Hello, my name is Jason Lenny and I'm the product manager for the release stage here at GitLab And I'd like to talk to you a bit today about what we plan to do over the next few months to a year Maybe the first thing though would be to talk a little bit about what release automation and orchestration are So if you're familiar with the industry terms, this aligns to CDRA and ARL Which are the continuous delivery and release automation reports as well as the application release automation and orchestration reports If you're not familiar with those what this means really is just taking the software that comes out of your CI system It's been tested it's been scanned and it's ready to follow the path to production through your environments and ultimately to your users With that there's a few north stars that we see is very very important Incident in achieving successes in this area. The first is probably the one that I think is most important And this is really just looking at things in terms of zero-touch delivery If you do a lot of work with continuous integration systems, you know that there's a lot of maturity that's developed there Where all you have to do is check in some code The system can automatically determine what language it's in what tests need to be run And build it and and do everything for you and end up with a release deliverable We have a vision for doing the same thing With the release side and so we have environments in our system We have the code in the system and we want to pair those up automatically So that there's very very minimal to no configuration needed to make that happen Also, we want to make environments where we want to continue to make environments ephemeral and available where needed One of the great features that comes with GitLab CD is the review apps feature and that lets you spin up environments to test on Demand they can be associated with merge requests. They can just be associated with the pipeline whatever you want to do there It's on demand and it makes testing in and in particular doing user acceptance validation and that sort of thing very very easy And then lastly We see the need for secure and compliant deployments And there's a lot of innovation that's happening in that space especially around things like binary authorization But being able to lock down the path to production being able to Take the output of your continuous integration continuous deployment systems And have those kind of like assets that are associated with the build and deployment Be bundled in and in a secure way with the release itself So that you can really trust that what what you built what you tested and what you deployed is really what you expected That's going to be incredibly powerful, especially as we're moving to these more Distributed deployment systems with Kubernetes and things like that that can be quite complex to understand You really need some some some powerful basic tools in there to make sure that you know what's happening So making up the release stage, there's actually a few different categories here that we focus on continuous delivery sort of captures the All of the automation around Deploying to Kubernetes deploying to other systems a lot of this is based off of the continuous integration pipelines that we also built here at GitLab But really it's all about orchestrating things in a very deployment transactional oriented way Which leads pretty naturally into our release orchestration category Which is where we will be looking at more of the big picture and like as a company How are you orchestrating and planning releases and supporting that now an important thing to call out here Is that I get lab our vision for release orchestration is that it's a automated system that supports delivery It is not tools for kind of slowing things down or blocking blocking delivery So with continuous delivery and release orchestration together we believe that you can do continuous deployment production and Not run into the kinds of organization or planning problems that that you can run into If you if you don't have a good plan Pages so many folks probably use pages and it's a great feature for delivering content that goes with your release Review apps I mentioned, but they're just such a powerful tool for being able to preview. What's going to actually happen in your production environment? incremental rollouts is sort of a sub subcategory of the continuous delivery category where we are really just focusing on making sure that Supporting all kinds of incremental rollout systems that on different platforms is supported Future flags is something here that we delivered towards the end of last year and we're continuing to mature this year But this is implementing feature flags for your code and using get lab to manage them and then lastly release governance here is about kind of that third North Star that I talked about where it's Doing the control and tracking and auditing of what's happening in releases but again similar to release orchestration doing it away in a way where there's not manual gates or kind of You know individuals who have to go and approve different things to go to go on we want to see these Integrated into the fully automated deployment chain so that everything remains zero touch But you have that confidence that you need in order to deliver One thing that I'll call out here is that if you visit this page each of these vision links We'll take you to a page where you can see in a lot of detail what we plan to do next how we're thinking about the space And would welcome your participation there and it'd be great to hear from you We also can link to Learn more pages that have kind of a basic overview as well as the detailed documentation for each of these So moving on to what's next we have a few releases coming up and I'll I'll preview a few of the items that That we're going to be delivering so an 11.8, which is our February release We're doing a couple things to focus on improving the way the pages work So in a recent release we added access control for pages. We're going to be enabling that on get lab calm We're also going to be adding support for subgroups Which is a very popular item and one that I'm happy that we're going to be delivering now And then another improvement to our feature flags is to be able to turn them on and off per environment So like I said feature flags is a new feature right now. They're global and turned on and off at a global level But this this starts to mature that feature and and make it so that you can use it more scenarios And you'll see that there's more coming up as well So 11.9, which is our March release We're adding the ability to limit pipeline concurrency in different ways We got a few requests to do things like Limit pipeline concurrency per environment or per project or per job And we have an approach here that you're welcome to come click on this issue and check out and get involved in the discussion Where we're going to have flexible semaphores that can be created in any pipeline that Will allow you to limit pipeline concurrency in whatever way you want Continuing the theme of mature and feature flags. We're going to be adding auditing and permissions as to who can who can control those Binary authorization is I'll skip ahead to this one for Just because it's it's easier to start with this one but binary authorization is a way to in your continuous integration platform in Mark a release as trusted And also market as having certain things having happened to it So there's an attestation signature which can be associated with all of the tests running or having a security scam run And this