Welcome back folks to another episode of Let's Play, Dragon Quest XI S on the Switch. Last episode we met this strange little creature, Veronica, and apparently her sister has gone missing, looking for her to try to save her, so we've agreed to help Veronica find Serena, her sister.  Kidnapped her, took her back to the lair, oh wow, an underground lab runs out west, so you know, let's head out. Let's see what Eric has to say.  Her sister's just a little girl, oh is she? Alright, let's head over, what do these guys have to say? We intend to go west, be prepared to fight. Praying on the weak, okay. Oh hello. People all talking weird, like poems, it's kind of strange. Let's head out westward, the Hado step. Okay there's the enemies, there's the she slimes, we could fight them, but I kind of want to rush over and save Serena as soon as possible. Mount Fuji, like Mount Fuji but not quite, what is this? Yeah, well that might be another story for another time. If you haven't noticed, there's areas in this area where you do have to come back later on for other story related stuff. This game is not linear, you have to go back and forth and kind of look at everything. So how about we grab a horse and leave these two behind. Veronica kid talks a good game, but could she really handle herself a theme scott airy? I guess she didn't say she was a mighty sage from Arboria, he doesn't know what that means.  Oh there's a campsite here, not that I need to camp, oh there's something here, a wake robin. You don't have to get off your horse this time to collect the iron ore. Now around this corner, these guys are so slow they won't be able to catch me. There's a door here but I can't get through it, there's something good in there I can tell. But we'll look at that later, anyway onwards, there's another whatever that is, I believe she was around here, oh no the cryptic crypt, okay so it should be at the cryptic cave, right around here, it's past this campsite right here, I'm not gonna bother saving because who cares about saving right, we have autosave on our side, let's look at those guys rolling around and here we go, into the cave, gonna have to leave my horse out here, auto mode part 2, wait, I can get all three of them in there, you can't give Veronica to do anything though, alright so we'll head through here, there's some drakis or whatever the green ones are called, whatever this is, a chunk of iron ore, I can build some good stuff with this, hopefully, this is a trap, I can already tell it's a trap, because I mean I played the game before, I know what's going on, okay so there are trap floors around here that most people don't realize, I believe this is a good floor right here, this is not a trap and that must be the staircase to get back up, so I'm just trying to remember what happened that first time, so I think that might be a trap, I'm gonna go the long way around, oh damn it, I thought that was the good floor, okay getting back up is a pain, it's like a huge pain, that's all I remember, but here we go, good ladder right there to help us up, hopefully we don't fall through, this is a good area right here and through here should be good, now here is another flashback, oh look at that light, it's pretty nice, that's actually the Eggdrasil route, so you heard that right, we gotta go the long way around, this route tells you a lot of secrets, I wonder what they're to think, she's angry, Keeper what's about you, this place is full of tricks and traps, what do you think buddy, okay so the long way around is what you want to take, not the short way around, so damn I can't remember where was, I can't quite remember which was the way I needed to go again, I think it's this place, I swear if I fall down again, if I fall, this is so frustrating, this is like really great and I gotta, so you see that guard there, the glowing dude, what I need to do is actually beat him, a gold aura, maybe this might be worth it to be honest, we'll see how powerful Veronica is now, our first fight with her, so flame slash this dude, skull rider, well why is she, oh yeah she doesn't have magic I forgot, yeah that's, it's kind of part of the story, you'll find out in a few minutes, she lost all her magic so she's basically useless, oh she's hitting them pretty hard though, she's actually doing alright, casting Kasap, oh I should save my energy actually, what am I doing, I should not have been using that energy yet, we'll be using, we'll use some of these medicinal herbs, now what you want to do, no no no no no, these guys can crawl up the wall like that, that's cool isn't it, and they can even run, so let me think, where do I need to go, he said the long way around right, which would go to say, it would go to mean either this way or this way is the right way, oh I think he went through here, in the flashback right, yeah that's where he went, alright and this is the right way, this is not the right way, that's a trap obviously, alright I can't believe I'm still riding this stupid thing, alright so right around the corner hopefully, come on, nice, that treasure chest right there, that's a trap, obvious one and we made it, not bad, yeah that's her little sister here's a big revelation right here the Veronica is actually an adult who has turned into like a little thing like that, so she's actually older than Serena, yep that's what happened the Serena and Veronica are twins and they're both sages actually, you might think oh she's she's like a priestess and Veronica might be a battle mage but that's actually not the case, there are actually two parts of one sage, so Veronica got all the offensive abilities and Serena got all the healing abilities, alright so you can save here, yeah why not, alright we're gonna save right here, they're convenient, I just have to remember how to get through this cave, through this dungeon, the first time I played this it was really difficult because I didn't know where I was supposed to go, oh there's only one direction to go, alright let's hopefully we can beat this boss, I wonder what would happen if we just walk up to the door and try opening it, do you know it, okay so you need a secret word and of course this will tell us a secret word, they're just standing there watching me, umbra condombra, so that music I was playing right, it's called urge to dream I believe, it's the music from the beginning of Dragon Quest 3's remake on the Gameboy and SNES, so what are these guys got to say, pretty nervous about me Serena, I mean the last thing we needed was another Veronica, turns out the Serena is mature, sensible, calm, everything her sister isn't basically, uh what do you think, and that's funny that she's shorter, taking it very awfully well being tiny now, alright so let's you know restore Veronica back to normal, umbra condombra, hopefully we can be strong enough to defeat these guys because they are tough, they are rather tough, I didn't do any grinding since then, oh actually we got a whole team of four now, look at all these puns, these jar puns, his name is Jarvis, he wanted to earn the lord or shout out his respect and all his plans were shattered, right, this is gonna be tough, he gave them away, it's smashing, like smashing jars, hot, stop, alright let's go, going one way this fight's gonna end, let me get my magic back, okay okay Serena does not have, okay that's pretty, that's good actually Serena and Veronica or not did not have any sort of health bar, which means I only need to protect um, I need to protect and I'll have Serena, she'll heal basically, Serena's a healer, so we're gonna attack Jarvis's shadow first, no, no, maybe we go to sleep, please heal me, please heal me, thank you, thank you, and of course he, he's acting stupid, okay now we defend, you know why, because he, we defend because Jarvis is doing the deep sigh, I know what that means, the cool, the cool breath is what you want to do, to avoid, so every time Jarvis does a deep breath you, I've got it, my nice job, please heal him next, actually I could probably let, and that's too risky, oh see that's why, okay you got, you got to be careful, oh come on, alright let's do one more flame slash on his shadow, a wake robin, oh she can do that, she can buff people right now, alright that's nice, uh yeah, I didn't think he was gonna do that, I'll just heal myself, she can heal Eric next, heal Eric here, alright I'll use one of these, okay he does not have enough MP, please heal me, please heal me, yes, nice, nice, and we'll use this on Jarvis's shadow, and he's dead, okay and they're running on MP actually, yeah keep attacking the person who does not have a health bar, keep doing that, how much are you not doing too bad, nice, all right we're gonna be doing one more flame slash on the shadow, nice, nice, oh crap, please don't, okay that was useless, but okay, nice, nice there's only two left now, why'd you do it really well, what the heck, this is much easier than it was on the PS4, the PC version when I was playing that, okay we're, we're gonna be defending now this time, no, no, no, no, no, no, dammit, no, okay I think we can, we can maybe still do it, oh my gosh, does she have, is there an item that brings me back, I know there's the HR's relief, but is stupid, oh no, no, no, doesn't have any MP, all right we're defending this time, if I had not had the stupid shypox I would have beat him, thank you heal, if I had been, okay good, good, thank you, now what we're gonna be doing right is we're gonna be doing rubble rouser, actually, yeah he has a spell, that's rock, actually let's arena around, I could probably keep, I could probably beat this guy easily, all right I'm gonna do rubble rouser again, nice thank you, oh she's using gimme files which means I'll be able to keep doing this, okay, okay no, here to myself, thank you, all right we'll do one more rubble rouser on him, I'm gonna defend this time, hopefully, okay please, heal me, heal me, heal me, thank you, hopefully we can do this at the luminary, no, no, no, no, thank you, all right nice, serena's being really helpful and so's Veronica actually, I'm getting lots of good stuff, nice, no, thank you, she's smart, she heals me even when I am like not expecting it, hopefully she heals me again, thank you, her AI is a lot better actually this time, I'm thinking, defend me, buff me, buff me, yes, she knows what to do, okay, rubble, rubble rouser, let's go, I'm defending, no, no, heal me, yes, can't take any risks, oh he hit me, I think she's cool, okay I'm doing all right, no, no, oh she's healing me at least, all right, finally I'm back, all right now I'm pepped up and twice in a row, okay thank you, thank you Veronica, yes, yes, we won, I beat him on my first try, Jarvis and friends are defeated, 670, the luminary didn't get anything because he died, I did it without him, that sucks for him, all right, I heard Jarpawn, I know who he is, so of you it seems, shall we, Yggdrasil's chosen, long have we waited to greet you, we of Arboria swear to protect you, while we live none shall defeat you, there are those who would accuse you of bringing disaster on our world, please you must rest assured that they are wrong, you are a hero, the light in your eyes, the light told her in the legends of Arboria, it proves that beyond a doubt, so Serena and Veronica are from a land called Arboria which is like, it's like, it's like a holy place and they pretty much, you know, they basically are sworn to protect the luminary, they're the descendants of another legendary hero who traveled with the luminary, so they're here to help him, Magical twins, swearing to serve and protect you, I guess you really are the luminary, huh, not