Good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking the time to come to Plutus Fest and giving us the opportunity to present our work on the Plutus platform. So what I want to do in this talk is I want to answer the question, what is Plutus? And then moreover I want to tell you what's special about Plutus. So well let's start with the simple. What is Plutus? Well to summarize in one sentence Plutus is an innovative platform for the development and execution of distributed contract applications on the Cardano blockchain. Now you may say, well there are other contract platforms. What's so special about Plutus? There are three pillars, three special things about Plutus. The first one is a focus from the ground up on safety and security. The second is for it to work on a superior ledger architecture and thirdly we provide an integrated full-stack development environment for the on-chain off-chain components of contract applications. So let's look at these three in turn and let's start with safety and security because that's really at the heart of the matter. As far as safety and security goes, we've got a secret weapon. It won't be secret anymore after today. Maybe you can already guess. It's functional programming and type system. So yeah, what's this strange stuff you're coming with? Can't you just do object-oriented programming like everybody else did yesterday? No. So what's so special? Why do we do functional programming? Well because it's very simple and if you care about safety and security, simplicity is your friend. Functions are just mappings from inputs to outputs. Now you probably say well, any programming language has functions but we've got pure functions meaning the mapping from inputs to outputs is all the function ever does. The function is a pure function is entirely characterized by just this mapping. If I use the same function on the same inputs twice I will get the same result guaranteed. That's what makes it easy to reason about what the function does. Now we couple this with types. What types? Well it's basically a description of the inputs and the outputs which the function can handle properly. Basically it tells you if you lose the function in a particular context where it gets those inputs it's guaranteed to do the right thing and it's going to give you something back which has also certain properties which is represented in the output type. So the types give us more information about the behavior of the functions. Simplicity, that's great. Also this concept Phil told you this morning one way for us to make sure that our work on Plutus is going to be of, has a long life is to use something established, something based on research from 40, 20 years ago which has been validated over and over and over again. Well the notion of pure functions is even older. It's been validated, it's the basis for all of formal scientific reasoning. So it's a good foundation. If you want to make sure things actually work. So what do we get from it? We get the ability to reason locally. If you look at one pure function just by itself you can understand everything about it. You don't have to look at the 50 other modules of your program which we usually don't and then you misunderstand what the thing does. Secondly we can perform type directed design meaning types are not just a way to check whether function is used in the right context. No, no we use types to actually design our programs. It's a methodology for us to arrive in a constructive manner at a program which is already doing what we wanted to do or at least very close. Instead of just coupling something together and then testing it until maybe eventually works.  The kind of thing James Chapman has explained in the academic stream before lunch where we fully formalized the semantics of the Plutus core intermediate language. Now by taking these two things we get two major benefits. We achieve an increased understanding of the behavior of the code we are writing and of the code we are putting on the blockchain. And secondly, it gives us the tools to find exploits in that code. That's really the goal. That's why we go to the effort of this rigorous discipline of developing the Plutus platform. And let me give an example, one which has been mentioned before of what the outcomes of this are in the form of Plutus core. So Plutus core is the representation of programs as we store them on the blockchain. And as Phil has explained, we use this Plutus core based on system F omega. Doesn't matter what that exactly means. What's important to know, it's an established calculus which has been validated by the scientific community. We are basing it on this and it's a small well understood system. It's purely functional system. Everything in it is just pure function. Everything in it is typed. And by this design, the type directed design approach, we get to a very small, minimal system. So it's different to other virtual machines or similar things you have seen. It's not a byte code. Everybody uses byte codes. Why? Because Bitcoin had byte code, a Bitcoin had byte code and nobody came up with a new idea. Really, copycat. Plutus core is a type functional programming language. A very small one, but it's a full functional programming language. Also, we don't use a virtual machine, a big complex thing which we have to validate a verified test again. We use something called an abstract machine interpreter which is based on the operational semantics, very directly on the operational semantics which we formalize of Plutus core. And that's very small. It's what you have on the napkins. It's small, meaning it's a simple system we can actually, or James, can write an actor formalization of it and prove that it's doing what it's supposed to do. That's what we get back from the effort of going through this rigorous development methodology. All right, so much for safety and security, but where is this Plutus core thing used? Well, it's used on the chain. So now this gets us to the ledger. What about the ledger? Well, generally speaking, there are two ledger architectures as probably most of you know. There's the so-called UTX or unspent transaction output ledgers, like Bitcoin. And then there is account-based ledgers, like Ethereum. Now, what's the difference