Hi, welcome to CCTV Channel 17, live at 525 Preservation Burlington Show.  Preservation Burlington is a non-profit, 501C3 organization whose mission is to preserve and protect the historic architecture and livability of Burlington through education and advocacy, which is part of our topic tonight. That's it. The next half is when we leave. I would like to thank everybody for tuning in. This is my friend Charlotte Vara, and she's the Community Preservation Manager for Historic New England in Vermont and stationed out here in Burlington. I had the time and I was lucky enough to attend your more than a market presentation last night at Champlain College, so Charlotte's agreed to be on the show and we're going to do a recap, but I really want to talk to you a little bit about, first, thank you for doing the show. Sure. Happy. Thank you for all that hard work. It was a really, really great presentation last night at Champlain College. I think it was pretty well attended, especially given we're all easing out of COVID and trying to get people into closed places again, you know, and Champlain was pretty thorough about it. But it was, say hi to our audience, and tell me about more than a market. I saw the presentation, so we don't need to go over that again, but I'm really interested in about, I mean, you've been here in Vermont for a while. You spent the last three years pulling this together. There's so much information. I know we'll show the website later on, but, you know, so tell me a little bit about what that was like. Well, Historic New England, we are a cultural heritage organization, regional, and one of the things, we have museum properties that are open to the public to visit. We also do a lot of programming related to local history, and this was a project that I was working on as part of that program, which is called Everyone's History. I got the idea because when I moved to Burlington, I was just noticing how many different markets there were, ethnic markets there were, and, you know, Halal markets, and Nepali markets, and Vietnamese markets. I just thought that was fascinating, and I did learn that Vermont, that this area is a refugee resettlement area, so it makes sense that this is an extremely diverse city for Vermont in particular. For Vermont, for sure. Yeah, you're right, right. Yeah, second-witest state in the Union. But I also, in the process of just learning about Burlington, had noticed that there was a multiple property documentation form that the city had started to fill out, a national register form for a saltice grocery store in the former, like, little Jerusalem area of the Old North End. And I just got to thinking about this sort of continuity between these old markets, and knowing that Burlington was settled by a lot of, you know, various waves of immigrants. Right, I was just going to say that, waves. And so, and just kind of looking for the connections, the differences, the similarities, the experiences, and just found it fascinating that some of these current markets are in old market storefronts. In the footprints. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's kind of how the project started. So, the more things change, the more they are, you know. Yeah. Like you said, the continuity, the similar experiences of these different waves of immigrants through time. Right, right. And that sort of food is a universal. We all need to eat. We all have, well, most of us appreciate food and we have certain recipes we love or food traditions. And so, thinking about that as a sort of a unifier during a time that was very divisive in this country and especially around immigration. So, that was really where I started. Oh, so you mean like sort of currently, but it's always been that way. Oh, yeah. But thinking about trying to create a project around commonalities rather than differences. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the fact that there are many people here that are descendants of immigrants now. And we often forget that. Yes, exactly. That we're really all immigrants. Right. Maybe it was, you know, from, it was British, but it's still an immigrant. Yeah, right, right, right. There's some Abinacis that can say they were, you know, here, but everybody else came here. Yeah, right, right. And settled and did these things. And like you said, that's the funny, the food is that thread through all of that. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So, that was your idea. So, I mean, again, what's the name of the, so this is more than a market. The overall history. Yeah. So, we decided to develop sort of through different parts of this project to provide different means of access in terms of what, how people would enjoy learning about this, the subject. So, the sort of culminating component was this exhibit that we are going to be opening on June 27th at the Old North End Community Center on the third floor. Where the offices of AAALV are, and AAALV is a service organization that helps newly arrived people kind of acclimate, become familiar with living in this country, finding different services they need. So it seemed like a really appropriate place to put this exhibit because we wanted it accessible not just to people like you and me, but the people about whom this project is. Right. They're coming to this country. They're coming. They're this next wave. So they're going to see all the people that came before them doing the same thing. And you and I, and people that have been here for a long time, can go in and also share that same space and see that same story. Right. That's a great idea. And so people can, you know, we wanted the people whom we were interviewing because this was very much an oral history project, both descendants of the early market owners and current day market owners and their customers. And we want, those were the voices we wanted to share. We really felt that those, they were the creators of this exhibit essentially. You take away all those voices. There isn't much of an exhibit. Last night I really enjoyed when you were reading directly from people's statements, you know. And not to give you too many compliments, but you did a really good job because, you know, it was very visibly not your words, you know. So you were sort of dragging us into these, the thoughts, feelings and the syntax of other people and how they communicate. And I mean, I think it was easier for me to do that because I had done the interviews for the most part. And so I had been there with that person listening to how they expressed that particular thought. Mary Rizos, who was the photographer for the project and was sort of subcontracting through the Vermont Folklife Center, she did a lot of the on-the-spot interviews with customers in the markets. And I did the interviews with the market owners. And those were sit-down, more formal interviews. And hers were more, would you be interested in talking to me about this? And so, yeah, those were the, she and I sort of shared that. So the Vermont Folklife Center, so what were the partnerships that you pulled together to make this? So you have the idea? You know, it's a great idea. Yeah. So it was a lot of talking to people and, you know, just, I look back on my emails when I was trying to figure out how many people had been involved. And there was a good eight months of just laying the groundwork for it by talking to everybody from local politicians to service organizations to preservation people, immigrant organizations. And so eventually put together a partnership with, well, we contracted with Burlington Edible History, Gail Rosenberg and Elise Gayette to do the historical research for the Burlington markets. And they also put together the walking tour that we offer. And then the Winooski Historical Society, Joe Perrin helped with doing the historical research in Winooski, which I did. And then AALV and the Vermont Folklife Center. Those were the partners that I worked with. And really, you know, we had a couple of advisory meetings, but then other than that, it was just me shooting an email to somebody and asking for some advice. So, yeah, that's... Trying to pull all that information together. Yeah. Yeah. Get out there. I mean, it's a really interesting project. I love that. And everybody, you know, I think so. My career started in New York City when there's bodegas all over New York City. Yeah. They get handed down and handed down. Yeah. And that started your talk with some of the turnover even recently, you know. So, you know, Nepalese market going to the next generation or the next people that came here as somebody else moves to Pennsylvania or somewhere. Right. Right. So, how did you...  Well, we... In terms of the historical markets, both Gail and Elise and Burlington and I and Winooski started with looking at city directories. And we sort of started back in the, you know, the mid to late, kind of the late, I would say the late 19th century and kind of brought it forward to the 1950s or so. And just looked for market names that lasted for a long time. And then that was one thing we looked for in terms of choosing the old markets. We also then looked at, you know, census. We did some research on those families. We looked for obituaries because that sometimes helped us contact a family member. Like we would see a name, like surviving survivors for other family members. And that's how we would find somebody who could talk to us about that market. So that's how we found the people that we would interview, that I would interview. It's a lot of detective work. It's a lot, yeah. And it's a real rabbit hole. I love doing it. So, Ancestry is so... It's very dangerous when you like to do that sort of thing. Right. Yeah. Hours and hours. So then we also wanted to sort of have a good mix of the different cultures that had come here. And that was another way we decided on those. And then as far as the contemporary ones, it was, you know, that was trickier because, you know, you have to think about walking into a market and saying, hey, we want you to do a project with us. You know, you're coming from a very different cultural vantage point. And there's a language barrier, just cultural differences. And so in that case, we reached out to AALV. There was somebody at AALV who introduced us to a couple of market owners and tried to, you know, kind of encourage them to consider working with us. Yeah, translate a little bit. Yeah. And so that was a little bit more of finding somebody who could introduce us so that there was a feeling of trust about this. Because in a way, it's like, why should I do that? Like, what's why? Yeah. What's the benefit for me? What could be the repercussions? Yeah. And you know. Especially if you're new to a place. Yeah. I mean, I know that there's got to be a level of, you know, fear and, you know, not paranoia really, but you're just, you're new to a place. Yeah.  You know what the authorities are interested in or who's contacting you. Right. And a lot of the market owners are coming from, you know, kind of situations in their homelands where they dealt with a lot of trauma and distrust and that sort of thing. And so you really want to respect that. And we didn't really, I never brought up the subject of, I really tried to keep our conversations focused on the market. And because talking to survivors of trauma is so complex and I'm, I by no means am trained in that sort of thing, but was interesting that a few people that I talked to really wanted to talk about it and then others did not want to. And well, I didn't ask them, but they didn't volunteer it so, and others volunteered it. And so anyway, you know, it's very different to be talking to descendants who really didn't have the lived experience of coming to this country, but they did have the lived experience of the market and then market owners who had the experience of leaving voluntarily or involuntarily. Right. From some other culture and coming here, you know, and again, the market is the thread that binds, right? Yeah. So even through generations. Yeah. And I remember you were mentioning that, you know, some of the older generations, the historic markets, you know, and then their children all worked the markets and then some of them took over the market or, you know, but we're now more recent immigrants are here and they really make a push for their children to live a different lifestyle. Right. So they come here looking happily working super hard because it's not an easy lifestyle, right? It's always, it's not an eight hour day. No, it's practically a 24 seven job really. And, you know, they're up early and closing late and they want their kids to go to college and have a different job and a different life in America than they have. Yeah. Yeah. I got to say a couple of times during the talk, I got verclimbed because you were talking about certain things like that, you know, and I just, I kind of sympathize or empathize and relate to that struggle and, you know, it's, and again, you know, the drawing the line through the years, you know, so what historic immigrants went through. Maybe it was two generations for their kids to get out of that struggle or that hardware and now, you know.  