that I ever doubted it, of course, Plenty more we need to talk about, we have to take care of something first, I wasn't the only one they were keeping prisoner, you know, now, if I remember rightly, there should be a door around here somewhere, nice, Yggdrasil's chosen, awarded for being recognized as a luminary by the two twins from Arboria, entrusted with ensuring your safety, it's pretty epic how you have like this stuff going on, so do I have all four of them following, yeah, my new friend Serena, all right, so there's someone else who needs to be helped, I wonder who that is, oh, chunk of iron ore, nice, there's some good stuff here, a lot of, a lot of jars, notice that, there's a lot of jars and he's Jarvis, I think they did it on purpose, so through here there should be the next victim, what the hell's that head in his cronies, so that's, that's the little girl's dad basically, yeah, if there's anything I can do to repay you, just say the word, Noah, where have I heard that name before? Eric knows who Noah is, looking at me like, oh crap, why should I get back and see how Corny's doing, thanks a million, he's runs off, he's certainly left in rather a hurry, you can say that again, very fishy, well never mind, we should head back too, we deserve a rest, yes we do, so we're gonna head back, oh so we headed straight to Hato automatically, all right not bad, finally you wake, your comrades rose long ago, okay whatever, people talk so weird, I can't believe we beat Jarvis on our first try, that took me forever during the original version, like it was so hard for me originally and we beat him in our first try this time, see it's because I got better at the game, let's see what these guys have to say now, yep, hard to believe, I mean look at you, but it's true, you're the reincarnation of the luminary, the man who defeated the dark one long ago, a lot of foreshadowing going on here, the dark one, so yeah you're gonna have to put the dark one later on, we'll see who the dark one is, once we fulfill our sacred duty and get you to Yggdrasil, I'm sure all will be revealed, Yggdrasil huh, well I for one want to know what the heck's going on, let's mosey on over there, have you ever tried thinking before opening your big map, in case you hadn't noticed, Yggdrasil is floating in the sky, most of you said it's most safe, yeah Veronica's voice is really good, I revisited the world tree before his battle with the dark one, but alas the legends do not tell us how, what not even you special protectors of the magical ancient wonder treats, no, bummer, Yggdrasil, Yggdrasil, Yggdrasil, wait I think I might have an idea, really, what is it, you know that guy we bust out of jail yesterday, I remembered where I know him from, he sells information to people in my position, wonderful, well what are we waiting for, to the bar, that's the name of the guy nosy noah I'm very sure that was his name, all right so they follow me around, what are these people saying, I don't need to drop the money off, I have 500 gold, I'm gonna head on over to see that dude, where the heck was the bar again, oh yeah I was around here, could be in here doing something, daddy, let mine it keeps bringing me drinks, must be getting tired, just one hole for the, wow, sweet, you never know, he might have some heart gossip that I need to hear, fishing for rumors huh, some things never change, you're noah right, in the circles I used to move in you were pretty famous, you were the guy who knew things, for the right price, no nugget of knowledge too big or too small, no other noah at all, knows them all, that's what they used to say huh, what if they did, I can't help it, if juicy tidbits have an habit of falling in me lap now, yeah so he's the informant for all thieves and yeah so he was in the ladies bath when Veronica was kidnapped this is the space she's gonna make, she has this like cringe face you might be able to help us out, what do you know about Idrisil? Crikey, you don't don't do things by us do you, gotta be scoring my, seeing as how you saved me life, I'll tell you what I know, I'll go bring free information, across the desert, when we came down with a bad case of estro, we didn't have no grub left, no water, nothing, we just about giving up hope, but then these soldiers from Galopolis came along, let's, next thing I know, I'm waking up in a sultan's bleeding palace, talk about lucky, anyway when I come to, that's when I seen it, beautiful it was, this rainbow coloured branch thing, oh shimmery, beautiful, well I know top and gear when I see it, if that weren't a branch of the old world tree, I'm a monkey's uncle, did you hear that Veronica, a branch from Idrisil herself, sounds like we need to take a trip to Galopolis, so it turns out you are capable of having ideas that aren't completely stupid after, we should head for the desert right away, it's beyond the checkpoints out west of here, that marks the border with Galopolis, I do hope you won't mind us tagging along, we of Arboria swear to protect you, while we live, none shall defeat you, Veronica and Serena join the party, we have our two, two party members, we have a full party now, four people, well look at that, they're so happy to join us, all right the Galopolis pass, that point are awful sticklers for formalities, but if you show them that, they should let us move, there's those kids again, all right so I don't think we needed to buy anything else, we just need to get the heck out of here, oh wrong way, all right we'll head out, see if anybody is saying anything interesting, okay whatever, oh the steel quality, actually what was that quest that guy put me on, this dude right here, he had a quest for me, okay sure, oh he had enough ore, recipe book, I love iron arms, iron broadswords, iron claymores, nice he gave me a really cool recipe book, that was nice of him, very nice of him, all right let's head out, we'll grab that iron ore and we'll build something cool out of it, oh she remembers something important, zoom, she taught me zoom, she's a good magician that she can teach you spells and all that stuff, Veronica is actually the best wizard in the entire land, she's considered to be the most powerful archmage, buy hands-free over hill and dale with auto run, auto run, so if I click the left stick, oh yeah auto run, huh, imagine being this lazy that you auto run, like you don't even want to push this stick forward, it's not even that accurate, I'm just gonna run like normal, oh check out this green water, I can't go down there, it's probably nice and warm, all right so stay here in the water, uh the Galopolis region, it's gotta be up there though, let's see what these three have to say, I want to rest, so the branch of the world tree, the rain bow, that's what it's called the rain bow, anyway you go there, you get the branch of the world tree and hopefully that'll help us on our journey, it's interesting that we don't know what we're supposed to do yet, there's no like real set objective at the moment, all we know is that you're supposed to go out and just do stuff, isn't it kind of interesting how there's no like bad, there's no bad guy yet, there hasn't been a villain, a villain hasn't shown up yet right, there's no main villain except for, except for the king I guess, and the Galopolis region should be across this bridge right here, but yeah it's interesting how the pacing of this game works, the way there no actual enemies start showing up in in the beginning section, it's been hours and there's nothing, wow look at this canyon, we gotta watch after these rolling guys, they might bump into you, all right there's Galopolis and there's some rabbits, these are new new enemies from Dragon Quest XI, here we go, another save point, oh you have reached the end of the story and end of the story part demo, would you like to record your progress and venture along and end the game, wow well I guess that's it then, so this demo was supposed to be 10 hours long and it only took me like six hours, it took me how long, six hours and six hours and 30 minutes, that's how long it took me to finish this demo, thanks for playing the demo version of Dragon Quest XI S, it goes in Lose of Age Defensive Edition that's a mouthful, well it looks like we beat the demo so September 27th that's when the game comes out, I'll see you guys then when the actual game comes out and when we actually get the real game and continue because the save point will continue, in the comments I actually want you guys to let me know something, let me know if you want me to do the 16-bit version of the game or a 3D version because I'm gonna try to choose one over the other for the majority of the playthrough, I'm kind of leaning towards 16-bit but I want to hear you know the viewer's opinion as well, so thanks for watching and I'll see you next time


Student and youth organizations all over Italy hit the streets on January 28. This is part of a wave of protests that broke out following the death of a student Lorenzo Parri. He was killed when a steel girder fell on him while working as an intern for a private company on January 21. The same night, students in Italy's capital, Rome, organized an action in front of the Ministry of Education, University and Research. The next day, students protested in cities across Italy in front of the offices of Confindustria, the general confederation of the Italian industry. On January 23, the third consecutive day of protests, police attacked students in Rome and wounded too. The death of Lorenzo Parrilli was a trigger for the deep-seated frustration experienced by Italian youth. They have blamed and exploited a government policy responsible for his death. A school reform of 2015 implemented a mandatory internship for students. Seven years after the implementation of this system, nothing has changed for students and young workers. At the end of 2021, the unemployment rate of those aged under 25 increased to almost 30 percent, double compared to other EU 27 countries. Various forms of precarity such as irregular work, low wages, violence and harassment at the workplace affect one out of two workers under 35. The unpaid work is all the more jarring in an unsafe labour market where every day four to five people die in workplace accidents. In the last two years of the pandemic, high school students have been neglected by the government. At the beginning of the pandemic, the government quickly decided to make all learning to move. However, distance learning soon became an obstacle for students. In 2020, it was estimated that 13.1 percent of young people did not finish school and left early. According to reports, the number of students who made it to graduation but acquired only a part of the expected skills in high school also increased. Additionally, two years since the beginning of the pandemic, the Italian government is yet to adapt school infrastructure to the new conditions. The classes are still overcrowded and ventilation systems have not been renewed. Public and school transport have also not been upgraded. The country still does not have a proposal to overcome the digital divide. In this context, social discontent among high school students has increased widely. In response from October to December 2021, students occupied over 50 schools in Rome. Students protested the lack of infrastructure, shortage of teachers and sanitary problems. Students also denounced the lack of laboratories, teaching instruments and classrooms. The indignation of the students indicates the possibility of a larger protest movement against work precarity and exploitation. More protesters are likely to take place in the communities.


