This is a short introductory presentation on REAPS, a Resient Information Architecture Platform for SmartGrid. The original development of the software platform was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Agency, ARPA-E. There are revolutionary changes going on in the area of energy. With the appearance of many distributed energy resources, we are moving away from the centralized power station transmission system, distribution system, customer model. We are changing to a more distributed and decentralized paradigm where energy is produced and distributed locally, possibly shared across the grid. We started building microgrids with solar and wind generation playing an increasing role. This leads to increased decentralization and enables cheaper and cleaner energy, but this also introduces problems. New technologies are needed to manage and protect the grid. However, the control architecture of the power grid has not changed yet. The old model of centralized control driven by a control room still applies. Power devices at the edge, such as transformers, capacitor banks, and even loads, are remotely controlled. A new, very dynamic and distributed energy production and distribution paradigm does not mesh well with this. Control or production decisions should be made locally. Systems, which include inverters and substations, need to be integrated and interoperate seamlessly. Today, software is becoming the universal integration tool. This means we need to implement complex, distributed real-time software that is resilient and secure. But how should this be done? Vision with REAPS is to provide a software platform that enables the design, engineering, and operation of such software systems. REAPS is a middleware, a sort of distributed operating system that runs on networked embedded devices deployed on the energy grid. On one side, the platform interacts with sensors like PMUs and actuators such as inverters. And on the other side, it allows communication between the pieces of the distributed app. REAPS apps are inherently distributed and run in loosely coupled, interacting actors that are low overhead containers of single or multi-threaded software components. This is a list of features in REAPS. First of all, REAPS is a software platform to build real-time embedded apps. The apps can run with real-time priority to meet timing constraints. The components of the app interact with each other via high-performance messaging primitives that support various communication architectures such as Pub-Sub and Request-Apply, etc. Components are single-threaded and all interactions among threads happen through messages. REAPS apps can be implemented in Python for soft real-time or in C++ for hard real-time or as a mixture of the two. REAPS provides a number of services that apps can rely on. These include a fault tolerance peer-to-peer discovery service, high precision, approximately 10 microseconds, time synchronization, application deployment, and remote management device access control. Resource management of CPU, file space, network bandwidth, and memory footprint can be tightly controlled, so runaway apps do not exhaust resources. Mechanisms are available for fault tolerance, such as automatic app restart and network link reconnect. REAPS also supports a set of distributed coordination services, which include dynamic group formation and communication, leader election and consensus, and time-coordinated control actions. Finally, REAPS is secure. The deployment mechanism and all communications use secure protocols, and apps are strictly isolated from each other and their access to resources such as network link and devices are tightly controlled. This figure summarizes the layers of the platform. REAPS runs on Linux with real-time extensions enabled and uses standard Linux packages. Its two main ingredients are the component framework that supports the app components and the platform manager that implements the services. Apps are built on top of the framework and rely on the services. Example apps include distributed SCADA, power management, microgrid control, energy management, remedial action scheme. REAPS is designed to be universal and it can support a large variety of embedded apps. To summarize, REAPS is a software platform. We have demonstrated it in a few selected application areas. Microgrid control, remedial action schemes, and transactive energy. Additional information is available on our website. Next, we will show a demo to illustrate how REAPS apps are built, deployed, and run. In this demonstration, we will show a simple application called the distributed estimator. We will utilize Eclipse to demonstrate this. We will open the model file first. This model file has an application name distributed estimator. There are message topics, sensor ready, sensor query, sensor value, and estimate. Three components, a sensor component, a local estimator, a global estimator. The sensor component is defined with a periodic timer that runs every one second. A publish port publishes on the topic of sensor ready. The local estimator has a subscriber that is looking for that topic, sensor ready. There is a request port in the local estimator with a sensor query, sensor value pair, a reply port on the sensor which has matching topics. The local estimator publishes an estimate which is picked up by the global estimator subscriber looking for that same topic. The global estimator also has a timer every three seconds. Actors are executables defined by combinations of one or more components. The estimator actor has a combination of the sensor component and the local estimator. The local messages are messages that stay within the node. Here is where you can see the sensor with its publish sensor ready data and with the local estimator which is subscribing to that information. The sensor query and sensor value request reply ports exchange messages within that actor. The aggregator actor has one component, the global estimator. The estimate messages are global and will be received from the published information of the local estimator. The global estimator is woken up every three seconds using a timer. We'll now look at what it takes to define a component. Looking at the sensor component, the sensor class will define a timer port called clock with an on clock function. Within the on clock function, a message is published using a port called ready. The sensor also has a request port which responds to requests from other components. Next we will look at the local estimator component. The local estimator subscriber port ready is triggered when a sensor ready message is received. It then sends a request on the query port to the sensor. The sensor receives the request on its request port and sends back a response. The response triggers the query port. Then the local estimator will publish an estimate which is available globally. Now let's look at the global estimator component. This component includes a timer that wakes up every three seconds. There is also an estimate subscriber port which is triggered when estimate messages are received from the local estimator. Next we'll show how to start the REAPS controller and a REAPS node. The REAPS registry service is started first. This service could be started in the background as a system service. We will start the REAPS controller application on the development machine. The application will be used to load the REAPS apps, to deploy them to REAPS targets and to start and stop the applications. We will start the deployment service on the development machine. The IP address of the deployed target node will appear once the REAPS framework discovers the node. Now open a REAPS application by first selecting the application folder. Then the model file for the application, the dot REAPS file and the application deployment model dot D E P L. By selecting the view button you will get a picture of the applications architecture and deployment. In this you see that the two actors, the aggregator and estimator are both deployed on the same node. The estimator contains the sensor and the local estimator. You can see the messages and how they are exchanged among the components. You can also tell whether they are local or global messages. The application deployment model shows that we will deploy both actors on all target nodes. Using the deployment model, the controller will deploy the actors to the specified node. Using the REAPS controller we will launch the application. The application is then launched by the REAPS deplo service on each of the target REAPS nodes. The REAPS deplo service output shows messages coming from each component, global estimator, local estimator and sensor. You stop the application by selecting the application and the stop button. You can also remove the application from the REAPS target. This will remove all of the files for this application. We will now run this application on a virtual network which will have four target nodes. Looking at this deployment model you will see that the estimator actor will be deployed on three nodes. The aggregator actor is deployed on the fourth node. We will now launch Mininet with four virtual nodes. We log into each of the virtual nodes and start the REAPS platform. We also start a REAPS controller. This gives you a display window for the control app, three estimators and an aggregator. You can see all four target nodes indicated in the control app. We locate and open the REAPS application as before. But this time we choose the Mininet version of the deployment model. If you again view the application, this time you will notice that there are four target nodes. Deployed onto one target node is the aggregator actor. On the other three is the estimator actor. This time you will see three target nodes contributing estimates that are gathered by the aggregator. There's a corresponding window for each of these nodes. We will now deploy and launch the application on the virtual network. Once it is running you will see one aggregator and three estimators. Aggregator actor log can be viewed in the top window while the other three windows show the estimator actor logs. We will now stop the application. Once they have grayed out then we can safely remove the application from the target node.  Then we can safely quit the control application. For more information on how to use REAPS in your next power application please visit our website.


