Alrighty, I have a really cool update for you guys today. I caught so much on the camera and we have a lot to talk about because two rides have been completed officially at Canada's Wonderland, so Snoopy's Racing Railway and Tundra Twister are complete. Right now in front of you, they were getting the Bat Trains loaded onto the track so I thought that was really cool. As you can see here, Snoopy's Racing Railway's track is fully complete. They're now working on the foundation for that second launch shed. You won't stop in there, you're just going to pass right on through. I highly advise checking out Grace Peacock on Toronto Star and CTV. Great shots of Tundra Twister and Snoopy's Racing Railway. Honestly, the coaster looks so good, especially where Grace was standing. It's such an iconic shot, but nonetheless, lots of work going on on Timberwaf Falls, so what they are doing, I can confirm this, is completely refurbishing the concrete in Timberwaf Falls. So that's really cool. You're going to see Tundra Twister progress through this video. So this was filmed at around 11am. As you can see, the gondolas are not on, they're sitting down there. And this digger is digging out where the aught booth will go and the elevator will go and the queue line will go. By the end of the video, they're ready to pour cement or concrete down. They're moving real quick on this ride. So their goal is to have it ready for opening day. I don't know. Their training weekend was supposed to be this weekend and it's definitely not happening this weekend. Here they are at front gate getting ready. They're digging up that grass and concrete area there to a double, almost the capacity of front gate with this temporary fix to allow more guests to enter the park. Love that they're doing this, hate it at the same time too, because it means that we're not going to get a front gate run out any time soon. But nonetheless, anytime Wonderland takes a step in the right direction for better capacity, I'm going to applaud them. Here we are at around 12.30pm. The first gondola was being attached. That was really cool. So this happened at about 1.30pm and then I believe the fire happened and then I kept filming after that. So here they are cleaning out Whitewater Canyon before they fill it. So they're going to get all the leaves and debris out of there. So this is them doing that. Thought that was really cool because I had never seen that before. Again, I saw a lot today. It was really cool. I hope everyone finds it cool. But I was highly entertained. Are you not entertained? But here's Vortex's paint job in the sun looking vibrant as F. It looks good. I love it.  But here we are, Tundra Twister with two gondolas. So this was filmed at exactly 3pm because I remember I looked at the time. 3pm, okay, send the drone up. So here it is, two gondolas attached on Tundra Twister. They did not unravel it. Unravel it? Yes, is that the right word? Yes, it's the right word. I think so. Tear me apart in the comments section if it isn't. But there we are. And as you can see, off to the left is where the queue line is going to go, where that digger currently is moving. That is where the queue line is. As you can see, as they progress, so this is around 3.30pm, I believe, a lot of flattening. And then you're going to see gravel, I think. The last shot, I think at around 4pm when I flew, they put some of that gravel down where they then comport concrete on top of it. But yeah, they made really quick progress now. It's so funny. Wonderland, I don't know what it is. It's obviously weather related. It has to be weather related. When there's still snow on the ground and it's winter, it's so slow, so moving, blah, blah, blah. And then as soon as the weather gets warm, you're like, there's no way this is going to be done anytime soon. It's like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And done. So I have that saying now, Wonderland just has a way of pulling through. So yeah, this is the 4pm shot of front gate. So after they had ripped up all the grass up there and concrete, I'm super excited to see how that helps alleviate crowds at the front gate in those long lines. And yeah, I know Wonderland has had a really successful year with hiring. So I do suspect that they might use those pretty frequently on the weekends. Obviously, they're not going to be in use on weekdays to start. But yeah, here we go.  You see that like brown? They put the dirt down and they flatten it and then they start putting this cement gravel on top of that. So here they are, they're making really quick work on the paint job as well. Again, it's looking really good. Here's a better shot of it. See how much they've done? See that? Wow. That sounds so unenthusiastic, but I mean it like wow. But yeah, here it is by the end of the day. Obviously, I forgot a shot. Maybe I'll upload a picture because there is a picture where it shows the gravel down. So that's why I was just looking a little confused. You can see where the platform to get onto the platform is going to go. You can see the little rebar cage coming out of the ground. I don't know if that's going to be the elevator, the op booth or the boarding staircase to get up there. But nonetheless, you can see the rebar cage for that. I don't know exactly where the op booth is going to go, but I do see the possibility there's a rebar cage way in the back by the far back left support column. That could be where the op booth goes as well. So that's where the electrical led to. So that would make sense. Anyways, thanks so much for watching today's update. I wasn't expecting to talk through the whole thing. So I'm highly impressed. I don't even feel like I repeated too much information. But nonetheless, I really appreciate it guys. You guys have been leaving like some of the nicest comments ever in the comment section about these updates. So I'm really happy that you're enjoying them. So I just want to take time to say thank you. Have a good one guys. Bye.


Baku Yerevan on threshold of peace. Azerbaijan and Armenia are on the threshold of peace. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jehun Behramov said, with the end of the nearly 30-year long armed conflict and the commitments to respect each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders which the two countries have undertaken for the first time since they regained their independence, Azerbaijan and Armenia are on the threshold of peace. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry quoted him as saying at a special session of the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He stressed that his country is working closely with Armenia to ensure lasting peace. The talks held recently in Washington, Brussels, Moscow and Chisino, have made the sides positions clear. He noted, Jehun Behramov stressed that Azerbaijan expects Armenia to reciprocate the political will necessary to settle differences on three concrete tracks on the agenda of bilateral talks. The ministry said adding that, the ministry noted that the key obstacles standing in the way of normalizing relations between the two countries are Armenia's ongoing illegal military presence in Azerbaijan's sovereign territories, its interference into Azerbaijan's domestic affairs and the hindrance to Baku's dialogue with the local Armenian population in Karabakh.