Hi, everyone. It's Monica Wahee here, your Data Science and Public Health Online Educator, and I'm here to make a suggestion on how you can make your online courses more engaging in an evidence-based way.  What initially inspired me is this article by Wickershem and McGee from back in 2008, called Perceptions of Satisfaction and Deeper Learning in an Online Course. What I really liked was how they set up this table one. They put least ideal on the left and most ideal on the right. Actually, I do studies of Deeper Learning, both online and in-person. So I posted about my research and this table from this article below. As you can see, I pulled out a few principles talked about in the article and put them on my blog post. But now, I was thinking of this article again when I did this more recent blog post, which is what this video is based on, where I focused on how I develop very real-world simulations in my curriculum for my learners relatively easily. I thought I'd share that with you in this video. One of the easiest ways I make Deeper Learning curriculum online is by reappropriating real-world examples from the real world of data science and public health that I live in. Real-world simulations actually cover many different Deeper Learning principles or DLP's listed in that table in that article. If you look at it, you'll see that simulations really hit multiple DLP's, which is why they are recommended so highly by educators. I found that I can design my simulations to illustrate separate concepts on purpose. For example, in my free online data collection course, I wanted to show the difference between the files you make if you are doing a data abstraction compared to the ones you make if you are doing a survey. So I made a scenario with two different characters with two different use cases and that helped me separate these two related concepts into different use cases. So this is how I use my simulation to separate concepts into different use cases and help the learner keep track. You can also more easily demonstrate multiple applications of the same concept with a simulation. For example, I have my online statistics course with all my lectures on YouTube, and if you are a statistics professor, you can use these. Just visit my blog where I hook you up with everything you need. So as you can see, one of the videos is about percentiles and box plots, and one is about sampling. So what I did was have the learners go to americanhospitaldirectory.com or ahd.com. So ahd.com collects public data from Medicare Quarterly Reports and presents it online. You can pay for a subscription to their database, but what I like for teaching about healthcare is that we can look at the basic hospital data online. I was teaching this course to learners in Massachusetts, so let's click on this link. See, this is real world data. The first hospital, Brockton Hospital, really has 197 staff beds, and some of my learners have worked at these hospitals before. So as you can see, the other video is about sampling. So I told the learners to do systematic sampling of these hospital beds. Don't know what systematic sampling is? Well, you have to watch my sampling video then, but then I showed them how to make a box plot of it by using this online tool. You probably know I teach SAS and R courses on LinkedIn Learning, but this statistics course was an undergraduate course at a nursing college, so I couldn't ask these learners to play around with SAS and R, but I could ask them to go to this online box plot generator, enter the sample of number of beds of Massachusetts hospitals they took, and make a box plot. Then I had them posted on a discussion board and comment about it. Remember, all the learners were sampling from the same hospital data, so they had plenty to talk about when their box plots looked different. So they could look back at the differences in their sample and comment to each other. So in addition to showing multiple applications of the same concepts, it also hit the deeper learning principle of social learning. But probably the most important reason to include real world simulations in your online learning is that you are probably teaching learners who need to apply their skills in a real job shortly. Actually, if you take my data curation course on LinkedIn Learning, all those curation files I show you started out in some sort of real project. I do research in this stuff, so I know why people don't do simulations more often. It's because they are a little hard to set up. But I'm an expert at it, so I'm going to tell you my hacks for setting up online simulations very quickly so you can keep your online learners engaged. First, you wanna pick an ideal topic, one that your learners are curious about. Think about what your learners have been asking you about in recent months, like what topics have they been bringing up? These might be the ones they need to know for their work or job search. Also, most people do more than just teach. Think about the work you have been doing in industry outside of teaching. What are your colleagues up to? Because these are future employers of your learners, so you want your learners to know about the topics your colleagues are researching. Okay, now you should have selected a topic. That will be the focus of your learning objectives. Next, you wanna pull out files that you will use in the simulation from your real-world activities so you can help your learners have a real-world simulation experience. Yes, I mean real computer files, like the examples I showed from that data curation video. If you take my SAS and R courses, you will see I use data dictionaries to guide my coding. Those data dictionaries started out as real files from a project. Since they were so important, I included them in my simulation. When you use examples of real files from your projects, you really help your learners prepare as much as possible for applying skills in a real job. Hey, if you have some great ideas for simulations for your learners, but you're in too much of a hurry to put them together before your next online class starts, just contact me by email or on LinkedIn and we can meet for a free consultation on Skype or Zoom and I can see if I can help you get your curriculum together. Also, please put comments on this video or on my blog post if you have suggestions for other educators. Actually, make sure you visit my blog post, where I link you to all my freebies, free online courses, YouTube videos, and other learning resources that can be helpful for instructors to use. I hope this video inspired you as to new ways to add deeper learning to your online curricula. Thanks for watching and have a nice rest of your day.