This is a whole different author. Or if you live in Zimbabwe, of course you're an expert on Zimbabwe. If you like to let Robin Hobb just rip out yourself, you are wrong. What am I gonna do when I run out of Hobb? ["Sleep of Magic"] Hey guys, it's Leanna and I'm here today to talk about Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. Robin Hobb continues to knock it out of the park. Oh my goodness. This is an author that has not been overhyped. But which I mean, like she has been hyped. It's not like she's underhyped. People are all about Robin Hobb, especially lately, but like they did not oversell it. The hype is deserved. Robin Hobb is killing it. And I know she wrote a whole heck of a lot and I know I have a lot to go. But I'm also like, what am I gonna do when I run out of Hobb? But anyway, Ship of Magic. This is the first book in the Liveship Trader series, which is the second trilogy in the realm of the Elderlings. Earlier this year, I finished the Farsieher trilogy. I quite adored the Farsieher trilogy. And so everyone pretty much had told me that the Liveship Trader series is even better than the Farsieher trilogy. And I frequently disagree with popular opinion, but I fully expected to like the Liveship Trader series. And what is most surprising to me, even though again I knew going into it at least a little bit, I knew that there would be live ships. I knew that there would be more perspectives. I knew that there would be a lot more characters. And even knowing that what most was most surprising to me about Ship of Magic was how different this is from the Farsieher books. Like it very much feels like Robin Hobb. It doesn't feel like this is a whole different author. It has something at its core that is quite essentially Hobb. And I think it is this nuanced, very careful approach to characters. Even though there's a lot more going on and a lot more characters to follow, it is still extremely character driven. But that is one of the things that is really different about this is that while the Farsieher books, you are in Fitz's head for the entire time. It is a long time to be spending with one character. And for that reason, it can be slower and it also then it doesn't really, not only do you not see different people's perspectives, but you also are only ever in the one place unless Fitz has gone somewhere else, which he does occasionally. It's not like the entire trilogy takes place in one place. Fitz does move around, but it's still not much moving around because it's only this one character that you're following. So it's only if he moves somewhere else that you are moving somewhere else. So by contrast in the Life Ship Traders or at least in the Ship of Magic, presumably in the rest of the books as well, there are again, multiple characters that you're following in third person, not first person, already different. And then those characters are in different places. So it is just like a lot more going on, a lot more people to follow, a lot more plot lines, a lot more threads, a lot more places. And in addition to that, if you think that going into reading this series after reading Farsieher that you have a leg up because, well, I'll have new characters, but the world is familiar to me because I've read Farsieher, you are wrong. Because this is taking place in a whole different part of the world, that's like saying that you have a leg up on the geography of like Zimbabwe, because you are a citizen of Earth. That's taking place a whole other area than from where I am. Or if you live in Zimbabwe, of course you're an expert on Zimbabwe, but me in Los Angeles has no leg up on knowing the geography of Zimbabwe. So similarly, this takes place in a whole other area. So knowing anything about Farsieher trilogy is not helpful at all. It does not help you to understand this world. Maybe in brief instances where some of the sort of types of magic that exist in this universe, you kind of recognize a bit because they came up in the Farsieher trilogy, but this book isn't really concerned with those forms of magic at all. There are new forms of magic that now you need to learn. So it's not even like, well, but I know the magic system, like you do not. You know a magic system that is taking place over there, but over here we're doing something else. So it was basically like starting a whole new series. Like even though it does take place in the realm of the elderlings, it's like a whole other thing. There are new cultures to learn about, new faiths to learn about, new characters to learn about, new everything to learn about. And everything that we're learning about here is really interesting. I will say because there's so much to learn about and so many different characters and so many different things happening, it felt slightly more surface level than Farsieher and that's more, again, it's not because Robin Hobb is not delving and is not delivering on nuanced characters. She absolutely is.  Assassin's Quest is about this long and it's just fits. In the Farsieher trilogy, you spend a whole heck of a long time just sinking into the moment, the situation, the feelings, the magic fits himself. Like it is, there's nothing left unexplored and for fits in the Farsieher trilogy. So here it's just by necessity because if there's so many other characters that we're following, you just don't have the time to be sinking into each character like that. But that said, for how many characters we had, for how many different places we had, for all of the exposition that needed to happen, for all of the introductions to magic systems and places, the familial ties, the various political situations, like everything that we needed to be caught up on in order to follow the story, all of that was done and we still had a lot of time and a lot of room for nuanced character development, nuanced character relationships, nuanced situations and intricate plot lines and so I don't know if I can, people who say that they like life shit better, obviously I haven't finished the trilogy. This is the first book in a trilogy and it is a great first book in a trilogy of five stars. But as to which I like better so far, I can't say that I like it better than Farsieher. So far, I feel like I had a more deeper connection with Farsieher and again, that is the result of just spending so much time with fits in fits' head, following him around. I just feel like emotionally, I felt more bound to Farsieher and again, that is just by virtue of the type of story that it is. It's, I feel very connected to the Ship of Magic. I don't wanna say that I don't and if I'm comparing those side by side though, then Farsieher demanded more of my soul than Ship of Magic. That said, Assassin's Apprentice, the very first book.  So it's again, it did demand more of me emotionally than this does. This had me very emotionally invested. It had me raging at the horrible characters. It had me rooting for the great characters. Absolutely. It's just not as much as Farsieher, which I've already said multiple times now. Why, like, it simply has to be that way. It's not like this book failed. It just doesn't have space and time to do what Farsieher does. It's a different project. So all in all, I had a great, great time bringing Ship of Magic and I would say, I mean, when I was talking tomorrow about this because we buddy read this just like we buddy read the Farsieher trilogy and she was saying that she doesn't know if she'd recommend people start with Farsieher, that she might recommend people start with Live Ship and I can see why. I think it would depend on who I was talking to, like what kind of taste and reading that person has or you have who's listening now. It would be perfectly fine to start here and I believe people do when you can. It's just so far there haven't really been any spoilers for Farsieher, but I think I believe I understand that at some point in the Live Ship Traders, something is either said or something happens or whatever, but there's information in the Live Ship Traders series that is spoilery for the Farsieher trilogy. So for that reason alone, if that is something that would bother you, that would be something that would bother me so I would never start with Live Ship Traders. It is a little more fast paced. It's a little more, I guess, exciting because there's just more things happening, more people to follow. So I mean, Farsieher trilogy, if you don't like fit, then you're in trouble because all the books and they only get longer and longer they are about fits and fits alone. So if you don't like being in fits' head, then you're again in trouble. First is The Ship of Magic. If you have some characters that you like better than others, that's absolutely fine because you're not just following one character.  So you're less likely to get, I don't know, exhausted or bored by one situation, one character, one whatever. So if it's a type of fantasy reader that likes to have more multiple perspectives, more stuff going on, more action and more adventure, yeah, I mean, yeah, this has more, more of everything. But if you really like to like sink into like wallowing with a character on their emotional journey, you like to let Robin Hobb just like rip out yourself, then Farsieher is, it's more, it's more. Also Night Eyes. Farsieher has Night Eyes. So far nothing in this can beat Night Eyes. I seriously doubt any of these live ships are going to own my soul the way that Night Eyes owns my soul. Farsieher wins by virtue of having Night Eyes. Anyway, I'm super, super excited to read the next books in this series. I am very curious about a lot of the sort of mysteries that have been teased. Now I had, I was a little bit disappointed in Farsieher by the explanations and reveals for the mysteries that were teased at the beginning of it. So I'm hoping that I will not feel that way about life ship where by the third book, if we get answers to the mysteries that are teased in the ship of magic, that I will not feel the kind of disappointment that I did with Farsieher. And I make it sound worse than it was. I wasn't that disappointed. I was just a bit disappointed. But yeah, I mean, I'm excited to learn more about these magics, learn more about these people, learn more about this world to follow these characters who I'm already extremely invested in. Again, even though I'm not as bound to them the way you are with Fitz Farsieher, they're great characters that leave off the page and they're complex and nuanced and they aggravate you and you root for them and they just feel very extremely well realized, fully fleshed out and three dimensional. And I think that above any, that is the most, the biggest through line that feels consistent between Farsieher and this where every character feels nuanced and fleshed out and messy and gray and just realistic. So A plus character work and the world building and the exciting adventures, et cetera, et cetera, are all also very excellent. But the character building I think is what truly shines above and beyond in these books more so than most of the fantasy series that I've read. Highly recommend, absolutely wholeheartedly without any asterisks. Pick it up if you have not. I do recommend reading Farsieher first but also explained why you may pick this up first instead if that's more what you're into. Let me know in the comments down below. If you have read The Ship of Magic, if you've read the Liveship Traders series, if you agree or disagree with me and my assessment of this and this versus Farsieher, whatever you want to let me know. I post videos on Saturdays, other random times as well but definitely Saturdays, so like and subscribe. Join my Patreon if you feel so inclined. I'll see you when I see you.


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing a random number block randomizer for flawless two box case pick your team number four for the Yankees, Cardinals, Metz, Tigers, Brewers, Twins, Phillies, and D-Backs. Just like all random number blocks, every spot will get a random number from the break from between zero and nine. If you get the number three, you'll get all cards below with the three being the first number next to this slash on the left side of the slash. So for example, the card is $243 out of $299, $13.99, $3.25, $43.49, $93.99, and so on. Number three will get the card. All redemption cards will go to the zero spot, even if it's a known one of one, it will still go to the zero spot. Any non numbered cards randomized to the group, which I don't believe there are any in this. Here is our list of customers from Daniel Ausley down to David Baker in the last spot, Mojo, and our numbers from zero down to nine. Dice roll for both lists to randomize them and pair them up. Four to two, six times. Six in final time from Jarrett down to Matt. Four to two, six times on the numbers. Six in final time, eight down to nine. So Jarrett Corfage with eight, Brett Smithen with one, Joe Vent with five, John Leonta Keanakos with four and seven, almost. Jeremy Titness with zero, Dale Carroll with six, David Baker last spot Mojo with three, Daniel Ausley with two, and Matt McLaughlin with nine. Quick trade window, give it about 20 seconds. Not often do trades happen in this, but with a product like this, why not? Give it 10. Five, three, two, one, no trades, print, and the break itself, coming up next. I'm Sean, that was the random number block randomizer for flawless two box case pick your team number four, covering the Yankees, Cardinals, Mets, Tigers, Brewers, Twins, Phillies, and Diamondbacks. Pick your team for break coming up next. I'm Sean, jaspyscasebrakes.com. Thanks for hanging out, see you in a minute.