will on the release side ensure that that is Checked and that only the right things can be deployed Into your various environments So the first part is actually Working with the continuous integration pipeline to make sure that this is set up impossible and easy to do And then this sort of follows on from that in that will make sure that there's a one-click or easy way to turn on the binary authorization feature in your GKE clusters Another one big one in the 11.9 release is running the build on the merge code before merging So we're continuing to work towards having release trains and merge trains that are Make that will make it easier to manage how features are flowing out to your production environment Especially when there's a lot of contention going on So that's a good issue to check out if that's something that you're interested in The 11.10 release which will be coming in April Has cryptable runbooks for releases. This is something that I'm pretty excited about This is going to be a easier way to Set up things that are like well runbooks is a good example, but the If there's a certain way that you can look at it as at a release as a kind of runbook so There's manual and automated steps that need to be set up in there And we have a vision where you'll be able to do that in markdown and create the plan in markdown But also embed code within that as well So that things like checks to see if the environment is up or down before you start the deployment It could be a one-button click inside of that runbook We think that's going to be very powerful and open up Release management to people who are less technical than those who might be editing the YAML and a continuous integration pipeline In the 11.10 release also Will be adding release package creation from the GitLab CI YAML We recently introduced a releases feature where you can create and manage releases Directly from within GitLab. So this is maturing that feature by allowing you to actually create the package as well Adding truly dynamic environment URLs to pages Automatic HTTPS renewal support for custom domains and then an environment dashboard Which will let you see for your project at a glance what all of your environments are and What what's deployed to them for example and what the status is? So of course this goes on we have things planned out to about Q3 I would love your feedback if you're interested in any of these items to jump in and let me know what you think And then also down here below We've got this other interesting item categories Where you can see just other items that we've identified within the release area as being important and just interesting We haven't scheduled them yet But if you think that one of these things is you know valuable or that we should reconsider I would love to hear your feedback. So again jump in and And let me know the other way that I'll mention that you can contact me is up here You can either send me a DM directly on Twitter or an email I'll get both of those. I'd be happy to hear from you and look up to chat. So hopefully this was a helpful bit of information And thank you for your time. See you later


It's like one guy who was selling stuff in his anayar sale. He put this little note in the newspaper. He said I'm selling a tape recorder a video camera and another mention another thing all of them are working I'm the only one who's broke Apostle John is telling us that prosperity in life depends on the prosperity of the soul For a moment right now. I want to talk about how God wants to bring a blessing in the area of finances into our life Prosperity in life depends on the prosperity inside of your soul That means your mind is What attracts money into your life? Not money is the one that are going to make you happy on inside your our biggest need Is not to get money But is to be inside a person who is wealthy and uninside a person who is prosperous The second thing that we see out of this verse that is very important is that if you get prosperity in finances It will not bring prosperity in your soul In 2002 there was a 19 years old man who won $15 million lottery now $15 million is not $15,000 That's a lot of money. That's probably more than some of us will make in the lifetime 19 years of age men wins a $15 million lottery You would think it will immediately make him, you know to be a good person He goes in gambling goes and spends it on drugs and then he spends in our prostitutes and about few years later He is again a garbage man where he started if money would solve our problems then a Cali Rogers who received $3 million in lottery six years later Became a single mom with two jobs as a maid and is living from hand to mouth Ken Proxmer won millions of dollars years later his wife left him and he filed for bankruptcy William Post won 16 million dollars in lottery within a decade. He declared bankruptcy his brother ordered a contract killing on his life His gruff his girlfriend dumped him and sued him and he lives on social security Jack with her won $315 million dollars What you're dreaming on multiply by 10 $315 million dollars this guy had the prosperity Within a decade his wife divorced him his daughter and granddaughter both died of consumption related issues His property was broken into repeatedly He wound up bouncing checks into casinos because he no longer had cash to cover them Whether you win 500 million or 1 million seventy percent of people lose or spend all of it within five to six years Why?


So we're here with the Beam Labs, and who are you? Yeah, my name is Don, I'm the CEO of Beam Labs, and we created Beam, the Smart Projector Fission and LightSocket. So right here, it's projecting on the table, right here, there's a DLP projector inside? Yeah, that's true, that's great. That's awesome, so how soon is this available? It's available right now, we were a fountain kickstarter last year, and we're now, we're shipping already, and we have stock and we're wrapping up. Nice, so you put it in a light bulb? Yeah, so you can square it to a light socket, any lamp, but you can also use its flat side to place it on the flat surface. Here you see a flat side which stabilizes it, so you can place it down. Ah, so then it's a movie projector? Yeah, exactly, so it's just a normal projector like this, but with the Smartness of Beam we edit. This is the box you ship in? Yeah, this is the packaging we use. It's beautiful. Yeah, thank you. So how much it cost? It's a retail end for $499. $499, and what is the resolution? It's 854x480p. So right here, how does it work? How do you use it? Yeah, you control the smart phone, and it doesn't matter if it's Android or Apple, and basically you can use this remote to start apps that are on Beam itself. And Beam is also a light. So then it's... Do you know that we're getting your light plan? It's a light, if you can switch it to projector. Instant down, instant off. Nice. Awesome, so what are you doing here at the CES? Yeah, expanding a network, trying to find distributors, retailers, basically the works, I think everybody's here for that. What were you doing before this project? For myself, I was in a completely different line of business, and when I started with this, it completely took over and I quit my job. So you're already the number one projector company from the Netherlands, or what? I mean, how much is going on in the Netherlands? I think so. I think we're the only one, therefore the number one. Awesome, so what's the version two going to do? Is that secret? It's still classified, but I think you can imagine what it will do. This is awesome. Table, projector, every table, and you would control it with a smart phone.