Hello, thank you very much for being here with us. My name is Javier Perez and I work as a director of research and development for Dream Lab Technologies. And I'm Juan Escobar and I work as a senior cybersecurity consultant for Dream Lab Technologies. This talk is basically now our experience in the field of security audits, instead of response, as well as in the research of new vulnerabilities and how they are applied in the ICS cyberkill change. ICS are devices that generally operate in critical infrastructures. These are not well known since they operate in a different environment compared with companies that have common information technologies. Also, many incidents involving ICS devices and the OT environment have had very important geopolitical connotations, which has changed the world related to the vulnerabilities existing in them, which has led governments to take measures that classify them as a critical element of the nation. As many of you probably know, today we are in what is called Industry 4.0, which is characterized by broad interconnectivity, data collection, analysis and communication, which results in the optimization of the flow and quality processes. Also, the benefits are many. This convergence between the IT and OT worlds increases the attack surface and as well as the number of new controls to implement. Based on this premise is that in the 90s, Theodore Williams, along with members of the Purdue University Consortium, developed the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture as a model for enterprise architectures, where the Purdue model defines the different levels of critical infrastructure that are used in production lines and the way to secure them. But as we know, it's very difficult to implement, maintain and monitor all cybersecurity systems. We must remember that not all companies are the same. Therefore, the security mechanisms and architectures are different. But at the base, the activities to be carried out by an attacker will almost always be the same. That is why Michael, Asant and Robert Lee adapted the cyber kill change model created by Lockheed Martin to the ICS world to understand, visualize and organize the steps required for an adversary to reach their goal.  Cyber intrusion, preparation and execution is related to the IT world and the ICS attack development and execution is related to the IT world. So in this talk, we will try to emulate the most common vector attacks to get access to a remote power plant. Let's see what these steps are. For the stage one, the first one is reconnaissance. Recognizing is an activity to obtain information about something through observation and or other detection methods. This activity is divided into passive and active reconnaissance where the passive is in charge of searching for the information available in public sources and the active interacts directly with the target for the collection information. Okay, let's continue. First, let's define our target and the attacker. In this case, the target is a nuclear power plant called Macross and the attackers will be a group called APT666. If we search for this nuclear plant in Google, we have a result and we can see that this plant is located in Sicily. It also has another energy project. Continuing with passive reconnaissance, we can do search in Chalan or Sumai, where probably there is not much information, which always should be the case. In LinkedIn, we find one per five related to the company and not much else in the Internet. It is when the attackers carry out an active reconnaissance, obviously, both activities can be carried out in parallel. As we know, the plant is located in Switzerland, so we proceed to scan the entire country looking for any reference to the company. One of the protocols consulted is SNMP, although there are not many vulnerabilities for it, it provides information that may be important to carry out an attack. For this purpose, an automated tool is created and launched nationwide using the default community stream to perform the authentication. As a result, we can see that there is an IP related to the company. So in this tool, we will set the name of the database, the community, and the files with the IPs. So in Switzerland, there is around 20 millions IP, so this will take a couple of hours to finish, but now we can see that we have the result related to the macros electric power plant. So in this IP address that was not linked to any site like Shodan or Sumai, we will scan to see what it is in this IP address related to the macros electric power plant. Now we will see what information this service can give us. For this, we can use several tools, but now we will use one called SNMP check that will give us the data in an orderly way. As we see, it gives us quite a lot of information, but an interesting piece of information corresponds to the network connections. Here, we can highlight a connection established to port 22, which is generally used for remote administration, and we can see that it's accessible. Now we know that someone is connected, so we can assume that it's someone who managed this system. Let's see what we find in this source IP. We launch a quick scan and see that port 80 is open. We access through the browser and see there is a login page. With a little more research, we see that type of device it is and what part of the world the IP is assigned. This is a home router located in the United State. As we take a look and do some research about it and we don't have any vulnerabilities on this device. So as a summary of the first step, we have one LinkedIn account, one website, one Linux servers, one SNMP service, one interest in IP address, and one internet boarder device with no vulnerabilities. Next step, the preparation. In this step, there is weaponization and targeting. Both can take place, but this is not required. Basically, this step is to prepare the tools according to identify objective. In this case, we will use two vectors, the social engineering one and the other we will call it infrastructure. I will go for the social engineering vector is that the victim visits a malicious website and exploit a vulnerability in order to take control of her computer. Our school excuse will be an interview for a magazine specialized in cyber security issues in industrial environments. So for this vector, we will create a fake website where we locate our exploit for browser. And also, we create a fake LinkedIn account for a journalist who is working on this fake magazine called Skywire.com. Okay, and now our plan for the vector two infrastructure is also similar to the previous one. We want to redirect all the web traffic to our malicious sites, but since we don't know who is behind this device, we need to hack the device and change the configuration of the DNS server. So in this way, the traffic can be redirected to our malicious DNS server. So we don't know the password, we have to find a way to enter to this device. So what are we going to do is try to find a vulnerability. So we will try to find our CODA. What we're going to do is try to pass the parameters of this web application and try to find some kind of remote execution because these devices are common vulnerability to this kind of vulnerabilities. So we will try to pass all these parameters in the post records. So what we did was using a dictionary with a lot of commands in Unix, try to find a way to execute some commands and we can see in payload six and payload seven, we have the answer what we need. So in this moment, we find our word a remote code execution on this device. So this is a zero-day vulnerability. So now in the field keypad, sending a specific request concatenated to the parameter, we have a remote code execution. In this case, we send the command ID to identify who is running the process. In this case, it's a remote code execution with root privilege. So now we finish the preparation and weaponization and targeting. Now we go to the next step is cyber-intuition, management, enablement, and sustainment, entrenchment, development, and execution. So basically, this is the moment we can act. So can we delivery, exploit, install, or modify to gain access to the system of the victim. We launched our command and control using methods such as a connection to previously installed capability or have used trusted communications such as the VPN. Then we have the sustainment, entrenchment, development, and execution phase when in this phase documents a variety of end goals that an adversary may have. In this phase is when the adversary acts. So we can discover, do lateral movement, everything we know in common IT attack. So now our first victim will be an operator of the SCADA of the company, Macross Power Plant. And now we will send her a message through LinkedIn. So we will put a link of our SCADA wire magazine. And now we will try to exploit vulnerability and her browser. So for this, first we need to activate our exploit on the website. And now we can send the message. So we sent a message saying that I'm a journalist for a magazine. And if she wants to participate in an interview and we add the link for the website. So now we can see in the LinkedIn profile of the victim, she received the message and she probably links, click the link and she will have access to the website and see there is a normal magazine related to industrial technologies. But in the background you will see we execute the exploit on the browser and we have immediately access to her machine. So we can start and look for credentials. And also we can look for interesting files like VPN or software like for password management like e-packs, for example. And also we can start look for some files related to the company. Also for the second vector in PlasticTour, we already find a remote code execution so we will try to get some information about the device. In this case we have the credentials of the device. So we will now try to crack it. So now we have the password of the device. So now we can login in the device. And we're now going to change the DNS server. So now we apply the change. So now we can take a look on the victim machine and we can see the DNS has changed. So for example if it goes to dml.com so we can see it's trying to connect to dml. So any domain he wrote in the Europe bar is redirected to our malicious site. So now we can see we have almost the same information like credentials. A lot of VPN config files and probably more information that we need to prepare the next step for the attack. So as a part of command and control we are using the same application. In this case it's metasploit and as we showed previously we have a lot of information related to the victims. In this case we have the Windows credentials and we can see this person is working not only for macros like this also for another power plant companies. And we can get of course password manager like key pass and some sensitive files like details of the infrastructure. So if we take a screenshot of the victim we can see assistant administrator for external company work for macros power plant. Also we can use Kilogears for have the password for the key pass and we can see he have this is something for almost a lot of sensitive infrastructure like the CM, SCADA and the active directory. So probably this will give us domain admin immediately without any other attack. Also sensitive files same for Lisa. Lisa is a operator of this SCADA so we are interested also in their password management database so we add a Kilogear in the attack. So as a summary we have access to two important computers and now we have remote access to the plan with the configured files they have in their computer also we can pivot from their computers too. We have credentials for almost all the infrastructure and the details of the infrastructure. So next is the stage two and I give you Juan Escobar to explain this part. Thank you Javier. I'm continuing with the ICS cyber kill chamber in its second stage most recently in the development phase. In this phase the attacking group tries to create new offensive abilities using the information from the previous stage and this is possible because the attackers have discovered a cell document with a list of devices. In this case we can see an standard electric PLC using the MADBUS protocol. And first it's necessary to understand the MADBUS protocol. Luckily for us this protocol is really very simple. We are going into too much details the field seven bytes of the packets in red correspond to the header fields. Continue with one byte reserved to the clarea function. This can be ebt1 to 127 in hexadecimal. Finally we have the data segment the content of this field will depend on the function code we use. As you can see the request is very simple. This one is a valid request using the function code one or read coils. And if a request is valid the response will keep the function a field corresponding to a byte with the same value as the original request. But what happens when the request contains an error? In this case the response will return to byte reserved for exception. We have exception function code which is one byte and exception code. The field the exception function code is equal to the total sum of the value of the function used. One in this case plus 80 in hexadecimal. So for example if the function code in the response will be the value 81. If we use the function code one and if we use for example a function code two the response if the request contains an error will be 82 and if we use function three and we in the request contain an error will be 83 and so on. The second field the exception code is represented by a numerical value that will depend on the following flow. So if a request can pass the first condition illegal function this means that the function is valid. In other words if the exception code is different from one the function is valid. So basing the error messages is possible to determine the existence or the existence of implemented function and this is very helpful to build various attacks. It's also important to consider that an unable multiple function is always a possible attack. So with this knowledge it is possible to build a tool that can lead the implemented function. The tool sends value models frames always trying to force error messages and leads all the possible functions or the attack vector. So to continue our simulation we or the attackers will focus in function 43 which is a read device identification and also function 90 UMAS which is a Snyder electric proprietary function. This function was discovered with a new animation tool. So what is a function 43? In short it is a function that will provide device information. So for example a vendor name, product code, revision number, etc. Here are some first tests with the solution function 43. So we can see some information about the PLC and the project. The other interested function of a Snyder electric device is the function called 90. Among the many functionalities or sub-functions available we are interested in the following tree 40, 41 and 20. We are start PLC, start PLC and read memory block. So for the final attack we are looking for a request that can easily generate a stop on the target device. For which in our controller environment request has been sent to our PLC using only function 19 which are in hexadecimal 5a but with random data. So finally it was possible to generate a denial of service condition by sending two null bytes as you can see here in the sub-function read a memory block. Finally a tool was developed for this attack which we call Modbus Killer. So the next phase is validation. In the validation phase the aim is to certify the new abilities or development in a controlled environment with a specific hardware. All tests have been performed in a laboratory environment just as the one we show below. So the following demo evidenced a denial of service with the Modbus Killer tool. So here we are setting a value 1 for the slide ID 1 using the function called f5 to start the motor. And then we present some bannergramming with the check argument with the Modbus Killer script. This is performing a bannergramming using function 43. And then we are sending the exclude argument. We will use a function umas or function called 90. So we can see that the motor or the device is stopped when we send the the two null bytes. So as you can observe the resulting denial of service of all the plc functionalities and also disconnect it from the network first in a physical restart. And the final phase is called ICS attack. This stage is used to deploying and executing the attack. So we have another video that simulates the final step in the simulated macros electric plant. So as you can see we send the kill command and the device was unresponsive. So this is a system to control the temperature of the weather. And when the plc stopped working the alarm will be reactivated. And also the temperature will rise. So just in case the vulnerabilities we found have already been reported to the manufacturers and have their respective security patch. And here are some recommendations overview that you can apply to avoid this type of attacks. And finally thank you very much for your time and do not forget visit us in our ICS research blog and our github where we publish exploits and tools that can help you in your security audits. So thank you.


Guys often overcomplicate texting, the more she invests, which means the more she writes, the more likely she is to comply when you ask her out on a date. So let's say the girl's giving you short one word answers and you're like, hey, let's go on a date.  Whereas as if she's investing paragraphs and paragraphs, she's gonna be a lot more compliant, she's gonna be a lot more down because we all wanna see return on our investment. Again, it's the same thing as banter, right? Now you'd be wondering, okay, but how much is enough investment? This is why this stuff is an art not science. There's no exact number I can give you guys. I can say for me, generally speaking, it's between two and seven screenshots worth of conversation before I'm going for the meetup.


This weekend, 100 years ago, about 48 hours from this very moment that World War I ended. At the end of that war was said, the guns are now silent. The great tragedy is over. We must work to preserve in peace that which we have won in war. Only two people ever died for your treatment. The American soldier.


from the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering UiPath. Forward 4, brought to you by UiPath. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of UiPath. Forward 4, live from the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. We're here all day today and tomorrow. We're going to talk about process mining next. We've got two guests here. Mike Engel is here, Intelligent Automation and Process Intelligence Leader at PWC. And Ryan McBand, the SBP of Growth at UiPath. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you. So Ryan, I'm going to start with you. Talk to us about process mining. How does UiPath do it differently? And what are some of the things being unveiled at this event? Yeah, so look, I would tell you, it's actually more than process mining. And hopefully not only you, but others saw this this morning with Perom. It's really about the full capabilities of that discovery suite. And which obviously process mining is part of. But it starts with task capture. So going out and actually working with subject matter experts on a process, accounts payable, accounts receivable, order to cash. Digitally capturing that process or how they believe it should work or execute across one's environment, right, Mike? And then from there, actually validating or verifying with things or capabilities like process mining, giving you a full digital x-ray of actually how that process is being executed in the enterprise, showing you process bottlenecks for things like accounts payable, showing you days outstanding, maverick buying so that you can actually pinpoint and do a few things. Fix your process, right? Where a process should be fixed. Fix your application, because it's probably not doing what you think it is. And then third and where the value comes is in our platform of which process mining is a capability, our RPA platform, really moving directly to automations, right? And then having the ability with even task mining to drill into a specific bottleneck, capturing keystrokes, clicks, and then moving to with both of those, process mining and task mining into automation hub as part of our discovery platform as well. Being able to crowdsource, prioritize all of those potential, if you will, just capabilities of automations and saying, okay, let's go and prioritize these, these deliver the greatest value and executing across them. So as much as it's about process mining, it's actually the whole entire discovery suite of capabilities that differentiates UI path from other RPA vendors as the only RPA vendor that delivers process mining, task mining, and this discovery suite as part of our enterprise automation platform. Such a critical point, Ryan, right? I mean, it's multidimensional, right? It's not just one component to it. It's not just process mining or task mining. It's the combination that's really impactful. So I agree with you 100%. So one of the things that people who watch our shows know from like a broken record on this, the early days of RPA, I called it paving the cow path and that was good because somebody knew the process. They just repeat it. But the problem was the process wasn't necessarily the best process as you just described, right? So when you guys made the acquisition of process goal, they said, ah, okay, now I'm starting to connect the dots. And now, you know, a couple of years on we're starting to see that come together. And this is what I think is most misunderstood about UI path. And I wonder from a practitioner's perspective, if you can sort of fill in some of those gaps is that it's different from a point tool. It's different from a productivity tool. You know, like Power Automate, I'll just say it, that's running in Azure cloud. That's cool. Or a vertically integrated part of some ERP stack. It's a horizontal play that is end to end, which is a bigger automation agenda. It's bold, but it's potentially huge. $60 billion to am, I think that's understated. Maybe you could, from a practitioner's perspective, share with us kind of the old way and kind of the new way. Well, obviously we all made a lot of investments in this space early on to determine what should we be automating in the first place, right? I mean, we even went so far as we have platforms that will transcribe these kind of surveys and discussions that we're having with our clients, right? But at the end of the day, all we're learning is what they know about the process, what they as individuals know about the process. And that's problematic. Once we get into the kind of the next phase of actually developing something, we miss something, right? Because we're trying to do this rapidly. So I think what we have now is really this opportunity to have data-driven insights. And our clients are really grabbing onto that idea that it's good to have kind of a sense of what they think they do, but it's more important to have a sense of what they actually do, right? Are you seeing, in the last year and a half, we've seen the acceleration of a lot of things. There's some silver linings, but we've also seen the acceleration in automation as a mandate. Where is it in terms of a priority that you're seeing with customers? And are there any industries that you're seeing that are really leading the edge here? Well, I do see it as a priority, right? And of course, in the role that I have, obviously everybody I talk to, it's a priority for them. But I think it's kind of changing. People are understanding that it's not just a sense of, as Ryan was pointing out, it's not just a sense of getting an understanding of what we do today. It's really driving it to that next step of actually getting something impactful out the other end. And so clients are starting to understand that. And I like to categorize them, there's three types of clients, right? There's starters, there's stallers, and those that want to scale. And we're seeing a lot more on the other ends of this now, where clients are really getting started and they're getting a good sense that this is important for them because they know that identifying the opportunities in the first place is the most difficult part of automation. And that's what's stalling the programs. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we've got these clients that are saying, hey, I want to do this really at scale. It's going to help us do that. And it's quite a challenge. How do I build a pipeline of automations, right? So I've had success in finance and accounting. Fantastic. How do I take this to operations? How do I take this to supply chain? How do I take this to HR? And when I do that, it all starts with, as Wendy Batchelder, chief data officer at VM, or I would say, and as a customer, it starts with data, but more importantly, process, right? So focusing on process and where we can actually deliver automation. So it's not just about those insights, it's about moving from insights to actionable next steps. And that is where we're seeing this convergence, if you will, take place, as we've seen it many times before. I mentioned I worked at Cisco in the past. We saw this with VoiceOverIP converging on the network. We saw this at VMware, who I know you guys have spoken to multiple times, when it moved from a hypervisor to including NSX with the network, to including cloud management and also vSAN for storage and converging in software. We're seeing it too with process, really, and instead of kids in clipboards, as they used to call it, right, in many Six Sigma and Lean workshops with whiteboards and sticky papers to actually showing people within really days how a process is being executed within their organization and then suggesting here's where there's automation capabilities go execute against them. So Ryan, this is why sometimes I scoff at the TAM analysis. I get you got to do the TAM analysis, you have to communicate to Wall Street, but basically what you do is you pull out IDC or Gartner data, which is very stovepipe, and you kind of say, okay, we're in this market now. It's the convergence of these markets. It's cloud, it's containers, it's IS, pass, it's SaaS, it's blockchain, it's automation. They're all coming together to form this. It sounds like a buzzword, but it's digital matrix, if you will. And it's how well you leverage that digital matrix which defines your digital business. So talk about the role that automation, generally, RPA specifically, process mining specifically, play in a digital business. Do you want to take that mic or do you want me to take it? We can both do it, how about that? Yeah, perfect. Yeah, so I'll start with it. Right, I mean, it all is about convergence at this point. There are a number of platform providers out there, including UiPath, that are kind of teaching us that. And oftentimes we're led by the software vendors, right, in terms of how we think of it. But what we know is that there's no one solution. We went down the RPA path, lots of clients, and got a lot of excitement and a lot of impact. But if you really want to drive it broader, what clients are looking at now, it's what is the ecosystem of tools that we need to have in place to make that happen. And from my perspective, it's got to start with really process intelligence. Well, and I would say too, if you look at digital transformation, it was usually driven from an application, right? Really? And what I think customers found was that, hey, I'm going to name some folks here, put everything in SAP and we'll solve all your problems. Larry Ellison will tell you, put everything into Oracle and we'll solve all your problems. Salesforce, now I'm a sales person. I've never used an out of the box Salesforce dashboard in my life to run my business, because I want to run it the way I want to run it, right? Having said that though, they would say the same thing, put everything into our platform and we'll make sure that we can access it and you can use it everywhere and we'll solve all of your problems. I think what customers found is that that's not the case, right? So they said, okay, where are there other ways? Yes, I've got my application doing what it's doing. I've improved my process. But hang on, there's things that are repeatable here that I can remove to actually focus on higher level orders. And that's where UI path comes in. We've kind of had a bottoms up swell, but I would tell you that as we deliver ROI within days or weeks versus potentially years and with a heavy, heavy investment upfront, we're able to do it. We're able to then work with our partners like PwC to then demonstrate with business process modeling the ability to do it across all those, as I call silos of excellence in an organization to deliver true value in a timeline with integrated services from our partner to execute and deliver on ROI. So you mentioned some of the great software companies that have been created over the years. One you didn't mention, but I want you to comment on it is service now. Because essentially McDermott's trying to create the platform of platforms. It's all about workflow and service management. They bought an RPA company, hey, we got this too, but it's still a walled garden. It's still the same concept is put everything in here. So my question is, how are you different? Yeah, look, I mean, we're going to integrate with customers who want to integrate, right? Because we're an open platform and that's the right approach. We believe there will be some overlap and there'll be some choices to be made, right? Instead of that top down different approach, which may be a little bit heavy and large investment upfront with varied results as far as what that looks like. Ours is really kind of a bottoms up. And I would tell you too, if you look at our community, which is a million and a half, I believe strong now and growing, it's really about that practitioner and those people that have embraced it from the bottom up that really change how it gets implemented. And you don't have what I used to call is the white blood cells pushing back when you're trying to say, hey, let's take it from this finance and accounting to HR to supply chain to the other side to the organization saying, hey, look, be part of this instead of, no, you will do. Yeah, there's no, at least that I know of, there's no SAP or Salesforce freemium.  And the entry price is way higher, right? I mean, generally, I mean, I guess Salesforce not necessarily, but I can get, I can taste automation for well under $100,000. I mean, I can get in for, I bet you most of your customers started at $25,000 or $50,000 departmental deployments.  That's exactly right. And it's really that approach, which is much more like an Atlassian, I would tell you. And it's really getting to the point where we obviously, and I'm saying this, I work at UiPath, we make really good software. And so, you know, out of the box, it's getting easier and easier to use. It all integrates, which makes it seamless. The reason people moved to RPA first was because they got tired of bouncing between applications to do a task. Now we deliver this enterprise automation platform where you can go from process discovery to crowd sourcing and prioritizing your automations with your pipeline of automations into studio, into creating those automations, into testing them, and back again, right? We give you the opportunity not to leave the platform and extract the most value out of our, what we call enterprise automation platform, inclusive of process mining, inclusive of testing, and all those capabilities, document understanding, which is also mine, and it's fantastic. It's very differentiated from others that are out there. What's about having the right framework in place, right, from an automation perspective, right? And I think that's a little bit different from what you would expect from the SAPs of the world, so. Mike, where are you seeing, in the large organizations that you work with, we think of what you describe as the automation pipeline, where are some of the key priorities that you're finding in large organizations with what's in that pipeline and in what order? Yeah, no, it's interesting, because every time we have a conversation, whether it's internal or with our clients, we come up with another use case for this type of technology. Obviously, when we're having the initial conversations, what we're talking about is really automation, right? How do we stuff that pipe with automation? But we have clients that are just saying, hey, listen, I'm trying to carve out of a parent company, and what I need to do is document all of my processes in a meaningful way that I can, at some point, take action on, right? So there's meaningful outcomes. Whether it be a shared services organization that is looking to outsource all different types of use cases, so prioritizing is, I think, it's about impact, and the quickest way to impact seems to be automation. Is it fair to say, can I look at UiPath as automation infrastructure? Is that okay, or do you guys want to say, oh, we're an application? And the reason I ask, so then you get an answer, is if you look at the great infrastructure plays, they all had a role, the DBA, the CCIE, Cisco, the cloud architect, the VMware admin, you've been at all of them, Ryan, but so is there a role emerging here? And if it's not plumbing or infrastructure, I know, okay, that's cool, but of course, correct me on the infrastructure comment, and then is there a role emerging? You know, I think the difference between UiPath and some of the infrastructure companies is you used to take, Dave, years to give an ROI, right? Really, you'd invest in infrastructure, and it's like, if we build it, they will come. In fact, we've seen this with cloud where we kind of started doing some of that on-prem, right? And we can do this, but then you had Amazon, Azure, and others kind of take it, and just say, look, we can do it better, faster, and cheaper, it's that simple. And so I would say that we are an application, and we reference it as an enterprise automation platform, right? It's more than infrastructure. Now, are we going to, as I mentioned, integrate as an open platform to other capabilities? Absolutely, right? I think as you see with our investments, and as we continue to build this out, starting in core RPA, buying process gold, and getting into our discovery suite of capabilities I covered, getting into what I see next is, as you start launching many bots into your organization, you're touching multiple applications, so you got to test it.  We see another convergence with testing, and I know you had Garrett on and Matt earlier, with testing, application testing, which has been a legacy kind of dinosaur market, converging with RPA, where you can deliver automations to do it better, faster, and cheaper. Thank you for that clarification, but now, Mike, is that role, I mean, I know roles are emerging in RPA and automation, but is there, I mean, we're seeing centers of excellence pop up, is there an analogy there, or sort of a similar? Yeah, I think the new role, if you will, it's not super new, but it's really that sense of an automation solution architect. It's a whole different thing. We're talking now more about recombinant innovations than we are about, you know, build it from scratch, right, because of the convergence of these low-code, no-code types of solutions, it's a different skill set. And we see it at PWC. I mean, you have somebody who is potentially a process expert, but then also somebody who understands automations, and it's the convergence of those two as well, that's a different skill set. It really is, and it's actually bringing those together to get the most value, and we see this across multiple organizations. It starts with the COE, we've done great with our community, right, so we have that upswell going, and then people are saying, hang on, I understand process, but I also understand automations. Let me put the two together, and that's where we get our true value, bringing real names. And you have the education and training, and that's a really huge thing. The traditional components of it still need to exist, but I think there are new roles that are emerging, for sure. Well, that's a big cultural shift. Oh, absolutely. How do you guys, how does PWC and UI path, maybe you each can answer this in the last minute or so, how do you help facilitate that cultural shift in a business that's growing at a warp speed in a market that is very tumultuous? How do you do that? Yeah, I'll go first, or I can go. I'll go ahead and go first. It's working with great partners like Mike, because they see it, and they're converging two different practices within their organization to actually bring this value to customers, and also that executive relevance. But even on our side, when we're meeting with customers just in general, we're actually talking about how do we deal with, there's what, 13 and a half million job openings, I guess, right now, and there's 8,500 people that are unemployed is the last number that I heard. We couldn't even fill all those jobs if we wanted to, right, so it's like, okay, what is it that we could potentially automate so maybe we don't need all those jobs, right? And that's not a negative, it's just saying we couldn't fill them anyway, right? So let's focus on where we can, and where we there again can extract the most value in working with our partners, but create this new domain that's not networking or virtualization, but it's actually potentially process and automation, it's testing and automation, it might even be security and automation, which I will tell you is probably coming next, having come out of the security space. You know, I sit there and listen to all these threats, and I see these people chasing really automated threats, and it's like, guys, a threat hunter that's really good goes through the same 15 steps that they would when they're chasing a false positive as if a bot would do that for them. I mean, I've written about the productivity declines over the past several decades in Western countries. It's not universal around the world. And maybe we have a productivity boost because of COVID, but it's like this perpetual workday now, that's not sustainable. So we're not going to be able to solve the world's great problems, whether it's climate change, diversity, massive debts, on and on and on, unless we deal with that labor gap. And the only way to do that is automation. It's so clear to me that that's the answer. Part of the answer. It is part of the answer. And I think to your point, they say it's a cultural shift that's going to happen whether we want it to or not. When you think about people that are coming into the workforce, it's an expectation now. So if you want to retain or, you know, attract and retain the right people, you better be prepared for it as an organization. Yeah, I mean, remember the old, proficient in word and Excel makes it trivial, right? I mean, it's trivial compared to that. And I think if you don't have automation chops going forward, it's going to be an issue. Hey, we have whatever, 5,000 bots running in our company. How could you help? Right, huh? What's a bot? That's right. Yeah, you're right. And we see this too. I'll give you an example with Cisco. You know, one of their financial analysts, Jr., started, he says part of our training program is creating automations. Why? Because it's not just about finance anymore. It's about what can I automate in my role to actually focus on higher level orders? And this for me is just amazing, right? And you know, it's Rajiv Ramaswamy's son who's over there at Cisco. Yeah, right. He's a financial analyst. I was sitting on my couch on a Saturday, no kidding, right, David? I get a text from Rajiv who's now CEO at Nutanix and he says, I can't believe I just created a bot. And I said, I'm at the right place, really. That's cool.   Yeah, you got to train for that. And these are the types of skills that are expected. That's right. Awesome, guys. I'm glad I'm older. I have no expectations. Are you no longer proficient in word is the question. Guys, thanks for joining us, talking about what you guys are doing together, how you're really facilitating this massive growth trajectory. It's great to be back in person and we look forward to hearing from some of your customers later today. Terrific, great. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for having us. Thank you guys. Our pleasure. For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from the Bellagio in Las Vegas at UI Path Forward 4. Stick around, we'll be back after a short break.


So what I will present is more based on our experience on the Flemish level. I will say some words about our collaboration in the Policy Research Centre. Then I would like to focus more on what are we actually measuring or monitoring? How are we doing that? And then I will go to the urban context. Sorry. I will not open the website as you did, but on that website you can also see what we are doing. You have quite a lot of publications there. But basically what we do in the Policy Research Centre for Flemish is to monitor the progress towards circular economy. So I will come back to that later on, what we mean with that. And we are also working actually on these scenarios that I already mentioned. So monitoring is the first step, but then we want to use that monitoring to set up scenarios to see what strategies could work or do not work at all. And also very important, there is a lot of things moving out there. There is a lot of technology development, a lot of policy development, and of course that's busy on the European level, on the federal level, at city level and so on. So we have to put a monitor for the regional level. We have to connect that to all these other levels as well. So we exist already since some years as I already said, I will not dwell on that, but it's basically a collaboration between KJ Leuven University, Antwerp University, Gantt and Vito, and together with OVAM of course. We give policy advice, we write reports, we elaborate on case studies in particular fields, and it's all on these websites. These are the results of last years. I don't have that much time anymore, so I will go through the slides quite quickly. When we talk about circular economy, there are a lot of frameworks and a lot of definitions. You can start from the SDGs in the broad perspective. You can look at it from the Kate Rower perspective in the donut. You can follow the R-strategies, so on the left side, as Leif Millieu and the Lederlands are doing. But what we are actually concluding is that there is not a single definition of circular economy. You really have to look at what level are you discussing circular economy. Are you discussing that at a micro level? That's the definition most people will recognize, that's taking care about products and materials to use them as long as possible at the highest possible application level or quality and with minimal environmental impact. I really like to add the last one. Some people do not do that, but okay. At the meso level, it's more about a set of strategies to fulfill societal needs with lower material consumption and less impact. So the focus there is more on what are the needs of people. That's actually the level we will consider as most important at the regional scale. And then you have the macro level. It's a societal transition with positive impacts on economy, resources, environment and society, where the focus should be on this transition, actually. So why to measure a circular economy? Well, I don't think I have to explain that here. You have already a full day of discussions on materials, flows and things like that. We need to know are we on track and what are the effects of policy. I have to say together with Walter here present here, we are already active since 2006 on sustainable materials management and circular economy. There have been a lot of developments, so a lot of initiatives. Also knowledge has been growing, but my impression is that the gap is still there. And maybe the gap is in my perception also even growing. So we still need to have better ways to really have an idea of what we are doing. Is that really adding to the circular economy or not? And we do a lot of case studies and I will show one where we conclude that actually the intentions are very good, the concepts are really what we think that is circular economy. But the realization is not really helping the circular economy. So let's start with what is measured already. Well, a lot of things are measured at a macro scale. If you look at what Europe is doing, what JRC is doing, what the environmental agency in Copenhagen is doing, they are setting up large databases on materials, flows and waste, economy-wide. That's the macro level. There are quite a lot of indicators already on the results of efficiency and waste management. But this is very slow. These are data that are updated each five years for some other things. Ten years, if you look at Exubase, for example, and you put up with data, that's quite slow and the level of detail is not enough to really steer for policymakers, they can look at these indicators, but these are actually outcome indicators. They only result from activities and we'll only see developments in that type of indicators after some years. So that's not fit for really steering directly the circular economy. On the other hand, there is enormous literature about LCA's, MFA's at a product level. You also have, for example, the material circularity indicator from L. M. Carter Foundation, which I don't like since I think there are some double-coding countings in there, but okay, you have other aspects really at a product level. But is that helping the circular economy? Well, as to us, we really have to bridge these two levels. So the macro and the micro data, this is not good enough for basic policy upon. So what we think is that and what we are developing is circular economy should actually start from what are the societal needs that have to be fulfilled. And the products, the materials we need for that, okay, that's actually not the essence. That's the enabler of this fulfillment of societal needs. So we should actually measure how well and how efficiently these societal needs are fulfilled. And if we do that, we should be able to pick up evolutions in the early stage already, so that they impact really policy measures. We also have to incorporate there the roles of diverse actors, since that's another difficulty or another problem with macro data. Most of these data are very sector-specific, but circular economy is not bound to sectors, it's just crossing, that's typical for circular income, it's crossing sectors. So the emphasis in our way of working is on the consumption actually, and the consumption perspective. Since if you want to have a circular economy transition, we should look at changing the way of fulfilling needs, and consumers are crucial there. And it's also, for us, it's also an addition to what already exists. I