You don't have anything more valuable than your life. And that you don't want, because you have this mind, you don't want to be told how to live. You want to make those choices yourself. Now, people can advise you. People can recommend. You can read great books about how people have lived. And then you get to make the choice of how you live. That's what individualism means. And if you are like that, then you don't want authorities and coercion and people telling you what's true and what's not, what's right or what's wrong, what to do to marry and who not to marry, right? We've overcome that.


Will he ever escape? There's a new DLC expansion to the Binding of Isaac Rebirth called Binding of Isaac Afterbirth. Whoa, I love playing Binding of Isaac. Thank goodness I got a new keyboard. I am truly sorry for the horror that I have bestowed upon your ears. Any of you have watched my videos? I am sorry. I'm hoping to be able to try out Afterbirth here soon, and quietly, because it has added so much new and amazing content. Following Isaac one more time on his journey, players will find bizarre treasures that change Isaac's form, giving him super human abilities and enabling him to fight off droves of mysterious creatures, discover secrets, and fight his way to safety. This expansion hasn't added over 100 hours more of gameplay, which is totally crazy to me because in just a few hours that I have played, I have never seen the same map twice. The boss is yes, but it's still so crazy how complex and different the gameplay for this is, and now they've added 100 more hours! Insanity! There's over 1,000 new room designs with more poop, eight new bosses, including a new final boss, over 100 new enemies with new designs, and a new playable character, Lilith, the mother of demons. Greed mode also allows you to change things up and focus more on the risk and reward. The longer you survive the waves of monsters, the more money that you can earn. You can also compete in the online leaderboards to see who has the highest score or the best time. Other new updates include 120 new items, not counting tons of new pickups, chests, pills, bombs, and cards, taking the item count up beyond 500. They've updated the weapons combo system as well, plus there's tons of new secret transformations, plus more achievements for all you achievement hunters out there. I've quite honestly barely skimmed the surface of rebirth. I've only played a few hours, and until recently I didn't even know how to use my special abilities until somebody told me. It's space, by the way, I think. Another great part of this that I almost forgot is the added 2 to 4 player local co-op. I'm assuming by local they mean LAN, so that's kind of a letdown, but it's a huge upgrade compared to rebirth where the only option of co-op was for you to be the floaty little brother guy. I don't think you could do anything. I don't know the point. I didn't co-op. I might be wrong. That's just what I think I remember. I've been seeing a ton of youtubers playing after-birth on their channel, so I'm assuming that this game is pretty good and the expansion is worth it. I did skim the Steam reviews though, and oddly enough all the featured reviews were thumbs down, even though the overall review was very positive. So I'm assuming that there's some mixed feelings on all the added stuff. When you add that much stuff, I'm sure people aren't gonna like everything. If you have Binding of Isaac after-birth and you have played it extensively, please leave a comment down below and let us know your favorite parts about the new expansion. If you've seen me play this on my channel, I do apologize. Any future videos will be far less clicky and you will not have your ears bleeding. But my channel is Brits Games. If you are interested, I play lots of other things as well. All my links are in the description below. If you enjoyed this video, please leave a thumbs up. It is much appreciated. And if you have any other suggestions for some games that you would like me to review, leave a comment down below. As always, thank you all so much for watching. I will see you next week. Goodbye. This is produced by the Freedom Network. Ever wanted to earn revenue from your videos? Freedom offers a great partnership program which includes access to hundreds of thousands of audio tracks, sponsorships with great partners, and most importantly, a no-lock-in contract. You can leave at any time for any reason. We accept everyone, both big and small. For more information, click here or visit the link in the video description.


Hey, you want to make some money on the web? No, I'm not selling counterfeit HTML tags. I'm Sarah Clark, and I'm here with a quick introduction to collecting payments like the Professionals. Have you ever put a few things in your shopping cart online only to give up during payment? Me too. This kind of card abandonment is very common. Estimates range from 80% to 95% of all purchases that make it to the payment stage. This means the conversion rate is only 5% to 20%. That's a lot of money to be leaving on the table. What if I told you there was an easy way to increase your conversion rate by 25%? These days, the majority of commercial traffic is coming from mobile devices. That's no surprise. We all have a phone with us and app stores full of shopping apps. But here's a surprise. 66% of mobile commerce is happening on the web, even when people have native apps installed. We still don't have a complete answer for why people turn to the web, but one factor is pretty clear. People are accustomed to buying things on the web, so there's a degree of trust. Unfortunately, we also see a lot lower conversion rates on mobile web relative to desktop websites. Mobile conversions are about 1 third of the desktop conversions. And if you wonder why this is, the answer is pretty simple. Checking out, collecting payment from the user is still rather messy. People often give up while filling out the checkout form. So have you ever abandoned a purchase because of the checkout form? I've done it many times. Some checkout forms have improved since the beginning of web commerce. What hasn't changed is you still have to manually input the same information, credit card, billing address, and shipping address. The easiest step to solving this problem is Autofill. Because Autofill works on existing forms, you don't have to modify your site. Autofill just works to help users check out faster. Autofill alone increases conversion rates by 25%. Autofill does a good job of identifying form fields, but it can make mistakes. You can add the autocomplete attribute to your forms if you want Autofill to do the right thing every time. Here's the credit card portion of a form. By adding a single autocomplete attribute each for CC name and CC number, Autofill will know exactly where to place its information. If you want to learn more about autocomplete attributes, search the web using whatwgautofill to find the specification. Autofill gets rid of the manual nature of data entry and makes it much simpler for the user. The Autofill markup is so easy to add that we don't have a lab this time. Give it a try, especially on mobile sites, and see what a difference it can make. For users, though, the ideal experience would be that when it's time to buy, they just buy. Solutions like Apple Pay and Google Pay enable one touch payment for apps. And now there's a way to use them on the web. Come back after you've checked out Autofill and I'll tell you all about it. Thanks for watching.


Okay, thanks. I'm just refreshing my browser to make sure things come in through. Okay. Everybody, welcome to credit for April 2017. We have two demos today. The first demo will be from Nestlehan, who is a person who worked on an outreachy internship with Wikimedia for a project called Wikiradeo. I'll let Nestlehan speak about her project, and then she's recorded a demo that will play. Hi, everybody. I am Nestlehan, and I work on outreachy round 13 this year, and my mentor was Edum and Mirzar. We made an Android application, which is Wikiradeo, which is a radio application, and which plays from comments, audios, and text-to-page files from Wikipedia. It selects random summary files, and converts them to audio, and plays them randomly. And it's roughly working, and I would like to present, and later we can talk about it. Okay, Byron. Nestlehan, you're ready for the video to play? Is that right? Yes. Okay. Byron, I think we're ready to have the video playback of the demo. And please, follow the subtitles. I think the subtitles isn't shown properly. There is an army in fighting for peace. I know that it is hard for Americans to realize the magnitude of the war in which we are involved. Okay, and I think that is the conclusion of the demo. So if you didn't catch it the first time around, you'll probably want to replay the stream and play close attention to the captions to get a sense of what the internals are, for what the application is doing, as it's playing back random audio from comments, and random lead sections from Wikipedia articles. Thanks, Nestlehan, for your work on the internship. It's been a pleasure working with you on it. It's same for me, too. Thanks. You're the best mentor ever. And did you see the subtitles? Because I didn't see them, and I didn't see the buttons on the screen. But does everybody see them? Because otherwise, it is not made meaningful. I did see them. I was checking the YouTube stream. It's just that we're in the hangout right now. And so, like, the bottom of the screen was getting cut off. Yes, maybe we can share the video URL and everybody can watch the YouTube screen. Yeah, we'll definitely do that. We'll send out a note after the meeting, and we can include a link to the credit showcase itself as well as the specific YouTube video. That should be no problem at all. And if anybody has any questions, please enter them in the etherpad. You'll also find the link to Nestlehan's project on GitHub, where you can read the code and maybe offer some contributions, if you're interested. Yes. Thanks a lot. Okay, Jan, I think you're up next. Yeah, that wiki radio thing seems wild. I'd be a little afraid to play that all day, but it's a really cool project. Anyway, so what I've been up to, I'm going to present a little widget that I made for the search results page on Wikipedia that is meant to present Wiktionary definitions on the search results page. So if you somehow search for a single word that has a definition on Wiktionary, that definition will pop up on the search results page on Wikipedia. And this is a user script that I made, so I'm just going to share my screen now and your search results page. And let's say, just want to look for some stuff. It's the regular page and oh, in pops this definition. And so you can see it has some pronunciation with that little cool button and just a few first definitions, but more can be expanded there. So yeah, this is, and this is using an API that was originally made for Android, which also has a future like this. So yeah, this is what I've been working on. Very cool. It's great to see the API is being used on multiple platforms. Interesting that stuff came from a web backend to a native client front end and now it's being repurposed on the desktop web. It's awesome. Thanks. And where can we go to see the code on this? Sorry, I linked a ticket in the Etherpad and that has a link to the user script that you can install on your Wikipedia account if you want to see it live in action. Awesome. Thanks, Jan. I think that's it for this month. Thanks again, Neslahan. Thanks, Jan. And thanks, Byron, for setting up everything on the stream. Have a wonderful rest of the day and talk to you next month.