I wish we did not apply. Right. And so there was that experience, but I think these markets and these very kind of close communities surrounding these markets were really a support for people.  And so they're, they have a lot of advice on how to get settled. Yeah, he mentioned it. It's more, it's not just the market, right? It's like a social club. Yeah. For people that have experienced the same thing and they're selling a product that, you know, culturally relates to those people that go there. So that's the, again, the bond and then they get to share that experience. So yeah, it's, it's, it's an amazing dynamic that's not changed that much, right? Yeah. No, it hasn't really, you know, obviously the world has changed and people don't shop the same way anymore. Right. You know, you can even buy your groceries online and you, you know, a lot of people have cars, but or, or they take public transportation. A lot of these markets were, you know, they were smack dab in the middle of neighborhoods. There were some in between houses and, and so you just walked everywhere. So different in that way. Yeah. And there wasn't refrigeration in the, you know, till later. And so people bought, shopped more frequently so that things would stay fresh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, that's another socioeconomic, you know, part of it, you know, so the small markets we have are still serving that role. You know, I remember when they moved the, the co-op from right, right here to downtown, you know, and they were worried about people having to walk farther to, to get food and it was, you know, expanding and stuff. And that's, that's a real concern for some of the neighborhoods, you know. And these markets continue to, to take care, to fill that niche for those folks, you know. I feel really lucky. I was, my nephew wanted some Bosnian dried meat. I didn't know what that was. He heard about it. And I worked with a friend of mine's Bosnian. I worked with him and I was like, you know, so I went to the Euro market. And I, so I didn't say it last night. There's a lot of people, a lot of questions, you know. But when I went there, you know, I was like, I don't know what I'm looking for. You know, I got a friend who gave me a little bit of advice and I walked in and I asked him and they were so happy to try and show me and share and tell me what was good and what wasn't good and what my nephew was like, you know. And then I bought it and I have to be, I'm a little embarrassed. I brought it to work and I was asking my other friend how to ship it to my nephew and he said, oh, you can order it online and have it shipped directly. But you gave that market business. I did. And then he and I ate it. So I never sent it and it was really good. And we shared that experience of some other kind of food that I had never had. And I was like, oh, he's showing me how to cut it and, you know, and it was great. And I wouldn't, you know, sorry Dylan. I wouldn't have had he not asked me for that. I probably wouldn't have strolled into that market like you said, you know. Right, right, yeah. I don't think of it. But somebody last night said that they also want to start shopping more locally now. Yeah. And it's funny because when I, the dotto at that market, he has two women that used to be customers and they now work at the front counter quite a bit. And they're so great. They're so helpful about, you know, looking at when I was, I can't remember if I was talking to dotto about mayonnaise and they sell mayonnaise in tubes. And you know, it was just so fascinating to talk to these women. I bought a tube of mayonnaise because they said, we just love our mayonnaise so much better. It's got so much more flavor. And it really is. It's so fascinating to try it and go, yeah, you really taste the difference. So yeah, it's really fun to try things at these markets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do enjoy that. You said that last night too. You went in for one thing to some place and you chatted with people and you left with an arm load of stuff because you did all these new things. Try this. Try this. Right, right. That's really, it was, so you enjoyed it. It was a, I mean, it's a lot of work. Yeah. Three years of pulling this together and interviewing so many people, you know? Yeah. But you know, I'm really pleased with how everything has evolved and you know, the walking tour gives people the chance to be out and about and maybe hear about some markets that aren't really part of the project, but they happen to be on our tour route. And it's nice to see things and like be in the space of these neighborhoods. And then the web app is a ton of historical information and lots of audio from the interviews. And then- And that's, you can link to that from HistoricNewEngland.org or- Yeah, so you can go, the web app? Yeah. Yeah. You can access it. It's under like virtual exhibits or something like that. I can't quite remember, but. It's pretty easy to find. I pulled it up yesterday. Yeah. And I walked away from the tour, I went home and I pulled it up to just look at everything. And you know, it's pressuring you to do the show, so I thought. And then at the exhibit, we will have the content translated into four languages. So Arabic, Nepali, Somali, and Swahili. And we talked to AALV about which languages, if we had only limited ability to do it, would be the most would they suggest. So those were the ones we did. And we had them, the whole exhibit translated into each of those languages. And then I sat down with somebody who actually read the content and recorded it so people can listen to audio as well if they are not interested in reading it or they aren't able to read in their language. Cool. So yeah. There's so many, so many parts to that, you know. Yeah. And it's important though, because this exhibit, you know, is, we want it accessible. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.  Yeah. You know, like my Bosnian friend always tells me his English is much better than my Bosnian. Yeah. And he's right. Yeah. Yeah. So they could read it and stuff. So what else is going on? We're, you know, what's your next project? So this is a big, huge thing. Yeah. I sadly have to start to let it go. I am working. Yeah. But you've brought it to fruition. Yeah. And there'll be little, you know, there are things already growing out of it that will sort of happen on the side, but I won't be working on it so in such a focused way. But I'm now turning my attention to a project about early 20th century kit and plan-built houses in Burlington and really within sort of a broader framework of worker, middle-class housing. So, you know, we have a pretty good feel, feeling that there are quite a few kit houses like Sears, Aladdin here because first of all, the location, there was two rail lines coming into Burlington. Two things in, yeah. And then also, you know, Burlington was growing as many cities were in terms of moving away from, shifting away from industry to more of a service industry and professional population at the university and the medical center. So the neighborhoods, you know, the city was expanding. And then also just the rail, the streetcar was helping to expand the city itself and a lot of the biggest states were breaking up in the farmland. Yeah. So we really have these little neighborhoods of these small-scale, very compact houses, some of which are probably kits, but most of which are probably built from plans, you know, that builders, local contractors could pick up at, plan books, they could pick them up at the lumber store or the hardware store or whatever and use those plans to build. So, so that's my next... That's fun. That's going to be fun. Yeah. We had a, you know, one of the home stores on Gove Court, I think, there's a kit home, a Sears kit home that was on the home store and it's just, it's really, they're neat. Yeah. The idea of them are neat.  Yeah.  Love them.  I almost said ugly addition, but I didn't, but you know... It could be a very attractive, oversized addition. Exactly. And we're like... Yeah.  And I mean, I think the first step is really just raising public awareness of this period of housing and the fact that it was really providing an opportunity for, you know, a rising middle class to actually own rather than rent. And also it just kind of dovetailed with, you know, a lot of other modern, like industrial changes, you know, manufacturing, you know, assembly lines so that you could get... There was modern was, you know, the thing. Yeah, yeah. There was all these products now that provided, you know, plumbing, like it was plumbing became accessible to more people and having a kitchen that was equipped with appliances and a vacuum cleaner and all these things were happening at the same time. And they were sort of symbols of sort of a certain leveling off of or a growing of this sort of middle, sort of majority middle, really. Yeah, yeah, middle class, sort of burgeoning middle class with this opportunity and these things going on. Yeah. So, which, you know, not to get political, but it's really important right now, especially with what Burlington is experiencing, the nation is experiencing with housing, you know, it was an opportunity where people could have a starter home. People could move into neighborhoods where they're, you know, and we've, I think we're moving away from that in a lot of ways and we're not appreciating it or embracing it or embracing the ones we have. Right. You know, you take one of those houses and you make it huge, then the next people can't really step in with their family when you're ready to move on. Right, yeah. And they were, you know, before the term sustainable or energy efficient, we're even part of our lexicon, they were sort of inherently that. And so, yeah, it's kind of like it's not really a new thing. When you talk about new urbanism or small, you know, walkable neighborhoods, these were all that. Yeah. It's all been a thing already, you know, like all of human history. We've done it over and over and over again. Let's learn from it, you know. Yeah, exactly. Take the best of it. Well, that's cool. That's going to be a fun project. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. So anything else you want to pitch while we're here? Yeah. Historic New England is holding its first ever, but it will be an annual event summit. And this will be on October 13th and 14th in Worcester, Massachusetts. And it's really something that we want to do each year to bring together sort of leaders in the arts, in preservation, in museums, in planning, and bring people together to sort of really talk about shared challenges and solutions. And it could be around climate change or inclusivity. A lot of museums, including Historic New England, are re-evaluating how they've told stories and whose stories they've told. And so it's really an opportunity for us to bring together people who are interested in sort of meeting sort of this century and some of the changes that are sort of on us. It is ambitious and it's going to happen every year. Are you going? Of course. Okay. Well, I'll probably go. Yeah. It is. It touches on everything that we're all concerned with and that we're working towards. So thanks. Thank you for so many things, but thanks for putting that whole more than a market together. Yeah. I know there's a lot of work. Thanks for coming on the show and doing the recap. Yeah. And I just appreciate Historic New England. You guys are the foremost, obviously, in this region pulling these things together and being a leader in so many ways.  So thanks again. Yeah. It's been great and I really honestly couldn't do it without my partners here. The people I've built relationships with, like Preservation Burlington or the city of Burlington or the Vermont Folklife Center, I'm the only staff person here. So those are incredibly valuable relationships to make these things happen. Yes. Team. I want to thank everybody for tuning in to CCTV, live at 525 in the Preservation Burlington show. For more information on Burlington history, our tours and events, if you get a market for your house, go to www.preservationburlington.org and historicnewengland.org and we'll see you next month. Thanks. Thanks.