India is with John Cole of Skytran. This is a very exciting Israeli high-tech startup. It was originally a US startup which is now in Israel. John has been to tell us about something very interesting that's happening in India. Mukesh Ambani is said to revolutionize urban mobility. He is also a stakeholder in Skytran and the high-end transportation pods that are being developed may first be launched in India. John is going to tell us more about that. Hi John, lovely having you. The magnetic transportation pods that Skytran is developing of course are revolutionary to say the least. But I want to know how are these pods going to be launched? You mentioned that you're looking at launching them first in India. What makes India so unique? We weren't originally looking at India. India is a very complex place. The bureaucracy is crushing. How do you start? It's a very difficult place for foreign companies to operate. What changed it was Mukesh Ambani. Mukesh Ambani is a truly visionary businessman. In fact, at my very first meeting with him and Manoj Modi, they instantly got the whole concept of the physical package switching system. That is an abstraction very few people get and these guys are so smart they got it right away and they saw what this could do to India. So what we're working out right now with them, we're in the middle of working out a plan to roll this out throughout India. First with a small scale demonstration system on one of their captive projects probably in Mumbai and then after that expanding it throughout the country. You know the transportation pod that you're developing, it has been in the process of developing as I can understand that you're looking at launching them outside the cities first. Do you see India as the perfect launchpad for this country, the scale of the country? The deployment strategy for India may be a little different than what I described in the video. In most places we're looking at the inner city cores are very difficult places to work. There's a lot of regulation and bureaucracy and it's very tight confounds, permitting is very difficult. And in many cases there are adequate public transit systems. The problem is when you get into the periphery of town and going out. So our model for deploying initially in the developed world is different. India is different. Indian cities in these cities literally the inside of the city is completely non-functional. Nothing moves. So probably the first corridors will be actually inside the core of the city in India. Maybe a slightly different deployment strategy. We don't know yet. Maybe in Mumbai or Delhi having a sky pod in the sky. Because there's simply no place to build roads. You know in Mumbai they're even looking at putting a road offshore. It's like a coronary bypass operation for a city. Do you think that the launching of Skytran Skypods is going to give a tough competition to the now popular Ubers and Olas of India? I think it's actually going to be the best thing for the business ever. Skytran can take you almost to the last destination, but not all the way. A car can. The way we see it is that we will partner with those companies. And what they want to do is they want to get a lot more riders and they want fewer, they want a lot more trips and a lot less wasted time. We see that they will move to automated vehicles that will be seamlessly integrated with Skytran. So when you pick up your phone and you say I want to go to a certain location, an automated Uber or Lyft will pick you up, take you to a Skytran station automatically. And your trip on Skytran will be a continuous process. And when you get off, another automated vehicle will take you to your final destination. It will all be seamlessly integrated. Are you looking for it in the future? Looking for partnerships in the future? With Indian startups. Not only in Olas. We don't know yet. It's possible. Everything we do in India we need to coordinate with our partner's reliance.


This is Witchbase news for Friday the 12th of April 2024, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, you can win a billion credits with ED Co-Pilot, the East India Company is running a special offers month and FDev promises a powerplay 2.0 interview for the next livestream. You know how this bit goes, please like, subscribe and ding that little bell so that YouTube shows you all our content and if you'd like to directly help our work here at the burpit you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. The video production competition hosted by CMDR Auraxxus Animus entitled We Are Elite that we reported on at the start of the year concluded this week with the announcement of winning entries. The competition tasked its entrance with creating a cinematic style video using in-game footage on the subject of We Are Elite What does Elite mean to you? The competition was judged by a panel of three community members who took into account criteria such as cinematic quality, storytelling, editing and sound. The top three videos in reverse order were produced by CMDR Nugstar, CMDR Riley Angel and CMDR Protocops. You'll find a forum thread with a complete list of all the winners in the description below together with a link to the playlist on YouTube of all the submissions to the competition. Congratulations to everyone who participated. The East India Trading Company, the player group and faction that specializes in supplying some of the rarer commodities needed to unlock engineers in the game is playing host to some special offers in celebration of the Eid Festival right now. Right now any pilot supplying goods to the East India Company will receive double EI credits for their trouble and likewise if you're buying from the East India Company then all goods will be half price. To take advantage of the offers contact the East India Company via their discord server which you'll find linked below this video. The special offers last until the 5th of May. ED Co-Pilot is running a special promotion at the moment and it comes with the chance of winning 1 billion credits. If you're unfamiliar with ED Co-Pilot then it can be a tough one to summarize succinctly as it comes with such a wide range of features but I'll take a run at it. ED Co-Pilot is a second screen voice or hot key driven companion application for Elite Dangerous that can with a voice command key or tablet press automatically plot a course to one of its own destination bookmarks it can search and find tradable commodities interstellar factors points of interest or services like material traders for you it has an on screen guidance computer for finding coordinates on a planet surface and it can also provide information on stations planetary bodies mind commodity best prices and far too many other features to mention a large part of all this information can be delivered with a computer generated voice and it can also add voices to NPC generated messages it's a seriously impressive piece of work by its developer commander Razafrag. One of ED Co-Pilot's other numerous functions is to manage and record a plethora of time trial challenges in the game and it's here that Razafrag is centering the promotion. If you complete any one of ED Co-Pilot's time trials between now and the end of April you'll be entered into the prize draw to win the star prize of 1 billion credits or one of the two runner-up prizes of half a billion credits the system allows for one entry per commander account and you don't need to be the best time you just need to have completed and recorded a time which the application will do automagically for you just to underline that again you just need to go through a time trial in ED Co-Pilot you don't need to be competent or fast or fill out a form or any of that nonsense you just need to install ED Co-Pilot which is its own reward quite frankly and then drive or fly a trial that's it. To get started there's a link to the ED Co-Pilot website in the description below this video. Just a quick heads up that Frontier tweeted yesterday to say that they've pre-recorded a Powerplay 2.0 interview ready for the next edition of Frameshift Live which is due on the 24th of April and Arthur told me retweeted that post saying that we can expect around an hour of conversation from the interview and in case you missed it earlier in the week our video that includes a first look at the new supercruise overcharge capable Frameshift drive is linked on screen for you now. These new hybrid Thargoid Frameshift drives are not currently engineerable and are all Class C but the boost to speed that they are capable of delivering in supercruise is quite a thing to behold. Science in the community with regard to the drives specific usage is still very ongoing at the moment but if you want to pick one up and try it for yourself then look up for high-tech systems with outfitting or you can search on inara.cz for Frameshift drives with the SCO suffix in their title. Did you check out the We Are Elite videos? Are you trading with the East India company and will you be trying to win one billion credits from ED Co-Pilot? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then, 07 Commanders, follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.


African Migration Trends, Myth vs Reality Myth Africans migrate mostly to Western countries to seek opportunities. Reality Migration in Africa mostly occurs within the continent, and a relatively small percentage of people are actively planning and preparing to migrate. Myth A small number of refugees are being hosted in Africa. Reality In 2019, Africa hosted 7.3 million refugees, including asylum seekers, or 25% of the global refugee population. Myth There are very few female international migrants in Africa. Reality An estimated 47% of all international migrants in Africa are female. The share of female migrants is the highest in eastern Africa, followed by central and western Africa, southern Africa, and northern Africa. Learn more about the migration trends in Africa in the African Migration Report.


69. An absorbing novelty, the Kimberly-Diamond Mines, discovery of diamonds, the wronged stranger, where the gems are, a judicious change of boundary, modern machinery and appliances, revealing excitement in finding a diamond, testing a diamond, fences, deep mining by natives in the compound, stealing, reward for the biggest diamond, a fortune in wine, the great diamond, office of the De Beers Company, sorting the gems, Cape Town, the most imposing man in British provinces, various reasons for his supremacy, how he makes friends. The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice, Puddinhead Wilson's new calendar. There isn't a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights. Puddinhead Wilson's new calendar. Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in South Africa was the diamond crater. The rand gold fields are a stupendous marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was not a stranger to gold mining. The belt was a noble thing to see, but it was only another and lovelier variety of our great planes. The natives were very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new, and as for the towns I could find my way without a guide through the most of them, because I had learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like them in other lands. But the diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a splendid and absorbing novelty. Very few people in the world have seen the diamond in its home. It has but three or four homes in the world, whereas gold has a million. It is worthwhile to journey around the globe to see anything which can truthfully be called a novelty, and the diamond mine is the greatest and most select and restricted novelty which the globe has in stock. The Kimberley diamond deposits were discovered about 1869, I think. When everything is taken into consideration, the wonder is that they were not discovered five thousand years ago and made familiar to the African world for the rest of time. For this reason the first diamonds were found on the surface of the ground. They were smooth and limpid, and in the sunlight they vomited fire. They were the very things which an African savage of any era would value above every other thing in the world excepting a glass bead. For two or three centuries we have been buying his lands, his cattle, his neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale, for glass beads, and so it is strange that he was indifferent to the diamonds, for he must have picked them up many and many a time. It would not occur to him to try to sell them to whites, of course, since the whites already had plenty of glass beads and more fashionably shaped, too, than these. But one would think that the poorer sort of black, who could not afford real glass, would have been humbly content to decorate himself with the imitation, and that presently the white trader would notice the things and dimly suspect and carry some of them home and find out what they were and at once empty a multitude of fortune-hunters into Africa. There are many strange things in human history. One of the strangest is that the sparkling diamonds laid there so long without exciting any one's interest. The revelation came at last by accident. In a boar's hut out in the wide solitude of the plains, a travelling stranger noticed a child playing with a bright object and was told it was a piece of glass which had been found in the belt. The stranger bought it for a trifle and carried it away, and being without honour made another stranger believe it was a diamond, and so got a hundred and twenty-five dollars out of him for it, and was as pleased with himself as if he had done a righteous thing. In Paris the wronged stranger sold it to a pawn shop for ten thousand dollars, who sold it to a countess for ninety thousand dollars, who sold it to a brewer for eight hundred thousand dollars, who traded it to a king for a dukedom and a pedigree, and the king put it up the spout. And written note from the Greek meaning pondit, mt. I know these particulars to be correct. The news flew around, and the South African diamond boom began. The original traveller, the dishonest one, now remembered that he had once seen a boar teamster chalking his wagon-wheel on a steep grade with a diamond as large as a football, and he laid aside his occupations and started out to hunt for it. But not with the intention of cheating anybody out of a hundred and twenty-five dollars with it, for he had reformed. We now come to matters more didactic. Diamonds are not embedded in rock ledges fifty miles long, like the Johannesburg gold, but are distributed through the rubbish of a filled-up well, so to speak. The well is rich, its walls are sharply defined. Outside of the walls are no diamonds. The well is a crater, and a large one. Before it had been meddled with, its surface was even with a level plain, and there was no sign to suggest that it was there. The pastureage covering the surface of the Kimberley Crater was sufficient for the support of a cow, and the pastureage underneath was sufficient for the support of a kingdom. But the cow did not know it, and lost her chance. The Kimberley Crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman Colosseum. The bottom of the crater has not been reached, and no one can tell how far down in the bowels of the earth it goes. Originally it was a perpendicular hole packed solidly full of blue rock or cement and scattered through that blue mass, like raisins in a pudding, were the diamonds. As deep down in the earth as the blue stuff extends, so deep will the diamonds be found. There are three or four other celebrated craters nearby. A circle three miles in diameter would enclose them all. They are owned by the De Beers Company, a consolidation of diamond properties arranged by Mr. Rhodes twelve or fourteen years ago. The De Beers owns other craters. They are under the grass, but the De Beers knows where they are, and will open them some day if the market should require it. Originally the diamond deposits were the property of the Orange Free State, but a judicious rectification of the boundary line shifted them over into the