between? Well, if you look at it, the structure of the UTXO ledger, it's really a structured data flow graph. It shows us exactly for each transaction what are the inputs, what are the outputs, like the pure functions. Remember, a function is a mapping from input to output. So the transaction, they are very similar in nature. In contrast, if you look at an account-based ledger, like Ethereum, then it's really like object-oriented programming. So the accounts are the objects and they send messages to each other. Well, you may think, well, object-oriented programming is cool. Well, it was cool. But have you ever tried to write an object-oriented program in a concurrent and distributed manner? No, because otherwise you wouldn't sit here, you would be going crazy somewhere in a closed institution, maybe. It's very difficult, very buggy, you get race, conditions, deadlocks, lifelocks. It's crazy. I mean, the entire conference is just devoted to even halfway sanely handle this kind of complexity. We don't want this complexity on a ledger. We want to get it right. We want a compositional structure. But what about smart contracts? Right? So this is Bitcoin. This is Ethereum. We know Bitcoin scripts. Not that interesting, not very powerful. Ethereum, yeah, well, you can write any exploit you want. So the question is, can we have both? Can we have the simplicity and gain the power? So let's look at this in a bit more detail. What's a transaction?  So inputs could be money in, outputs, money out, but could also be data. And then we can join them together, but we can't join any all transactions together. Well, the money summing game has to be all right, but there's more when scripts are involved. The outputs, they come with what we call a valid data script. And that's in Flutus core in our case. And the inputs, they come with a redeemer script. Both are little programs. And in order to check whether we can plug the two together, we have to apply one program to the other. It's a function call. Well, everything's functions for us, right? It's a function call. And the result is either true, so okay, or it's not true. There's an error. And then we say, no, this transaction has to be rejected. That's a simple model. That's the simple model you get in Bitcoin. Now, we've extended this slightly, keeping the spirit, the simplicity, and by just adding a little bit more information. So in the outputs, in addition to the valid data, we get a data script. So in addition to the code, we have some data which can travel along the UTXL graph. And then we also provide access to some further information on the chain so that we can reason about chains of transactions. And then the validation condition is slightly more complicated. This function, the valid data function, is applied to a few more arguments. Still the same principle, plus a little bit more data involved. Now, this gets at what we call the extended UTXO model. So the nice thing about the extended UTXO model is it has the same structure, the same simplicity, the same ease of reasoning about it as the original UTXO letter. But it provides the scripts with significantly more expressive power, giving us the best of both worlds. So what's the additional expressivity that we are gaining? Firstly, we have the ability of letting data flow along pure value through the transactions and this transaction graph. So we can do things other than just trade money on the blockchain, which ultimately, that's what we want to do with smart contracts. We want to track other information, not just the funds. Secondly, scripts get an identity which is similar to, in an account-based model, the account provides you some identity and often you need identity to reason about things using the same script and similar invariance. And finally, and that's very important for more complex contracts, we get the ability to write scripts which ensure certain invariance that certain things are true about, for example, not your money not getting lost or an f of a chain asset being tracked correctly across multiple transactions on an entire chain of transactions. That's the power we gain in this extended ledger model. All right, so that's two of three. So what's the whole full stack business about? Well, what's a smart contract? Let's take a simple example. Let's have a simple crowdfunding example where, well, somebody makes a campaign, other people can pay into this campaign for a certain time until a deadline, then if the funding goal is reached by the deadline, then the campaign owner can get all the paid in funds out. And if the funding goal doesn't get reached, then of course contributors want to be able to get all the funds back. Or if say the campaign owner runs away and doesn't play anymore, then you should also be able to get your funds back. So very simple setup. Let's use that as a little bit of a running example. As Phil mentioned in the beginning today, well, if you want to implement this in solidity, then, well, you write some solidity for Ethereum and then you write some clavascript and then you put the two together. That's a quite ad hoc way of constructing your program, but it's necessary because the off the clavascript bit, they are associated with the wallet of the user. That's where you spend stuff into the contract. And then the on-chain bit, this is where all the contract logic happens and it makes sure that things are only paid out under certain conditions. So you need both. There's no way around it. And this is what programming language researchers like myself, we call this two level or stage programming models. And this is not a new idea. It's been around for a long time. People have researched this. In fact, some of these ideas go back a long time to the first functional programming language, so the least line of languages for the developers among you. Now, this particular setup with solidity on Ethereum, this is very ad hoc. I mean, people just thrown this together. I don't think they thought about any programming language considerations, really. So the communication between the two is ad hoc, and why is ad hoc bad? Maybe ad hoc is good. Now ad hoc is bad because it's inconvenient. You have to learn two languages. That's bad. You can't take out from one language into the other language. