Gentlemen, James Marshall here from the Natural Lifestyles and Reporting Floor 21 Convention from Abed. Now, I've got a very important video for you today. This I recently released on my own channel, it got a whole lot of buzz and feedback from guys that it really resonated with and I wanted to share it with you guys here today. This is all about the six phases that you will inevitably need to go through over the long term when you're trying to become excellent with women. Most guys think that seduction is about learning some techniques or a method, getting good at it and then forgetting about it, but really this is a long game. This is about personal evolution and growth and if you don't understand the different phases that you will need to go through and master, then it's very easy to fall off the track and basically give up. I consider this to be probably one of the most important videos that I've ever put out. I suggest you watch it. Hope you enjoy. Gentlemen, James Marshall here. Today I want to cover a topic which I get asked about a lot, which stems around this question, which is how long does it take to get good at this? So guys ask me this a lot, especially when they come on a workshop after a couple of days, when they've been out slogging it out in field and getting the inevitable rejections and all the nasty stuff that happens when you first start this and they start thinking, ah, how long is this going to last? Like how long is it going to go on all this going up to girls and then saying go away before I can finally just be surrounded by chicks all the time and not have to worry about this? And usually I don't like to give guys any definitive answer about this because most men who are getting involved in seduction are often very analytical. They tend to think about things in terms of metrics and that's not really the way I teach. I want you to think I need to do a thousand approaches in order to get X level of ability. However, what I do want to talk about today is something that's become really apparent to me as I have been writing my book, which is in a nutshell that there are distinct phases that you will go through if you follow this journey to its conclusion. There is no conclusion. It cycles around and starts again, but if you take it through to your potential, you will come through what I've just broken down into six distinct phases. And it is really important that when you get into this, that you start to look at this as a long game, right? Because I think many men come into the seduction sphere and what they think is okay, I'm going to learn a method, a method, choose a method and I'm going to get really good at it and then I will be done.  It doesn't really work like that. It's not like riding a bicycle. You don't just learn it once and then you're done for life. The process takes time and in answer to that question, how long does it take? I am going to give an answer now. In my experience, my personal experience and from teaching many people and watching guys get good at this, it takes at least two years and often up to five years to get very good at this.  You need to be aware that I don't mean it's going to take five years before you get laid. I don't mean it's going to take two years before you get results. You can get results now, right?  You'll get some learning. You might even get that girl's number.  So of course you can get results almost instantly as soon as you start taking correct action. But what I'm talking about is in order for this to become an instinct, something that is truly internalized and something that works whether or not you're in a good state, whether or not you're depressed or supremely happy, I know that I can go tomorrow morning very grumpy and in a bad mood or whatever and I can make this work. I'm not dependent on my state. I don't have to be warmed up. For the last few weeks I've been literally locked in this room, writing my book, filming all this stuff. I have an approach to a girl in ages and tomorrow, sorry, next week I have to go and teach a workshop. I'll get up on the Monday, I'll go out and I'll get my group of guys in Budapest and I'll start approaching girls and demonstrating and within a couple of sets I'll be fine, I'll be back on because of all of the years of work that I did previous to that. So what I want, the purpose of this video is to start to get your head around the idea that this is going to be an arc of development that is going to last years and it's a beautiful arc. Those years are not something to dread.  Actually, when I look back over my life, that period when I really started getting into this and through to when I really had it locked in, even though that was probably the most difficult part of my life, it's so precious to me. I learned more in that period than I ever did and never will again. The curve was exponential. And as I've been writing this book, which is about my life during that period, particularly over the last few months, I've been thinking a lot about this and it was during this writing process that I started to really divide these phases and look at them as distinct discrete entities and see that yeah, they do exist and they happen pretty much to anyone who goes and follows this rabbit hole as far as it can go. And so I wanted to give you guys a brief taste of that tonight just to see you can start thinking about where is this going long term. In my as part of my book launch, which is coming out this week, I have put together a very long version of this. It's essentially a course that allows you to plot out the next two to five years of your life psychologically and also for in terms of what behaviors and what methods you're going to be following. Because if you have a roadmap in the same way that you start university and you do X amount of years study because you know that at the end of that you'll be qualified to move on to something else. You should start thinking about your seduction practice like that. Don't think of it like I'm trying to learn this pickup skill today and hopefully I can get it over with as soon as possible so I can just stop feeling these weird feelings when I talk to girls. I have always looked at seduction as a catalyst and a mechanism for expansive personal growth for a supreme personal growth. It's always been around about trying to find myself not run away from myself. It's always been about developing myself not just trying to develop a skill, right? So let's just look at these very briefly at what these six phases are that you will inevitably go through, whether I call them six phases or not. They're going to happen to you if you follow this. And look, and the nature of them is that within each phase are certain inherent pitfalls, certain things that are very difficult or aspects that people tend to get bogged down in and plateau or often give up. And that's what you need to be really wary of because if you're not aware of what the characteristics, the tendencies of the phase are, then it's very easy to fall off into the pitfalls that are associated with it. On the other hand, there are certain lessons and goals and breakthroughs that you will be aiming to go through during that phase. And these are the things that you need to focus on. Okay, so if you look at phase one, which I call the beginner's mind. Phase one is where a lot of men are currently at. This is where you are first becoming conscious that it's possible for just a normal guy to start going and talking to women. They find very attractive in everyday situations, whether that's day game, night game, on the street, in the club, whatever. Prior to you being aware of that as an idea, and for most people now, that's a fairly mainstream idea. Back when I was starting this in the early 2000s, that was not a common idea. It was not generally accepted that a normal dude could just go and do this. Now, because of the internet, because of the proliferation of this information, most people can at least intellectually accept that it's possible. For the guys that out there that keep holding on to these, it's only for short tall guys, it's only if you're good looking, it's only if you're not Asian. It's all their higher actresses every time they do infill. All of this stuff that we keep seeing on our infill videos and other infill videos, I just feel really sorry for you guys. I'm not faking my infill videos. I get laid, Liam gets laid, my students get laid. I've got nothing to really prove anymore.  So I can't do much for the people that are holding on to these limitations. But for most guys, okay, they accept that it's a possibility. They're entertaining a space inside their psychology. And this is where the beginner's mind phase really develops. It's that process of thinking about it, planning it, investigating material. But the pitfall of that is of course that you stay there. You stay in the analysis or the worst, the situation that I explained where you deny that it's possible. This is also the phase where people start going out and hopefully starting to talk to girls. And this is the beginner's hell, okay? So when you first go out approaching girls, often you get a lot of rejections. You don't get what you hope you're gonna get instantly. You don't necessarily get the numbers or the kisses or the dates or the sex. And then sometimes you just do.  I always say that the people who get good at this are the ones who try to open and try to close. The rest in the middle, you'll get better at that as we go along. Okay, so this is the beginner's mind phase. And you need to accept that it inherently has a lot of struggle in it and a lot of struggle and self-doubt as well. Because at this point, you don't necessarily have enough reference experiences of success. You don't yet really have faith in yourself, in the system or the action of seduction. And so it is a very delicate phase and it is one where you need to change your benchmark of goals.  