So yeah, I'm Sam Whitehead. I'm a sometimes work for the XMPB standards foundation. I'm not sure why that's on there. I think I copy pasted from some old slides, but I'm also currently employed by Cloudflare. So obligatory we're hiring. And a medication will go contributor. And I'm gonna talk a bit about the empty interface. I called the talk the case for empty interface, but I'm not really arguing for it. I'm just kind of trying to to figure out when is a good time to use the empty interface and when is it a problem. So I suspect everyone in this room, I suspect I don't have to give an introduction to empty interface for this crowd or why it can often be a problem. It's one of those feature of go that ends up giving you a lot of interesting problems, but is also very useful. And I will start with some assumptions that I think will, if you don't know what empty interface is, they might explain a little bit about it. And if you do, these are just some assumptions you'll need to know or need to agree with potentially if you're going to agree with this presentation. So the first one is in go interfaces should describe behavior, not data. I think that's one of the go proverbs. And it's kind of part of the basis for this talk. Also the empty interface is easy to abuse and thus is abused. This is just something, if you don't agree with this, you know, we can argue afterwards, but that's sort of the fundamental underlying assumption for this talk. Also, anytime I say empty interface, you should hear optional dynamic typing. And if you don't know what empty interface is, that's the most succinct description I can give you. And if you can describe your behavior with a more specific type, you should. I think this is another one of the go proverbs. And finally, possibly the most controversial, heavy use of reflection leads to difficult to maintain code. And if you're a Ruby developer and disagree with this, then go attempt to modify one of the encoding slash JSON or XML packages and then get back to me afterwards. And those are sort of the things you need to understand going in or maybe not agree with, but it would be helpful. So let's start with the encoding packages. I'll be using an example from encoding XML, but it's exactly the same in JSON, pick your poison. We're going to look at the Marshall API. Now, from the user's perspective, Marshall is an elegant, maybe even beautiful API. It's encoded right in the function signature. I give it some arbitrary data, empty interface, and I get some arbitrary representation out. And that's great because the producer of the value in the empty interface, the user of the library, doesn't really have to care about the data. They just put some data in and get some data out. It's very, very succinct, very nice to use, works very well. There are other methods if you need more control. But when you start digging, and this is all, this empty interface says nothing is one of Rob Pike's famous Go Proverbs. And that's really all you need in this specific API. Nothing. You don't need to know anything about the value of V. But from the package developers perspective, this leads to, from the XML package developers perspective, this leads to a lot of problems. It's obvious what to do with V if V is a type from the standard library. If it's an int, we make up some representation for an int. And we can do a nice simple type switch that decides is this an int, is this a string, is this some other type. If it's something defined in the XML package, like the XML-martial interface, it also has a predefined behavior. The XML package can know if it's an XML-martial, call it's martial XML function. But as soon as we start getting into user-defined types and more complex types, like some arbitrary struct that is not defined in the XML package, it becomes really difficult for the XML package to know what to do with that data. On this struct, the XML package knows nothing about any of the fields. It doesn't know about name. It doesn't know about tags. It doesn't know about the layout of the struct. Now, we could limit the usefulness of the XML package and not support user-defined types, but that's not going to be very useful. People aren't going to use our package. So the way that information has to be gathered is using reflection. And that leads to effectively two separate code bases. Half of the package is reflection-based. Half of it is normal idiomatic go. And it's very hard to reconcile these sort of two distinct code bases. Hard to get data between them. Hard to read and process the reflection-based parts of the package if you're trying to work on it. So it's great from the user's perspective, not so great from the package maintainer's perspective. This use of empty interface. So when the producer of some data, the user of the package in this case, does not care about the type, but the consumer does, the XML package, which is consuming that empty interface, the library becomes difficult to maintain. Reformulated, that gives us our sort of first rule for using empty interface. The producer of the empty interface, the value in the empty interface, must also be the consumer of that value. So let's talk about another package, context. And context is actually going to have problems because of this rule, and we'll have to modify it a bit to make this work. So if you haven't used context before, this is sort of the basic trimmed down version. Most of these examples will be a little trimmed down version of the API that we care about. Context is effectively like an associative array or a map. You have a key and a value, and you can index things by that key and get things out. The implementation doesn't really matter. But in context, the key and the value are empty interfaces, and the consumer is also the producer, like that last rule. Most of the time, when you create a context, you are, for instance, doing it for some HTTP middleware, and your package has a, oops, that's not right, your package has a, say, get session ID from context and insert session ID, or new context with session ID function. So you are both creating and consuming from within that package the empty interface value. And this makes the context package a study in simplicity. If you've never looked at the code, I really recommend it. It's very simple, very elegant package, but it has some other problems. So let's look at a quick, the documentation for context. Package context defines the context type, which carries deadlines, cancellation signals, and other request scoped values across API boundaries and between processes. Request scoped values is the kind of key word here. What does that mean? It's sort of a, we don't really know, this is API as, or documentation as API, because this wasn't something that was encoded in the API we have for context. Nothing in here gives you any indication of what a request scoped value is, or how context should be used. So these request scoped values, I think the original idea was to have things like session ID, request ID, maybe a trace ID if you're using some sort of tracing. Basically anything that's a simple value that ends in ID. Maybe that last part's a little bit of a stretch, but very simple values. Unfortunately, I suspect we've all seen context abuse to do things like this. A lot of times I find new Java developers, for instance, that are coming in to go, or other languages where you're used to a pattern like this, discover goes dependency injection package, and love to abuse context to put in database connections and metrics and various loggers. Don't do this. It's terrible. It leads to a maintainability nightmare because this is effectively an undocumented side channel API. I suspect we've all run into this at some point where you say, well, how am I getting my database connection in my middleware? And someone says, if you're a web developer, and someone says, oh, well, that's just in a context based on a key in some package somewhere. And none of that was in the function signature, and none of that was in the API, and you had to kind of dig through and find it. And then you're trying to type a cert on a thing in a context and figure out if it works, but maybe it doesn't because someone's inserted the wrong middleware in the chain, and it just becomes a nightmare, and it's very hard to use. So this is a sort of more specific example of one of those. This is the common, no, really, don't do this with context thing. Because you see there's a, the kind of basic middleware pattern people use when they're abusing context this way is you get the context, you insert a value with, or create a new context with that value, and then you create a new request with that new context and pass it on through your middleware chain. None of this really is tied to the request specifically, or none of this guarantees that the value you're using is really request scoped. So this kind of leads us to our second rule. The way, the reason this is abusable as a side channel API is because this context leaks between packages, or this empty interface leaks between packages. So empty interface should not cross package boundaries, otherwise it's able to be used as a side channel API and kind of slip, smuggle data through into packages where it's not supposed to be. Finally, we'll take a look at a third package, and I couldn't find a good example of this in the standard library, and I'm sure one exists. And if I, if there's a much better example I hope someone will tell me afterwards. So I'm going to use an example from one of my packages. Sassel is a, an authentication framework that's widely used. You probably use it every time you log in to check your email with SMTP, or you probably use WhatsApp or Facebook chat or something. I don't actually know what they use, but it's just a widely used potentially multi round trip authentication framework. So I have a little go library that uses it. And the API looks something like this. We have a mechanism, which are things like plain