British Territory of Cape Colony. A high official of the Free State told me that the sum of four hundred thousand dollars was handed to his Commonwealth as a compromise, or indemnity, or something of the sort, and that he thought his Commonwealth did wisely to take the money and keep out of a dispute, since the power was all on the one side and the weakness all on the other. The De Beers Company dig out four hundred thousand dollars' worth of diamonds per week now. The Cape got the Territory, but no profit. For Mr. Rhodes and the Rothschilds and the other De Beers people own the mines, and they pay no taxes. In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles under the guidance of the ablest mining engineering talent procurable in America. There are elaborate works for reducing the blue rock and passing it through one process after another until every diamond it contains has been hunted down and secured. I watched the concentrators at work, big tanks containing mud and water and invisible diamonds, and was told that each could stir and churn and properly treat three hundred carloads of mud per day, one thousand six hundred pounds to the carload, and reduce it to three carloads of slush. I saw the three carloads of slush taken to the pulsators, and there reduced to a quarter of a load of nice, clean, dark-colored sand. Then I followed it to the sorting tables, and saw the men deftly and swiftly spread it out and brush it about and seize the diamonds as they showed up. I assisted, and once I found a diamond half as large as an almond. It is an exciting kind of fishing, and you feel a fine thrill of pleasure every time you detect the glow of one of those limpid pebbles through the veil of dark sand. I would like to spend my Saturday holidays in that charming sport every now and then. Of course there are disappointments. Sometimes you find a diamond which is not a diamond. It is only a quartz crystal or some such worthless thing. The expert can generally distinguish it from the precious stone which is his counter-fitting, but if he is in doubt he lays it on a flat iron and hits it with a sledgehammer. If it is a diamond it holds its own. If it is anything else it is reduced to powder. I liked that experiment very much, and did not tire of repetitions of it. It was full of enjoyable apprehensions, unmarred by any personal sense of risk. The De Beers Concern treats 8,000 carloads, about 6,000 tons, of blue rock per day, and the result is three pounds of diamonds. Value, uncut, $50,000 to $70,000. After cutting they will weigh considerably less than a pound, but will be worth four or five times as much as they were before. All the plain around that region is spread over a foot deep with blue rock, placed there by the company, and looks like a plowed field. Exposure for a length of time make the rock easier to work than it is when it comes out of the mine. If mining should cease now, the supply of rock spread over those fields would furnish the usual 8,000 carloads per day to the separating works during three years. The fields are fenced and watched, and at night they are under the constant inspection of lofty electric search light. They contain fifty or sixty million dollars worth of diamonds, and there is an abundance of enterprising thieves around. In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden wealth. Some time ago the people were granted the privilege of a free wash-up. There was a general rush. The work was done with thoroughness, and a good harvest of diamonds was gathered. The deep mining is done by natives. There are many hundreds of them. They live in quarters built around the inside of a great compound. They are a jolly and good-natured lot and accommodating.  They are not allowed outside of the compound during their term of service, three months I think it is, as a rule.  And this routine they repeat, day in and day out. It is thought that they do not now steal many diamonds successfully. They used to swallow them, and find other ways of concealing them. But the white man found ways of beating their various games. One man cut his leg and shoved a diamond into the wound. But even that project did not succeed. When they find a fine, large diamond, they are more likely to report it, than to steal it, for in the former case they get a reward, and in the latter they are quite apt to merely get into trouble. Some years ago, in a mine not owned by the De Beers, a black found what has been claimed to be the largest diamond known to the world's history, and, as a reward, he was released from service and given a blanket, a horse, and five hundred dollars. It made him a Vanderbilt. He could buy four wives and have money left. Four wives are an ample support for a native. With four wives he is wholly independent, and need never to do a stroke of work again. That great diamond weighs 971 carats. Some say it is as big as a piece of alum. Others say it is as large as a bite of rock candy. But the best authorities agree that it is almost exactly the size of a chunk of ice. But those details are not important, and in my opinion not trustworthy. It has a flaw in it, otherwise it would be of incredible value. As it is, it is held to be worth two million dollars. After cutting it ought to be worth from five million to eight million dollars. Therefore, persons desiring to save money should buy it now. It is owned by a syndicate, and apparently there is no satisfactory market for it. It is earning nothing.  Up to this time it has made nobody rich but the native who found it. He found it in a mine which was being worked by a contract. That is to say, a company had bought the privilege of taking from the mine five million carloads of blue rock for a sum down and a royalty. Their speculation had not paid. But on the very day that their privilege ran out, native found the two million dollar diamond and handed it over to them. Even the diamond culture is not without its romantic episodes. The co-innure is a large diamond and valuable. But it cannot compete in these matters with three, which, according to legend, are among the crown trinkets of Portugal and Russia. One of these is held to be worth twenty million dollars, another twenty five million dollars, and the third something over twenty eight million dollars. Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or not, and yet they are of but little importance, by comparison with the one wherewith the boar wagoner chocked his wheel on that steep grade as Heretofore referred to. In Kimberley I had some conversation with a man who saw the boar do that, an incident which had occurred twenty seven or twenty eight years before I had my talk with him. He assured me that that diamond's value could have been over a billion dollars, but not under it. I believed him, because he had devoted twenty seven years to hunting for it, and was in a position to know. A fitting and interesting finish to an examination of the tedious and laborious and costly processes whereby the diamonds are gotten out of the deeps of the earth and freed from the base-stuffs which imprison them, is the visit to the De Beers offices in the town of Kimberley, where the result of each day's mining is brought every day, and weighed, assorted, valued, and deposited in safes against shipping day. An unknown and unaccredited person cannot get into that place, and it seemed apparent from the generous supply of warning and protective and prohibitory signs that were posted all about, that not even the known and accredited can steal diamonds there without inconvenience.  