Maybe you will. Okay, maybe you'll get a model. But if you do, that will be an outlier. That will be just a statistical anomaly. More likely that you'll get a variety of results, many of which will just be feedback, learning, experience, that's really what you're trying to take from this beginner's phase. Okay, so if you keep going, and unfortunately many men don't, they do this, they go and do a dozen approaches and they're like, oh, that was, I didn't like that. That felt weird. I feel silly, I was embarrassed. This is, I'll just, I'll go and do some more research and I'll get back to this in a year. Don't do that, please. Just stay with it because, yes, it gets better. The second phase is the dating game. That's what I call it. This is where you are now comfortable enough with everyday approaching. You can approach girls in the day. You can approach them at clubs. You're not an expert. It's not perfect. You don't get the girls all the time but you are getting numbers. You're getting dates. Sometimes you get laid. You're still probably going through periods, long periods of enforced celibacy. You're probably not getting sex as often as you'd like. You're still dealing with a lot of the frustrations and now because you're deeper into the interactions with girls, so you're on dates, you'll have more of those experiences was where you're having, you're sitting across a girl at a date and it's just not working. The conversation is not necessarily flowing or you get through that and then you almost get her home and she slips through your fingers and then she doesn't return your calls. So this phase is more about consolidation. This is about getting more experience with not just the meeting a girl and getting her phone number. It's getting more experience with being with women. So spending good amounts of time with attractive women and for many men, that's new. Especially if you've come from technical backgrounds or female isolated backgrounds due to your culture or your choice of career or whatever and you don't spend a lot of time around beautiful women. This should be really the major aim for this time is to get used to being around hot girls, learn how to be relaxed with them, learn how to have conversations, learn about what makes them tick, what they're actually thinking, what they actually respond to. This is a great time for much more deeper experimentation and that should really be what you're looking for. What I would say the main pitfall of this second phase is settling, right? Because at this phase, you will start to have sex. You'll be dating girls and sometimes they'll take their clothes off and you won't be looking through their window. You'll be in the room with them and then the temptation can be to just go, all right, well, this girl's cute and she's nice. I haven't met a girl that's like this maybe even before and she wants to have a relationship so I think I should do that because I'm not sure if I'm really gonna get any better at this or it gets any better than this at all. And that's a very bad mistake to make. At this point in your development phase two, when you're really still just learning about women and about dating and how they tick, you shouldn't be getting into a long-term relationship. Definitely start having casual relationships.  Don't just have one-night stands. I don't advocate having lots and lots of one-night stands particularly. I don't judge them. Sure, I've had some great one-night stands but you don't get to know somebody that well usually in one night and if that is the style of seduction you're getting into which is just like 4 a.m. trashy pickups where you take home drunk girls and bang them and don't see them again. If you continue like that, I've met some people who do that for decades. That's a very shallow existence and you'll never learn much about women and you'll never have any really great connections. So yeah, sure, have the odd one-night stand when it comes along but I would be aiming to develop sexual relationships with women but not exclusive. Get stuck in one for years at this point. Reason being, you don't have choice yet. If you get into a serious relationship when you don't have choice, then you will lose power very quickly. The woman will very often wrap you around her little finger and crush you because more or less you asked her to because you stepped into it without the resources and the boundaries to know what you really want and what you're really willing to put up with. So that is the danger, main danger of phase two. Phase three is multiple lovers. Now this is where stuff gets really fun and really complicated, really interesting. So this phase is where we're going, we're coming out of the going on lots of dates to now we are seeing girls regularly, not just one, maybe two, maybe three, maybe more. I for a time have tried to do this with around five girls, that's too many unless you're only doing this. Remember that I don't have a normal job and in the book that I wrote, it reaches this peak where I reached the sex pentangle which is five girlfriends all at once because I just wanted to see if that was possible. It is, I don't think it's that healthy. So this is having a couple of lovers or two, three girls that you see regularly, maybe one you see once a week, one that you only see once a month because she comes into town every now and then. If this is where you start to work out the multiple relationship dynamics. Now some guys will be at this point going, well, that's not really what I'm after. I don't really want to have five girlfriends or three girlfriends or even two girlfriends. I got into this because I wanted to get a great girlfriend. Fine, that is a perfectly healthy and reasonable goal and I'm not here to try and convince everyone they need to be polyamorous and have 10 girlfriends. However, it goes back to what I said before about choice. Most men follow this cycle, inactive single. Single, not because they want to be but because they have to be, celibate, not out of choice, more or less they're not getting any sex.  Like guys talk about it, oh, I've been through a dry patch. I'm like, what does that mean? I haven't been laid in a few months. If that's where you have come to a point where you think that's normal, then I've got news for you. That's not okay. That is not okay. If you're in that position, you need to desperately get out of that position. To be a happy, healthy, functional adult male, you need to be having sex a lot every week at least. I mean, I prefer to have sex every day and I worked very hard and very diligently to get to the point where that is my reality.  I want to have sex now. There was times in my life where I didn't and that is painful. And for guys where that's lasting months, how can you really be concentrated on anything else? How can you actually enjoy your life if you're not getting the base level of sexual and intimacy satisfaction?  And the girl decides usually, okay, yeah, I want a boyfriend and then you start a relationship. That lasts for a hell of a long year, two years, five years, 10 years and children, maybe, whatever it is, you break up inevitably and the man is out cold again on the street, often heartbroken or overweight or out of practice socially back out to inactive single. And then he continues that, a lot that miserable path until eventually he bumps into another girl and does that again. Then what does he do? He does that one, two, three times over about 10 years, maybe. And then when he's 30s or he's late 20s, one of that girl decides she wants children and so he more or less has to marry her. They have kids and that's the end of his dating life and that's the woman he's gonna be with. It doesn't usually end there actually. That relationship then lasts five, 10, 15 years. They have a horrible divorce.  There's children and courts involved and it's a horrific mess. I deal with this all the time. I'm teaching men who come out of those positions and men who are headed in that direction if they don't do something very serious about it. So make no mistake, if you don't take action in your dating life and you don't happen to have a really good social circle, sometimes guys can get away with this. That's why cool guys and girls will sometimes say, hey, shouldn't people just get together? Like isn't it a bit contrived to be learning this dating stuff? You should just be yourself, chill out, you'll meet somebody. Yeah, it's very fucky and easy for you to say cool hipster bar dude. Of course you meet people.  If you're a guy who was brought up nerdy and is working in engineering, there's no cool people or there's no chicks around. There's no just chilling out at the party, you waiting for the girls to arrive. Okay, so when people say that I get pissed off because I'm like, that is you coming from a very entitled position because you happen to be socially very well positioned or very attractive or have one of these distinct advantages. For the average man out there, he's gonna have to take very, very clear action in order to change this not very enjoyable cycle that he's inevitably going to end up in. Which is why I tell you, you must get to phase three. If you wanna have a cool girlfriend, you have to choose her. How do you choose her? By having different cool girls in your life. Different sexy, interesting, loving people who are gonna be good to you so that you know what that's like. People get in abusive relationships because they're used to it. They don't know any better and that goes for men and women. Women who are beaten by their boyfriends or husband, people try to get them out and they often go back because they feel that's what they're worth because that's what they're used to. In the same way I see guys who are brow beaten by overbearing women who just crush their souls because they feel that's all they can get because they're used to that. So if that resonates with you at all or you feel like that might be the path you're going down, you need to be able to date more than one girl in order to choose the right one. Phase four is probably not what you would expect. It's the breakdown. So this can happen at any time, right? So in these phases, they do work generally in a chronology. However, the breakdown can happen at any time but it often happens when you're juggling a lot of girls or when you're coming to a crisis point in a relationship. And so by breakdown, I mean literally that. I mean a mental and emotional and possibly physical breakdown. I mean crying. I mean depression. I mean locking yourself in your room.  I mean self-harm. I mean self-medication. I mean all the dark, hidden and often shameful things that happen to everybody but in this case I'm talking about men as they go through a process of self-discovery. Because self-help doesn't talk about this. Self-help is about positivity. It is about motivation. It is about morning routines and wheatgrass juice and doing the right kind of push-ups and all that stuff, which is great. Great, wheatgrass juice and paleo and all that stuff and smiling and affirmations. All good stuff. However, the reality of human life is it doesn't work like that. You don't just get on the super positivity program and then after that your life's awesome and there's never a moment of self-doubt. In my book, when you guys read it, you will see that I go through some very, very dark phases. I go through suicidal thoughts. I go through peer and this is when I'm getting laid. This is not me alone. This is me dealing with the existential crisis of suddenly having all these people's hearts that I'm somehow responsible for, of really questioning myself worth as a human being, of feeling like I'm a fraud, of hiding behind arrogance and bluster and false identities. Because when you get into seduction as a life pursuit, as something that is a catalyst for deep change, what you're really saying to the universe is, give me the extreme. Give me the extreme life. And if you ask for it and you move towards it, you'll get it. You'll get the extremes. You'll get the sex and the threesomes and the glamour and the power and the glory and you will get the shadow for all of that, right? You can live in a fairly mediocre, average bandwidth of life and kind of avoid the extremes. And to me, that's a slow death. That