username and password authentication auth to various kind of authentication systems. A negotiator, which is a state machine that actually handles the authentication flow, make sure that replay attacks aren't possible, make sure that that general security constraints are enforced. And that has a function that the user of the package calls to advance the state machine and accepts challenges and returns responses and you can serialize that in your whatever your chat protocol or your email or whatever the protocol is and send them over the wire. So as you can see the mechanism API takes and returns an empty interface. And this I think is actually a pretty good use of interface because this mechanism might be defined by a user in their own package. But the way it works is every single time the negotiator step method is called we're moving we've gotten a new authentication request or something over the wire, and we are advancing the state machine and trying to do some sort of authentication. It calls this mechanism as part of its work calls this mechanisms next function that's the user defined whatever OAuth2 specific what we need to do thing that returns some data since the sassel might be multi step. In a future step, you might need a value from an earlier step. So for instance, in scram, which is just is a password based authentication where you never send the password, you do a proof of possession. One of the ways the server make sure it's still talking to the same person is it returns a signed version of the very first message that was sent. Which is also something I think TLS does and so you have this data you might need in another step. Unfortunately, for reasons that don't really matter here, mechanisms have to remain stateless or don't have to but it's because this is a thing users are writing and is authentication based. It's important to keep them stateless because keeping things stateless makes them simpler and auth code is notoriously difficult to write and difficult to get correct to begin with and is security sensitive. So we want to make things as simple as possible. But there is this state that needs to be stored somewhere. So since the negotiator, the state machine is already stateful for obvious reasons. It's called a state machine. We can return that state that needs to be stored. The negotiator will store it for us and then when it calls next again in future steps, it will pass that back in as the data parameter. That all sounds very complicated and it kind of is. I wish I tried to draw a flow diagram but for some reason I couldn't get box drawing characters to show up or work at all. I have no idea why. And I tried to do a JPEG and it was awful and I kind of gave up after a while. But the idea is data is returned from cache and then the next step passed back in as the data parameter. And this keeps things very simple. It means the producer is always the consumer. This next function always puts a value into cache and is always getting it back in data. And that means that in practice the next functions are generally always structured like this when people write these mechanisms. You end up with something like a step that checks the states. This API is not what it looks like in the actual package. It's sort of simplified. So it might check are we in step one, step two, step three with a switch or an F or something. Put some data in this case a randomly selected integer into return it for use in a future step and then because it returned it, it can always assert on the type of that data and it knows that it will never be mistaken. It's very easy to test and it's very simple and easy to read. I think this is a slightly better use of empty interface and it follows these two rules we've mentioned before. And this is the point in the talk, I think, where I have a bit of a confession to make. I've been deliberately wasting your time. Both of these rules actually kind of simplify down into a much simpler rule that encompasses both of them. And it took me a while to realize this, which is why I bothered with the rest of the talk because hopefully it kind of gave you a few examples first that will make this make more sense. My real rule for using empty interface is you must always be able to type assert on the value in the empty interface. And if you can't do that it's going to lead to problems. So empty interface gives you, it's not that it's useless, it's easy to say well if I can type assert why don't I just return an int. But in a lot of cases you do need arbitrary data. In some languages you would use generics for this in others there are other mechanisms. In go that's sort of a mix of empty interface and closures. But if you are using the empty interface and you have some arbitrary data that you need to return it needs to be known arbitrary data. You must always be able to type assert on that data and that will make sure that you don't run into maintainability problems later. And I think that's sort of the core rule when using empty interface that needs to be followed. There's a lot of other examples if you go dig through the standard library but these are my kind of three rules for using empty interface. I'm going to end really early. That's really it. So if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to take them in the back. So defining a method, I'll repeat the question but that's a validator method is what you're asking about or like a validate interface value. I'm not sure that I followed the question I'm sorry. So I think the question, stop me if I'm wrong, I think the question was is it a good idea to define methods like is integer value or something for your empty interfaces? Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think it's a bad idea but I don't think it's necessary because I don't have an example on here. But because you can you should be able to type assert in my opinion. If you can't though if for some reason you really do just need to check if a value is a certain thing that's what type switching is for or types or type assertions with the optional okay parameter. So I don't see the use in having a separate method but I may have misunderstood the question. Anybody else? Oh right. So the question is at what point could you type assert in the Marshall XML example and you really can't is the problem. That's sort of why this was one of my early not a bad example. It's a great example from the user's perspective. It's a very nice API but it's very bad from the from the developer's perspective and the reason is like I said it's hard to type assert. You end up having to do this are lots of reflection to get because you can't type assert because you don't know what the type is. You have to do a lot of reflection so it you can't is I think the answer. I don't know a way not in this I would love to know a better way to do the encoding package and go but I haven't thought through that. Anybody else? I guess that's it. I'm sorry I'm very early. Thank you.


Nearly 5,500 participants from 20 Allied and partner nations joined together to participate in the annual Sabre Junction Exercise. This U.S. Army Europe-directed exercise is designed to assess the readiness of the 173rd Airborne Brigade to execute unified land operations. The operations consist of airborne operations, which include airdrops from C-130, C-27, C-17 aircraft in the case of this exercise, and they land on multiple drop zones throughout the training area and then maneuver to their fighting positions to take on the opposition forces in the homefills training area. Sabre Junction 18 is a collaboration of NATO partners working together in a multinational environment. It is also an opportunity for U.S. forces to practice executing the mission in a joint branch exercise. As a C-17 pilot, my job is to deliver goods and materials to the people who need it, and a lot of times that is the Army. It's really cool seeing the face of the guys that actually get and need that stuff. You never really get to see how it impacts, so getting to see a Humvee drop here and then somebody jump in it and drive away and go execute their missions is really awesome. Sabre Junction 18 ensures that U.S. forces in Europe are ready to execute the mission unilaterally or with our Allied and partner nations. Reporting from Hohenfels, Germany, I'm Staff Sergeant Lauren O'Connor. The tune and the mission.


Being ready for a search and rescue mission requires constant training for a call you hope to never get. Lieutenant Junior Grade Curtis Calabrese, a P3 pilot with VP4, explains why being ready at a moment's notice is so vital to the success of a mission. The longer time it is by, you have currents that are taking the debris further and further away. The sea state is going to change and when night time sets it's even harder to find objects. So we have limited day late hours and hopefully optimal sea states. The first day we went out there the sea was great and we could really see objects easily and that's how we were able to find so many objects within the first 24 hours. When the skinny dragons received orders to join the search for the missing Egypt air flight they knew the chance of finding survivors was slim. We were definitely going out there with the attention to find survivors hopefully in a life after or with flotation devices. Of course the longer you're out there and the more debris you see in your head you become less hopeful and it kind of hits home a little bit more at what you're doing. It's kind of turning less from search and rescue to the search and recovery. But you still have the same mindset that you're going out there if it's not to rescue someone is to give peace of mind to the family. Try to piece together evidence and just figure out what happened on the flight. For the time being VP4 will remain the eyes in the sky for the Egyptian and Greek authorities searching for answers in the plane's black box. Reporting from Naval Air Station Sigonella, I'm Petty Officer Rebecca Sunderland.