That day's catch was about seventy thousand dollars' worth. In the course of a year, half a ton of diamonds pass under the scales there and sleep on that counter. The resulting money is eighteen million dollars or twenty million dollars, profit about twelve million dollars. Young girls were doing the sorting, a nice, clean, dainty, and probably distressing employment. Every day, ducal incomes sift and sparkle through the fingers of those young girls, yet they go to bed at night as poor as they were when they got up in the morning. The same thing next day and all the days. They are beautiful things, those diamonds, in their native state. They are of various shapes, they have flat surfaces, rounded borders, and never a sharp edge. They are of all colors and shades of color, from dewdrop white to actual black, and their smooth and rounded surfaces and contours, variety of color, and transparent limpidity, make them look like piles of assorted candies. A very light straw color is their commonest tint. It seemed to me that these uncut gems must be more beautiful than any cut ones could be. But when a collection of cut ones was brought out, I saw my mistake. Nothing is so beautiful as a rose diamond with a light playing through it, except that uncostly thing which is just like it, wavy sea water with a sunlight playing through it and striking a white sand bottom. Before the middle of July we reached Cape Town and the end of our African journeyings, and well satisfied, for towering above us was Table Mountain, a reminder that we had now seen each and all of the great features of South Africa, except Mr. Cecil Rhodes. I realize that that is a large exception. I know quite well that whether Mr. Rhodes is the lofty and worshipful patriot and statesman that multitudes believe him to be, or Satan come again, as the rest of the world account him, he is still the most imposing figure in the British Empire outside of England. When he stands on the Cape of Good Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambezi. He is the only colonial in the British dominions whose goings and comings are chronicled and discussed under all the globe's meridians, and whose speeches, unclipped, are cabled from the ends of the earth, and he is the only unroyal outsider whose arrival in London can compete for attention with an eclipse. That he is an extraordinary man, and not an accident of fortune, not even his dearest South African enemies were willing to deny, so far as I heard them testify. The whole South African world seemed to stand in a kind of shuddering awe of him, friend and enemy alike. It was as if he were Deputy God on the one side, Deputy Satan on the other. Proprietor of the people, able to make them, or ruin them by his breath, worshipped by many, hated by many, but blasphemed by none among the judicious, and even by the indiscreet and guarded whispers only. What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says it is his prodigious wealth, a wealth whose drippings in salaries and in other ways support multitudes and make them his interested in loyal vassals. Another says it is his personal magnetism and his persuasive tongue, and that these hypnotize and make happy slaves of all that drift within the circle of their influence. Another says it is his majestic ideas, his vast schemes for the territorial aggrandizement of England, his patriotic and unselfish ambition to spread her beneficent protection, and her just rule over the pagan wastes of Africa, and make luminous the African darkness with the glory of her name. And another says he wants the earth and wants it for his own, and that the belief that he will get it and let his friends in on the ground floor is the secret that rivets so many eyes upon him and keeps him in the zenith where the view is unobstructed. One may take his choice. They are all the same price. One fact is sure. He keeps his prominence and a vast following no matter what he does. He deceives the Duke of Fife, it is the Duke's word, but that does not destroy the Duke's loyalty to him. He tricks the reformers into immense trouble with his raid, but the most of them believe he meant well. He weeps over the harshly taxed Johannesburgers and makes them his friends. At the same time he taxes his charter settlers fifty percent, and so wins their affection and their confidence that they are squelched with despair at every rumour that the charter is to be annulled. He raids and robs and slays and enslaves the Matabelle, and gets worlds of charter Christian applause for it. He has beguiled England into buying charter waste paper for Bank of England notes, tongue for tongue, and the ravish stillburn incense to him as the eventual god of plenty. He has done everything he could think of to pull himself down to the ground. He has done more than enough to pull sixteen common-run great men down, yet there he stands to this day upon his dizzy summit under the dome of the sky, an apparent permanency, the marvel of the time, the mystery of the age, an archangel with wings to half the world, Satan with a tail to the other half.  I have travelled more than any one else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent. Puddin had Wilson's new calendar. I saw Table Rock, anyway, a majestic pile. It is three thousand feet high. It is also seventeen thousand feet high. These figures may be relied upon. I got them in Cape Town from the two best-informed citizens, men who had made Table Rock the study of their lives, and I saw Table Bay so named for its loveliness. I saw the castle, built by the Dutch East India Company three hundred years ago, where the commanding general lives. I saw St. Simon's Bay, where the admiral lives. I saw the Government, also the Parliament, where they quarreled in two languages when I was there, and agreed in none. I saw the club. I saw and explored the beautiful Seagirt Drives that whined about the mountains and through the paradise where the villas are. Also I saw some of the fine old Dutch mansions, pleasant homes of the early times, pleasant homes to-day, and enjoyed the privilege of their hospitalities. And just before I sailed, I saw in one of them a quaint old picture which was a link in a curious romance, a picture of a pale, intellectual young man, in a pink coat with a high black collar. It was a portrait of Dr. James Barry, a military surgeon who came out to the Cape fifty years ago with his regiment. He was a wild young fellow, and was guilty of various kinds of misbehavior. He was several times reported to headquarters in England, and it was in each case expected that orders would come out to deal with him promptly and severely, but for some mysterious reason no orders of any kind ever came back. Nothing came but just an impressive silence. This made him an imposing and uncanny wonder to the town. Next he was promoted, a way up. He was made medical superintendent general, and transferred to India. Presently he was back at the Cape again and at his escapades once more. There were plenty of pretty girls, but none of them caught him. None of them could get hold of his heart. Evidently he was not a marrying man. And that was another marvel, another puzzle, and made no end of perplexed talk. Once he was called in the night, an obstetric service, to do what he could for a woman who was believed to be dying. He was prompt and scientific, and saved both mother and child. There are other instances of record which testify to his mastership of his profession, and many which testify to his love of it and his devotion to it. Among other adventures of his was a duel of a desperate sort fought with swords at the castle. He killed his man. The child here to forementioned, as having been saved by Dr. Barry so long ago, was named for him, and still lives in Cape Town. He had Dr. Barry's portrait painted, and gave it to the gentleman in whose old Dutch house I saw it, the quaint figure in pink coat and high black collar. The story seems to be arriving nowhere. But that is because I have not finished. Dr. Barry died in Cape Town thirty years ago. It was then discovered that he was a woman. The legend goes that inquiries, soon silenced, developed the fact that she was a daughter of a great English house, and that that was why her cape wildnesses brought no punishment and got no notice when reported to the government at home. Her name was an alias. She had disgraced herself with her people, so she chose to change her name and her sex and take a new start in the world. We sailed on the fifteenth of July in the Norman, a beautiful ship perfectly appointed. The voyage to England occupied a short fortnight, without a stop except at Madeira. A good and restful voyage for tired people, and there were several of us. I seemed to have been lecturing a thousand years, though it was only a twelve-month, and a considerable number of the others were reformers who were fagged out with their five months of seclusion in the Pretoria prison. Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton Pier, where we embarked thirteen months before. It seemed a fine and large thing to have accomplished the circumnavigation of this great globe in that little time, and I was privately proud of it, for a moment. Then came one of those vanity-snubbing astronomical reports from the observatory people, whereby it appeared that another great body of light had lately flamed up in the remoteness of space which was travelling at a gate which would enable it to do all that I had done in a minute and a half. Human pride is not worthwhile. There is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it. End of Following the Equator by Mark Twain. This is John Greenman.


Hi everyone! Welcome to Stampin' Chat with Stampin' Jill and Aubrey. Today we are playing with a new suite of products. This is kind of something online exclusive right of products and it's not available so we're this is a sneak peek. Yes it won't be available until March 5th. I think that's about two weeks a week and a half two weeks from now but we wanted to play with it today and just give you a little sneak peek and show you how fun it is. So in it it has this super cute stamp set. Simply Zinnia. I'm gonna show them right here. Some folders. Here's the stamp set. And there's the folder. Embossing folder. So cute. And the dies. Oh sorry. There are gems. Love the colors. Yes. There are dies that coordinate. So cute. And then oh my favorite. Yes there's glitter paper. Oh my goodness this is so gorgeous. And it is it's even more bold and glitzy in person. And it doesn't shut. No. At all. Yeah. Awesome that way. Design your series paper. Yes the colors in this are just my very favorite. So so so pretty. And it makes me want summer to get. And all the beautiful flowers. Yes. Except for when it gets here for us it's like. Well yeah very hot. It's like spring for us that I really love. But these look more like summery flowers than spring. Love the colors. So pretty. And the oranges and the yellows and oh my goodness. So many awesome. I mean a lot of colors in this. Yes. So so fun. Okay so we're gonna play a little bit with this today. I'm gonna show them. You've been playing already. Yes I like this one because it could be a masculine card. Words fail to express my gratitude. I love it. And I love how this ribbon that's in the main catalog also goes with it. It coordinates. And I think you have a sample that is using the rose ribbon or the did you use that the pink one. This one. Um yes but I can't show that. Oh sorry. That's okay. And then this one right here is just sending flowers and thinking of you and there's a gift card. So if you're sending flowers to somebody or a gift that would be kind of fun. And it's got the little cute little gems on there. Yeah that DSP is so pretty. And what are you working on right now. I'm working on this one. I cut out some of the dies. So this flower has three different layers to it. There's like a smaller top petals, a middle petals and then a bold one beneath. This one actually cuts out this stamp as well. But it's really nice in the back to just give a little bit of base color. And then the leaves and then I just stamped off some colored flowers on there. And I'm gonna attach that just like this. And I'm gonna use that sweet sorbet metallic ribbon on this one because I thought that would be pretty. It really coordinates nice. It does. It's not the same color but it goes really well with it. That's why I used it with the green too. The old olive and the lemon lolly. I think it really looked super fun. And I'm just using right here with the petal pink. I went ahead and did the, I don't know if you can see it, but I did the folder and the petal pink. And then I also did it in white. So I think I have that here but I don't know where I set it. Just had it. Oh, is it this? Yes. And then I just did the white too with the folder and I'm just gonna put the two on top of each other. And I think I'll go ahead and do this with the petal pink. I've already cut it out and I'm gonna use this ribbon that I believe is also in our main catalog. It works really good. I like how we can use with our products, you know, both kind of things. We don't have to always reinvent the wheel. We can use what we have. It just everything coordinates super nice. And remember this is not in the mini catalog. This is an online exclusive. And they come