was always my motivation for getting good at this and progressing was that I wanted anything else except that. I so desperately didn't want a life where I was sitting with a girlfriend where I was like, and watching TV shows and meeting our couple of friends who were also looking at each other and going, oh, shit, is this it? Is that it? I was willing to do anything. I was willing to be desperately alone and live in despair and be broke and whatever else I had to to be away from that, right? So I was talking to my good friend, James McClain, dating coach today. We were filming some extra bonuses for the launch and I asked him like, what was it that propelled you to have these women that are of such exceptional beauty, which is something he's well known for? And it turned out that it wasn't like this super positive motivation. It was an extreme heartbreak and having his life fall apart that made him get up and move, right? So the breakdown will inevitably, breakdowns happen in your life and men are very bad at dealing with them usually. We're not taught to express our emotions. We don't usually talk to each other about these feelings. That's why when men try to kill themselves, they kill themselves. When women often try to kill themselves because they wanna get some attention, right? When a man decides he's gonna top himself, he drives his car into a wall. He hangs himself. Women take pills, just a few and then people find them and then give them some more support. It's hard for us as men to express ourselves, to cry, to ask for help, to fall apart because our worth as human beings is judged by whether we're successful, right? No, men are so scared of being losers that they can't accept that sometimes they need to fall apart. And so this is one of the phases that I look in this program, which most self-help kind of programs would avoid totally, is that it's okay to fall apart. It's okay to be on your path and just lose it. It's okay to fucking, you know, need to go and talk to a psychologist or a therapist or even in some extreme cases to go to hospital or to get on medication. I'm not, I don't advocate everyone getting on antidepressant so I think they can be heavily overused but there are circumstances where these interventions need to be involved. Better that you actually learn to navigate the breakdown rather than wait till it gets to a deadly point in your life. Right, so how do you make best use of a breakdown? Well, you don't want to stay there forever. You don't want to roll around in depression forever. However, the thing to take out of it is that it is often a signal for you to redirect your life. It's the midlife crisis, right? That's a common thing. I try to have a midlife crisis every year. I think it's good, have a midyear crisis.  Where am I trying to change? What is it about my life that is not working that I need to adjust? And then you can get back on the cycle. This is the perfect time to retreat. I and all of the guys in my crew, we do at least one retreat a year. So that may be going into the Amazon jungle and taking ayahuasca. That may be doing a 10-day vipassana retreat. For me, that's often going and doing martial arts retreats. All of us here are writers and we take time away. I'm in a retreat right now. I've barely left this room in weeks because I've been writing and not just writing, but I've been introspective. I've been looking back over my life. I've been taking stock of where I've come from or where I'm going. These are good things to do. Don't save those till you're retirement. Don't save those until someone has to put you in a mental institute because you just exploded. It is important phase to learn to master and not avoid because it's gonna come one way or another.  It's important. Phase five is the one. We're told about the one pretty much from the moment we can conceptualize things. We are fed a certain storyline in terms of romantic love and women are fed this very, very heavily, but we are as well, that there is a soulmate out there for you. There is almost a predestined partner.  It was built for you and you only. And that at some point, you guys will inevitably meet thanks to the stars crossing in fate aligning. And then when you do, your life will be perfect. You will live happily thereafter and that's it. This is the fairy tale that we are sold in terms of how relationships come together. Most people after they've had a couple of relationships start to realize that that doesn't seem to work exactly like that. However, we do often hold on to this idea that when we're ready, the right person will turn up. And that's a really dangerous, dangerous myth to hold in your mind. It's possibly one of the most damaging myths you could ever, ever believe is that the one is coming. Because what it says is you just have to wait. You don't really have to do much. Okay, maybe you need to go to some speed dating things or sort of meet some people, but they're coming. And it also says you don't need to change.  Even if you feel deep down that you're not worthy or that you're not living your full potential, there's this idea that another person will come and fix that for you.  It's a complete fabrication. It's completely untrue. And such an absurd statistical kind of idea too that out of all these people on the planet that each one of us has a perfect match out there that we're all gonna line up with, how is that gonna happen? I don't see how that makes any mathematical sense either. However, it is something that people carry around.  I don't wanna take that away from most people because maybe they need it as someone famously said, religion is the opium of the masses. I don't remember who that was. But I would say the one is also the opium of the masses, the opium of the beta, the opium of the nice guy. It's this concept that, okay, be nice, do your job, earn money, buy a house, get a car, the girl will come. And no, she won't. A girl will come. Someone will turn up probably at some point and then you will have to convince yourself that that is the one. So when I'm talking about this phase of stepping into the one, I'm talking about not that. I'm talking about when you have earned the one, when you have become the one. Because if you've gone through this beginner's hell phase one, learning seduction, learning meeting people, learning basic social skills, learning how to have some choice, you've gone through the dating rigmarole of understanding women, of communicating with them, of learning how to touch them, learning what they like in terms of being interacted with. You've started becoming their lovers. You've learned to become a great lover. You know how to make girls have orgasms. You start to understand their fantasies and that a lot of them are darker and weirder and way more complicated than anything you've ever imagined.  Hopefully you've traveled, you've got skills and hobbies and interests that make you a well-rounded character.  And in my book, you see this, right? I go through this process, this hero's journey, these phases, I have my breakdown, there's a couple of them actually. And I keep going and at some point I meet a woman that I am finally ready for. She was the one for me at that time. And if I hadn't have done all of the other stuff and I'd met her, fate wouldn't have gone, here she is, she just would have looked at me and gone, some dude, so what? But because I'd done elect training and all had all of those experiences, I was at a point where, yes, now I was matching her, now I was her equal, now I was ready.   Maybe I should just be with her, wouldn't that be a smart decision? And I say to them, if you're asking me like that, then it's not the right decision. If there's question, if it's really a compromise and you're looking to balance things out and going, well, on one hand there's this, but on the other hand there's this, you're still settling. And no judgment, okay, sometimes people settle and then they make it work and then they grow to love each other and they have functional relationships and you don't have to have the most extreme life possible. For me, I want the best that is possible in my life. So I would say if that's what you want then if there's any question in your mind, should I be with just this girl, then you shouldn't. If it's so clear to you, if everything in your body and your cells screams, this is the girl, this is the one for now, then do it and throw yourself into it 100%. And the way that you build that, the paradigm that you live within is up to you. It doesn't have to be monogamous man, woman, only be together. That's what society tells you. You can have a primary lover and you can have other lovers. You can have a relationship like I do now where I have one lover who I'm deeply in love with, which is my partner, and we also bring other girls to join us because we're both interested in females. There's all sorts of different dynamics that people can do and that's up to you to build with your partner or partners. So what I am talking about is a primary relationship, one where you are invested emotionally where you're in love with this person. The dangers of this are many, the pitfalls are many, mainly to do with being with the wrong person, staying together with somebody too long, losing your own personal identity, becoming codependent, monogamous or very deeply committed relationships have a lot of inherent flaws and dangers within them and it takes constant vigilance to A, keep the relationship fun and vital and B, not become this one single celled, like depressing organism. All right, so that's your phase five. Phase six, and everyone's like, what, what phase six? Phase five, happily ever after, right? Really guys, really? No, phase six is the breakup, yet another piece of self-help area that most people don't talk about. If people are talking of giving love advice or relationship advice, they very rarely would tell you how to have good breakups, how to learn the skill of breaking up and I'm here to tell you that is one of the most important skills you need to know. I've been through a number of serious relationships in my life, I've had a number of breakups and they've been bad and some of them have crippled me for years. Literally they've wiped me out in terms of feeling alive and a really bad breakup does that to you. Some people never recover from bad breakups. They carry cynicism and baggage for the rest of their life because of one deep heartbreak that they had and that's because they didn't learn to process the breakup and they didn't accept that it is actually a natural part of the cycle. Okay, sometimes, very occasionally, a boy and a girl will meet, they'll stay together for the rest of their lives and they will be very, very happy about that. Of course in my parents' generation, particularly my grandparents' generation, people did stay together for their entire lives often. That wasn't because back then they were better at being in love for 50 years, really. That was because back then marriage was different. It was not necessarily based on a feeling of romantic entanglement. It was based on practicalities. You have to get married in order to survive. You have to have children. It's part of the way the society is built. There's not really any other options.  