Doing an autopsy on a carcass. Well, it may not be a human being and it may not be somebody who's passed away, but this is my carcass, the carcass for a workshop cabinet. And when you're done building something, you should probably stop and do an autopsy and make some notes about all of the mistakes that you made so that you can look at those notes before your next big build and then try to avoid some of those things. I am accumulating quite an encyclopedia of notes of mistakes that I've made and that's called experience. Hola woodworkers, Paul Carson here, a small workshop guy. So I've got this cabinet pretty well done. I'm putting on some finish. That's a mistake we'll talk about. But I just wanted to talk about this carcass for a workshop cabinet. It's a 16 drawer cabinet that does not use drawer slides but rather uses some runners. And it's a face frames first build. I have another video that talks about the face frame first method in more detail and gives little sketch up illustrations all the way along. I'll put a card up here and I'll put a link down below in the description if I can remember. If you want more detail on that, you can go there. My face frame first, what I mean is I built with some poplar this frame, this exterior frame and that's all I did first. I put some pocket hole screws back here in the styles and then the bottom and top, bottom and top on the far right hand side. I didn't do these and then I pocket hold them together into the rails. And then so that's all we had. Now right there, you better make sure that that puppy is absolutely square 90 degrees because if that's all everything else will be off for guaranteed certain. Fact is I think the biggest lesson that I'm learning after several years of doing this is A, try to get much, much more precise at the very beginning of the project. You can't make up for it later. So when you're getting a face frame put together as your first step, make sure you are exactly 90 degrees at all four corners. In doing that, it helps to have a really nice square and an accurate one. This one's been tested and a large one because that'll help give you more indication whether you're truly square over quite a number of inches rather than just using some little six inch T square. All right, so make sure that's square. First mistake as I was putting some of these plugs in, I realized that I had not gone deep enough with my countersink and so the screw head was just barely inside there so it didn't leave me any room to put in the plugs. And so I had to take out a few of the screws countersink further and make room for the plugs. You can see these plugs. What's the mistake? The mistake was being in a hurry, just grabbing a piece of poplar, going to my drill press and drilling out the plugs without getting any consideration saying, hey, poplar is poplar. Well, apparently this color of poplar is different than this color of poplar. So I should have looked at my face frame and decided what kind of poplar as far as the grain and the color and so forth I should grab to do those plugs. I could find some poplar that's got this in it. In fact, there's very little of my poplar is this clear, but apparently all of my plugs came out of a very clear piece. So there's another mistake. When you're creating plugs, take a little time and find the wood you're going to pull them out of that matches the wood that they're going to go into. What am I going to do about that? Is there a solution? I think the answer is yes. I can't tell you for sure yet. Matt Jackson of Next Level Carpenter is one that taught me about these. These are a set of wax tints that you can take to finish up a project. And if you've got a little color mismatch, then you can find the right color here and apply the wax. I haven't done it yet because the instructions say do it after you've got all of your finishes on. So we'll see how that comes out as far as a method to fix it. This is from Fast Cat. It's called the Soft Wax Kit. I'll try to remember to put a link down below, although maybe it's not available through Amazon. But you can certainly go to the Fast Cat website and get it. Now, one big mistake that I have is because I'm not using drawer slides, I'm just using these runners. I wanted to have a little bit of room in the width of my drawer so that it wouldn't be too tight because already I'm running based on friction. Now I've waxed all of this with some hard furniture wax so that it's nice and slippery. And I waxed all the inside. I didn't bother to lacquer or use any finish on the inside. All wood wax. But here's what I did wrong. I built my drawer widths of the boxes with just a little bit too much wiggle room. It turns out that with that little bit of wiggle room, then when I put in a drawer, let me grab one here, the drawers are done using the quarter, quarter, quarter method. When I put in a drawer then, it has some room back and forth. Although maybe I tried to do a sixteenth of an inch on each side, I wasn't precise enough and so I think I got a little bit more than that. Well, that's no problem. It goes in here, it goes up nicely against the face frame and you think that would be alright. But when you're trying to build the face and get them all lined up properly, the fact that you have drawer that move back and forth, then it's very, very difficult to do all of your alignment. And so, I wish what I had done was built my drawers so that they were tighter in the opening just by making the front and the back a little wider and then they wouldn't move around as much. So then when I'm trying to put on the fronts, it would be easier to get a nice alignment. Again, it is a shop cabinet so that's not the end of the world. It's not like a chest of drawers up in a bedroom and that's why you do your shop furniture first to teach you what to do when you get to the real furniture. I got one more mistake that I'm discovering during autopsy. Had all this beautiful Baltic birch plywood with Baltic birch edge banding that I did almost everywhere. But my whole cabinet looked this color or this color and I took some boards, similar same material and I tested a lot of different finishes to decide what would look good. But the mistake I made was I think my sample pieces where I put down different kinds of material. For instance, the Watco Danish oil that I put on one piece of that wood. It looked like kind of like what I wanted. It didn't look like it changed the color hardly at all. But I think what happened was I have too small of a sample and so I put these samples there side by side and they didn't look that much different so I picked the one that I thought looked the best and so I just decided when it was time to put that Watco finish on here. I just poured it on the top and got going. I said, the minute I did that I said, uh oh, that's a mistake. I like it the way it's bringing out some of the grain and so forth but I don't like it that amber, that color. I should have, even after I had tested on different sample pieces I really probably should have tested it, oh I don't know, on the inside or on the back somewhere. I could have just tested it anywhere other than the whole top and it would have probably told me that I should go back to the drawing board and change to a different finish. Sanded it all off and then I put on some shellac and then it really came out cool. It was kind of an artistic model, how do they say that? So anyway, it's like those fancy walls you see in the fancy homes so kind of like the way that turned out. That's my autopsy of my carcass. I'm going to write those mistakes down and make sure I don't repeat them on any future projects. Small workshop guy, hoping you'll like, comment and subscribe. Have a nice day and be safe in your workshop.


We're going to talk about what is an opt-in form and why it's so important for your business today on The Journey. So if you're like most people, you started your website or your blog and you have all these followers and people who are reading your content, or maybe you've developed this following on social media, but what would happen if all of those things just went away? If social media, you know, and half the people aren't seeing your stuff anyway because of the algorithm. So that's where an opt-in form comes in so handy because it gets people to sign up for your email list. And then that way you control your audience and what you're sending to them. Now that sounds great Morgan, but now where can you put an opt-in form? Yeah, the easiest place you can do it is obviously on your website. So you can do it on the footer, say, hey, you want to join my newsletter? I want to hear more, get my weekly tips. They can just sign up right there. You can have at the end of your post. You can have it in your social media profiles. Really, you can put it anywhere that there's a link. So I heard that you can, you know, buy a list of email addresses. Is that really the best practice? Yeah, that's a no. We've all been added to lists where you get these emails and you're like, who the heck is this from? That's a one-way ticket to Spamville. So don't do that.  The easiest way is just to give your readers the opportunity to sign up and then they'll enjoy the content that you're sending and most likely read it. Now, I know I'm already a part of a lot of different email lists and I wouldn't really want to join another one. Yeah. So what do you do to make someone or entice them to sign up? Yeah, obviously your fans are going to join because they want your content. But some of your readers and fans may need a little extra incentive. And that's where an opt-in incentive comes in. So this could be anything where, hey, sign up and you get this freebie or you get my checklist on how to be more productive, things like that. Just give them something that encourages them to sign up. So that way they're not just signing up for another list. And a lot of times you will have people sign in, get the little freebie and bounce and unsubscribe. But a lot of the time you will have people who will stay. And if you have great content, they're going to stick around. And that's more opportunity for you to market you and your business. As you often heard, content is king. So now, Morgan, you have your email subscribers, but now how do you keep them? Yeah. So you want to make sure number one is that you have a really eye-catching subject line. I think one of the easiest way to do this is to throw an emoji in there because when I see that, those emails stand out. So and don't just go emoji crazy because that's a little too much.  I want that. So yes, content is king. And so you want to make sure that content is super relevant to your audience. They signed up and they want to stick around for what they signed up for. That's what they're expecting.  You know, you may find people who aren't really into that because they actually really liked your top five articles of the week. So make sure that your content is relevant and really driving to not only what your users want, but also what you want for your business. This is a huge opportunity to convert these users into paying customers. So you're going to have to balance that. And another way to get people to opt into your email list is to have subscriber only perks. I know I'm a part of some email list where you get first chance at merchandise or opportunities to see different videos before everybody else does.  Part of the Cool Kids Club. Exactly. And the next thing is don't email your subscribers every day. You don't want to be that one that floods everyone's email. We all, we know who you are, company X unsubscribe. So make sure to space it out and, you know, give your subscribers a breather every now and then. So guys, you need to get started creating your opt in and your email list now. It is so important. Even if you don't have a product yet, you have people who will be following you and you want to start creating and building that list. Even if your product is a year out, so that way, when it is ready to launch, boom, you have an instant base of customers that you can now sell to. Don't wait. And I know it's a lot of work and coming up with these emails and I'm already doing social media and I'm already doing blog posts, but make the time. It doesn't have to be like we said, definitely don't do once a day. It doesn't even have to be weekly. Just find a nice cadence so you can start getting people on your list and giving them some value. All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed this video on what is an opt in form and how to effectively use it in your email marketing. And I'm curious, let me know what are those companies or people that anytime they send you an email, you click it and you check it out. Comment below and make sure that you like this video, subscribe to our channel and also ring the bell so you know when we have new fresh content coming out. This is the journey. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.