out in the catalog all the time. So be checking. You'll just look up online exclusives when you go to the website and that's where it will be. Yes, you can search for them just online in the online store. So fun. Okay, so I kind of want this to be like a bow to be a little bit behind my flower here. A little bit of extra back there. I'll put the same on the inside and normally I don't do that. When you have such a pretty flower though sometimes that works. Yeah, it's just fine to be just well I think by itself. So I think I will pop this up though. How many of you that are demonstrators are watching and do you already have this stamp set? How can how can they get it earlier if they want to Aubrey? Well, if you want to sign up as a demonstrator, it's available to demonstrators right now. And right now is an awesome time. If you were interested, if you did want to sign up at celebration that you don't get during other times, Beth is gonna have to kind of help. I think it's just you get the how much product for $99. Beth will tell us. You also get the glass mat, which is really cool. We don't use it while we're filming because it gives a glare, but it's really nice because you can stamp off on it. You can use it as like a little palette for your colors. There's a lot of different things you can use for it. So there's two options. If they like the stamp, they can get that. If not, they get an additional $30 in product of their choice. So it's just $99 plus tax. The shipping is free and they get to choose $125 worth of products and the glass mat or $155 worth of products for the $99. Oh my gosh, that's like $60 extra. Yeah, that's awesome. So if you even thought of just ordering that your order is that amount, you can sign up and no, be a hobbyist. That's what how a lot of us started is just for the fun of it. Super fun. I love these guys so much. So cute. Okay, I was really inspired by can I will you tell me that piece of paper that is the Melon Mamba one? Oh yes, this one right here. I love this piece of DSP in the in the designer series paper pack, but I was like I could do that just on regular card stock. So I ran this one through, I don't know how well you can see that, but I ran it through with the embossing folder and then I just took the Melon Mamba stamp pad and I just took it up so it just kind of gave some added detail to that. So that's one way to get that look. But also at the stamping in the Melon Mamba on Melon Mamba as well and just see how those three different looks that you can kind of get the same idea. But you can also do pretty. So that's just a very hard because it's very feminine I think. Lacy card. Yes, I guess I'm just old. I don't think that makes you old. Lace is still around. That's true. And I'm gonna take these three colors like that are in the stamps. I think that that would be fun. Be fun lemon, lime twist, mossy meadow and old olive. I think that those are just cool. Okay, so there's three different options to get that background. Cool background. Anyway, now I need to make some cards with it. Now that I have a background, maybe I'll do this. Lacy. Got ink. Oh, nobody does that, right? Only a couple times a day. I'm just gonna get all the ready to go. Yes, and we still have celebration also with, you know, if you order $50 worth of product you get free items and there's more new free items too to choose from if you haven't looked at it lately. I'm just gonna start with the lightest color first. You don't have to clean your stamp if you go from lighter to darker. When you're working with like a monotone color scheme, like the same colors. Yes, and I'm just doing three of everything. Let's see. Go to the next, the darker color. I'm gonna bring in some lens here. You can't get away with not having any blends, right? Oh, look what I just did. Oh, see, that's the danger. I don't know if you all saw that. See, it happens to me too. I'm just trying to decide where I want this one. I'm moving it around. I think I need another, let's see, I think I want this right here. A couple more of the different colors. I'm just kind of filling it in. Then I think what I'm gonna do is splatter it because I like splatters too. Splatter it with? Yeah, a marker. Okay, so I've got a bunch of, kind of reminds me of bananas in some aspect, the way that the leaves are curling. I'm gonna close these so I don't do it again. And you can try to get that off by taking a wet wipe and getting the darker color out like that. And then just re-inking it. Or you can use like your, just a paper towel would do the same thing. Okay, I think I'm gonna get a marker. I think I'm gonna take the old olive marker because it's like white in between the different colors. Move everything away. Yeah, move anything that you don't want to get splattered. Away. Just flicking it into the cap. Away from the cap, I guess. Got that done. We'll finish that minute. I will put a stain on that. I'm gonna move to the next card. What else are you doing? I'm gonna do blackberry, mambo. I think those three bright colors just with the, just with the flower. This one, yeah, do you have a cleaner? I do. I have mine. Okay, start with the lighter first. I'm gonna keep the other ones closed. Good idea.  You're not loving it. Well, I chose too dark of a color to color. I'm just gonna re-stamp it. Good idea. Is it bright? Kind of the same thing I'm doing but I'm doing this with the, or the flower. We looked up all the colors of the zinnias and there are so many colors in nature for zinnias. So, I'm really pretty. That's why we're thinking about summer, right, and all the colors. Yes, yes, they are really pretty. And the colors in the paper, they did a good job of matching it to what they look like. I think I might want to stamp it off or if you like it, better pull strength. I think it's up to you. If you think it's too dark, we'll just do it straight. Let's see how it looks. Have these two kind of overlap a little bit. Okay, what else are we working on? I'm gonna try out these zinnias instead and color those. Maybe we'll go ahead and end and finish our cards. We'll enter our live and then we'll finish our cards and we'll go and post them on our VIP Facebook group, VIP Facebook group on Facebook. You can go and see them.


Thank you, Mr Speaker. Many of the banks that the Chancellor has been talking about are raking in bumper profits by refusing to pass on high interest rates to their savers. Surely a windfall tax on these additional profits would allow the government to provide mortgage holders with the kind of support they really need at this time. Before the Chancellor dismisses this idea, can I gently remind the Chancellor that even Margaret Thatcher imposed such a windfall tax on banks' excess profits? Well, I hear what the Honourable Gentleman says, but he'll be pleased to know that banks already pay a surcharge on their corporation tax of 3%, that means they pay 3% more than everyone else, as well as a levy on their balance sheets.