Our final speaker today is someone whom I'm sure many of you are familiar with, Dr. Safideen Amas. He's the best kind of intellectual and academic, which is to say an independent one. He has taken some time off from his teaching job, teaching duties at the American University in Baruch to work on his book, which is now considered the seminal work in the area, the Bitcoin Standard. He also teaches his new online courses at his own website, safideen.com, which are really fascinating, really interesting. We have a small group of us at the Mises Institute that watches them live on Monday mornings. He does hold advanced degrees from the London School of Economics and from Columbia University. He was, however, able to overcome those infirmities and still develop a sensible worldview. Dr. Safideen Amas. Thank you very much, Jeff, and to everybody at the Mises Institute. It was really down to your work and your beautiful website that I managed to overcome these infirmities.  So thank you so much. It's a true honor to be here. Today, I'm not going to actually present my book. I'm going to talk about the topic of Bitcoin and Austrian economics and the relationship between them. Why is it that Bitcoiners are so interested in Austrian economics in general? Obviously far more than the general population is. And why is it that I think and so I'm going to try and explain why in my mind I think Austrian economics helps us understand Bitcoin and how also Bitcoin also can help understand Austrian economics. Why it leads to many people wanting to study Austrian economics once they learn about Bitcoin. I think it's something that is well worth explaining. These are my five general categories of explanations of this phenomena. So let's get into them. The first one is that Bitcoin is free market and non governmental money. And you know, the famous quote by Mises quoted in Professor Salerno's book is that the sound money principle has two aspects. It's affirmative in approving the market's choice of a commodity used medium exchange and negative in obstructing the government's propensity to metal with the currency system. And in this regard, I think Bitcoin is extremely interesting from an Austrian perspective because it functions as a medium of exchange and it has acquired that role without any government having forced it. It nobody has forced its acceptance as money and yet this has acquired that role of a medium of exchange and it has acquired economic value on the market. The value of Bitcoin has never been imposed by any authority violently. It has been one on the market and it has been trading freely on a market for 10 years, which I think is amazing. And it's amazing because it's not government approved money. Nobody asked government's opinion for it to function and yet it operates, it works. So it's a slap in the face of the state theory of money. So that should make Austrians happy, not that it needs any more slaps because it's God, it's fair share of them. But to also borrow from Professor Salerno's distinction, Bitcoin is firmly in the tradition of Turgo as money. It's not John Law money. It's not money as an instrument of law as an instrument of government as an instrument of policy. It's money as a natural emergent institution, market institution that emerges through peaceful cooperation. It's a good that emerges on the market that all others. Now the question of is it money, is Bitcoin money? I like this definition from Man, Economy and State by Rothbard, where he says the concept of a medium of exchange is a precise one, but the concept of money is not. It's it's less precise. The point at which you could call a medium of exchange into the common or general medium of exchange and therefore define it as money is rather subjective and and down to judgment of the historian. So in this regard, you know, Bitcoin is not the most used money in the world by far. However, it is already more it's worth more in terms of the value that it holds than many of the national currencies around the world. So it's you know, it's it's it's more of a money or it's more it's got more volume as money than most national currencies out there in only 10 years. So the other interesting thing about it as a free market institution is that it is the only working alternative to government central banks and their monopoly over international money transfer. I think this is from a just purely functional perspective. It's truly amazing because there's no way that you can send money across international borders up until the year 2009. There was no way you could do this, except through going through the central banks monopoly and in particular through the correspondence banks, which are which is a highly lucrative monopoly in every country. You know, the central bank allocating to a few banks, the privilege of being able to send and receive money abroad is highly lucrative. And it's a monopoly that only Bitcoin breaks, only Bitcoin has succeeded at breaking. So this is quite amazing because now finally we have a free market way of having money across the world. And it's, you know, the interesting thing then once you see that this thing is possible, that it's possible to send money from the US to China without having to resort to any of the political and legal institutions that exist in the US or China, then it becomes possible for people to really see that free market money is possible. And that's when the march down the Bitcoin rabbit down the Austrian economics rabbit hole starts to happen. Because the next question as well, how is free market money different from government money? And, you know, the only coherent answer to these explanations can come from Austrian business cycle theory, which will tell you is effectively economic crisis. And inflation and unemployment are not, you know, just the product of how capital markets function. They're the products of the intervention in capital markets through central planning and manipulation by central banks. And that if you had a free market monetary system, then you wouldn't get these kinds of failures happening. So this is the first one. The second one is the fact that Bitcoin continues to operate in spite of having the committed the cardinal sin of having a fixed money supply. The Bitcoin money supply can't be increased. Nobody has found a way of making more than 21 million bitcoins. And yet it works. So really, the only version of the universe in which this works is really Austrian economics, because all the other scores of economics have all their various reasons for why the money supply needs to grow at all times. So Bitcoin refutes that inflationist tenant of modern economics, which is almost taken for granted amongst most economists. And the interesting thing about it is that, you know, it's not just a living challenge, it's mathematical almost. We've seen Bitcoin. If you look at the growth in the Bitcoin supply over the last five years, it grew the number of bitcoins in circulation has grown by about 32 percent. The value of the daily transactions carried out in Bitcoin in those five years has grown by about 2,500 percent in the same term. So that, you know, the fact that Bitcoin growth has not kept up with the value or the real market value or the real size of the Bitcoin economy has been no impediment. Bitcoin has just appreciated and it has not needed the supply rate to increase. So people who believe in the inflationist view of money, who think that the money that the supply needs to continue to increase, need to really ask why, what need to now answer the question of what supply growth is necessary, what is insufficient. Why should, you know, should it be 2 percent, as some people have suggested, but there's very little evidence as to why and how, you know, what happens when Bitcoin goes under 2 percent? Does that mean that Bitcoin stops working 5 percent, 10 percent? Is the size of the growth in the money supply, does it have to be proportional to economic activity or to the number of people and why can't it be zero? These are all very difficult questions for people to answer if they are not armed with Austrian economics. And that's why they come to Austrian economics when they find out about Bitcoin. Basically, you know, I think it's quite amazing that so far we've not seen a single inflationist economist present a coherent theory or a coherent prediction about why the limitation, the limited supply of Bitcoin is a problem with Bitcoin. It would really be interesting to see, you know, somebody present that if the growth, the supply growth rate of Bitcoin is declining, it's around 4 percent. So eventually it's going to drop below 1 percent and head towards zero. So it would really be great if any of those people who tell us that money supply growth is necessary could actually formulate a point at which they'll tell us, you know, at this point, Bitcoin stops working because the supply growth is too slow. We've not seen anybody come up with an explanation. If you know anyone, please let them volunteer. I'd really be interested. The third topic I find interesting is time preference. Austrian economists seem to be the only ones who focus on the importance of time preference. And I think, you know, the impact of the move toward easy money and how that has affected individual and societal time preference is something that you would only really read about in the work of Austrian economists like Professor Holtzmann or Professor Hopper and, you know, the impact of time preference on decision making and the importance, of course, in Austrian economics of time preferences is unrivaled and is not really analyzed. And we see this, the interesting thing about Bitcoiners and over time is because Bitcoin has appreciated so much, people who have started getting into it have realized, have started to really learn what opportunity cost means. Just somebody, just today, you know, as if to prepare me for this talk, somebody tweeted something that I just saw saying a hangover is Satoshi's way of reminding you that you could have been buying Bitcoin instead with the money that you spent on alcohol. And it's, you know, it's something that for people, our generation is something that we've never had. Like the concept of saving doesn't really exist. When you're young, it doesn't make sense to save because money loses value over time and you don't know how to invest in the stock market. So the culture of saving, particularly among young people in our generation, isn't very common these days. I'm sure that this is not news for anybody here, but Bitcoin changes this quite drastically. And it leads to a lot of people beginning to think much more about the future. And I think honestly, the reason the, the, the, the, the, the number of people that mentioned this that have mentioned to me personally and then say it online cannot really be a coincidence. It's, it really forces a shift in the way that you think about things because when you have access to a hard money, it makes it easier to plan for the future. It makes it easier to hold on to value for the future. And that makes it more rational to plan for the future, more successful, more likely to be successful to be planning for the future. So people will start thinking more and more of the future if they have more reliable methods for saving to get to it. And I think that's effectively what Bitcoin is doing. And fourth, you know, ending the Fed, this, I think, is another reason that Bitcoiners and Austrian economists see eye to eye in many ways. Bitcoin is essentially actionable, practical, practical, individual and an apolitical way of ending the Fed, one individual at a time. And so, you know, it's no matter how much you think Bitcoin is bad, it's still non-governmental money. And the more you use it and the more less you use government money, the less you're financing government and you're allowing government to finance itself from this.  Of course, anyone who's familiar with the work of Ron Paul knows how important this was as an issue for him and many other people associated with Austrian economics. And it also is quite strong of a motivation among many Bitcoiners. Many people see it as this new motivation of just taking money out of the hands of the government. And Bitcoin offers us a new technological way of doing it, which I think is quite interesting. So finally, Bitcoin has exemplary haters. You know, if I haven't sold you on Bitcoin yet, just remember all the people who hate them. You know, the fiat governments, obviously, they hate them because it would be a shame if somebody were to take away their printing presses, right? And fiat economists like Krugman and Rubini, obviously, they also hate Bitcoin because, you know, they are employed by governments that tell them to tell the world about the importance of government money and the importance of monetary policy and the importance of hiring more and more economists in your central bank and listening to the IMF and listening to all the chief economists from the IMF, all that army of economists that they send all over the world. To tell you how to centrally plan your economy, you know, all of that army is financed essentially with government money and credit. Nobody actually would pay for the services of, you know, IMF economists like Rubini to go and destroy their country voluntarily. They pay for those things because the IMF walks in with a loan of freshly printed fiat money that they get from their credit line from the US Federal Reserve. And so it would also be a shame if Bitcoin were to put these people out of a business, wouldn't you say? And of course, you know, monopoly banks that have a monopoly over correspondence banking. This is one very important monopoly throughout in today's economic activity. And it's it's it's something that Bitcoin disrupts. It allows us to have this instead of having to rely on this old financial political behemoth monopoly. You just rely on open source software that nobody can control, nobody can manage. And it's a truly, truly amazing thing. And, you know, a lot of people can be skeptical about while software, you know, you can always hack software. But pretty much most of the critical things that we do in our life from the grid to flying airplanes today, they all run on. Well, not all, but the majority of them probably run on open source software. It's the most reliable thing because it's, you know, open source software means anyone can check it online. And so if anyone finds a mistake in it, they can report it. And so this means people are constantly verifying it and constantly checking it and constantly revising it. And effectively, this is what Bitcoin is becoming. It's just becoming a fixed protocol for exchanging value without politics. And that really makes it quite interesting. Thank you very much for everything. One final announcement. My website, as Professor Deist has mentioned, safeadine.com, and in the Academy section, I've already offered two classes and I'm going to begin offering the next class now. I'm going to start a principles of economics class based on Murray Rothbard's man economy and state. And basically the business model of my website is to teach Austrian economics to Bitcoiners. And so a lot of them are becoming interested in it because of Bitcoin, because of all the reasons that I mentioned. And so if, you know, if you don't believe me, well, you know, I believe myself enough to set up the website at least. So check it out. And of course, let me know what you think of the syllabus. Obviously, if you have any feedback about it, I would appreciate it. Thank you very much.


Good morning guys and welcome to the unpacking vlog So obviously we've already started unpacking a little bit like my room right where I'm standing There was like a mound of boxes But I kind of like unpacked some and I moved them to the sides as you guys can see so this is a towel Don't mind it as you can tell or as you know Valerie study was like full of books So some of the boxes in the hallways and stuff are for Valerie study And that's gonna take a while like I already know all of this is pretty much like towels and that's only three boxes That's good. And then over here. We just have more master Linen stuff a couple of Valerie's like study stuff rather than linens It's basically either Valerie study or linens and then over here is all of like Valerie study books and stuff I'll show you around because that's what we do here So you guys can see kind of my room right now. It is okay. So when it comes to unpacking and stuff It's pretty much finished, but it's not even close to being finished because This whole thing is gonna be a lot different as you can see. I don't have a bed frame. Oh, hey, you can see me in the mirror As you guys know like I'm gonna get a bed eventually It says just a mattress on the floor then we have the mirror The mirror is going to just be for props for like if I want to do photo shoots or whatever over here I have some decor at this letterboard, which I don't know what I'm gonna do with yet The hanging thing my friend got me actually my friend got me really both those things So the little hanging thing that's gonna go in my bathroom Somewhere on the wall because it matches really well and then this hello sign is gonna also go to my bathroom I'm gonna spray paint it black and I'll show you guys why I need spray paint it black when we get into my bathroom This is just a spare pillow. I've ordered my comforter thing the insert But the comforter like cover is right there So I have that this thing you've seen all the time But I'm going to get rid of it and this is going to be a tall chest Number one for storage number two Because I want it to match like I want a bedroom suit to like match So it's just better it just like flows better because I'm also going to get the matching nightstand So that's gonna be over there and then on top of my bed. I think I want some sort of like art thing I'm not too sure. Hey Sherry. This wall is going to be like some sort of I don't know I'm gonna do it this fall yet.  I can't justify that.  They were in one of the boxes I unpacked the TV is not mine I don't need a TV in my room because I don't watch TV. Don't even really like TV Over here. I forgot to tell you what was over here. So over here We are going to put like pompous grass with like a vase and then a lamp because as you can see There's no lights in this room, which I think is kind of stupid like I don't know why they're doing that But I need a light so a lamp and pompous grass is gonna go over there And then in here you guys have seen this is literally just replicated my closet It's like I did a copy paste of my closet from our old house here So it's exactly the same. There's nothing really to show there and then moving into my bathroom My bathroom is probably like my favorite don't mind this stuff because All of this stuff was stuff that was under my bed That's gonna go into my chest when I get that tall thing that I was showing you guys because I don't have any space So it's just gonna live there for now. This is my keepsake bin It's gonna go on the in the top shelf of my closet But I just can't reach that and then this is gonna go into Valerie's closet because she took my mini fridge.  So that's pretty cool moving into here I got well, it's just toilet paper, but I got a really nice soap dispenser because I wanted it to match so Like it matches the sink it almost looks like it goes with the piece which that's that was my end goal Like I wanted something to match and yet go nice. I'm not feeling the green, but I like the scent So I'll compromise on that. We'll just get some Elphaba vibes and going on in here and then down here Just like my closet. This is literally a copy paste of my old under the sink cabinet space Like it's exactly the same same set up everything. It is kind of weird though this like front Thing isn't wide enough. So I had to like turn this thing on its side to like get it in there I was like, oh my gosh, I hope this fits and then in here again because I don't have a lot of storage yet There's not a lot of place to put things. So I just put my ears in here I'm probably gonna end up putting my ears in a drawer again when I get that big chest thing I'll have a space for the ears and then my littlest pet shop I don't know what to do with and then some lotions that I got on eBay and then more ears Yeah, this is not gonna stay like that But for now it works and if you couldn't tell I'm the type of person that likes to unpack and like organize Right at the beginning of something like it just bothers me when it's just not not it. So yeah So Sherry and I Sherry peek out there We're gonna work on the kitchen because we don't have any utensils or anything So that's gonna be our target today and I'm gonna vlog I haven't vlogged us because it's kind of been overwhelming and stuff, but yeah So welcome to the unpack with me vlog. I hope you guys enjoy and stick around Okay guys, so we are going to start on the kitchen now, but first It's like so late guys. We should have gotten an earlier start, but But first coffee. So Sherry was like if you drive, I'll get Starbucks. I'm like, okay We don't have one that close to us Well, it's like semi close to us But we're hoping they'll build one around here and Sherry and I were talking about like coffee places I'm like if it's not Starbucks, I hope it's Duncan. I do not want foxtail moving in. Anyway, we need to get to work So I'm gonna start the time-lapse now I should just move this to the other side that's like one good thing about having like so many boxes, but My Duvet thing came like my comforter came. So we're just gonna put the comforter cover on the comforter Hoping this is right Okay, so this is it is the lightweight Down alternative comforter and this is in the full queen size It's the right size Okay, so this is what my bed looks like I love it so much and I can't wait to get my actual like bed frame before it But yeah, I am throw both the way it looks. I know sorry about the bra But overall it's what I imagined I wanted that like so very simplistic look even the pillow over here is really cute and then for the closure It zips you don't have to worry about like the pillow falling out, which is really really nice So I'm super super pleased with how this turned out. Wow I look so tiny on the screen, but I'm going to put together my shower curtain Stuff so again, I will link this down below. Oh my gosh. Why me the lighting maybe change up the angles All right, there we go. That's a little better So again, I'll try to link all this stuff for you guys like down below, but I got a new shower curtain I'm so excited. Like I swear. This is like the first time I've actually like gotten to pick out my room stuff I mean, I've always gotten to pick it out, but like this is like real pick out. You know what I mean? Like not Dog themed I had this one room that was like dog themed and it was so bad. Oh my gosh. It's so cute I like the fabric so it is from the company CB2 and It just says shower curtain on it So I got the taller version because my shower is like taller. I wanted the shower curtain to like cover everything So this is the taller version of the lengths they offer This is her They're on this side. So here in the little Cutouts to put the rings in and then I just got these black hangers So it matches my bathroom and then this is a liner. I got from Amazon. It's just like a cloth one I don't know. It says that it's like mold resistant. So I Just decided to go with this one So I'm gonna time-lapse this so you guys can watch me try to put this together Okay, so this is the shower curtain. It's pretty cute It's supposed to be like kind of loose at the top, I guess But overall it just like matches which I wanted as you guys can see this I don't know if this is too short or not. I don't think it is but it kind of makes me nervous The liner, but it's not the end of the world and I didn't want it to be like super long in the tub So I don't know. Yeah, I can finally at least take a shower in here because I've been using my parents shower So that is what the shower curtain looks like.  So that's a little awkward But overall the measurements for the shower curtain itself Worked out really well. And yeah, that's basically what it looks like. It's really cute. I like it a lot Okay, so before I finish off this vlog and like shower and start a new vlog I wanted to share And it's like horrible. Anyway, I wanted to share this like really Stupid story. I shared it on Instagram. So if you guys have already seen that follow me Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing But okay So I had to go into work Then I turned around because like I thought streets were closed off because I didn't think about getting off in another exit So then I turned back around but in the midst of all that I find a Starbucks that's open that was open Got an iced coffee and it looked really off and I was like what the heck But I asked for more almond milk because I always need more almond milk in my drink I even put like extra on the little label or at least I tell them that so I get the drink And it just looked really off and really weird So I try it and taste normal the almond milk tastes fine like it didn't taste off But it was almost like a thicker consistency so I try to like shake it up in the cup that she gave me and Still like not very good But I ended up drinking it because I got a venti because I was really craving the Starbucks So I got the venti and I was like just forced myself to finish it because I'm like I paid for this Actually, my friend Angie got me this gift card to pay for it. It's still like I'm gonna drink it whatever Finish it. I'm like I wonder what Stale almond milk looks like I looked it up and I was like I swear that almond milk was stale Like and the girl didn't really understand either because she's like oh, I normally put oat milk instead of almond And I'm like oh my gosh, so I consumed some Stale almond milk, but I'm still alive and well. Let's knock on wood for that But yeah, just look that up. So you guys know also I wanted to share with you guys. I got a Stanley cup I'll probably talk about that more in my next video that I'm gonna start But yeah, that is pretty much it for this video. I'm gonna go take my first shower in my shower I'm excited because I haven't been able to use it because I've been waiting for like all the Shower curtain stuff to arrive. So yeah, I think that is about it for this video Give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it. Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye


Hi, this is Helena Hart from commitmentconnection.com and in this video I'm going to be answering a question I received from a woman in our community who wants to know how to handle a man's mixed signals. She just wants to know once and for all what this man's true intentions are or what his feelings are for her. And this is one of the most common questions we get here in our community. I can't tell you how many women I hear from every week who are feeling really confused because a man's giving her mixed signals. Maybe he's really hot and cold or one week he acts really interested and the next week he seems to disappear. I've certainly been there myself in my past. Pretty much every woman I've ever talked to has experienced this at some point. So hopefully this video will be helpful for you if this is something you're going through right now. But before I get started, if this is your first time to our channel, be sure to click the button to subscribe to get all of our videos and information on how to attract the man and the relationship you've always wanted. So let's get started. I'm going to give you two steps that you can do if you're really ready to put it all on the line and find out a man's true intentions and what his feelings are for you. The first step is that you want to give him one really clear positive indicator of your interest, one really, really clear signal that shows him that you're interested in him as more than just a friend, for example. And step two is you want to lean back into your feminine energy from there and see if he picks up the ball, so to speak. See if he takes that and runs with it and really steps up and makes moves to take things to the next level with you. So what is a clear indicator of your interest? This could look like all different kinds of things depending on the situation. I know every situation is different. So let me give you a couple of different examples here. Let's say you are interested in a man who you don't hang out with socially yet. Maybe you work with him or you see him in your daily life or your weekly routine or something like that and the two of you get along really well and you think he might be interested but you're getting some mixed signals from him. I know I hear from women all the time in situations like that. So if you really want to show your interest and indicate to him that you want to spend time with him and get to know him on like a dating level, saying something like you know it feels so great getting to know you or I love talking with you and we really get along too well to not hang out more often or something like that and then lean back from there and just you know keep your energy open to him and see what he does. Now if a man is really interested in you, if he wants to pursue you for a relationship, he should really pick up the ball from there. He's not going to jeopardize this opportunity you're giving him to take you on a date or get to know you better or connect with him on a deeper level than what is currently happening right now. So that's one example. Another example I hear about all the time from women is you know maybe someone from her past has come back into her life, maybe a next boyfriend, someone she used to date or maybe a man she was dating who just kind of disappeared and sometimes those men tend to come back. I've certainly experienced that in my past maybe you have too and you don't know what his intentions are. Maybe he's showing back up like nothing happened or maybe he wants to hang out as friends or something like that and you don't want to just be friends with this guy. So in those situations saying something like you know it feels so good to hear from you and I'm open to getting together and you know seeing where things go but I just want to be really straightforward you know I have feelings for you as more than just a friend so it feels too difficult to just be friends right now and I kind of feel good to know whether or not we're on the same page before committing to a date with you or committing to a time to hang out or something like that and then again leaning back from there and seeing what he does. A man who's truly interested will should at least you know reciprocate that and say yes I'm interested in dating you too depending on the situation right if it's a man who disappeared and you're interested in you know finding out why you know you could say something like you know it feels good to hear from you again and I'm feeling a little confused you kind of dropped off there for a little while and you know I'm really interested in being with someone or dating someone who really follows through on what they say they're gonna do and you know a man who doesn't just disappear without an explanation so you know I'm feeling curious are we on the same page or what's going on here and really I really want to invite very direct straightforward communication where you're in to get indicating your interest giving him a clear signal and then leaning back from there and just seeing if he you know takes that and runs with it and I just want to mention that a man who's truly interested is not going to jeopardize these opportunities are giving him to be with you and I would just do this like one time I wouldn't keep showing interest in a man who's clearly not picking up that ball and taking things to the next level but if you're truly ready to know once and for all what a man's true intentions are I really want you know you to feel comfortable being really straightforward you don't want to like beat around the bush here and you know a man who's truly interested should definitely reciprocate that effort and take things from there so I hope this was helpful for you I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with this feel free to type those into the comment section and I will see you in the next video thanks for watching if you're struggling to know exactly what to say to a man to deepen the connection and bring him closer click the button on the right hand side of this video to download our free report on the 40 flirty text messages that men absolutely love


Hey everyone! Oh man, I'm back. It's good to be back. Let's just get right into what we're talking about today. Pokemon home details have been revealed and Pokemon fans aren't happy. And it seems to be for a very specific reason and I almost think the outrage is a little justified. Now you would figure that the Pokemon company would, you know, want to do right by Pokemon fans after all of the backlash of our Pokemon Sword Shield. There's even been some backlash over the DLC which maybe there's something to it. Maybe it's unfounded. That could be a conversation we have but it is something that Pokemon fans are kind of on edge. And they're kind of waiting for Game Freak and the Pokemon company to do something right or justifiable. And we know Pokemon Home was coming for a while. Pokemon Home is basically the replacement for Pokemon Bank. For those who don't know what Pokemon Bank is, just kind of the rough skinny of it is Pokemon Bank is where you put all your various Pokemon from prior Pokemon games. If you want to transfer them between games or trade them online and all that stuff you would use Pokemon Bank. And Pokemon Bank was a subscription service for $5 per year. So pretty cheap and you know you can question if it should even cost anything to be honest. It feels like it should just be an included service but for five bucks a year it's pretty hard to complain. It's like people who kind of justify hey look you know yeah Switch is online isn't the greatest and doesn't have the most amount of features but it's only $20 a year compared to 60. People justify the price point of Switch is online because it's just cheap in comparison to everyone else. Same kind of a Pokemon Bank it's cheap so people kind of just let it go. Pokemon Home is the replacement for that. Pokemon Home essentially does what Pokemon Bank does