So I just wanted to let you guys know I'm giving you more options to help me out Hopefully you realize that they realize realize that on my page films by Chris commas Chris K link in the description There's a support section you click on support scrolls down to it and up until now There's been a PayPal link and a patreon link I've changed the PayPal link into a Libre pay link which allows you to pay through that using either PayPal or Stripe I just signed up for that really don't know much about it, but it's been recommended to me So if you like my videos and would like to support me now you have another way Hopefully a better way of supporting me and you can do Monthly weekly supports through that or of course through patreon With that said, I hope that you do like my videos and that you do consider supporting me I want to thank you guys. I think it was 2012 so almost almost Ten years ago you guys helped me pay for this computer Awesome. I went out. I asked you guys today. I'm doing videos. I need a new computer Do you think you guys could chip in and I was surprised how quickly people started responding and overall? I got just shy of $1,500 a thousand of that from one person which was very unexpected. I I appreciate that. I appreciate all my viewers That being said this computer still awesome. I love it I've upgraded the RAM upgrade the hard drive and it's new USB ports recently and also all the old fans side So I put these ones in with the horribly bright red lights. I knew they had lights on them I didn't like how bright they were gonna be Pretty awesome. I am gonna do a video asking you guys some suggestions on possible upgrades to this but since we're on the topic of Support for me and ways of doing that and how great you guys were ten years ago with that and I try not to ask too much From you guys, but I could really use a new laptop to help me work on stuff for you guys when I'm not sitting here I have This think pad. I love it, but it's seen better days. It's getting kind of old Battery shot doesn't last more than a minute or two without it. I could get a new battery for it But it's an older model bulk bulkier VGA, so it doesn't have HDMI which I kind of need one amount because I try to use TVs as second monitors And it's HDMI. It's just the way things are. So this is a what does this a t40? t400 Love this thing. I barely ever use it anymore when I'm not here at home I have a Chromebook that I installed Debbie and on an Acer one with a touch screen It turns into a tablet got it refurbished for like a hundred and seventy five dollars two years ago It allows me to surf the internet do a few things, but definitely not recording videos Doing some of the programming stuff. I like to practice when I'm not at home Sometimes I have opportunities to learn new things teach you and it's hard to do on that little thing. So I like to ask like Nine years ago when you guys help me with this if everyone helps out now You know any money I get in the next couple of weeks I can put towards maybe getting a new laptop. So that's something I need but something that'd be very helpful and basically what I'd like to do is see what you guys Support me with and I hate using the word donate but you donate to me And then I'll have a price range and then I like to come back and get your recommendations on hardware So yeah, if you guys like my videos and you could support especially right now That's what the money would be going to And I would appreciate that that would be great I've definitely again once I have a number in mind if I actually get enough to buy a laptop I will definitely come back and get recommendations from you guys on What I should get I really really like to think pads So I might go that route again because I know they have newer models so I just haven't really looked into them too much because I haven't had the money to do that and Hopefully I can get some so thank you very much for watching again. Go to my website films by Chris calm There'll be a link in the description of the video in the top menu. There's a button click support We'll scroll down to the sports section. There's two buttons There's a patreon one, but then there's the new Libre pay and again You can do one-time donations weekly monthly. I think there might even be a yearly option And I just checked the box to accept all currency That makes things easier on you guys because I know not all of you are here in the US And I just signed up for the stripes account stripe account. I haven't used it, but Libre pay you recommended it So I thought I'd give it a try. I really hope that that makes it easier for you guys If you have any other recommendations to make easier for you to support me, let me know I know there's so many options out there and I don't want to have like a bazillion buttons on my website But Libre pay was the one that I thought I'd go with Instead just having a paypal. Of course, it still goes through. I've talked too much now I thank you again for watching and if you are able to support me Thank you so much. If not, I thank you so much for watching because I Do these videos because I feel like I'm helping people and the more views I get it makes me feel good So I appreciate your views your likes your shares and those of you that subscribe So thank you so much, and I hope that you have a great day


As you were left hanging at the end of the last episode, we literally did not have tickets to the game and couldn't get in. It was sold out everywhere. It felt horrible. I just figured, oh, we'll go down there. It's an afternoon game. They're never sold out. And for whatever reason, that game just sold out. But this Blue Jay employee came by and I mentioned we don't have tickets. He's like, oh, that's too bad. I actually had extra tickets, but I do have one left. If you want that one ticket, you can take it and you can go in with your son. It was awesome. It was awesome. Let's go, Macy. He had no idea what was going on. He just fed off the excitement. As soon as I plopped him down, he was off. He stopped at this one point where there was a big mural of the Jays and he was like, wow. Macy and I want to thank the gentlemen who gave us a ticket to go to Macy's first game. To really commemorate the memory, I wanted to make something. The overall idea for this is the shape of a foam plate. And I took the sign that he made and cut it up and put it as the backdrop. We can see his little toesies and everything like that where he walked on it. I also have multiple snapshots from the game that I want to put on the piece. I bought this little bat for him at the game. Here you go. Put something like that at the top. And I've also got, obviously, this magical ticket that the guy gave to me. So that has to be on there without a doubt. I am so happy to be a father. I'm so lucky to have Mason as my son. I just look forward to more and more memories like this.


