort to create stations that you can embed on your website that makes Basically internet television off YouTube it's an off YouTube strategy I think it was the most compelling project a few of you have emailed me your Indiegogo projects and I'm gonna feature one which I think was the best one and then if you tell me the fans the audience down there in the Comments below that you want to hear about more Indiegogo projects and how they can What's cool and exciting about them then I'll feature more here on the George show on the freedom central channel? Just let me know We have a lot of other updates like a new heartbeat We have a developer his name is Raven and he is building a new heartbeat crawler That will allow us to index all of YouTube. We've already indexed almost 500,000 channels and we're quickly growing to millions and as soon as that's ready I'll let you know it's our better more accurate version of social blade Which incidentally has not updated in like two months and our network is still showing we have 5,000 channels on social blade when we have 30,000 come on dude Update, please. We'd like to see our new statistics. I know we're not number 25 anymore I think we're like number 20 maybe number 15 in all the networks. We'd love to see those stats So Jason ergo, please fix social blade or we will build a better one and you don't want that, right? No, it's friendly competition guys when we launch heartbeat. It won't be just a social blade Analytics it'll have a lot of other cool features which will include analytics But we'll include them in a way to help your channel grow and help you connect with other youtubers It's a dating for youtubers and by that we mean it's connecting on common interest We're going to use channel statistics things like what videos you enjoy. We're gonna let you bookmark Moments video marks. They're called like bookmarks for video and based on the video marks You choose the start and stop points your favorite moments We can match you with other people who make the same or similar video marks to help you find Collaborators and people to work with based on common interest dating. So it's not, you know boyfriend girlfriend dating It's common interest dating and for those of you who don't know I met my wife Shall you threw a website? Not match calm Although I did use the that service to look for a future wife And I just couldn't find one to connect with for a long-term relationship went on many dates But nothing really worked out the point is I met my wife on study pond Dot-com which sadly is no longer in business. I guess they couldn't make their business model profitable But study pond was a website which connected language exchange I was looking to learn Chinese because I had a meeting with EMI in Taiwan I had the business idea of promoting Asian singers outside of Asia, and I wanted to learn How to speak Chinese at least the basics so I could go to that meeting and say more than just knee-how and I had shall you as one of my teachers who I found through study pond dot-com I had three teachers at the time we were using Skype to do language exchange lessons and Shall you and I met for the first time in Taiwan She went with me to all the meetings in case I didn't know how to understand Chinese and We actually built a relationship when we weren't looking for one that was more personal and not just business and then a year later We got married a year after that. We had our first baby girl at the enda who is now almost five years old So it's been a six year We've been married for six years, and it's going really well, so I Hope you enjoyed that little bit of trivia, and I hope you enjoyed this update I hope you missed me, and if you did the good news is I'm back from my travels And I will be making more episodes of the George show both edited and Unedited because some of you said you prefer unedited some of you prefer edited so we'll give you both and We'll see you on the next episode of the George show unedited Speechless what happened to being doctors and teachers what happened to being your brothers keep up now with days


Welcome to Maine Public News Connect, original news stories from Maine Public Radio, airing weekly in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Somali, and English.  Today is Friday, February 24th, and here are the week's top stories. Many asylum seekers in Maine are struggling to access legal representation, with some facing the prospect of defending themselves in immigration court without a lawyer. Anna Welch, a professor at the University of Maine School of Law, says asylum seekers without representation are 65% more likely to face deportation. The Portland-based non-profit Hope Acts is trying to help by running a clinic two days each week at the Portland Public Library to help asylum seekers file their initial applications. Legal advocates say the fundamental challenge is that the immigration court system is nearly impossible to navigate without a lawyer, but does not provide free legal representation to those who can't afford to pay. Maine households that rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to buy food will see a reduction in benefits starting next month when extra pandemic supports will end. Alex Carter with the group Maine Equal Justice says it will be a devastating blow, with households losing an average of $190 per month. Governors for low-income households say Congress has an opportunity to boost food assistance benefits in the upcoming Farm Bill, a piece of legislation that includes nutrition programs. Advocates also say the cuts are coming at a difficult time when grocery prices across the country have risen due to inflation. Maine Governor Janet Mills and 19 other Democratic governors have launched what they're calling the Reproductive Freedom Alliance. The multi-state coalition aims to protect and expand reproductive freedom. It was led by California Governor Gavin Newsom. Mills says states need to collaborate to strengthen and protect reproductive freedom after the Supreme Court's decision last year that ended the constitutional right to an abortion. Maine law protects the right to abortion, but after the Supreme Court decision, 13 states made the procedure illegal, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. Only a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Maine Senator Angus King emphasized the urgency of providing weapons and training to Ukrainian forces. King, an independent who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, made the remarks during an interview with MSNBC-TV. King said it was important to train Ukrainian soldiers on high-tech weapons provided by the US before Russia launches another offensive. Next week, President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine, where he pledged continued support for the country. This has been Maine Public News Connect. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Maine Public News Connect partners with wonderful groups across Maine, committed to providing access to important news and information for all. We'd especially like to recognize the Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition, present a Maine, the Congolese and Angolan communities of Maine. I'm John Bo-Africa, Catholic Charities of Maine, the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center, Portland Adult Education, the Portland Office of Economic Opportunity, Prosperity Maine, the Maine Health Access Foundation, and the Maine Humanities Council for their support and efforts. Maine Public News Connect is made possible by individual sponsors, businesses and foundations from across Maine, and especially by Coastal Enterprises, the Seaport Credit Union, Hannaford Supermarkets, IDEX, Kuh and Patricia Ewan, Maine Health Access Foundation, Maine State Housing Authority, and the Sam L. Cohen Foundation. Thank you for your significant support. Maine Public News Connect is made possible by Kuh and Patricia Ewan, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. At Maine Housing, we know an affordable home is key. Our first home loan program offers Maineers low interest rates and downpayment assistance on multi-unit properties. Learn more at MaineHousing.org. Hannaford Supermarkets, celebrating the diversity of its employees, customers and communities, and committed to fostering a welcoming environment. Together, they're greater than groceries. Learn more at Hannaford.com. If you would like to support this project, please contact Corey Morrissey at<PHONE_NUMBER>.