but it's just new. It's a new version of it built for the new games. Now I'm here on the Nintendo left that has all the details and all the graphs and basically how Pokemon Home works. You see this image here is you can transfer Pokemon from Pokemon let's go EV let's go Pikachu into the bank. You can transfer Pokemon Pokemon Sword or Pokemon Shield into the bank. You can transfer Pokemon from Pokemon Bank into the bank and the bank in this case in Time Out is Pokemon Home and eventually in the future you can't do it yet. You will be able to transfer Pokemon from Pokemon Go into Pokemon Home. It's not coming now when it launches but it'll be available later but Pokemon let's go EV and let's go Pikachu Sword and Shield and Pokemon Pokemon Bank day one will be able to be transferred into Pokemon Home and obviously compatible Pokemon that are part of the Pokedex or the National Dex or whatever inside Sword and Shield can be transferred into there. So even if you don't buy the DLC technically if you have some of those Pokemon that are older Pokemon that were added through the DLC you can actually transfer them from let's go EV let's go Pikachu or your Pokemon Bank eventually Pokemon Go as well into Sword and Shield without ever buying the DLC so that is something there you can also obviously trade for them and all that jazz. Pokemon Home is basically Pokemon Bank just a new version and that's fine there's actually a free version of it and then like a tiered pay system and this is where things get really weird and this is why people get mad and now they're adding GTS which lets you specify which Pokemon you want to trade and which Pokemon you want to receive this is something that isn't part of Sword and Shield at all so this is really cool it's been part of Pokemon Bank for a bit so again Pokemon Home is kind of fixing all the issues with trades and transferring Pokemon between the current Pokemon games and future Pokemon games and even letting you bring in your older Pokemon games as well from Bank but here's the thing it has plans it has a basic and a premium and even the premium is a tiered system but here is how the plans work for basic you do not get the ability to move Pokemon from Pokemon Bank basic is the free version by the way so like free to try free to use or whatever don't pay anything so you can't move any of your old Pokemon Pokemon Bank you want to do that you need the premium one you can only deposit 30 Pokemon in the basic version but 6000 in the premium one there's a really huge disparity in my opinion but that is what it is number of Pokemon that we placed in the wonder box at once is 3 10 for premium I don't know if that that's necessarily too controversial I think the number of Pokemon you can deposit and Pokemon Bank that that to me is a little weird number of Pokemon that can be placed in the GTS at once is 1 compared to 3 again I don't think that's big deal in order to get into a room and trade you could participate as basic you could host and participate as premium you can't judge anything in basic but you can in premium as well some of this stuff isn't that big a deal to me I think one to three three to ten I don't think that's too big of a deal even the room the room participate and host thing I don't know that that's a huge deal but there are other things that you can't move from bank for free you have to pay money to do that you knew they were probably gonna pay while that but it is what it is the question obviously is how much is the paywall well according to Nintendo live Pokemon home will be available on a free plan or a premium plan premium plan will cost $299 for a 30-day subscription $499 for a 90-day description now remember it was $5 for Pokemon Bank for a year so $5 for only 90 days or $15.99 for an annus subscription so it's increasing by over three times the amount for a year that's $4 less than Nintendo Switch Online let that sink in Nintendo Switch Online which affects multiple games on Nintendo Switch is $20 a year the singular service for Pokemon that only affects Pokemon $16 a year remember it's essentially Pokemon Bank a new version of it Pokemon makes $5 a year you can see why Pokemon fans are pretty upset now we need to give game freaking the Pokemon Company a little credit there is one silver lining in this the first month of Pokemon Home premium will be free so they are kind of giving you Pokemon fans a month to get all your Pokemon off Pokemon Bank and get it into premium the problem you're gonna have of course is that you're only allowed to store 30 Pokemon if you drop down to basic so like if you store all these you know thousands or hundreds of Pokemon from Pokemon Bank into Pokemon Home then you don't pay for premium I don't know what happens I don't know if the Pokemon just go away if they're locked and you can't access them you can only access the first 30 you put in I don't really know so it's kind of this weird thing where like if you transfer all your stuff in that free month from Pokemon Bank you're still gonna have to pay for premium anyway to do anything with the Pokemon after that first month so it's kind of they get you they get you one way or another basically if you take advantage of the free month to move your Pokemon from Pokemon Bank you probably have more than 30 Pokemon to move which means you're gonna need to pay for premium after that month so it's just it's just a it's kind of a gotcha scheme you know hey we're doing something nice but you're still gonna have to pay anyways so yeah forget you and I don't believe you can transfer back into Pokemon Bank so what's the potential out of Pokemon make they're just out of Pokemon Bank so that that's another thing as well to consider but you have to understand why this is kind of kind of upsetting for Pokemon fans and as someone like me who doesn't have all these Pokemon to transfer because I haven't been playing all the games over the years I feel you I could still feel the pain because $16 that's I mean $4 less than Tennis with Childhood Service is just $16 over the grand scheme of a year isn't that much I mean if we're being completely honest it's what a little over a dollar per month like maybe a dollar 50 per month or less like it's not like it's a super expensive thing and some people are gonna be like who really cares but it's about the principle of the fact that you're going from $5 to $16 and $16 is $4 less than a service Nintendo provides that affects multiple games and adds more functionality including all these free you know quote unquote free SNES and NES games so we're kind of left in this conundrum where Pokemon home is priced way out of what the marketplace has been set at $5 and $20 it's not that high end and it doesn't make any sense to me even if it was priced at $10 that's a 2x increase which again doesn't sit right it feels like Pokemon home which is Pokemon bank should just be $5 I think they're trying to justify it because now Pokemon games cost 60 so not only are you guys paying 20 extra dollars per game now compared to what you used to just to have Pokemon games basically an HD that's kind of like the big thing so if you get both games you're paying $40 extra per generation which is the cost of what a third game would be on 3ds now you have to pay 3x the price for the same service you can see what Pokemon fans are pretty outraged and I'm right there with them because I think personally this should be a free service anyways they want to promote all this cross connectivity across games it should just be included with the purchase of the game but it's not it is cool that you are able to access it on mobile phones and you know do everything you can on mobile phones the same on your switch or whatever and that makes sense since they're including Pokemon Go but I still think it's still this it's just not a bad look at a time when the Pokemon company and Game Freak could use some positive publicity again it's just another dropping of the ball and the thing is I actually think the DLC plans for DLC on the whole instead of releasing new games is actually a positive for them I think that's a good thing I think that's the better direction than releasing you know two more $60 games but again because people are already mad at Sword and Shield they found a way to criticize that as well and this is just an easy criticism it's way too expensive and they need to change the pricing structure but they're not going to and if you're going to stick with Pokemon Long Hall you're going to be strong harmed into paying an extra 16 bucks a year so this is unfortunate what's happening to Pokemon I think you know I think that this kind of thing's been happening with Pokemon for quite some time but it's really coming to head in this switch generation with Pokemon that the Pokemon company and Game Freak I've probably more on the Pokemon company in this case it's just greedy they're just super greedy and they're milking you guys for every penny you have and they just don't care and I wonder if the success of Pokemon Go which by the way I love Pokemon Go I think it's a really good application and I think Niantic has done a fantastic job updating it and making it better and better it is it is very close to what was promised at the start now and I think it's ultimately a really neat experience I think what happened is they saw the money roll in in the billions yes billions with that game into their pockets and they're like hey how else can we make more and more money off our fans so they're doing it I'm wondering when they're going to just fully go micro transaction city in a mainline Pokemon game how far away are we from them doing that or is Nintendo not going to let that happen maybe Nintendo's pull with the console games will be like hey you can't do that so maybe Nintendo's blocking that from happening I don't know but they're finding other ways to nickel and dime you guys over a 3x increase for the same service I don't know about that even if it even if it's a massively improved interface and everything is just better I mean 3x the price for the exact same service I am not thinking that's going to fly very well but you know you guys let me know what you think about this down in the comments below because I so desperately want some positivity behind Pokemon and once I finally get my hand on Sword and Shield because I am going to play it eventually here maybe I'll be able to provide a positive spin because maybe I end up really enjoying my time with the game as I have seen some others really enjoy their time with the game so maybe then when I can reflect back on and be like well you know despite all the criticism honestly maybe I really enjoyed it and that's something we can cross when I get to that point but for right now I think the Pokemon company just needs some positivity and some good buzz maybe they need to drop a trailer for Detective Pikachu 2 now um since that was one thing that went really well for them of late so I don't know um I am Nate Jantz 6 for Twitter and subscribe for more content it's great to be back and hey you know what um why don't you hit that bell icon so you get notified of all future streams and videos uh sorry for the absence over the last you know 12 13 days or whatever a couple weeks I've been dealing with a lot of personal stuff if you caught the stream a couple days ago you know what some of that is uh there's been some changes in some of that situation from um a few days back but you know what uh maybe we'll talk about that at another time it's a lot of it's personal so I'm not going to get into it in one of these videos so you guys have a wonderful day enjoy your what day is today Wednesday enjoy your Wednesday enjoy your night and I'll catch you guys in the next video