don't say that what exists is bad, we need that of course, we need that. But that is a necessary addition. And policy could have a more direct impact on these aspects than on others. So it's kind of a footprint approach, so the measured data that are in between, or bridging the gap between these macro data. And we start actually with four consumer or societal needs, and we start from mobility as a need, housing, nutrition, and consumption, products, ICT, and things like that. So we published these ideas in more details, you can download the paper on the websites of the Policy Research Center. So again, macro indicators are fit for, or are based on more material input, waste generation, recycling rates, and they are more giving ideas about the effects of circular economy. Let's go to one example, we did that for mobility, it's not completed yet, it's quite a challenge to do that for flounders as a region. So circular economy in mobility is about what people think, getting the maximum out of end-of-life vehicles. That's true, that's one aspect of it. It's also about new vehicles, how circular are they, they should be more circular. It's also about, and then it becomes less common and less known, it's also about new business models on the market, business models for car sharing, leasing, and so on. Also business models for multimodal or modal shifts and things like that. It's also minimizing the amount of vehicles and minimizing the material and carbon footprint. So how can we bring all these aspects together? So at the macro level, people look at material footprint. At the micro level, it's more the materials, flow, the production use, and end-of-life aspects. But at our level here that we want to add, we need information, for example, on what are actually the personal kilometers that you have to travel. That's the basis, that's the start of all. And how do you fulfill this mobility in personal kilometers? You fill that with vehicles, but what are the kinds, the different types of vehicles you need, the amounts of vehicles, the efficiency of use and the intensity of use. It's also very much important in the circular economy, which I don't think you find in Mathieu's flow analysis. That's the type of information that should be added. I will not go into too much details, but of course we also need quite a lot of data, which is a huge challenge since some actors want to share that. Policy departments, some, not all, are keen on sharing data, which is very strange since that data should be public. EPR organizations, companies are the most difficult ones. We'll come back to that afterwards. And in setting up that kind of monitor, we also have to choose between the territorial data, are we looking at the kilometers we travel within Flanders, or are we looking at the consumption perspective, which we tend to use based on the cars registered in Flanders, which is not always correct for the, or does not reflect exactly the population of Flanders, but okay. So there are some limitations of the classical input, throughput data that are easily used. For example, that's a graph of the newspaper saying that car sharing in one aspect of mobility in Flanders is increasing a lot since there are more members of car sharing companies. What does that say of circular economy? Nothing, really nothing. So are we really making less car kilometers then? We did a study for that, and that shows, that study actually also shows the difficulty of data gathering as well. So we wanted to have also data from companies, car sharing companies, they didn't want to share that. So our study is based on questionnaires to consumers, and it's quite broad questionnaire, but we can know some things, but we cannot know everything from consumers. We should add, for example, what car sharing, or how long car sharing companies are keeping their cars. We don't know that at this moment, and that they do not want to say us for now. But afterwards, if you publish the study, then you get the comments of the car companies that it's not complete, and they comment, of course, the aspects that they didn't deliver. Okay. So car sharing, the conclusion of that study, I could show a lot of information on that, but we presented that two weeks ago. But the conclusion actually is that what we want is that we reduce the number of cars and that we also reduce the number of kilometers driven by car, and so the CO2 emissions by car mobility. But we didn't see a real... If you isolate car sharing, we didn't see that reduction in CO2 emissions, for example. Why is that? Well, car sharing should be looked as a transition from car ownership to a more public way of mobility. And that's the most important. We should have a more public, common mobility instead of these private cars here. Car sharing helps with that. But what we see is that there are also quite some people going that direction. And that makes in the balance that it is not... Yeah, the concept is okay, but if you look at the realization today, much more emphasis should be in... If you do car sharing, then you should also try to motivate people to sell their private car. Okay, this gives an overview of the monitor then for mobility. So it's not only about flow of cars or number of cars. Yeah, it's here. That's in this corner. And we see that we are not very circular since the amount of cars is increasing. We also see, on the other hand, that the need per kilometers stagnates in front of us. So we realize actually a quite constant need with more cars. So the ratio between both should be in the other direction than it is today. Also use intensity is also an important indicator for circular economy. Use intensity, so the same cars actually average distance each cars travels per year is decreasing in a circular economy. We would like to see that one car is used more intensively by different people. Use efficiency is also not improved. End of life stage, I will not discuss this, but these data are not very, very clear since we have the border with France, with the Walloon region, so there are fluctuations there that we cannot see very well. And also the application of recycling technologies that's the only indicator there that is improving. So you see quite the different types of indicators that we would like to add on top of the pure material flows. So if you go to an urban context from the regional level to the city level, we also are active in Leuven, as I said before. We do believe, but you discussed this already today, I guess, and we do believe that circular economy has a lot of opportunities at the city level because of the strong concentration, not only of the stocks in cities, that's also true, of course, but also a concentration of people, ideas, so giving space for a lot of experimentation. We also see in cities that, if I may say so, and there are some more progressive policies that are more aware of the opportunities of circular economy, and the smaller scale, we actually see that as an advantage. You could say that, okay, the smaller scale, you have not a big impact on the companies, on the producers of products, but you do have a better impact on the consumer side. You are closer to the consumers, and I think the consumer perspective becomes even more important, so the things we are doing becomes even more important at the city level. I would like to end actually with questions that you could discuss further on this evening, but I have to apologize that I don't have a lot of time to, five minutes actually, to stay. Yeah, what do we actually want to know about the circularity of cities, and what can we measure? So what is the final goal of circular economy? Is it that resource efficiency, climate neutrality, inclusiveness, business friendliness, and quite all actors have different opinions on that, that we should be aware of, of course, and what are the risks of only relying on available data, in first instance? That's the thing that we hear a lot. People or policymakers, they want us to give advice based on existing data, but are these the data that are really described in a circular economy in a good way? And how to correctly deal with the spatial aspects and scale that's, I suppose, something that has been discussed already a lot. So the choice between territorial and consumption-based data, I show you that for the cars, for example, or the kilometers driven, how to deal with important export, of course, how to accommodate the diversity of cities, and since you have, of course, the front runners, I could say that Brussels is certainly a front runner, you have the laggards, you have also other cultures, other ecosystems in cities. Is there one single approach that is fit for all? I don't think so. So we have to be flexible in there as well, and then also efforts and money also are important. Some say that indicators have to be cheap, since they want to use that a lot, but of course you all know that it does not come for free. Okay, I will not, that's just a last word on the need for data, the need for support, actually. And I think that there are a lot of aspects we can share, and I hope that I showed that if we want to guide cities and regions in becoming more circular economy, we do need a better knowledge about the materials flows, but on top of that, we also really need to think, yeah, what do we want to achieve? And for us, these societal needs are really, the fulfillment of these societal needs are really key in there. So thank you very much.


This is an exciting time for the young people of Wales. A new curriculum for Wales is coming that will enthuse learners from 3 to 16, giving them the foundations they need to succeed in a changing world. The curriculum is changing to help our young people become more adaptable and motivated to keep learning new skills, as life and the world changes around them, exactly the capabilities that employers say they want to see. Four purposes will be at its heart and embedded in the life and work of schools. They set the aspiration that children and young people should be ambitious, capable learners who will be ready to learn throughout their lives that sets high standards for themselves, enjoy research and problem-solving, interpret and evaluate data, use digital technologies. Enterprising creative contributors who are ready to play a full part in life and work that think creatively, grasp opportunities, lead and play roles in teams, express ideas and emotions.  Ethical informed citizens who are ready to be citizens of Wales and the world that engage with contemporary issues, respect the needs and rights of others, commit to planet sustainability, consider the impact of their actions. The four purposes will also underpin new assessment arrangements. What else will change? Digital competence will be added to the curriculum. Join literacy and numeracy as one of the foundations for success in learning and life. The new curriculum will also encourage creative, connected learning based on six areas of learning and experience. Expressive arts, health and well-being, humanities, languages, literacy and communication, mathematics and numeracy, science and technology. It will be broad, balanced, inclusive and challenging, giving a wide range of experiences and opportunities. It has been widely welcomed by education professionals and those with an interest in the future of young people. What happens next? Pioneer schools across Wales are working with education stakeholders and experts to develop the new curriculum and identify the support teachers and practitioners will need to deliver it successfully. The ambition is that the new curriculum will be available by the summer term 2019 and in use from 2022. The Digital Competence Framework was the first element of the new curriculum to be introduced in September 2016. Find more information on what the curriculum of phones will mean to you at www.gov.wales.com