So we'll kick off. Hi everyone. My name is Kevin Lats. This is Kira Loftus where network software engineers out of Intel and Janin Which is hidden away in the west of Ireland Today we're going to mix some kool-aids and Hope things go quicker in the internet then So most of you probably know what dbtk and fx to PR For those of you who don't we'll do a quick introduction So dbtk is a set of user space libraries and drivers They aim to accelerate pack processing workloads and they run on a variety of CPU architectures Some important things to remember for this talk is that dbtk supports many different PMDs and they're usually but device specific and dbtk has its own memory management system If xdp is a kernel-based address family optimized for high pack pro high pack performance packet processing If xdp has its own sockets in order to move packets from kernel space to user space and It uses the in kernel fast path. So it bypasses the network stack In order to move those packets quickly So if we take a closer look at a simplified diagram of the traditional dbtk model down the bottom in kernel space We have dbtk specific kernel modules They interact with the Knicks and expose them to user space in user space Then we have all of our dbtk PMDs and our applications and they work together in order to do whatever wonderful things You want to do with your packets? The aim of this work was to introduce and use the new dbtk of xdp PMD And then that will directly talk to your Nick driver. So you can still use all of your Usual kernel tools that you like using like I have config and so on So the goal of this work was to have all dbtk applications working out of the box With the new way of xdp PMD And of course it should do so with good performance the performance we were aiming for was close to or on par with the kernel sample app xdp sock The challenge with this was that frameworks like dbtk have their own memory management as said and these come with constraints and assumptions of their own dbtk specifically we have a discrepancy between the dbtk and afxtp buffer alignment So this prevents us from mapping dbtk memory buffers directly to afxtp humans And in order to do this mapping We needed to do some extra work and complexity which negatively impact performance Okay So I'm going to talk about how both afxtp and dbtk lay out their memory for packet handling I'll talk about the differences between the two and why those differences pose the integration challenges Which Kevin just touched on there So afxtp it's got this concept of a UMEM or user memory And it's essentially an area of memory allocated by the user for packet data The UMEM it's split up into equal sized chunks with each chunk being used to hold data from a particular packet and How it's used is for instance on the receive path The kernel will place packet data into a chunk for the user space process to retrieve and in our case or user space process is dbtk and On the transmit path the user space process places packet data into a chunk for the kernel nick driver to transmit and Prior to kernel 5.4 this UMEM this area of memory that afxtp uses to hold packet data It had a number of restrictions on it in terms of its size and its alignment The first being that the start address of the UMEM had to be page size aligned So that's going to be 4k in most cases The chunks within the UMEM they had to be power of two sized and Kind of as a side effect of that the chunks could not cross page boundaries and In a kind of networking use case that leaves you really with only two potential chunk size options either 2k or 4k Anything bigger than 4k and you're going to cross a page boundary and I think smaller than 2k Isn't big enough for a networking packet or networking use case So in this example here, we've got a chunk size of 2k We've to 2k chunks per 4k page and as you can see none of the chunks are crossing the page boundaries Everything is nice and neat and tidy The reason for these restrictions is essentially it just makes calculations in the kernel a little bit easier When everything is nicely aligned you can use things like masks, etc Okay, so let's See how dbdk lays out its memory for packet handling and see if it satisfies the requirements of the AF XTP UMEM So dbdk as many of you know we're in the SDN room It holds packet data inside structures known as memory buffers or mbuffs for short and a group of those together is known as an mbuff pool and dbdk mbuff pools they don't have as strict restrictions on them as the AF XTP UMEM so for instance mbuffs can be of any size within reason and They can have arbitrary alignment relevant to the page size so they can cross page boundaries So in this example here, we've got a mbuff size of maybe three and a half k and or mbuffs are crossing page boundaries all over the place And I suppose why do we care whether or not the dbdk mbuff pool? satisfies the requirements of the AF XTP UMEM and the reason is That in order to get the highest performing integration of AF XTP and dbdk We need to map the mbuff pool Directly into the UMEM to get a zero copy data path, which is obviously going to be the best the most performant But as you can see here, that's not possible at the moment. This is just one Example of a dbdk mbuff pool. There's plenty more examples with different sized mbuffs different alignments and most of them won't comply with the kind of restrictions of the UMEM But to get around this the clever folks in the dbdk community have come up with a number of solutions to to get them to integration work together Each of them have a varying degree of success in terms of performance so the first solution that was considered was copy mode and In this mode we allocate memory for our UMEM and we also allocate our dbdk mbuff pool as normal and we simply Mem copy between the two locations and memory This works really well, but in terms of performance, it's not the most performant just due to the Psycho cost of the mem copy being pretty high But nevertheless it made it into a dbdk release 1905 as part of the series that Initially introduced a fxtp support The second approach then that was looked into was this alignment API. So it was proposed to introduce a new API in dbdk, which allowed you to kind of specify the type of alignment you wanted for your mbuff pool and Then any application you wanted to work with a fxtp could use this new API and kind of mold its mbuff pool to fit the the UMEM requirements Then you could do the one-to-one mapping and you could get your zero copy performance but even though this did give really really good performance it Was deemed a bit too invasive So it didn't make it into a dbdk release It was invasive because you had to change your application to get it to work Which kind of went against what Kevin said at the start about apps needing to work out of the box so that didn't get into a dbdk release, but it Generated a good discussion on the mailing list which led to this third approach I think it was suggested by Oliver Matts and implemented by Xiaolong Ye and this approach uses dbdk's external mbuff feature which allows dbdk mbuff to instead of holding the packet data in the structure itself to point to a different location and memory In this case, we'll be pointing to our UMEM chunk And then you can achieve your zero copy However, there are still kind of additional cycles with this Solution so there's additional complexity involved in attaching and detaching that external piece of memory from your mbuff But then again, it does give a really really good Improvement over a copy mode. I think 29% for a certain use case So it made it into dbdk 1908 as kind of a first gen AFX-TB zero copy solution At this point, we kind of felt that we'd well the community had taken dbdk as far as it could in terms of performance with AFX-TB But we still felt that there was still some performance left on the table some cycles to save so at that point we decided it would be a good idea to start looking at the kernel side of things and maybe looking at Adapting the UMEM to make it a bit more flexible to work with the flexibility of dbdk as opposed to trying to Make dbdk fit the narrow restrictions of the UMEM So what do we do in the kernel when we finally took off our dbdk ads? We took a look at the original UMEM and its constraints Being trunk size aligned or page size aligned sorry Was one major restriction that we had to lift so we enabled arbitrary trunk alignment so you can now Align your chunks anywhere you want within the UMEM As a part of this we allowed arbitrary trunk sizing as well So now you can size and align wherever you want within the UMEM much more flexible than the original With this we also had to allow the crossing of page boundaries So we now need to keep track of whether pages are physically contiguous in memory or not If they aren't contiguous like chunk 3 in this case, let's assume page 3 is non contiguous to page 2 Then it will cross Into a non contiguous memory region. So we can't use that address We discard it get a new one and we use the start of the next page So we do have a gap in memory. This is just one the side effects to this kind of added flexibility But a lot of the time you're going to be a lot more better off with this With this we also needed to change the AFXDP RX and TX descriptor One of the fields within this descriptor is the address field This is simply an offset into the UMEM of where your trunk is placed As the packet travels through the data path and various offsets are added onto this in the original Design of this the offsets were added directly to the address field So the value would change as you it made its way through the data path at the end of it when we recycle the buffer We could simply mask back to 2k 4k, whatever your alignment was Because it was a power of 2 This isn't possible anymore without in complex calculations seeing as we have arbitrary sizing and alignment so we moved to a model where we took the upper 16 bits of the address field and Stored the offset there rather than adding it to the address field and we kept the lower 48 bits purely for the original base address Or the original offset as it was and This still gives us 256 terabytes of address space, so we've more than enough for now and What this enables us to do is basically just when we're doing the buffer recycling just mask off the upper 16 bits We have our original address and we're back to where we were All of this added flexibility Makes the UMEM a lot more flexible so we can map directly into it And it really gives us a lot more a much more seamless integration with existing frameworks such as dbtk So as Kevin said now that we've relaxed or UMEM alignment constraints we can now map or to be decay and buff pools no matter what size they are Directly into the UMEM so using our example from earlier with our three and a half k Mbuff we can size or UMEM chunk to to match that or whatever the Mbuff size is and we can get or a seamless zero copy and We don't need to modify or Existing to be decay applications. They're going to work out of the box So those were kind of two key goals that we outlined at the start of this and they were or key goals at the start of this work so we've achieved those and in achieving those we've got both a performant and portable solution In terms of performance This solution it gives us 60% improvement on the copy mode the first one that I showed earlier and a further 24% upon the first generation zero copy, which was in 1908 which used the external Mbuff feature, so it's a pretty significant performance improvement and The feature itself it's available in dbtk 1911, which is the most recent dbtk release So provided you have kernel 5.4. This feature will be available if you don't dbtk will simply fall back to copy mode I think we're out of time. So, yeah Okay. Yeah, so just a quick note Before we end a lot of people kind of ask what is the value of integrating AFX-DP into dbtk? so Dbtk as many of you know it provides an application developer with a wide variety of functionality for an application So things like memory and power management crypto virtual networking QoS the list goes on AFX-DP then provides unrivaled flexibility and Magnus touched on this in his presentation first thing this morning So in contrast with the typical dbtk usage model or Nick remains bound to the kernel driver so we can avail of the kernel control paths and have Use of our familiar tools like IF config, ETH, etc. So that has a huge Impact on the usability of an application and a solution as a whole so together essentially the best of both worlds can be enjoyed and We can get applications that are high-performing portable fully featured Accelerated insert blizzard here Yeah, so I think they're just a good combination together And then just to close a couple words of thanks to some people that helped myself and Kevin along the way with this work Magnus and Bjorn on the kernel side Bruce Chi and Zhao Long on the dbtk side and the dbtk and kernel communities as a whole Yeah, that's it for myself and Kevin Yeah So it really depends on the workload Off the top of my head, I don't have a number I it really does depend on the workload if it's a heavy workload They could be pretty close if it's something like test PMD some or I'll do forward. There's going to be a bigger data I'm trying to think is there there I think we might have some data published soon Which we might have some data published soon. We're running some benchmarks at the moment So that should be public soon enough. Yeah


I will start my presentation talking a little bit generally about the Nile and the regional political economy. And then I'll zoom in on the Eastern Nile a bit and also talk about the cooperation processes around the Nile-based initiative, the illegal agreements, and then also talk a little bit about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and finish off by talking about how do we see the way forward. I'm very lucky to speak before Ken because everything I forget to say, he will say and he will give you all the details and all the technical issues from the research. So if you miss something, it will probably come later in Ken's presentation. So about the Nile, it's a quite unique river basin. Firstly, it's shared by 11 countries, which is of course unusual in itself. It's extremely long. It is very uneven in terms of rainfall, in terms of climate zones, in terms of poverty levels and so, so very complex. It has two main water systems, you could say. The white Nile, which actually is white on here, no, that's not it. There we go, technology. Here is the white Nile coming from Lake Victoria here. And then we have what is called the blue Nile here. It's not blue at all. It's very brown. I learned in Sudanese Arabic, blue and brown has the same word. That's why it's called blue, but it's actually brown. I don't know if that's right, but that's what I was told by a Sudanese person. And then we, so those two systems are quite separate and different, but they join up here in Khartoum in the main Nile. And then we also have other tributaries. I mean, it's really complex. It's lots of water coming in from different directions. As I said, here is the Nile, and here we compare it to other big international rivers.  This is Amazonas and there. So it's very long, and it actually has very little water. So it's also very uneven when it comes to rainfall distribution. If you look, it's just important to remember, because this is what we call upstream. It's actually south and downstream is north. So the river obviously goes south to north. It confuses people sometimes.  And in Cairo, it basically doesn't rain. They have an average rainfall of 25 millimeters per year, and there are basically no other surface water sources in Egypt. So Egypt is, you could say, entirely dependent on the Nile. For the upstream countries, you see here, there's a graph with GDP and rainfall. And you see the, this is from the World Bank, when Paul Block I learned, and the interrelations between GDP and rainfall. And it's very, very closely related, as Ethiopia is very much dependent on rainfall agriculture. Population growth is a challenge, or one of the main challenges, I would say, but very little water available in some of the countries, especially in Egypt, but very large increasing demands due to very rapid population growth. The projection is by 2050 to have 1 billion people in the region, and this of course increases the water stress with increasing demand on irrigation water and hydropower and so on. So this is something all countries are looking into and plan for. However, there is a huge potential, potential for storage. You can see the storage capacity could increase from, yeah, now very little to quite rapid. This is the plants in the region. The hydropower could go from 6,000 megawatt to 25,000, and the irrigation could increase up to 3 million hectares. So substantial untapped potential. And of course, all the countries in the region, they want to dig into this potential. They all have plans to do so. They have plans to increase hydropower and increase irrigation. And this is reflected in their national plans. Unfortunately, there's not yet any proper regional plan, but the Nile Basin initiative, they took all the national plans and did a study and see what did it end up with and came to the conclusion that if the countries implement all their plans, they will actually use twice as much water as is available in the Nile. So obviously, there is a need for cooperation and coordination of these plans. So that's, I mean, one of the many reasons why cooperation is crucial. I'll jump ahead here. And then I'm looking more into the Easter Nile, where more or less 85 percent of the water is in the Easter Nile system. And that is looking at four separate sub-basins. And Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan are included in the Easter Nile system. This area suffers from erosion very much and high variability in water flows in years and between years. So that's normal. So floods and droughts is normal. And of course, large opportunities for development. A lot of foreign investments in irrigated agriculture in this space, especially in Sudan, is coming in. But we see rapid changing dynamics. There are a lot of things happening in this region over the last few years. We have South Sudan independence in 2011. Suddenly, there is a new country in the region. We had the uprising in Egypt, which went on for quite a few years with changing governments and instability and so on, that weakened Egypt's position. We have, of course, Sudan, which is moving from, you could say, an oil economy to a post-oil economy, going back to more focus on agriculture. And then Ethiopia with rapid economic growth, some instability as well. And also, I would say, shrinking space for civil society. So a lot of dynamics going on. Egypt has also, over the last few years, quite strongly tried to reduce its dependence on agriculture as a whole, but also improve water efficiency in the agriculture sector. So recently, for example, they have put in a rule about how much rice farmers are allowed to produce or how many hectares, to try to reduce the most water-consuming sectors. And this is, of course, quite sensitive in Egypt, where you already have instabilities and the relationship between farmers and the government is a critical thing. So they have not such an easy task to balance the different interests. This is just to look at Sudan, and if you ever fly over Sudan, you can actually see, I have seen from the flight, these round circles and wonder where they are. And that's actually the irrigation. You can see there, and that is, and this is expanding more and more and more. So these are quite large areas. So coming back to cooperation, several challenges, and it's not only about water quotas and having enough water, there's strong differences throughout history. They have ethnicity, Arabs and Africans, religion, Islam and Christianity, different colonial past, a history of water-related diplomatic conflicts as well, mistrust between countries that has built over long periods of time, and also power asymmetry, where Egypt has been more developed, the big power in the region, and therefore have been able to develop infrastructure and so on and had the veto right to upstream infrastructure development. So all these differences create some kind of mistrust in the region. It's quite promising to see recently, especially in Egypt, how they now are looking back into Africa in their foreign policy. For a long time, Africa wasn't really part of their interest, but now recent years they are really looking into how to create stronger relations with especially the Nile countries. But still, limited cooperative mechanism, one could say limited interest in cooperation, although there has always been some cooperation on the Nile issues, of course, and asymmetric economic development. And of course, I'm coming back to that, the existing water agreements, the agreements from the colonial times, 1929, 1959, that give water quotas to Sudan and Egypt, but not the upstream countries. So this mistrust manifests itself, of course, in headlines, in media. You can often see these kind of headlines when you talk about water wars and so on. So there's a lot of, I would say, misperceptions in the region, also misinformation and misperception that comes out in media, and of course, contributes to keeping this fear in the region. When I talk to Egyptian journalists, they say, oh, we always joke that soon we'll all have long beards because we won't have any water, so we can't shave our ourselves because Ethiopia will switch off the tap. And this is things that they say daily to each other, and it's part of what they somehow believe that Ethiopia can just switch off the tap at any time. And of course, this is the livelihood. This is Egypt's security interest number one, as they often state. So this is a very critical issue. And yeah, so we have to manage, the politicians obviously have to manage this, the fear among the public and the misunderstandings. One large attempt to establish or advance cooperation was the creation of the Nile Basin Initiative. It was launched in 1999. And it has been in some ways very successful. It attracted $200 million in support through the Nile Basin Trust Fund that was set up by the World Bank with 10 different donors to it. So a large amount of money. It has Nile Council of Ministers and three different centers that it operates through. The Nile Secretariat, which is facilitating cooperation. It also has NELSAP in Rwanda, which is looking at investment preparation and then ENTRO in Addis, looking at Easter Nile, also focusing on investment and modeling. It had a shared vision program to build trust. And this subsidiary action program was called to create an enabling environment for investment. This was very much about investment planning. The NBI is still there, but the Nile Basin Trust Fund has ended. So key mandates to facilitate cooperation and also to work on water resources management and water resources development. The results, on the infrastructure investment preparation, I would say it's been hugely successful. It has prepared $6 billion in investment and largely attracted financing to those investments plan. It has worked on capacity development. It created very good capacity in its three centers with decision support systems, modeling tools, and so on and policies. So, and it worked very closely also, I would say, with universities on these modeling issues. But the vision that they was from the beginning, one Nile one people, I wouldn't say we're there yet. Long way to go. And also, the NBI has become weaker in recent years, I would say, partly because Sudan and Egypt freeze the cooperation in 2010 due to political reasons. 2012, Sudan resumed its participation, but still it made the development partners hesitant to continue financing when there is a partial NBI that doesn't include all countries. The Nile Basin Trust Fund ended, so those funds ended and it made it a bit weaker than it used to be. But it's still there, and it's still working. Going into the more political track and looking at the historical agreements. 1929, it's quite a lot of slides left, but agreement Egypt and what was then called Anglo-Egyptian Sudan gave Egypt right to monitor upstream flows and veto construction projects upstreams. The 1959 agreement is the one that is usually referred to in negotiations, and that one was only between Egypt and Sudan, didn't give any water quotas to upstream countries and it divided the water between Egypt, Sudan and evaporation, you could say. There are very big evaporation losses in the region. And then I also just wanted to mention the international treaties, the Helsinki rules I have to mention, especially as we are here today. And the 1997 UN Convention on the Law on Non-Navigational Use of International Water Courses is usually referred to as the UN Convention on Transboundary Water. And that one actually entered into force 2014. It took a long time, but now it is into force. The Cooperative Framework Agreement negotiation, the idea was to go from a Nile-basin initiative which doesn't really have a strong legal status to have this Cooperative Framework Agreement which would in turn create the Nile-basin commission, which would be an intergovernmental commission that would take over much of the rights and decision-making from the countries, basically. And several key norms are included in the Cooperative Framework Agreement. But there is one Article 14B which they don't agree on. And that is basically about reference to the 1959 Agreement on the, what is called, the current uses and rights. So the 14B is about water security and the upstream countries don't want to recognize the 1959 Agreement while Egypt and Sudan want to have reference to that. The CFA status, I think I mentioned most of it already, but it could be interesting to know that 10 to 2011, six states signed the CFA, upstream states. But so far only three countries have ratified the CFA and it needs six ratifications to enter into force. So it's not into force yet and it's been a slow process and no new ratification in the last couple of years. So we don't know where that is going right now if there will be an iBasing Commission or not. And I'll jump into the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. In February 2011, Ethiopia announced that it's building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the biggest dam in Africa. This came at the time, of course, shortly after the freeze of the cooperation in the NBI from Egypt and Sudan. And it also came in a time where Egypt was affected by internal turmoil. And it changed the power dynamics quite a lot, I would say, because I would say Egypt probably didn't think it would be possible for Ethiopia to develop such a large dam because they were quite sure that with their veto power no external financiers would go in and finance it. But Ethiopia managed to raise the funds from their own public, which is quite impressive. So basically every government employee in Ethiopia gives one month's salary per year to the dam project, but it's also fundraising a lot from other private people, expats and so on. So they are financing by themselves. And this, of course, because the Ethiopian people are financing it, they consider it their dam. The Ethiopian people are very proud of the dam. And they say it's my dam. I'm part of it. I'm financing it. I own it. So this is very important in terms of how to manage this dam and the expectations from the Ethiopian people. It was a unilateral decision. And yeah, it's a large, huge dam with a capacity of 6,000 megawatt. The Aswan Hai Dam in Egypt has a capacity of 2,100 megawatt. And they need to be operated in some kind of cooperation to ensure efficient hydropower production, but also to manage water flows, of course. So the economic benefits that Ken will speak about later. You have some very exciting figures. But the dam will also help a lot to smooth variability, of course. So it can reduce the flood risks, especially in Sudan. This is flooding in Khartoum, 2014. But it also gives huge irrigation potential for Sudan as the water flow is more stable. There are some challenges ahead. I mean, this electricity that is generated, it has to be sold. And to be sold, it must be connected to transmission lines. And those are not there largely yet. So they are being built. But there is a power cell agreement with Sudan. But largely agreements are not in place yet. The transmission lines are being constructed at the same time as the dam. Very difficult to know what the end result will be in terms of ability to sell this power to the region. But the most important is a huge 500 kilovolt transmission line to Sudan, which is being constructed right now. And in this process, of course, short of the announcement of the dam, the countries came together and they decided to establish an international panel of experts. And that panel of experts came up with a report and which called for additional studies. In parallel, there were many series of ministerial level meetings. And those meetings came up with a declaration of principles, which is a really important document. Because this is the only type of agreement, if it now is a legal agreement that's a bit debated. But between the countries on the dam, and this declaration is a very short document, but it has some very important aspects into it on cooperation and not causing significant damage and so on. And this is, of course, crucial. But all the details are still lacking. So it was also a tripartite national technical committee that formed in 2014. This one has met 12 times so far in the two years, so once every second month, basically. So far we haven't really seen anything coming out and all the negotiations are secret. But it's definitely a very slow process. All the decisions from this committee must be in consensus and that takes very long time. However, three years after the report from the international panel of experts came and recommended studies, the consultancy agreement to do the studies was finally signed on Tuesday this week. So now they're going to do some studies, looking at the modeling of the hydropower and the water flows and also doing a social environmental impact assessment. This is now starting. Of course, the dam is being constructed full speed and the filling is expected to start at the next rainy season, which probably starts in July next year. So they have 11 months to finalize this study that could have an impact on the filling strategies. But of course, coordinated releases from the GERD and the Aswan High Dam is needed. And that has to be agreed upon by this tripartite committee. This slide I have stolen with pride from Kevin Wheeler, Oxford University. We did a training of journalists a few weeks ago in Ethiopia. I will not go into the details of this one, but this is just to show two different scenarios. One with what we called basic cooperation and one with continuous cooperation. And here he's looking at the probability of some kind of, can we call it crisis mode, when the water level goes below 150 meters in the high Aswan Dam, which one would say that then we can start talking about significant harm and so on, which have an impact on irrigation and hydropower generation. So depending on how much water is released from the ground Ethiopian Renaissance Dam during the filling, the probability of coming into too low water level in the next dam is here. So with the basic cooperation, you have here some dam drought operations. They are already in place. They are used.  But if you do some agreements here and cooperate continuously, then that risk will reduce significantly. So there are possibilities to reduce risks through cooperation. That is the main message from this figure. You can read it. It's actually open access on international waters, water international, if you want to go into the details. So just to go into intense and rapid changes, increase risk of crisis. This is something that's often stated by some scholars at least. And so I just want to summarize here all the rapid changes in the region that the countries have to deal with. The signing of the CFA in 2010, the 2011 Tahir Square protest, the GERD announcements, South Sudan independence, and things like that. Very many things happened. And this, of course, put a lot of pressure on the country's capacity to deal with change. So how do we move ahead from talking to something better? I would argue that we need to work with a wide range of actors that can influence what is happening in the region. This morning, we heard about track one and track two. Diplomacy, we could divide those tracks into nine tracks, as is done by the Institute for Multitrack Diplomacy that I've stolen this round circle from. It's talk about different actors. Of course, it's the government that we want to influence. But often, we can't do that directly. So we have to work with other actors that can help. So professionals, the business is an important actor in this region with lots of foreign investment in the countries. And they, of course, want stability, but they also impact on the development through investments in irrigated agriculture. Very influential private citizens. Research, crucial, very important. And then we have religious leader. We have funding, development cooperation, and so on. And then we have the media up here. That's the public opinion. So it's a long time since diplomacy was only made in secret rooms. I mean, now diplomacy is really open, I would say. So the public track is more and more important. You can't hide anything. There's a set of, oh, no. There. First, you can see water levels. You can see what's going on. So you can't hide what you're doing. But it's also coming out through Facebook, Twitter, so on very rapidly. This picture is from a training of 27 journalists that we did recently. Journalists from Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Sudan going to the GERD. And this is the GERD manager trying to explain to the Egyptian delegation here what is happening. And they asked questions for a whole day there. But I think it was a very good training. So we are working different that through academia with new knowledge and so on, and to create the awareness and try to reduce misperception and fears. The technical track, I would say there is still very little shared understanding among the Eastern Isle countries. There's lots of international research. The research in the specific countries, they often come to very different results, depending on which countries presenting them. So it's very little kind of joint understanding. So here, there is a crucial role of actors to improve the understanding. And then, of course, the political track. And here, we have foreign affairs, heads of states, security, water ministers, and so on. And they often don't have exactly the same visions. So we have to be aware of that because we have a good conversation with the water minister. We can't be 100% sure that this is actually going to be reflected in the foreign policy in the end. So we have to be aware of those complications, too. And we need to communicate with all those levels. Here, we need to work on trust building. We need to develop guarantees. And some example of guarantees will be presented from Ken, but technical, legal, and economic guarantees. Because we work on the trust building, but the mistrust is there. And then we need to have other ways of ensuring that the harm will be minimized. And yeah, I just wanted to mention also the role of Sudan. Sudan has actually played a very critical role in this whole process. Sometimes we refer to Sudan as a mediator between Egypt and Sudan. The countries themselves are not always so happy with that term. But it's very much true that Sudan has played a critical role in the reconciliation and in finding some kind of middle ground. So I think that has enabled a lot of the progress that has been seen so far. And this is my actually last slide. Took a bit long, but we have a long time here. So I just wanted to mention some lessons learned to be aware of for involvement as third parties. To play this role in trying to promote cooperation, it helps to be a neutral and trusted partner. Long-term commitment is needed. There are no quick fixes. Interventions must think about relationships, and it's people. So personal relationship, you must know who you're talking to. And coordination between all this different track is crucial. I would say we can learn so much from each other if we work together, diplomats, academia, media, and so on. We really can come up with innovative solutions if we work together. And the strategic knowledge is not only useful for the countries in denial, but also for the foreign, the external foreign policies and development partners. So these are just some of the things to think about. Yes, that was the end.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to Oxmore Toyota. I'm Gabrielle and I wanted to do a quick little video on the brand new 2024 Toyota Grand Highlander Limited. You guys, this is in the new color storm cloud. It's absolutely beautiful. So on the front of the vehicle, it's really, really bold looking. You are going to have this black that stands out against that storm cloud color, all LED lighting. And you're also going to have a little bit chrome that kind of goes over the front of it. So going on to the side, you're going to have 20 inch alloy wheels. Now with this one, you are going to have the roof rack crossbars. And there's also going to be the blackout emblem. So when we come to the back, you'll see the all wheel drive. Your limited is also going to be in the black. And then I really like is the Grand Highlander. It's that steam color and it just looks really good, really put together. All right, guys. So moving into the interior, it's really beautiful. You'll have the black leather. You're going to have your all weather floor line throughout. There's heated steering wheel. You're going to have heated and cooled seating. There's going to be a 12.3 digital. There's also going to be a 12.3 touchscreen. You're going to have a wireless charger. There's different driving modes too. And there's going to be the 11 speaker JBL sound system in here. So the sound is going to be really great. Now moving into the second row, again, all weather floor liners. You're going to have charging ports. You're also going to have the rear passenger controls for the temperature. To get into the third row, which is laid down right now, but all you do is flip this up and push. And so all weather floor liners, again, third row, like I said, is down, but there's going to be plenty of space. And speaking of that, let's go check it out. The back of the Grand Highlander. Like I said, third rows down. So you do have a great amount of space. Now, if the third row was up, you are going to have some chargers for your third row. So one on each side and some cupholders to pull up your third row. All you have to do is pull up on these little tethers. And then you can also recline them back a little bit. And with that fully, you know, even reclined, you still are going to have a significant amount of space. All right, guys, if you have any questions on the beautiful Grand Highlander, let us know. All of our contact info is listed right here. Thanks for watching. Bye.


No, thanks for sharing that. Other questions? Anything more for us related? Is that for my kids? No, they weren't, but I do have some cats. What are their names? My cats are Marilyn, Charlotte, and I just forgot the style. Oh, they're talking about the style. We have people named cats. Yes? So you can have multiples sticky quotes and then adjust them by the date to your order. Yes, but it's also dependent on your date. So some themes will support that as well in my experience. In my WordPress, I'm from Rochester, New York. In my WordPress makeup, people will always ask me questions about anything, and my first answer is always, it depends. Because in WordPress, a lot of things depend on your plugins, and a lot of things depend on your theme, and a lot of things depend on when the last time you got any of that was, and then updated it. So the other thing, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention this in a group full of repressors, never, ever make huge changes to your site without backing up first. So if you haven't invested in a good backup program, I urge you to do that, because that has saved me more than once to be able to back up and then restore site. What are some of your favorite themes? Oh, OK. Well, my somewhat favorite themes are paint themes. When I first got involved in working WordPress, I invested in a lifetime membership to elegant themes. And it has to do with elegant themes. And I know that people will be at one side or the other based on this, but I love to be, and that's what I use a lot. Look at all my blog, I don't know, because when I built my, I have a blog, it hasn't been blogged out in a while because life gets busy, but I have a blog called WP Fanatic. And with WP Fanatic, I tried to use things that were all out of their repository so that anybody who's looking at WP Fanatic will be able to use the same things that I use, not having to spend any money. I don't remember what that theme was though. Thanks. You're OK, OK. There you can always run it through what WP was that, and you'll find it. Thanks. Sure. Other questions? I'm laughing at all my jokes today, but it was a good one. I really appreciate you feeling a lot better as a speaker. No, so I just did an awesome capture on the website of the night, not there, but after a very good night screen shot. Yeah, I'm there if I've got one. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fun little tool for sure. It's not a feature of WordPress. It is kind of a lesser known feature on the internet. It's kind of like the museum on the internet. Think about it. That's what's up. Yes. I was just going to say, I use this all the time. This is the all-time radio show. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a desire to have a first three. Sometimes if you really need to go back and capture some stuff. That's cool.  Let's see how they've cropped over the years. It's really kind of neat to be able to see. It's not just you if you can look at anybody. Anybody else? Can I ask you how do you figure out how unfairly it works and what do you do to put it up? So there's a couple that I recommend. And some are paid and some are not. I know a lot of people will be able to use what I recommend, Updraft Plus. It's free, it's in the repository. Updraft Plus. I also use Duplicator, which is also in the repository industry. And then as a paid program, I use BackupBuddy. I have used all three depending on the site and when the client's needs work. You're welcome. What's the last one you said? BackupBuddy. Because mostly for logging, you want to give some of the editor privileges. So I have two logins to my own blog site so that the name that shows up as the blog author can't be as easily hacked. So I don't want to use an admin name as my blog author. I don't want to give anybody extra information to try to hack into my site using a username. And so what I do is I change. I have the blog editor. Is one blog in the funny mail address and username. And then I use something different for my admin user. Thanks. So with that, because we're trying to come with that because when we first started, we had the admin as the author. So I'm thinking creating a new site in as a writer as a contributor and then changing all of the options. Yeah, and you can do that through QuickEdit and July at once. Well, at once it's just someone that's a contributor. So we've already been having someone try that. Yeah, so that's a great way to kind of at least throw a little bit of a mail in between the user chat. Yeah, just to do an extended of that a little bit, some of the WordPress API for the users at the point. And it'll expose any users that have published those, which is a great reason to create an author role because if your admin has published a post, then that user will be listed in the user endpoint. So it's just another way to kind of throw this on top of it and create some barriers. So there's a guest. Can you talk to me about the off job, no? That would be dangerous. Yes. Did you have a letter in the form with vendor, like it says the vendor is one of the... It depends on how big this item is. Sometimes you can run into issues. But if you run into issues, that's usually something that has to do with your host and your server. So if you contact your host and have them about that, they can usually change some settings and give you a little bit more ability to back out of your site. Well, because I'm backing up about 200 sites, I pay a service that'll do that for me. I don't have to do it manually. That's why I do that. And it's the first one I was introduced to and I've been using it for years. But it's really up to you. It really depends on the user. I don't have people who are developers and designers who never pay for that service. They use some of the free plugins. It really is your preference. Yes. The big backup that answers is not using both. Because certain web posts, they don't pay certain plugins. They just don't. Or if somebody has a backup, they just don't go. And yeah, Updraft Plus is where they work. And I think you can pay for migrating. I think so, too. And I'm not sure... I think Updraft Plus has... It's a premium model, right? I think that they have a paid version as well. So it's duplicator. So if you upgrade to either one of those, you get additional functionality. Will you pay for the five blocks? I don't secure any of my sites. No, I'm kidding. I use a couple different security plugins. I can't remember those names on the top of my head right now. But if you tweet me later, I'll be happy to share some of those. Or if you go to my favorite in WordPress.org, you'll see the ones that I favored. I switched over recently from what I was using to a new one. It seems to be working better for me. So I'm not sure I want to say all of these names and say what works and what doesn't. But yeah, if you tweet me later, I'll be happy to share with you some of my favorite plugins for different links. Here's all the free ones. I haven't paid for any services yet. The free ones have done what I've needed them to do so far. Security plugins, depending on the host, you can click, right? So you kind of have to take a security plugin based on what the host... I have them on that to be a conflict for myself, yeah. But I understand that other people have. So it's always good to know what your host does because of Jay Lin, you know, so that's our solution there. Another question. What's WordPress TV?  WordPress.tv, it's actually a URL. And WordCamps all over the world videotape our presentation. And they post them on WordPress.tv. So if you want to see other iterations of this talk, I'm giving it on the East Coast. You can search me on WordPress TV. If you want to see some of my other talks, you can do them there too. If you're interested in a specific topic, you can pull it up on there if you're interested in memberships, membership pages, things like that. People have even talked about all those different things. And you can watch the 45 minute talks on WordPress.tv. So, of course, we're in WordPress TV, I think. That's another question. You have so many questions until then it's out the room. How do you know somebody's trying to hack your site? Well, that's a great question. How do you know somebody's trying to hack your site? Number one, your site goes down. Number two, your host may contact you and tell you that you're under a hack. Because it's hidden their resources too and they want you to fix it as quickly as possible. Number three, the security plugin that you put in should have notified you for anybody, either of those other things happen. So if you're using WordPress or the other kind of thing, all of those, you should be getting emails from them telling you that there's a problem. And if they're a really good plugin too, the WordFence will tell you that you'd have a plugin on the date. These that are on date are time to update your WordPress core. Because all of those things can present an issue that's our security and they want to make sure that you're as secure as possible. I want a second WordFence and the username and the point. So I got a survey of notifications from China and Eastern Europe about users trying to log in and being logged out. But there was no such user. So it's really interesting how they just use the main name and just guess that that's the user name and then solve it. Be really cautious about what you're using. Big ups for WordFence. I'm glad you mentioned that too because I had a site for there's a dentist's office in my hometown who contacted me because they thought I was a local WordPress expert. I do a lot with WordPress. I never consider myself a nice person. They called me because they're like I hacked and they wanted to know how to fix it. And so they paid me to go in and fix their site which I did. I got it unhacked or whatever you want to call that phrase. But they were getting attacked by IP addresses in Turkey and Russia. Well guess what, nobody in Turkey and Russia is going to come to the dentist's office in Hilton, New York. So there are actually plugins where you can restrict access to your site based on country. And so I blocked anything except the United States because nobody outside of the United States is going to come to the dentist's office. If you're doing international commerce you're never going to want to do that if you're actually hoping that people from other parts of the world visit your site. But if you're a local pop-type business then that's something that can really help and it's a shield that just reflects those kinds of things. Be careful with your user names. Yes. You want to make a username that's not easy to to guess. So like if you are like my website when I had a freelance company with Market By Michelle guess what they tried to sign in on? My wife said it was Michelle. Because they know that's my name. So guess what my username for Market By Michelle isn't? Michelle. There have been times I've spelled somebody's name backwards to get them to the original user name that kind of thing because it's not as easy to guess. Yeah. Anything that makes sense to you is not as easy to guess the user name. Because if they have your user name they have half of your login. You don't want to have any of your login. So just a couple minutes left for those other questions. Are you guys having an awesome? I really appreciate it. That's why I tell people in Rochester the same thing is awesome. That's why I tell people in Rochester the same thing is awesome. That's why I tell people they shouldn't appreciate anymore. It's not a great way back here at one o'clock.


Welcome to the last set news like a top stories in crypto and bring around a bite-sized pieces. So today just as a thumbnail suggests, we're going to take a look at the Twitter and Bitcoin integration, how big I think that potentially could be. I was going to take a look at a friend of the show, Gary Ginsler, SEC chair, as he calls crypto and stablecoins the Wild Wild West. And then lastly, we'll take a look at Evergrande update and how it's affecting traditional and our markets. So that is what's going on for this one. But let's just take a look what's going on in the market in general. So as you know, we had a little bit of a dip today and that's all because of thanks to China as they come out and say that, hey, we're going to ban crypto yet again. And of course, people who are uninitiated did a little panic selling and our market cap right now is 1.85 trillion. There is no really good reason for this. It's just that people heard some news, panic sold and off they go. To me, I think this is like a golden opportunity because it allowed me to dollar cost average yet again for some very cheap crypto. So Bitcoin price 41.4, the sentiment, you know, the sentiment even though that the China news came in, we've got some pretty smart people in the markets. They realize this is just fud and really has no bearing on the overall market. The fundamentals have not changed, but a lot of people are scared because they're new to crypto. Anyhow, Bitcoin 41.3, Ethereum 28, Cardano up a whopping 2% in the last hour. Watch out. And everything else is pretty much in the red as we can see. Man, what is this? Filecoin down 30%. Crazy. That's a definite pickup. I think Ethereum dropped 8% and Avalanche dropped 8% as well. Actually, it was down much more and I actually picked those two up today. So that's what's going on the market. Again, we're using trade the chain. Here, you know what? This would be a great opportunity. I'm going to click on the projected range. Just so you know, trade the chain, links in the description look something like this. And you can see the exact same things that I see. So it scrapes all the interwebs, it scrapes all the blog posts that has a direct API integration into Twitter, so to disseminate all that sentiment analysis. So here's what I would look at. Travala.com. I have no idea what these are. Acropolis, REN, ION, Injective Protocol, Gala and Balanced. Maybe even a Waze in Swissburg. Swissburg is making some pretty big moves. So take a look at those. In the next hour, it looks like they're all going to go up pretty substantially. But again, do your own research. All right. So let's get into today's top story, which was Bitcoin and Twitter. And actually, I wanted to do this yesterday, but I got a little sidetracked and some things came up. So one thing I will say though, before I get into this story is this. And that is that no matter what the market does, you just kind of take a look at it with a grain of salt and just kind of say, okay, I think I've been here for quite some time. And remember that people look at things as either the thing, the glass is half full or half empty, but just remember the glass is refillable. And in all honesty, that's kind of like the crypto market. It goes up, it goes down, but in general, this is going to change everything. So you just kind of stick around, things should work out okay. Even the wolf of All Streets came out and said, hey, you know what? I'm going to write a book and it's going to just say this, buy and hold. And he said, that's pretty much the whole book. I'm just going to be one page, three words. And I said, that's a pretty good idea. Anyhow, think about this. And then also before I get into the Bitcoin, Twitter thing, a couple of days ago, we did a story about the PyCycle top indicator and people were, they were kind of freaking out because when I said this, I said, you know, in this year, we've already seen the top as far as like, when was this? In March or end of March early April. And it switched over, which was one of the four indicators of when things dropped down. And it's been pretty accurate. But I just want to mind everything, everybody of this. And that is that just because it happened in this year, 2021 doesn't mean it can't happen again. It happened twice in 2013, one time in March and one time in December. So if you think that it can't happen again, just look to history, not that it's going to happen, but sometimes we can just take a look, look a little bit of history and see what's going on for the future. All right. So here is our top story. And this was, this actually kind of blew my mind that this is actually going on. And this is from Jack Mahler's strike API. He's the one as far as like integrated, worked with El Salvador to allow for the lighting network to actually be used over there to make Bitcoin an actual currency, an actual cryptocurrency for next to nothing. And I'm just going to watch the video. This will explain it pretty thoroughly without me talking. Listen to this. Yo, we're here in Chicago. And we've got David here and Starbucks in El Salvador. David has a strike account linked to his Twitter account. And we're going to make a free instant cash final remittance payment over Twitter. So I'm going to go search David's Twitter account on my phone. I'm going to find his tips button. And I'm going to send David $10 over Twitter for changing the world. It's going to open my non custodial lightning moon wallet. Anyone in the world can download. And I'm just going to hit send and boom. We just made an instant free remittance payment from Chicago, Illinois, USA to San Salvador, El Salvador over Twitter. Why would anyone ever use Western Union again when you take one of the world's largest social internet networks and you combine it with the world's best open monetary network, Twitter accidentally becomes one of the best remitting experiences in the world. This one singular payment standard and this one singular open monetary global monetary network is dematerializing all existing monetary networks. Western Union, pawn to E4, your move. Yeah, I mean, pretty crazy. I mean, look at that. This is one of those news that should have pushed everything up. But of course, because with China coming out with everything they're saying they're banning Bitcoin again, didn't really do much of the price actually dropped everything, which is amazing that an old news story would do that. So this again makes me stand corrected. I never thought Bitcoin would be used as a cryptocurrency again. But because of what Jack has done here and then of course in El Salvador, it's being used as a currency and it's pretty much next to nothing. So again, why would you use a Western Union? Why would you use any kind of service like that? Because that's like 20, 30, 70 bucks, depending on where you're sending it to. If you could do this for free all the way around the world, why wouldn't you do it? And then the next question people will say is like, well, not well, Rob, not everybody's got smartphones, especially in third world countries. I will direct you to this. First of all, how many third world countries have you been to? Are developing countries have you been to? I can tell you right now, living El Paso, going over to Mexico multiple times, going deep into Mexico, everybody's got a cell phone, a smartphone or what we want to call it, they have internet service, everybody. And that's in like the poorest of towns in Juarez, Mexico, everybody's got one. And there is this is from Brookings.edu. And they talked about how overall, they did sort of a survey, just a data analysis, overall in developing countries, 86% of men and 79% of women have a mobile phone. If you take a look at this, this is mobile phone ownership around the world. This is in 2018, I guarantee this is higher than right now. So the darker the blue, the more people actually have it. And you can see North America, obviously, I mean, the the US, the Canada, Alaska, Central America, pretty good. And then South America, sure, Africa, Australia, obviously, China, India, all these places are not in Greenland. So whatever. And that is pretty much the story. So if you don't think that, oh, well, nobody has phones, that's not the truth. The truth is everybody's got phones and everybody can use this, even if they don't have the greatest functionality of like the latest iPhone, they still have phones, whether they be flip phones or whatever else. Just take a look at Africa and the, was it PESA? Mobile phone service and payment system. So that is just one thing. Let me know what you think about that in the comment section. Let's move on to our next piece where we talk about Gary Gensler and what's going on with him. So this is Charles Gasparino. He is a commentator over a Fox business, and he's been on great job of really covering the story well. And it's been on Fox News many a time. So our Fox business network. And he says, as I've said, Gary Gensler won't back down and squeeze in the crypto until Congress or the courts forced him to. SEC is Gensler called stablecoins poker chips. What is he talking about? This is what he's talking about. So this was a story over a coin dex, twin desk SEC Gensler called stablecoins poker chips. And there was an interview between him and the Washington Post. And he says, well, what was said here is the SEC is currently putting together a report about stablecoins under the guidance of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He also said the SEC is working with banking regulators in order to get expanded authority from Congress to regulate stablecoins. He says, we've got a lot of casinos here in the wild west and the poker chip is the stablecoins. And it was kind of weird. I'm like, why does he say that? He says, well, here's what he says. Those platforms should come in and they should figure out how to register. Not many have. And so I do really fear that we'll keep bringing these enforcement cases, but there's going to be a problem. And frankly, when that happens, I think a lot of people are going to get hurt. So there's a lot to unpack there. First of all, why would Gary say that these are the poker chips? Well, really, it's kind of like your gateway to get into cryptocurrency. And then when people take profits from their other cryptos, well, guess what? They put it into a stablecoin usually tether for some reason. I don't like tether myself or USDC or whatever else. And he's just saying like, look, this is kind of like their gateway. So there is that part. And then when he talks about here is like people should come in, well, guess what? Coinbase came in. And what did you do?  After that, nobody's going to trust you. Why would you do that? Why would you do that? And then say, oh, they haven't come in? Well, of course not. If I'm going to get sued, I'm not going to come there. It's crazy. And then on top of that, you have to kind of think about this. The question is then, is why is Gary so adamant about putting in regulation and enforcing and trying to protect the individuals? And I think it really comes down to this, like I always look at this. This is one of my downfalls. I always see it as people think like me. People don't think like me. I mean, not everybody, especially as a crypto investor. You have to understand the mindset for Gary as he's coming into this job. And this really comes down to, let me blow this up. Why the SEC failed? Regulators against regulation. Gary used to work in Goldman Sachs. He was a CFTC commissioner, I believe. I worked in the CFTC. I know that. He's been on Capitol Hill. Now he's the head of the SEC. This guy's a classic overachiever. Let's just be honest.  And I think this is the problem here. It was people don't understand that the SEC for a while massively screwed up and they didn't protect people. And two of the SEC's most notorious failures came into light in 2008. The demise of several of the largest investment banking firms under its regulatory care and the SEC's disregard of the Ponzi scheme that was Bernie Madoff's 50 billion Ponzi scheme. The main reason for the decline of the SEC is that the commission succumbed to the anti-regulatory climate of recent years. Too many of its members just did not believe in regulation. I think that's the thing is that I think Gary and his crew are like, hey, we need to put the hammer down. We need to make sure because we don't want to be like that.  And then of course, everybody talks about how awful they were. They missed this, this, and this. So as a person, as a person likes to achieve myself, I can respect that. I can. It's not going to be a very popular opinion here on this channel, but it is what it is. However, the thing with Gary, I think, is that he said it perfectly. He goes, and this was in the hearing, the Senate hearing on banking. He said, look, with the laws that we have in place right now, and the way that the Howie test is written, and the Reeves test, Reeves litmus test, these are securities. Now, if you guys come out and say, hey, we're going to write some more laws and regulations, I'll work within those, those confinements of those laws and regulations that you write. But until then, this is what it states. This is what I believe it is. This is where we're going to go. And I think there's two ways that this can go about. Either first of all, if you're in the cryptocurrency space, digital asset space, and you're in exchange, you need to go on the offensive. You can't wait to be sued. You just have to bring the battle to them because that's just how it is. And even Mark Cuban talks about that.  So if you think that the SEC can't lose, they can, and it's been done before. So we have that, that part. Also, Hester Pierce said, also this crypto mom, she said, hey, let's just give everybody a refractory period or grandfather everybody in. So if they've done this, if they're selling unregistered securities, instead of finding the exchanges and finding the projects, let's just give them a grandfathered in, just say, okay, everybody come forth, we're not going to bust you, we're not going to sue you, just come on in and we're going to determine, we're going to triage you. We're going to say, what is a security? What is, and of course, that'll be on the SEC. What is a commodity? That'll be on the CFTC. And of course, what is a currency? And that'll be the office or OCC. And then we can figure that out. And then we can go out that way. And then we're going to affect too many people. It just been like picking up a stock. It's a security, it's a commodity, or it's a currency. And there is those really three options, in my opinion. I don't think we should be sitting on our heels just waiting for it. But I think this is where things are going. And we will see what happens. Let me know what you think about that in the comment section. I understand where Gary is coming from. I think he's wrong. I think there should be a little bit more back and forth between this happens. But so who knows. Anyhow, let's move on to our last piece, where we're going to talk about a little update as far as Evergrande. So Evergrande, we've been talking about this at length. Everybody's scared about it or was scared about it. It was a company in China who did a lot with real estates, retail and home and all that stuff. And there was a big thing because they were going to default on their loans. And it was a $300 billion collapse. And everybody was scared about it. And the one person that said that, who cares? China's just going to print some more money. It was George over CryptoZRS when it was me, him, and James over Invest Answers. And even Simon, you, from StormX, he says, I called it. And I think he said the same thing. China injects $18 billion in the banking system during the Evergrande crisis. So here's what's going on. And before I tell you, this is a great quote from Peter Lynch. I always think about this. Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate there's been a loss in corrections themselves. So again, people were freaking out. And they sold everything. And then it wasn't that the end all be all as far as the traditional markets. So this is what's happened. China injects $18 billion in the banking system. And the People's Bank of China pumped $120 billion yuan or $18.6 billion, resulting in an injection of $90 billion yuan because they did for the reverse purchase agreements. Sentiment was also boost after Evergrande's onshore property unit. So it plans to repay interest due Thursday on its local bond. So all that, it was much ado about nothing as they say. So I just want to bring that to everybody's attention. Everybody's worried about the Evergrande situation. Not so much. I think the bigger thing that we actually have to fight is FUD articles and people not doing their own research and panic selling and over leveraged traders who have no idea what they're doing. I think those are the big three things that are going on. Anyhow, that is it. So if you made it all the way to the end, first of all, thanks. I appreciate it. If you like this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. Also consider subscribing. We talk about these things every single day. And that is it for today. So thanks so much for watching. I appreciate it. See you on the next one.


This is my, it's not really Jacob's ladder, it's more of a 2 bits wire, giving a bit of a spark gap. It's quite nice that it doesn't go out when you're using just a few arms keeping it 15 volts. It can do a little bit more than a particular transistor, and it can take up 5 arms at the base, but it won't take anything else after that, not for over a second or two anyway. Dead, dead, because I tried to run it a little bit over over there with 5 arms for longer than a second or two just to see what would happen. Well, the data sheet took up 5 arms was the absolute maximum, I just had to push it. But I do like it, it's sort of like a thing, yeah, which is quite nice. It leaves a smile on my face, but what I've understood on a couple of videos I've watched about doing this sort of thing, when they talk about always the smile of the o-zone, if that's what it is when you smile the freshness, they say it's a bad thing, but I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, or maybe somebody could let me know, because I just love it when I look at the smile of it. Have you seen what I've done with it, it goes up a bit too high and it loses If it doesn't start from the bottom, it sparks across at the top. My camera supplies takes you a few minutes of running this before it allows me to turn the play a little bit more. It's a cheap, tan-on supply that it's pretty good actually, just by when it's in and the supply on top is just running a little cool in the front. I've taken off the diode off the transistor and I've just put an LED on it because well, I can never tell sometimes and it fails a bit, but it's the diode or not, so and the LED, in my other circuit, I've got my big sider. That works really well for me, it's the first thing to get. I did try putting the little resistor, I did try putting the little resistor on the LED, I'm not a sider, I'm a sider. I've got my chip blue, I don't know if you've seen that. And the amputability is too much, so I do prefer the LEDs. What it gives them is an indicator. And to the work, they blow trigger. So it protects the transistor. Flyback coil from the back of the TV. You can hardly see it that well, but I'll turn this off in a second and let you see what's happening with the noise.  So let me just see where the, let me just see where the, there we have it, the amputability. I'll turn it all the way up. There you go. So I'm allowed to pull, 4.6 times. So I'm going to just see them just a little bit more. I don't want to take it really past 4.8, because that's really just pushing it. I'm going to have to back it up a little bit, actually. So I can use the sign control to turn it a little bit. I'm just going to back that down. And then just take a little bit more. The course control. There we go. Now I can use the sign control to take it 4.8.  And it does every time I get a 5. It's just a little bit over. It kills the chip, so it's just not worth it. So that's 4.7. That's 4.8. I'm just going to back it up again now. Just do that. Well, I'm not going to trip that. I'm going to keep it currently limited at 4.7. There we go. I'm just going to back off the voltage. It'll make more noise, but it'll, make it to the top of it more. There we go. I'm missing it. I do like it when it goes up the ladder. Well, probably 2 bits of metal and sparks across the top. I'm just going to continue to do that. I haven't got a capacitor on this circuit. I've been looking at the building one for a couple or two. I don't know how many I need. I laid them down, had capacitors. So, anyway, I think that's coming for that.


Hi everyone, Joe for jazpiececasebreaks.com coming out to you with 2020 Topson session baseball one box number three not four That's just the next one in the store. This is Officially break number three. So very big. Thank you to all of these folks right here for getting into the action. Thank you Thank you. Thank you No cardinals in this set this year for some reason. So let's take that out. We only sold 29 spots Let's roll it. Let's randomize it three and a three sixth the hard way One Two three four five and six there was not Joe We got Dan all the way down to Renee So we're doing the break first the the giveaway spots are always in a separate dice roll heart six teams So after six times we've got the Miami Marlins down to the San Diego Padres All right, so For for voice preservation For voice preservation, I'm not gonna read all this off But there's everyone right there And there's everyone in the second half right here Brian last spot mojo raise So now let's alphabetized by team So there's all that now in a separate dice roll after I do the break in a separate dice roll We're gonna randomize your names the top two spots are going to spot in that transcendent Baseball break transcend Hall of Fame edition. So pretty pretty awesome stuff 450 a spot so pretty high-end too. I don't think there's gonna be any trades, right? So let's uh Let's roll the die we'll go one two three four five six on the dice roll and it's three one two three four So we'll do the middle box right here. We'll save this for the next break break number four Good luck everybody. All right. Good luck everybody. We got Anders Munoz We got Javier Baez To 75 There are the other cards here There's Edwin Rios and behind Edwin Rios is Is a fish Jordan Yamamoto? 39 out of 245 And that'll be for Dan Tyson and the Miami Marlins Now the important part. Let's see who wins those transcendent spots So we got Rob. We got Samantha down there everybody in between. Good luck. Thank you very much for getting in Let's roll it and Randomize it eight times five and three top two win spots top two spots win spots after eight. Good luck one two three four five six seven and eight after eight times Top two names. Good luck and thank you and congrats to Rob. There you go and Quintin Rob and Quintin winner winners in that transcendent break you guarantee to hit $450 value pretty nice. You can still buy spots straight up ladies and gentlemen on jaspyscasebrakes.com if you'd like so check that out as well and We'll see everybody next time jaspyscasebrakes.com. Bye. Bye