You can't live in unwed situations. You can't, it was just not accepted, right? So people did. They stayed together for a long, long time, mostly. But were they happy? Were your grandparents happy all their lives? Mine certainly weren't. People did it because that was the done thing and because they were keeping families together.  In fact, I think I'm just gonna go. And that's a good thing because many relationships, even really good ones, reach a point where they're no longer good. I've had some awesome relationships in my life but at some point they became bad and they were toxic and they were no longer serving me. And knowing when it is time to leave a relationship is a vital skill. Most people, myself included, stay in a relationship about 30% at least longer than they should. And I have clients often, because I talk to them always about their lives, their previous relationships. And I hear things like, I was with my ex-wife for 10 years, it was after the first year that I realized I didn't love her. And I'm like, oh dude, oh. And then we had kids because I thought that would make things better. You know, these kinds of decisions and it just makes you wanna cry because people have put years into a partnership that was a bad idea.  So, phase six, if you wanna be a true master of this cycle, is learning to separate from a partner at the right time, be able to process the emotions, the grief, the mourning, the anger, whatever the jealousy, whatever it is that comes out of that and allow yourself to feel that and then to transmute it and let it go so that you can then return back to phase one. But you're not returning back to phase one as the novice that you first started. It's more like a spiral, right? So you go one, two, three, four, five, six and now we're at one, but we're at a higher level. Now you have all of the learning, the understanding, the experience, the expansiveness to do this journey again, which is, okay, I'm a single guy again. What am I gonna do? Am I gonna lie in my bed and cry? Well, yeah, do that for a week if you want to. But am I gonna stay there? No, I'm gonna get back out, I'm gonna meet some girls.    It doesn't work, guys, it just makes your fingers sore.  Yeah, right? So there you have it in a very small nutshell, the next two to 50 years of your life. But the point of this video is I want you to start being conscious of this, to start looking at your love life as an arc of growth, not just a skill set that you're learning, not just a scramble away from a pain point to the nearest woman that's gonna look after you because you'll pay the price for that. If you don't do this consciously, then it will just happen to you and it won't be fun. You won't get the best. It's like winning the lottery as opposed to learning how to become an entrepreneur that becomes wealthy, all right? People who try to win the lottery are delusional. If they think that's the way they're gonna get rich.  People who get wealthy, people learn how to understand money, understand business, understand that process, take some risks, lose it all, start again, lose it all, keep going until they get somewhere. Guys who get exceptional women, who have exceptional relationships are the ones that go through these six phases and then come around at some point at the back to, not to square one, but to the beginning again from a different place and then run it again. And in that way, each time you run that cycle, maybe you do a two, three, 10, I don't know, there can be many rotations that will be different for every person, but it will mean that each time you come out stronger, better and more prepared for an absolutely excellent life, which is coming to you because you've earned it. So if this has been interesting to you, if it hasn't been, then I may as well quit because I think this is pretty interesting and important stuff. I will be presenting in my product that I'm releasing this week a much more expanded version of this, a program for you to actually plan and prepare and build action steps to work through these six phases in a way that's functional, that actually serves you so that you can not make all of the mistakes necessarily that I have to make, not have all of the heartbreak and the long breakdowns, you can just make your breakdowns effective and work for you. So that's James Marshall from the Natural Lifestyles, signing out. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Now, before I go, I've got a very special announcement, which is that after 10 years of writing, I have finally finished an amount right now releasing my first ever book, which is called A Natural History, The Seduction Journals of James Marshall, which is exactly that. The evolution, the story of me going from broke, loser, hippie musician, through to international man of mystery and sexual abundance. I dish the dirt on myself. This is no holds barred. I tell everything, my ups and downs from Shaolin Temple through to becoming a porn star, a rock star, massage therapist, all my failures and right through to juggling five amazing girlfriends until I finally find the girl I dreams. It's a crazy ride. And if you guys are interested, then click the link below for full details. This is James Marshall from the Natural Lifestyles and reporting for a 20-week convention, signing out.


Hello everyone, I'm Paul and today I'm going to be talking about boomerang attacks So more precisely, I'll present a joint work with Amidboukeru, Virginie Lallement, Bimal Mendel and Marie-Migny Which introduced the fast-to-counter part of the boomerang connectivity table So let's get to it Right, so I'll start by recalling some basic notions of boomerang attacks We'll have a look at the boomerang connectivity table which was introduced for SPNs to study a boomerang switch of one Then I'll present the FBCT, so the fast-to-counter part and I'll give some of its properties Compare them with what we know of the BCT then We'll address the cases where the boomerang switch covers multiple routes All right, so boomerang attacks they date back to 1999 They were introduced by David Wagner and they are a variant of different show-crypt analysis But instead of considering pairs of messages here you are looking at Quartets of messages and what is studied here is if a difference will come back or not So let me explain in the basic form of the distinguisher as an attacker You have access to encryption and decryption oracles and what you're going to do is First choose M0, use E, your block cipher to obtain the corresponding ciphertext C0 Then you're going to construct M1 which is the initial plaintext M0 Exord with a difference alpha and you're going to get C1 Now two additional ciphertext C2 and C3 are then computed by adding a difference delta to C0 and C1 and the corresponding plaintext M2 and M3 are retrieved So finally what we want to do is check if M2 and M3 differ by the same value alpha Now if the probability that the difference equals alpha is higher than For a random permutation, then we have a distinguisher So boomerang attacks have an advantage over standard differential attacks Which is that they remain efficient as long as there exists short high probability differential characteristics So I mean on a small number of rounds so you don't need a high probability differential on the whole cipher Usually you would use two small differentials covering half of the attack rounds each So for instance in the original approach the attack cipher E is written as the composition of two sub ciphers E0 and E1 And you need good differentials over each part So let's say that for E0 the input difference alpha leads to the output difference beta with high probability P and Gamma leads to delta with probability Q over E1 Then it was thought that with probability P square Q square the boomerang came back Now this formula was a later question because some odd cases were observed So in some cases the boomerang would come back more often For instance in the related key crypt analysis of the AES Birgakov and Krovetovic found distinguishers with probability higher than expected They also identified some particular cases that they called the ladder switch the s-box switch and the five-stall switch And sometimes the boomerang didn't come back at all. So that's what Murphy showed he He exhibited an example of distinguisher that seemed valid, but was in fact of probability zero So people realized that the junction of the two trails needed to be studied more carefully and all these observations were later formalized in a framework called the sandwich attack Now in this setting the cipher is divided into three parts instead of two So E0 and E1 are still here, but in between there is a middle part EM called the boomerang switch Now if EM satisfied the requested differential propagation among the four texts with probability R Then the probability of the boomerang distinguisher is P square Q square R So usually R would be manually computed by looking at the equations linking E0 and E1 But then at Eurocrypt 2018 a new tool was introduced to easily Evaluate the probability of the middle part for SPNs in the case where it covers one round This tool was called the boomerang connectivity table or PCT for short So what's interesting about this technique is that it reduces the problem of computing the probability R of the boomerang switch Over one round function to the one of computing it over one S box only So here's our middle switch and we want the returning difference to be equal to beta So if we just expand EM and write it as an SPN we get the following Now looking at the S box level from beta and gamma It's easy to deduce intermediate input output values that we're going to call delta i and nabla o for each S box Which gives us the following equation So now the study is simplified Instead of looking at the property of a round as a whole The problem is reduced to one we can easily study because of its small size That is examining each S box at of the S layer independently And now since the S boxes are applied in parallel The probability over one round is simply going to be the product of the probabilities over each S box So here's the BCC table for the small S box of skinny for skinny 64 So as you can see the BCT of an S box is going to give at row delta i nabla o The number of values for which a boomerang of input delta i and output difference nabla o comes back Now from this the probability of a boomerang switch over each S box can be deduced Then the probability are that a message verifies the entire EM step can be computed So this tool gave a new criterion for the choice of S boxes because naturally an S box with small BCT coefficients is going to prevent an attacker from building efficient boomerang style attacks It also gave a better understanding of the special cases observed by Murphy or Biryukov So it detects cases where the boomerang won't come back and these are the zeros in your table It also detects So the ladder switch which is one of the special cases observed by Biryukov and Krobo tovich in their related key analysis of the AES So without going into the details of it We can read this on the first row or the first column of the BCT All right, so from what we've seen the BCT is a very convenient tool To automatically study the behavior of the junction between E0 and E1 However, there exists no such tool for boomerang attacks on Feistel networks So we address this in the next part by introducing the FBCT the Feistel counterpart of the BCT and As we're about to see the boomerang behavior of an S box in the Feistel case Can be quite different from the SPN case And but first let's just define our table So we start by illustrating our theory on the generic Feistel But it also works for variants of this construction like the type 1 and type 2 all right, so that's our switch and So for the sake of clarity, we're going to number our states just like that So here we consider balanced Feistel with two branches and a Feistel function F Which is defined by a round key addition an S layer and a linear layer L So at this stage, we will not focus on the details of F The only important thing is that F contains one S layer made by the concatenation of T and BDS boxes So we are interested in the probability of the following one round boomerang switch We have an input difference equal to beta between state 1 and 2 and An output difference equal to gamma between state 1 and 3 and between state 2 and 4 and we want the input between State 3 and 4 to be equal to beta So since we're going to study the left and right part we can just separate the differences into two parts Just like that. Let's just split them same for the output. All right So let's start by studying the cost of obtaining the left difference between state 3 and 4 so we want beta L and The good thing is the left branch is the one that is not modified through one round of Feistel So the left part actually comes for free All right, so moving on to the right part now We want to obtain a difference of beta R between the right part of state 3 and 4 So let's just call these branches R prime and R second I'll go through this pretty quickly the details are in the paper anyway, but Basically, it's just a matter of writing down the differences we have at each branch So right so this is what we want and by naming L prime and L second the left outputs after one round in state 3 and 4 Then we get the following equations So here I've replaced our prime and I can do the same thing for our second And then we express L and L second as functions of LR the two branches of state 1 and the differences And we get this We can simplify a bit And so in the end we end up with the following condition This entire thing right there needs to be equal to zero All right, so now we have this condition on the entire round function But now what we can do is that we can use the fact that the non-linear function of F is an S layer that is simply a Parallel application of small S boxes So meaning that we can rewrite this condition as a set of independent independent conditions on smaller parts of the states and obtain equations of this form So here Delta I is the difference at the input of the S box between state 1 and 2 it can be deduced from beta L and NABLA O is the difference at the input of the S box between state 1 and 3 and states 2 and 4 and It can be deduced from gamma R So interestingly what we're looking at here is actually the second derivative of S Canceling out right so with that we can now define our FPCT So the FPCT is going to be a table In which the entry for the Delta I and NABLA O position is given by the number of times the second derivative of S cancels out in this point And once the table is built the probability that a boomerang comes back over one round of the Feistel scheme is Simply going to be the product of the corresponding coefficients Divided by 2 to the power of N. So that's just like in the SPN case Here you're looking at the FPCT of one of the S boxes used in L block All right, so now some simple properties that are Easily deduced from the definition of the FPCT So it's symmetrical the input and output difference can be permuted The diagonal is always going to be equal to 2 to the power of N The value of the FPCT is always going to be a multiple of 4 and that's simply because If X is solutions so are X or Delta I X or NABLA O and X or Delta I X or NABLA O And finally for each row the values are the same when the column is shifted by the value of the row Let's talk about the Feistel scheme So as I mentioned earlier, this is one of the special cases identified by Biryukov and Kovratovic in Which the boomerang comes back for free for a Feistel construction and this is one Excerpt form from their paper So the setting is shown on this figure What we have here is that the left input difference and the right output difference are the same so those are in green and Using our previous analysis, we know that the internal state X Y is going to allow the boomerang to come back if This equation is verified Which in this case is always going to be true because gamma R and beta L are equal So what happens here is that if we consider the Feistel round function to be to be made of some linear operations and an S layer Then for every S box, we are actually looking at coefficients that are on the diagonal of the FBCT So we're seeing here that our table automatically gives the last special case of switch We also have properties regarding APN functions So I'll just recall that a function S is called almost perfect nonlinear or APN If the derivative of S at delta I has either zero or two solutions for any nonzero delta I Now when looking at the FBCT of such functions We can say the following so F is APN if and only if the coefficients of its FBCT Equals zero Except in the first row first column or first diagonal Here's an example of a 3-bit S box So you have the DDT, the FBCT and the PCT I think it's actually the one from Pijamas Now to conclude this part, I will now give a quick comparison of the PCT and the FBCT Regarding the boomerang uniformity of an S box for various classes of equivalents So the boomerang uniformity is a relevant parameter for an S box In an SPN, it's the highest value that is neither on the first row nor the first column And its properties were already investigated by Cristina Burra and Alcanto About two years ago Now for the Feistel scheme The diagonal is also always equal to 2 to the power of n so we have to exclude these values as well So here we compared the boomerang uniformity for the Affine, Extended Affine and CCZ equivalences So those are classes that tend to preserve some cryptographic properties for equivalent S boxes And what we can see here is that the set composed of all values in the FBCT Is preserved under Affine and Extended Affine transformations But not for CCZ equivalence or for inversion So the key point here is that A good S box for an SPN is going to be a good S box for a Feistel scheme Regarding many usual criteria such as differential, linear or algebraic degree However The behavior can be different regarding boomerang switches If we use it in an SPN or in a Feistel All right, so in the last part of this talk, we're going to focus on boomerang switches over more rounds So this has already been done for SPN constructions There are two paper that investigated these cases So for instance, Wang and Beren introduced the BDT standing for boomerang difference table Which is a variant of the BCT with an additional variable fixed, which is the S box output difference So here's the BDT, there's also the BDT prime for the invert operation And so Wang and Beren proposed to use the product of the BDT and BDT prime coefficients To cover the case of a two-round switch So first, you're going to apply the BDT on the S box layer of the upper round And then the BDT prime on the lower S box layer So in our analysis, we found a similar table for the Feistel case So we introduced the Feistel boomerang difference table, the FBDT Which is a three-dimensional array In which the entry for delta i, small delta, number o is computed by the formula appearing on the screen So for a two-round switch, again here we consider a very generic case where the round function is composed of one S box layer Made of T parallel and BDT boxes and of some linear or affine operations So this implies that if the input difference of one round is known, together with the other two round switches And the output difference of the S box layer, then the difference at the input of the next round S box layer can be computed Alright, so for instance here, let's look at the upper round, so the first round And we're going to focus on the difference between state one and two, so the one in blue So delta i is going to represent the difference at the input of the first round S box layer And this value can be deduced from the left input difference of the first round, delta i L Then we have small delta, which denotes the corresponding output difference of the same S box layer But it's not specified Then finally we have delta i prime, which corresponds to the difference at the input of the second S box layer So again, with respect to state one and two And its value can be deduced from delta and from delta i R Now in a similar way, the difference at the input of the second round S box layer between state two and four So now we're looking at the red differences So this difference is going to be set to a value that we're going to denote by nabla O Which can be deduced from the right output difference nabla O R Then the corresponding output difference is going to be denoted by alpha, but again we're not going to fix it And finally, nabla O prime represents the input difference of the first round S box layer for the state And it can be computed from nabla O L and alpha So now having defined those new variables, the probability that a boomerang comes back over two rounds Can be computed by applying the FBDT on the S boxes of the first round And the FBDT on the S boxes of the second round Then you're going to sum all the probabilities over all possible S box outputs So here delta and alpha So sometimes we want to go even further, so let's talk about three round switches As depicted in the figure, we introduce new variables to represent all the intermediate differences And the idea will be to iterate over all the possible values for these Compute the probability of the obtained settings and finally sum together the probabilities Just like we saw for the two round switch So for that we're going to need a new table, that's going to be the FBDT, five-still boomerang extended table Which is a four-dimensional table for which the each entry is going to be computed according to the formula appearing on the screen Now with this table the probability of a switch can then be estimated to be the sum over all the possible intermediate differences of the product of the FBDT coefficient for each S box Now in this approximation we consider that the same characteristic is used between state 1 and 2 and between state 3 and 4 So the new table that we've introduced here, the FBDT treats the case of an arbitrary number of rounds and recovers the previous formulas The problem is when you're looking at a switch covering many rounds Applying this formula can require too much time if many S boxes are involved So it might be better to evaluate the probability of EM experimentally Alright, so to wrap it up, we have developed a new theory that explains the behavior of boomerang switches for five-still ciphers We've introduced the notion of FBDT and we gave its main properties and relations with other well-known cryptographic tables And we saw that it could easily evaluate the probability of a one-round switch We also provided an expression of the probability of a boomerang switch over two rounds And gave a more general expression of the one over multiple rounds But this leads to many parameters, so switching to experiments to evaluate the probability might be better Thank you for your attention and if you have any questions, I will see you at the live session


Hell yeah, what's up guys, it's CursePike. My friends call me Bigsy. Back in action today, I'm gonna show you how to install your own custom font in Photopea. Photopea is a free image editor where you can create your own custom thumbnails, just like this one here. And this one I'm doing a giveaway for a game called Wounded and I don't like the font. And the reason why is it's an indie survival horror game and this font doesn't scream indie survival horror. So what do I do? I'm gonna go to Default. This is one of many websites, but this is a simple one that I'll show you how to use. It doesn't have to be from this website, but it's just nice and easy. I'm gonna go there and then I'm gonna look at the bottom here and I'm gonna see an option for horror. I'm gonna click on that horror. And when I'm here, I get to see a whole bunch of, you know, unique looking scary horror type fonts. And I don't know, let's go with something like Help Me. This looks like a fun one. I'm gonna go ahead now and click on download. And this is the font that I want to use. So there it is. It's downloaded it as a zip file. I'll just open it. So I'll show it in Finder and then I'll just move it to my documents folder. And when I'm in there, I'm gonna double click on it and presto. We get a pretty cool looking font. There it is. It's a .ttf as you can see. And now we're gonna go ahead and install it into photopeia. It's very simple to do. Head on back to photopeia and now double click on the font or the word part of me that you want to change. In this case, it's the word wounded. And you'll see here that I've got Bebast Noia selected by default here. But I don't want that one. So I click on that and I'm gonna click on load font. And when I do that, it's got my other fonts here. I'm gonna go ahead back to documents. And this one, I believe if I remember correctly, it was called Help Me. There it is. I'm gonna download, I'm gonna click on that. And then I'm gonna click on this help me .ttf file. Click on open and it says font help me loaded, but it hasn't changed yet. We got to do one more thing.  Take this and go right to the bottom. And then you'll see that it is there and it's clickable. So if I click on help me, presto. There we go. We've gone ahead and changed the font. Doesn't quite work for what I'm looking for here, but I'm just gonna go ahead and reduce the size a little. And there we go. We've got wounded. It's, yeah, it's not bad. That, however, is how you create your own custom font and use it inside Photopeia. Thanks for watching. Ton more stuff coming up.


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overlord here So we talked about screen 5 again here today This is coming to us from viewer or non viewer non is one of the trusted sources when it comes to inside information on upcoming releases I'll share a little bit more light on that later on in the video But viewer non responded to someone begging them to just give us anything on screen 5 because they're we're just yearning to have some Food on the table. I'll just say he responded with this response to the image that they shared a few weeks ago The reddish glow at the bottom of the ghostface mask is from a button He or she hits on his or her neck to be able to speak in Roger Jackson's voice to other characters This is also a very big scene in the movie so that right there that little explanation from viewer or non is Letting us know of one of the gadgets that we can expect ghostface to have in his arsenal this time around in his or her arsenal this Time around I'll just start saying there having their arsenal this time around and now we know then the past David Arquette Has kind of talked about this ghostface will have some new tricks of his sleeve I know I've made many other videos where I've talked about other people that have brought this up about the new film viewer or non Is someone who's already seen the movie and he's Reliant he's replying to this individual who asked him to just or ask them rather just share any information They can on screen 5 and without going into any real major spoilers They shed some light on potentially one of the gadgets that we could be seen in screen 5 Relates to ghostface now ditching the voice changer box that we are accustomed to seeing but now just having a simple button That they will be able to press on their neck to speak in Roger Jackson's voice So the characters and that would explain that reddish glow at the bottom of the ghostface message I did see quite a few of you kind of speculating on but this is the most likely answer because again viewer or non has been right about other things in the past the Response that I have to that one of my thoughts on it. I think that's a nice little updated Approach as it relates to voice changers and ghostface speaking in Roger Jackson's voice in the in the movies voice Of course, they'll just be regarded as the ghostface voice So the fact that we have that little update from the typical voice changer box to now Just a simple button I think that could be a cool thing to see on screen how many times we see it though I think could be what makes the difference between something being Cool to see and something being cartoony Because I don't me personally I would not want to see ghostface pressing a button on his mask his or her mask and Then have that red glow or red tint reddish glow at the bottom of the mask Like maybe in multiple scenes maybe once during the final reveal Maybe twice even but I wouldn't want to see this a lot during the film and I don't think that's what will happen I'm just giving my perspective on it. I would hate to see that just because you know I feel like if you show it too much it does start to become a little bit cartoony We in the past have never seen ghostface always on the phone using his voice changer We've just had the person on the phone and ghostface on the other in the phone talking in Roger L Jackson's voice and then of course we would see it the very end right towards the reveal Something will pull out their voice changers like Roman not Roman, but uh like what stew did like what Mickey did They will pull out their voice changers. So hopefully that's the same thing that'll happen as relates to us seeing that reddish glow I think that would be a very cool scene to have unfold where we get to the final stage We're in the final act ghostface is about to reveal themselves And before revealing themselves They press a little button to show us how they've been talking like Roger L Jackson and talking as that voice that many of us find so iconic Since the beginning of this film will see that they haven't been using the traditional voice box that we're accustomed to using But we'll be seeing this Little button press that they just do now again We could see this done throughout the film but minus the reddish glow We could see it done throughout the film and the filmmakers could just hide the reddish glow until the final Stages of the movie to kind of give us a bigger picture of what was going on with that button press that could be shown numerous times throughout the movie I think this is a decent little update and change of pace or change of scenery for the whole voice changer dynamic I really do think this could be done well on screen if of course It's not something that's overly exposed and just come comes across very cartoony But I guess you guys can let me know what you think about this new piece of technology one of the new Gadgets that ghostface will have because again people have talked about the killer having new gadgets And new tricks up his his or her sleeve this time around The other thing viewer non did respond to someone with was in relation to the runtime of the film They said it was longer than screen one and screen two or screen one and screen four rather But shorter than screen three and screen four So that would tell me that this movie is most likely going to be either 115 minutes 160 minutes anything less than 117 and 120 because I think scream scream two clocks in it 120 I think screen three clocks in it 117 I might be mistaken or have the movies mixed up, but if it's shorter than Or if it's longer rather than screen one and screen four but less Than shorter than two and three then that means that this movie most likely will clock in at a little above 110 Maybe at 110 on the dot it has to go above 111 I would imagine just because again, I believe screen four is 111 minutes just like the original screen is 111 minutes again. I could be mistaken so We that gives us plenty of time to get to know the characters spend time with them catch up with Sydney Do we in Gale learn what their lives have been like since the last ten years since the original since screen four rather and Just get to know who we're dealing with now get to spend time with the characters Hopefully grow attached to them and care about their survival get to know the carpenter sisters understand how they're factoring into this new Ghostface killing spree. So that runtime is a decent enough runtime in and of its own I know a lot of us were thinking this would be the longest entry in the franchise These type of comments like this I do just want to also add that they did say that they were looking at a cut that didn't have the music finalized So maybe the cut that we get is something completely different Maybe a little bit more additional footage or something who knows But this is enough time for us to get to know the characters spend time with them Grow attached to them care about their survival catch up with our legacy characters watch Ghostface do his thing and hopefully enough time for our directors to Completely blow us away with their incarnation of what a Ghostface film or a screen film by there looks like without West Craven and give it Their own unique spin So I know you guys are looking forward to this film We also have the upcoming 25th anniversary Re-release in October where many of us believe that the film will Showcase the first look at screen 5 and then that'll play along Halloween kills Which releases during that same week of the re-release of the original Screaming theaters for like a for the two-night fathom event That's coming in October So viewer none also did common is say as of right now It looks like the most likely date for us to get the trailer during the week of Halloween kills release So it can play alongside it in theaters which many of you would argue we've already known that before but again viewer none Is a trusted source He's spilled a lot of things in the past from other big movies coming out But let me know just think about this down in the comment section below if you haven't already of course Make sure you subscribe turn on postification that mirrors the video in the description I have links to my social media accounts my Facebook turn Instagram you can message me there Of course, there's any movies news or views like me to cover in the future and with all that in mind guys I will see you in the next video


So again good morning to everybody My name is Tomasz Walenski, and I'm a product manager with RF Elements, and I'll take you through this journey today So antennas have Actually, just let me let me remind one thing and that's if at any point during the presentation You have any questions feel free to write them down in into the question window in your webinar tool and I'll I'll answer them either during or at the end of the presentation So back to the topic antennas have many So-called textbook parameters and being a wisp Well, the question is do you need to know about each and every one of them? Well, of course not the question that the answer is no definitely not in the wisp industry There are only a few antenna parameters that you should really know and care about So in general, it's it's fair to say that Many of the antenna parameters are connected to one another and sometimes in quite a complex way so the parameters that are usually thought to Express the ability of an antenna to deal with the with the interference are our front-to-back ratio side-lobed level or Etsy masks now these you most likely know or at least heard about and The one we at RF elements believe is the most important one in terms of noise suppression is beam efficiency and in the following slides will we will explain why beam efficiency is the ratio of energy contained in the main loop to the total energy an antenna radiates So in other words, it it tells us what part of the radiated energy is going to the main loop So the higher the beam efficiency is the the more energy is contained in the main loop in other words Where we want it to be and vice versa Less energy is going everywhere else or in other words to the side lobes Now since side lobes do a lot of harm in the unlicensed wireless networks beam efficiency of antennas You're using is is something that's really worth knowing about and not only actually knowing about but also Make it a decision factor when thinking about how to deal with interference To give you a practical example This is the radiation pattern of a generic power bullet dish antenna, so if the beam efficiency is 40 percent These 40 percent of the power that are the antenna radiates go into the main loop Now how about the remaining 60 percent? Well the remaining energy goes everywhere else and Since everything outside the main loop is a side loop it goes into the side lobes note that All the side lobes are highlighted in this animation, so beam efficiency Includes all the side lobes of an antenna if you want to compare two antennas side by side in terms of Side lobe performance beam efficiency makes it extremely simple The higher number wins. It's simple as that. So for example The ultra horn had beam efficiency of 99 percent so only 1% of the power it radiates is in is in the side lobes and The a generic dish antenna has beam efficiency 40 percent So the remaining 60 percent of the energy it radiates is in the side lobes So 99 percent is more than 40 percent. That's clear clear as as the blue sky So therefore ultra horn is better antenna in terms of noise suppression probably Actually, probably the best on the market to be fair We should also look at the parameters you you might already know so front-to-back ratio is One of them and many manufacturers Included into their data sheets. So let's have a small recap of front-to-back ratio The conversion of thinking about front-to-back ratio is that if it is high it means an antenna is good for colocation So if the antennas are back-to-back and both have high front-to-back ratio, they will not interfere with each other The reality is that Front-to-back ratio does not mean an antenna is good for dense colocation in every possible scenario and setting It is simply Disconception it is important to understand this because next time you you might have a conversation about front-to-back ratio You can be sure that if anyone is saying that high front-to-back ratio means an antenna is great for dense colocation you you know that a person is either misinformed or we simply didn't go deep enough with the topic high front-to-back ratio means that The back low is small to be more precise the the low pointing in the opposite direction as the main low That one is small. It can also mean that a group of side lobes around the back lobe is small depending on the on a definition Or the way the front-to-back ratio was determined So front-to-back ratio is easy to understand looking at the radiation pattern of an antenna in this example We show the pattern of a directional patch array Front-to-back ratio is the difference between the gain of the main lobe and the back lobe which is pointing backwards in practice Front-to-back ratio is often determined based on the strongest side lobe from a plus minus 30 degree angle around the back lobe because possible manufacturing assembly or material imperfections Because of these imperfections the the back lobe might not be just a single lobe But it can be fractured and divided into several minor lobes around it and thus this this definition of front-to-back ratio is Is convention and adopted in many industries? Nevertheless back lobe is one of many side lobes antennas used in with wisp industry usually have So if that globe is one out of many side lobes, then it's probably not so important Now this is the typical error in Interpretation of front-to-back ratio. It doesn't say anything about the other side lobes So when two antennas are exactly back-to-back Colocated this is the rare kind of scenario where high front-to-back ratio can help to decrease interference level The the radios are working with But as I said before the the typical antenna used in wisp networks has as plenty of side lobes and the back lobe itself can be quite complex So as soon as there are more links on a tower or the Colocated antennas are not exactly back-to-back. You are looking at potential issues because of all the other side lobes High front-to-back ratio provides no protection Whatsoever in high noise environment so for urban and sub-urban areas With other wireless link and links in and the neighborhood or even on the same tower front-to-back ratio is simply irrelevant Now these other links may be yours or or competitors either way. They're using similar hardware to yours meaning their antennas are Most likely also have many side lobes that create noise Which is received through the rest of the side lobes Another parameter I want to I want to mention is side lobe level. In practical life It is it is similar to front-to-back ratio, but let's have a look at the at the details Side lobe level is the difference between the gain of the of the strongest side lobe and the main lobe As such it is more useful than the front-to-back ratio because at least it points out the strongest side lobe Which says about antenna performance in high-nose areas to a degree So if side lobe level is high the strongest side lobe is close to having the gain As the main lobe making it a poor antenna for WESP networks The issue with side lobe level is that it doesn't talk about all the side lobes So side lobe level is defined by the strongest side lobe which again is only one side lobe out of many and Also, it's defined at a single frequency Now since the side lobes are changing with frequency the noise level also changes with them So despite you know what the strongest side lobe is at single frequency It's not very useful in the bitter in the bigger picture since simple switching of a channel changes everything Side lobe level is therefore Similar metric to front-to-back ratio. It tells you what the strongest side lobe is at one frequency But nothing about the rest of the side lobes throughout the useful bandwidth of an antenna Which is the biggest issue with this two metrics in WESP networks all the side lobes matter To sum it up Not all the antenna parameters are practically useful for WESP networks Simply depends on the context the antenna is used in and in the end It's it's up to the users and mainly the manufacturers to responsibly look at each at each antenna parameter and Evaluate whether whether it's useful in the framework of WESP networks or not The conclusion for front-to-back ratio and side lobe level clearly says that these two are not so important They tell a very limited part of the story of side lobes You may have also heard about the Etsy masks which do to a degree They they also serve as a parameter that says how well antennas perform in terms of noise So let's have a closer look at at dose It is important to clarify that Etsy masks consider two principle cuts of the antenna radiation pattern So the azimuth and the elevation obviously so the masks consider two slices out of the whole 3d radiation pattern In terms of frequency the Etsy masks are observed at three frequency points the beginning the middle and the end of the spectrum an antenna works in Nevertheless the the rest of the spectrum, which is rather wide in case of WESP networks is is not included in Etsy definition starting with the polar plot you may know from antenna data sheets The antennas you're using and and redrawing it on an xy plot the Etsy mask is Is a line that says that the radiation pattern should stay below the mask So that an antenna can be declared compliant with a given Etsy norm So if it isn't the antenna is not compliant, which Yeah, is the case with with this particular example. We're using here The masks are easy to understand and to their credit they do consider the whole 360 degree circle of the radiation pattern, but unfortunately only two cuts of the whole 3d pattern and That at three frequency points of the whole spectrum an antenna works in So vast majority of the spectrum is simply not included. That's why in terms of the Interference suppression there. They're also not very useful So whenever you see an antenna being compliant with an Etsy form of any number You know that it does not bring much added value in terms of suppressing noise in WESP networks At RF elements, we strongly believe in doing the right thing for the customer and the industry So we looked in the textbooks as well and found out about beam efficiency Which is