Published in 1968, this was Anne McCaffrey's second novel. It starts off very powerful and exciting. It introduces a strong young female lead who can talk to dragons, and she's going to change the world. But after that thrilling introduction, it becomes a tedious slog. Lots of people standing around talking, having meetings. The characters remain thin. I didn't believe any of them or their relationships. And by the end it was completely incoherent. I didn't accept anything that was happening. And just laughably bad. Sloppy and unprofessional, one of my worst modern reading experiences. I am very sorry to say that I cannot recommend this book. I want to take a little time to talk about what went wrong with this book. A lot went wrong. And I'm going to explain it all. And there will be spoilers in case you're ever wanting to get into Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders. This is where you would start. This is the first book. Anyway, I've complained before about authors dropping their style or changing their style partway through their book. And this is a prime example of that. The first part is quite good. In fact, I talked about that in my October Reads video a couple of weeks ago that I was really impressed with the first part of it. And I was very excited about reading the rest of it. And I was. See, the book is divided into four parts. The first part introduces this character, Lessa, right here. I don't like the drawings, by the way. I think the drawings in this book do not represent what's described in the book. I think it does these characters some serious injustice. I'm very unhappy with the art. But she's a very strong, very likable, very sympathetic and very powerful young girl. She can talk to dragons. She can talk to every dragon in the world and nobody else can do that. And she's going to become the dragon queen. And in fact, by the end of the first part of this book, she dramatically changes the leadership structure in her world. See, here's an example of the artwork I'm talking about. This looks like some kind of steampunk thing. She's wearing flight goggles. She has flight goggles around her neck. Like she's flying an airplane in 1914. Yeah, I think it's all wrong. Anyway, here's an example of the kind of problem I'm talking about when an author's style changes or just drops away partway through a book. This is a perfect example of it. I end part one, I turn the page to start part two, and immediately all of the great style, all of the strong interest, all of the maturity and professionalism that characterizes part one, with the turn of a single page, it's gone. It's gone completely, immediately starting to read the second part. I was saying to myself, wait a minute, what happened? Is this the same writer? Did someone else take over? Did she just stop writing? I can't stand that sort of thing. And it gets worse and worse as the book goes on. The characters just were just unsympathetic and unbelievable. They weren't sketches of characters. They weren't complete characters. They didn't have any depth. There's a lot of characters, too. Every human has a name and every dragon has a name. And you have to be able to keep track of that. And I did not have trouble with that, by the way. There have been instances where I have had trouble keeping track of large numbers of characters. This is not one of them. I'll show you an example of the kind of thing you'll run into here. With all of these humans and all of these dragons having names, you'll run into sentences like this here. Philar told Nimminth to have Kant tell Fanor to proceed. And see, that's clumsy, to say the least. One of the problems I had, and again, this was starting with the first page of part two, I could not tell how much time had gone by. One of the first things I was asking myself was, wait a minute, how much time has gone by? At first, I assumed that several years had gone by. But then after reading a few pages or a few chapters, I said to myself, wait a minute, no time has gone by. This is the very next day. And then again, I had to say to myself, wait a minute, no, I was wrong again. I couldn't tell how much time had gone by. And then later in part two, near the end of part two, she said explicitly that two years had gone by. That was not what I had guessed. It was either no time had gone by or a number of years had gone by. There should not be that much confusion. It's not necessary for an author to tell us everything. But there shouldn't be confusion. And Lessa and this Philar character, he was the dragon leader, I couldn't tell if they were supposed to be having a relationship. Sometimes she would say things that implied that they were having a relationship, that since she was the dragon queen and he was the dragon leader, that they were expected to have a relationship. But she didn't say that they were expected to but weren't, which would be defying custom or going against custom. And then sometimes they would do and say things that made me think, okay, wait a minute, are they having a relationship? I couldn't tell. I felt like it was jarring, it was inconsistent and it caused confusion. Now it was established right at the beginning of the book that dragons can teleport. They can teleport instantaneously from one place to another. As long as their rider can picture in their mind the place that they need to go, they can just boom, they can just teleport there. They call it going between. And then about halfway through the book, the author does something that I think is unforgivable. It's unacceptable to me and I consider it downright unforgivable. She introduces time travel. Lessa accidentally discovers that dragons cannot only teleport from one place to another, they can teleport between times. This is one of my most infuriating pet peeves, is an author who introduces this trope of time travel in a story that's not about time travel. If you establish that a book or a movie or any story is about time travel and you're going to explore how it works and the problems that it causes and what kind of amazing things someone can do when they have control of time travel, fine. Let's establish that up front. If you introduce time travel partway through or near the end of a story that's not about time travel, you ruin it because everything becomes meaningless. Seriously, everything becomes pointless after the characters can suddenly time travel. And every character can time travel here. Every dragon can time travel. When dragons are born, they are immediately paired off with young people, with young kids. So basically Anne McCaffrey has created a world here where every teenager in the world has their own personal time machine. Can you imagine what kind of mess? There's no reason for anything to make any sense after that. I didn't believe anything that was happening. Once time travel was introduced, every time something would happen, I would say to myself, well, why did that happen? Why is it a problem? They can time travel. She did try to be a little bit more mature about it. Lessa and Fallor, for example, realized that all of the important points in their lives, when they had epiphanies, when they had important changes and revelations in their lives, what was actually happening was that their future selves had been traveling back in time and sending them mental boosts, like mental psychological. It was ridiculous.  I didn't accept any of it. I'll tell you what else I did not accept. The reason they have these dragons is because there's another planet or another star, called the Red Star, which every few hundred years passes close to Pern and these spores from the Red Star travel across empty space and rain down on Pern and the dragons fly through the air blowing fire and burning out the spores. I did not accept that. I mean, you have a platoon of 20 dragons who are going to fly through the air and basically stop every drop of rain from hitting the ground. I do not accept that. I will accept dragons. I will accept dragons that can teleport. I don't like accepting dragons that can time travel, but I will reluctantly accept it. I will not accept that any number or any amount of flying dragons of individual creatures can stop the rain. I don't accept it and I don't believe it. And here's another thing. I mentioned that the Red Star came by every few hundred years. The author did something that created even more confusion for me. At the beginning of the book, she would refer to, she used the word turns to describe years. At least I thought that's what she was doing. She described Lessa as being 11 turns at a certain point in the book and then later she said that Lessa was 10 turns older, so she was 20 or 21 at that point and all throughout the first half of the book I was accepting turns as being years. But then suddenly, about three quarters of the way through the book, she used the word years. She specifically used the word years instead of turns. And then a short while later she used the word turns again. So that made me think, okay, turns are not years. Are they? But then she was using the word years to describe the movements of the Red Star or the number of years that the spores or the threads they called them would fall. But then she kept using turns to describe other things. So I'm thinking, okay, if turns are not years, then I don't understand the passage of time at all here. I don't understand what's been happening. I don't understand who's who or who's older than who. But then it didn't make any difference because they were... When they didn't have enough dragons, they would send a group of them 10 years back in time to go some other place and grow more dragons. And then when it was time for them all to get together and fight the threads, suddenly there would be a thousand of them instead of the 20 that they had. It was insane.  By the end of this book it was so crazy and so outlandish and so laughably bad. It was like the end of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Really, for a book that started out so strong and so professional and so interesting, it turned into just a stupid, unprofessional slop job. And I'm completely serious when I use those terms. It was slop. I'm not going to be reading another Dragon Flight book. Now I reviewed Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey before and I don't remember having problems like this with Crystal Singer. And I read another one of her books, one of the... one of the Brainship books. It was either the ship who sang or the city who fought. I don't remember which. But I remembered them being good. So this was just a disappointment. Here's another example of these drawings being a problem.  He's wearing an overcoat. And look at the size of that dragon. It's the size of like an entire football field. Nowhere in the book do they describe the dragons being this big. In fact, this is Philar. And they describe Les's Golden Queen Dragon as being much bigger than Philar's Dragon.  But seriously, this is a big disappointment. I was pulling my hair out finishing this book. If you want to read it and see what I'm talking about, go ahead. It should be an easy read. I would actually be interested to see if other people have the same feeling I did that the first part of this book was tremendous and exciting.  Let me know. Bye.