Personal Finance Powerpoint Presentation. Stock Investing Introduction. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Most of this information can be found at Investopedia, how to start investing in stocks, a beginner's guide, which you can find online. Take a look at the references, resources, continue your research from there. This by Chad Landgager, updated March 14th, 2022. In prior presentations, we've been taking a look at investment goals investment strategies, investment tools, keeping in mind two main categories of investments, fixed income, such as bonds, and stocks or equity investments. The focus here on the stocks or equity investments, keeping that in mind, how to start investing in stocks, a beginner's guide. Investing is a way to set aside money while you are busy with life and have the money work for you so that you can fully reap the rewards of your labor in the future. So clearly, we would like our money that we are earning to not just be sitting in the bank, but hopefully growing so that they can be used at a later point. So a legendary investor, Warren Buffett, defines investing as, quote, the process of laying out money now in the expectation of receiving more money in the future, end quote. So we wanna be putting the money to work for us. The goal of investing is to put your money to work in one or more types of investment vehicles and the hopes of growing your money over time. Let's say that you have $1,000 set aside and are ready to enter the world of investing. So clearly, as we've seen in prior presentations, we first need to be thinking about how are we gonna free up the money so that we can invest. We have a lot of debt that we are dealing with. The question is, do we need to be paying off the debt first before we start investing once we free up the money so that we can put some of our cash flow into investing, then of course, the world of investing opens up and we've got a lot of questions to ask at that point. So, or maybe you only have an extra $10 a week and you'd like to get into investing. In this article, we'll walk you through getting started as an investor and show you how to maximize your returns while minimizing your costs. That's great. Buy low, sell high, that's my motto. What kind of investor are you? Before you commit your money, you need to answer this question. What kind of investor am I? When open a brokerage account and online broker such as Charles Swabs or Fidelity will ask you about your investment goals and what level of risk you're willing to take. So, when we think about our investment goals, we've talked about the investment horizon, how long we have for the investment process to take place, what our investment goals are such as retirement or some specific goal and then our personal risk levels as we pick and choose our investment strategies. Some investors want to take an active hand in managing their money's growth while others prefer a set it and forget it type of method. So, whenever we think about investing, we can say, okay, how much detail do I want to get into the investing? Do I want to be actively doing a lot of activity in the investing or do I want to set it and forget it? If I want to set it and forget it, do I want to do that by getting a managed brokerage account or possibly do I want to use something like index funds or funds that basically have a standard kind of ratio analysis and there's a lot of debate as to whether managed funds can beat the market and so on and so forth. So, we'll talk more about that. More traditional online brokers like the two mentioned above allow you to invest in stocks, bonds, exchange, trade funds, those are the ETF index funds and mutual funds. So, as we invest in stocks and bonds, the two categories note that we're often as individual investors using tools such as possibly investing in mutual funds, ETFs and using those tools. We've talked a little bit more about them specifically in prior presentations. So, online brokers, brokers are either full service or discount full service brokers as the name implies give the full range of traditional brokerage services including financial advice for retirement, health care and everything related to money. They usually only deal with higher net worth clients and can charge substantial fees including percentage of your transactions, a percentage of your assets and that they manage and sometimes a yearly membership fee. So, note that for lower income individuals it might not be worthwhile to get a very expensive portfolio manager. Obviously, as the income gets higher then a lot more complexity comes into play in terms of where the money should be put, how to diversify that money and also you've got a whole lot more like tax planning strategies that might be something that could be implemented at that level as well as estate planning which can also be a huge planning thing that isn't really there for the lower income individuals. So, it's common to see minimum account sizes $25,000 and up to full service brokerages still traditional brokers justify their high fees by giving advice detailed to your needs. So, you're always gonna, if you watch like investment TV and so on they're often interviewing full service brokers. Now, there's nothing wrong with that because they're in the business of investing. However, they're also obviously going to be advocating for their service as a full service broker. So, you'll often hear people asking them, well, do you really think that you're able to beat the market such that you can get a higher return than someone investing in say like just an index fund or possibly a 60, 40 split kind of mutual fund or something like that. And there's debates about that. Also just note that when you hear someone's track record about how well they have done then really you don't really know someone's real track record until you look at the life, their whole investment career because you might have had a 10 year spurt that you just happen to be there at the right time. An aggressive investor that happens to be there when it's good to be aggressive will look like a genius but that same aggressive investor when it's a time that is not suited for that much aggression will look not smart. So, it's kind of difficult to know what an investment's track record is without looking at their full life worth of track record. But in any case, we recommend the best products through an independent revenue process and advertise do not influence our picks. So, these are of course our investopedia picks and not my picks. I'm not affiliated with any of them at all here just given my advice on it. So, we may receive compensation if the visit partners we recommend read our advertised disclosure for more information. Again, that's from investopedia. So, here's what they got here. They got the fidelity investment category, best overall and best for low cost. So, the investopedia rating 4.8, account minimum zero, basic fees zero for stock, ETF trades zero plus 0.65 contracts. IT, Ameritrade, best for beginners and best mobile app. So, I don't personally I don't really like trading on a mobile app. I don't see that. But if you're trading a lot, maybe that would be something that could be beneficial for you. I tend to be more of someone who would like to think about the investing and not be doing day trading kind of thing because I think of a long-term kind of perspective on it. But in any case, 4.5 investopedia rating account minimum at zero and we've got testiworks best for options. So, options 3.8 on the investopedia rating. We got the interactive brokers, best for advanced traders and best for international traders and then Charles Swab, best for the ETFs. So, those are again, as investopedia ratings, I'm not affiliated with them. Take them with a grain of salt. Do your own investments. Take a look at the websites themselves and continue your research from there possibly looking at some of the references from the investopedia possibly. So, discount brokers used to be the exception but are now the norm. Discount online brokers give you tools to select and place your own transactions and many of them also offer a set it and forget it robo advisory service. So, when you're thinking about the advisory service you might be doing some of your own trading for example setting your own decision-making processes. Some of them now give you kind of what they call like the robo advice. They can kind of compile your data and give you a computer generated analysis of advice based on kind of best practices, the main heuristics which again, there's a lot of questions in terms of you might say, well, I want some individual advice but the question is always can the actual active advisors be basically robo advice at this point in time which hopefully is based on kind of best practices over a long period of time. So, as the space of financial services has progressed in the 21st century online brokers have added more features including educational materials on their sites and mobile apps in addition. Although there are a number of discount brokers with no or very low minimum deposit restrictions you may be faced with other restrictions and certain fees are charged to accounts that don't have a minimum deposit. So, you might find that some of the things that you want to investment in for example are gonna need like a minimum deposit in order for you to put the money in which is still way better than having to buy individual stocks and pay for individual brokerage fees in order to do so. Also note that if you are investing in multiple platforms you might think, hey, I'd like to have multiple platforms so that I don't have all my money in one place which can be nice but also it can be a little bit difficult to look at your overall picture in terms of your pie chart and what you're invested in that way. You might have some other kind of tools, investment tools, softwares like a personal capital has one I believe that can pull your investments together even if you don't have all your money in one area and help you to kind of get a pie chart in terms of how much is invested in bonds, what kind of different stocks and so on and so forth. So the managing of your investments can get a little bit tricky. There's different tools. We might dive into that more in the future presentations. So this is something that investors should take into account if they want to invest in stocks. So we got the robo advisors after the 2008 financial crisis a new breed of investment advisor was born, the robo advisor John Steen and Eli Bravernmourn of Betterment are often credited as the first in the space. So their mission was to use technology to lower costs for investors and streamline investment advice. So we've got the wealth front. So these are again, investopedias, robo advisors, wealth front. So category overall best overall best global and you've got the betterment and then the interactive investors. Again, you can look at investopedia for more references from there. Take a look and do your own research about them. We've got the M1 finance. We've got the personal capital, Merrill guided investing and then good old E-Trade. So since Betterment launched, other robo first companies have been founded and even established online brokers like Charles Swab have added robo like advisory services. According to a report by Charles Swab, 58% of Americans say they will use some sort of robo advice by 2025. So if you want an algorithm to make investment decisions for you including tax loss, harvesting and rebalancing then a robo advisor may be for you. So if you can compile all your data which can be difficult if you have multiple different places that different financial institutions but you could use tools to compile them then the robo advice can use general heuristic kind of tools to give you an idea of what the average investment should be given your age range and risk tolerance and so on and possibly give you some advice in terms of tax strategies based on that information as well. So also as success of individual investing has shown you might do better with a robo advisor if your goal is long-term wealth building. So if you're putting your money away for retirement and you're not like trading all the time then that might be a better, that the robo advice might be good because that's what it's designed to do. It's basically saying for long-term this is the idea. If you're trying to beat the market in the short-term then again there's questions in terms of how can that possibly be done. Obviously you're gonna need someone that's an active manager that they can possibly do that. And even then again the question is can they do that in such a way that even it'll extend over and above the fees they're gonna charge for it? So investing through your employer.  So many people start their investment by having a retirement plan like a 401K or a 403B. These are huge tools you wanna take advantage of because if you put money in there you might get a matching benefit on it as well as a tax benefit for it. So obviously you need cash flow to be able to do that. So but it's a huge benefit to be able to put that in. Now that's just kind of like an umbrella over normal kind of investments. They're usually investing in stocks possibly in the form of mutual funds or ETFs that are under the umbrella of a retirement account like a 401K 403B or you could do a similar thing in an IRA and that umbrella is allowing you to get kind of tax benefits. But the investments are the same kind of investments that you can have outside of the umbrella. They're just more restricted once they're in that umbrella. The reason you restrict them is to get a tax benefit.  So work-based retirement plans deduct your contributions from your paycheck before taxes are calculated which will make the contributions even less painful. Once you're comfortable with a 1% contribution maybe you can increase it as you get annual raises. You're likely to miss the additional contributions if you have a 401K retirement account at work then you may be investing in your future already with allocations to mutual funds and even your company's stock. So minimum to open an account. So how much does it cost to get rolling on this thing? Many financial institutions have minimum deposit requirements. In other words, they won't accept your account application unless you deposit a certain amount of money.  So it pays to shop around some and check out your broker reviews before deciding where you want to open an account. We list minimum deposits at the top of each review. So some firms do not require minimum deposits. Other may often reduce costs such as trading fees and account management fees if you have a balance above a certain threshold. So these fees obviously the companies are gonna want you to be putting more money into the accounts. They would like to hire net worth individuals, lower net worth individuals, although they would like them are often more costly because they're more likely to kind of be bouncing around possibly and so on and they don't have as much money in there. So as you put more money in, you might be able to maximize or reduce some of the fees involved. So you wanna keep that in mind when you're thinking about what types of investments you're going towards, look at the fees. So still others may offer a certain number of commission free trades for opening an account. Commission and fees as economics like to say there aren't no such thing as a free lunch. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. So nothing is free because there's always opportunity caused from an economy or an economist's standpoint. Though many brokers have been racing recently to lower or eliminate commissions on trades, the ETFs offer index investing to everyone who can trade with a bare bones brokerage account. All brokers have to make money from their customers one way or another. In most cases, your broker will charge a commission every time you trade stock either through buying or selling, trading fees range from the low end of $2 per trade but can be as high as $10 for some discount brokers. Some brokers charge new trade commissions at all but they make up for it in other ways. There are no charitable organizations running brokerage services. So obviously we're talking about business here. We're not talking about charities. Even charities are in it for the money. I mean, give me a break because they still have to be efficient, right? They have a goal they're trying to reach but they've got to make that goal efficient and they've got to do that by basically paying their employees. Employees are still making money and we know the government is in it for the money, right? The government's not gonna be free. So it's good that it's a business looking for money but you got to be understanding that and hopefully they're gonna lower their costs by being more and more efficient and competing with other businesses. So depending on how often you trade, these fees can add up and affect your profitability. Investing in stocks can be very costly if you hop into and out of positions frequently, especially with a small account of money available to invest. So usually most small investors are here for the long haul. You're putting money away for retirement. If you want to do the day trading kind of thing, that could be a more costly kind of thing and you're probably in more of a gambling situation for a typical investor. So you might want to put some money aside that you're willing to lose to kind of play with it in that case and that could be good because you get a better feel of how to make trades and how everything works. But from a short-term perspective, an individual investor beating the market would be a difficult type of thing. But in any case, remember, a trade is an order to purchase or sell shares in one company. If you want to purchase five different stocks at the same time, this is seen as five separate trades and you will be charged for each one. Now imagine that you decide to buy the stocks of those five companies with your $1,000. To do this, you will incur $50 in trading costs, assuming the fee is $10, which is equivalent to 5% of your $1,000. If you were to fully invest the $1,000, your account would be reduced to $950 after trading costs. This represents a 5% loss before your investment even have a chance to earn. So should you sell these five stocks, you would once again incur the cost of the trades, which would be another $50. So to make the round trip buying and selling on these five stocks would cost you $100 or 10% of your initial deposit amount of $1,000. If your investments do not earn enough to cover this, you have lost money just by entering an exiting position. So mutual funds loads. Most people that start investing, small investors are gonna be using mutual funds and ETFs. So besides the trading fee to purchase a mutual fund, there are other costs associated with this type of investment. Mutual funds are professionally managed pools of investor funds that invest in focused manner, such as large cap US stocks. So you may also have like index funds, for example, which have less management kind of costs because they're based on averages of the market, which is another kind of thing you wanna consider. Do you want a mutual fund, which will have someone managing the fund? And do you want that person to have more control over how they manage it? Or do you want them to restrict them by having them tie it to an index, which should lower the costs of the person managing the fund because they're now just tying it to an index. So the investor will incur many fees when investing in mutual funds. One of the most important fees to consider is the management expense ratio, the MER, which is charged by management team each year based on the number of assets in the fund. So you can look at how costly it is on a ratio basis and do some comparisons. The MER range from 0.05% to 0.7% annually and varies depending on the type of fund, but the higher the MER, the more it affects the fund's overall returns. So you may see a number of sales charges called loads when you buy mutual funds.  So be sure that you understand whether a fund that you are considering carries a sales load prior to buying it. So check out your broker's list of no load funds and no transaction fee funds if you want to avoid these extra charges. For the beginning investor, mutual fund fees are actually an advantage compared to commissions on stocks. This is because the fees are the same regardless of the amount that you invest. So it could be a little bit easier because you know exactly what the fees are based on your investment for the mutual funds. Therefore, as long as you meet the minimum requirement to open an account, so some mutual funds will have that minimum amount you have to put in, you can invest as little as $50 or $100 per month in a mutual fund. So you can put more and more money into the mutual fund in pretty small increments once you have bought that initial base, which usually has a minimum amount to start. So the term of this is called the dollar cost average, the DCA, and it can be a great way to start investing. Diversify and reduce risks. Diversification, as we talked in prior presentations, is considered to be the only free lunch in investing. In a nutshell, by investing in a range of assets, you reduce the risk of one investment's performance severely hurting the return of your overall investment. So when you start watching like stock investment channels and whatnot and they're giving you advice, it's funny how many different words they have for simply diversification because that's kind of one of the golden rules that you're gonna want, you wanna be diversified. So you could think of it as financial jargon for don't put all your eggs in one basket would be the idea. In terms of a diversification, the greatest difficulty in doing this will come from investments in stocks. As mentioned earlier, the cost of investing in a large number of stocks could be detrimental to the portfolio. So when you're investing in individual stocks, it's harder to diversify because you're buying individual stocks. It's easier for small investors at least to diversify by investing in things like mutual funds and ETFs, which the funds are gonna help with the diversification process. So with a $1,000 deposit, it is nearly impossible to have a well-diversified portfolio. So be aware that you may need to invest in one or two companies at the most in the first place. This will increase your risk. This is where the major benefit of mutual funds or ETFs comes into focus. Both types of securities tend to have a larger number of stocks and other investments within their funds, which makes them more diversified than a single stock. Stock market stimulators. People new to investing who wish to gain experience trading without risking their money and the process may find that a stock market simulator is a valuable tool. So there are a wide variety of trading simulators available, including those with and without fees. So you can kind of practice with a simulation tool, which is pretty neat kind of thing to play with. So Investopedia Simulator is entirely free to use. So you can take a look at that one. Stock market simulators offer users imaginary virtual money to invest, quote, invest, end quote, in a portfolio of stock, options, ETFs, and other securities. This simulators typically track price movements of investments and depending on the simulator, other notable considerations such as trading fees and dividend payouts. Investors make virtual quote trades, end quote, as if they were investing real monies and kind of practice. Through this process, simulators users have the opportunity to learn about the ins and outs of investing and to experiences the consequences of their virtual investment decisions without running the risk of putting their own money on the line. Some simulators even allow investors to compete against other participants providing an additional incentive to invest thoughtfully. So it's kind of like one of those online games or sports games or whatever where you're trying to compete with each other, you can do that with the stocks. So what is the difference between a full service and a discount broker? Full service brokers provide a broad array of financial services including offering financial advice for retirement, healthcare, and a host of investment products. They have traditionally created a high net worth individuals and often required significant investment. Discount brokers have a much lower threshold for access but also tend to offer a more streamlined set of services. Discount brokers allow users to place individual trades and also increasingly offer additional tools and other resources. What are the risks of investing? Investing is a commitment of resources now toward a future financial goal. There are many levels of risk with certain asset classes and investment products inherently much riskier than others. However, essentially all investing comes with at least some degree of risk. It is always possible that the value of the investment will not increase over time. For this reason, a key consideration for investors is how to manage their risk in order to achieve their financial goals without they short term or whether they're short term or long term. How do commissions and fees work? Most brokers charge customers a commission for every trade. These tend to range anywhere up to about $10 per trade. Because of the cost of commissions, investors generally find it prudent to limit the total number of trades that they make to avoid spending extra money in fees. So certain other types of investments such as exchange traded funds carry fees in order to cover the cost of fund management. So what's the bottom line then? It is possible to invest if you are just starting out with a small amount of money. It's more complicated than just selecting the right investments, a feat that is difficult enough in itself. And you have to be aware of the restrictions that you face as a new investor. So you'll have to do your homework to find the minimum deposit requirements and then compare the commissions to those of other brokers. Chances are that you won't be able to cost effectively by individual stocks and still diversify with a small amount of money. You will also need to choose the broker with which you would like to open an account.