the most complete measure of sidelopes out there and when I say the most complete I'm I'm not just trying to push some marketing fluff through your ears and in the following slides We will clarify why So beam efficiency is the parameter WESP should have been looking for It gives the right answer to the question about sidelopes So despite you might have never heard about beam efficiency before Who at RF elements we we do what we believe is the best for the customer even if it means Bringing in something not considered before and which might be different from what other manufacturers are saying So if beam efficiency is the ratio of energy contained in the main loop to the energy The total energy on antenna radiates it is also a measure of sidelopes so we can get the percentage of the energy in the sidelopes by subtracting beam efficiency from the hundred percent of the overall energy and We can get beam efficiency of an antenna by measurement done in an unequipped chamber like the one you can see in the in this image now the antenna is attached to a rotary stage which rotates in in two axes and the radiation intensity is measured and Based on the measured data. We we can calculate beam efficiency If the model of an antenna is precise enough or if an antenna is is simple We we can use simulation software to do the same thing Obtain your radiation pattern and based on that we can calculate the beam efficiency So if beam efficiency is 40 percent So the 40 percent of the power antenna radiates goes into the main loop the remaining 60 percent Therefore must be in the sidelopes Know that all the sidelopes are highlighted so beam efficiency includes all the sidelopes of an antenna not just one or a slice of the radiation pattern, but the whole 3d pattern and It's similar case with the sector antennas here. You can see it's very easy to evaluate What's the amount of the energy that antenna radiates goes into the sidelope? If beam efficiency is 58 percent the rest of the energy in this case 42 percent is in the sidelopes So wasps use a wide chunk of spectrum But an antenna textbooks the beam efficiency is defined at a single frequency and For single polarization now This is the case for most textbook parameters and again it is up to the user and mainly the manufacturer to Consider whether one should care about the whole bandwidth or just a single frequency point Since the computational power is much more affordable nowadays than it was in the past we Can choose whether we you know, we need a wide band or a narrow band information at will So in with industry it makes perfect sense to average beam efficiency Over the whole bandwidth an antenna is working in because wasps use their antennas in a wide Frequency band, so it only makes sense that an antenna should perform well in the whole bandwidth So therefore we at our element we chose to extend the textbook definition of beam efficiency To a number that is the average of beam efficiency over the whole useful bandwidth of our antennas and Over both polarizations By doing this we we turn the textbook definition of beam efficiency into sort of a Super parameter if you will it is much more robust and more reliable measure of sideload performance than Then the single frequency and single polarization version so vast majority of antennas used for Sectorial coverage in with networks are you the patch erase or horns? The patch erase have many frequency dependent side loops So their beam efficiency values are around 60 percent depending on the quality of the manufacturing and design Now the RF elements horns both Symmetrical and asymmetrical have beam efficiency somewhere between 90 and 95 percent So less than 10 percent of the radiated power is in the side loops Now you can see other horns in this in this graph as well And this is to show that it takes considerable effort to design a horn such that it's Its beam efficiency is high So the stable and zero sideload performance is is not a given But we do put a lot of effort into our antennas to achieve high beam efficiency values similar Case is with the point-to-point antennas the patch erase are again at the at the bottom of the beam efficiency performance due to The many frequency dependent side loops collecting and transmitting noise hurting in any and every waste network Our dishes are are somewhat better and generally the bigger the dish the better the beam efficiency becomes If the antenna I mean that's under the condition that the antenna is carefully designed and and also well manufactured Now with any antenna though the the compromise is accepted at the at the design stage cannot be compensated by The manufacturing quality since the real-world results are with the antenna design are our best at best Approaching the design based on simulation results. Yeah So what is interesting here though is is the ultra horn so its beam efficiency is 99% So over the whole bandwidth of operation and over both polarizations the ultra the beam efficiency of ultra horn is is practically perfect Only 1% of the RF signal is in the sideloads So if you ever wondered if ultra horn was worth the extra cash compared to Any any kind of dish antenna you have a very clear answer here with 99% of beam efficiency It's probably the best performing antenna on the market in terms of noise suppression beam efficiency tells you Everything about sideload performance the higher it is the the better antenna performs So there you have it. I mean ditch the front of the ratio ditch sideload level or Etsy masks and Focus on the beam efficiency of an antenna when dealing with noise and not only is The beam efficiency most complete measure of sideload, but it's also extremely robust measure of sideload because Because of the averaging over the frequency bandwidth and both polarizations Since it rarely happens that a wireless link is situated in a completely isolated place The the interference is present almost everywhere so the noisier the environment and The the more important the beam efficiency of an antenna becomes because the higher the beam efficiency the better the noise isolation so in the following section I Right So the the most let's say short the shortest practical implication of high beam efficiency is that you know The antenna has low silos which results into a good SNR the radio is working with and in the end It means higher throughput. So we can sum up the effect of the beam efficiency of high beam efficiency Of antennas into one statement. It means it equals higher throughput so in a In a sector with no other links in the area you you don't mind the sidelopes really but it's the number of sectors grow Grows the the sidelopes cause the noise floor to rise so higher noise floor equals to lower throughput the beam efficiency of battery sectors is on the order of 60 percent so the 40 percent of the energy they is is In the sidelopes and the sidelopes collect and transmit interference to other links within yours But also competitors network, obviously, so a low beam efficiency equals to lower throughput and Consequently more unsatisfied customers Low beam efficiency of dish antennas works in a similar way The sidelopes collect the noise from its surroundings and transmitted to all neighboring links So whether it's a it's a backhaul link or a distant narrow sector the the beam efficiency around 45 percent means low throughput in high noise areas replacing the low beam efficiency beam efficiency patch erase sector by horn antennas with beam efficiency up to 99 percent The noise level in the urban and high density areas is effectively avoided So because I've been my efficiency means no sidelopes and no sidelopes means no interference resulting into a higher It's as simple as that So addressing the most pressing problem of with networks becomes much more straightforward On the one advice here use antennas with high beam efficiency high beam efficiency equals high throughput the radio manufacturers are of course also trying to help with With the noise of course. So the GPS synchronization Which ensures that the radios in your network transmit and receive at the same time protects you from self interference, but It does not protect you from The sidelopes of the competitors antennas. So high beam efficiency Antenna ensures that you don't have to worry about the interference at all. It does not receive it So you don't need to try to deal with with interference in the first place So beam efficiency is a very practical antenna parameter where before the discussion about the sidelopes was So it's sort of limited to you know, the comparisons have typed like okay This antenna has many sidelopes this antenna has little sidelopes or this antenna has this antenna doesn't have beam efficiency Provides a number from zero to 100 percent, which makes it super easy to compare sideload performance So now, you know that front to back ratio and or side lobe level are the parameters that are not so important More useful in Wisp industry because they only consider one side lobe out of many and Antenna might have so beam efficiency includes all the sidelopes, which makes it's very useful metric Including all the sidelopes removes any sort of ambiguity. You can be sure that this metric is reliable and always Ask whether a parameter is single frequency or white band in Wisp industry white band is simply a must Because the spectrum is shared by many and therefore white band white band performance is simply vital So RF element addition to the beam efficiency definition is to is to average Over both polarizations and whole antenna bandwidth now you cannot do better than that period That's why beam efficiency is the ultimate measure to judge antennas by in Wisp industry And it is a tool in your hands to make a better decision for for your business So please use it and and keep asking for it to make it easy for you We we added beam efficiency of our antennas into all our data sheets And we are we're transparent manufacturer and want to provide our customers with the information that is important to for them So education is also important part of our awareness activities. It is one out of Out of many of our first in the Wisp industry now things that We at RF elements can put on display Is that our idea is that? Only an educated customer can make qualified decisions And we're also very open about myth-busting because there there are many myths out there and misconceptions about all kinds of wireless concepts That and consequently can create a lot of problems in Wisp networks You've probably already noticed that we have our online Forum called RFELAP.com if you haven't it's a forum where you can It's the most direct way to contact us contact us and you can ask questions about our products or Or search through the questions that have been already asked There's a lot of recordings of webinars such as this one And also other recordings and of course we can find us also on the On the social other social media platforms So eventually just a trademark disclaimer so that it's clear that we're using third parties Trademarks only to reference compatibility with our products