Thank you everyone. This is Melissa with thestockswish.com and welcome. I thought it would go over Netflix. Good old Netflix. Love Netflix did an earnings update on this last night. Earlier in the day, yesterday morning, I thought I knew it would gap up and so I was spot on about that and I thought it would gap up to 375-400. Then the stock rallied. This was yesterday into the close, over 350, which was an area and I thought there was a possibility the stock could just gap up huge. I mean, this is huge, but I mean, I thought monster, like megalodon, huge. But really, I was thinking the target was 500, but instead it gapped up to 400 something. This was last night. The stock fell off a planet today. It absolutely just fell off a planet today. There was no stopping and it came down to this area here of support. No. Does this mean this chart is damaged? The answer is no. Does it mean Netflix is in a downtrend? No. Does it mean the stock got sold up pretty big? Yes. Is the stock still okay? Yes. Is it still in an uptrend? Yes. The stock has just had an incredible, unbelievable, insane, crazy move in the last year. The Netflix really is the golden gap of the year and I did say that when I sent an email out in the summer. The buy in this at 140 to get all the way up, where you would take profits today in this, obviously, if you had taken this gap here. You bought this gap here. This is a corrective gap if you bought it. Your profit up here in the earnings is $250, $260. So people took profits and that's what they did. So the gap looks like this. Now you still don't short this. I mean, I didn't short this today. I saw it going and you can't buy it because obviously it's a failure. It's a failed bullish gap, but you just leave it alone. You don't do anything. Netflix is still fine though. It really is still fine. It's still in an uptrend. This is still an amazing chart. Let's just go look at the one minute here. There actually was no setup to ever buy this. So there was no setup to buy it today. And again, the idea of doing failures, which is a plane in the direction against the gap is not something I do. But I can spot a failure. I just don't do them because it's going against the trend. The trend of Netflix is up. Netflix reverse-wushed. So you would immediately know not to do it, not to buy it. It was a failure than as a buy. High of here is $389. This is $939. $932. $933. $934. $935. Netflix comes in basically $12 in the first five minutes. That is a reverse-wush even at this price point. You cannot buy this buy setup here. You can't take it. You can't do it. Here was a sell set up on this confirmation of the failure. Actually, if you shorted Netflix here, the stop is huge. Stop really has to be $386. Well, $385. Now, it has to be $386. The spread in Netflix is this would have had to be $386. So the stop would have had to be $386. It would have been $3.25. I can just figure this out here. So $3.25. And here you would have gotten out. Now, it did go even longer. $382.75. And it came down to basically $334. So that was $48.75. And you could have lowered the stop all along. I mean, you would have seen here that it was broken. And again, I didn't do this. I just want to see what the profit in this would have been. The $3.50 stop. Man, if you'd taken 300 shares, you would have made over $14,000. It's just you're playing against the trend here. So I just don't do this. But I certainly saw the failure. The failure is the reverse swoosh, so you don't buy it. The stock's in an uptrend, so I don't want to short it. But it was a bullish gap up failure that came in and came in down to the support area. And you can play failures when you spot them, but I just don't do that. I really only do true, true professional gaps, which are in the direction of the gap. And if I see them failing for some reason, then I just lay off. I don't take a trade, I don't do anything because I never want to be against the trend of institutional money. And all that happened here today was profit taking. Megalodon profit taking, though. I will say that, and it just continued all day. And this is why you don't look for climatics or buy-and-retracements or bounces or anything you've been eating still because this is profit taking in here. So there isn't going to be any bounce. It just drifted then on into the afternoon. Never, never even got back over $3.50, $3.40. So I'm going to be watching this Netflix and see what happens to it. It's down here overnight, too. This is gapping down pre-market, but I'm not going to look at this as a gap to do tomorrow morning. It's not a good bearish gap. There's a chance, though, that this can fall in tomorrow. In fact, it probably will. Let me just sit here. Well, Netflix is at least going to come into 300 bucks tomorrow, but I think that's a mini-target. I think this could actually pull in all the way down here to 280, to 280, to 275 because it's going to, more people are going to sell off of this. That's why it's gapping down pre-market, post-market tonight. A lot of people sold off on the day and then more people will sell out of it tonight. And just there's this still profit taking and that's what this is, but I think this could come in some more tomorrow. Again, this is not a quality bearish gap, but it was a failed bullish gap today. Netflix reversed swished, so you don't take it. You don't take any buy in it. And again, you spot the failure immediately. One of the most beautiful things that I figured out in the market is a swush. And that's the reason I named my company the Stock Swush. One of these days I'll have to do a webinar on the swush. I gosh, I don't even know if I've ever done one. I don't think I have. So one of these days I'll do a webinar on the swush. It is an amazing thing that I figured out and it helps you make money and also helps you not lose. It helps save you money by seeing something like I would have seen in Netflix today, which I would never would have bought it, even as a gap. So this is Melissa with thestockswish.com. If you'd like more information on the upcoming gap class, it's this weekend, October 26th and 27th. Feel free to email me at melissa at thestockswish.com. Thanks everyone, have a fantastic evening.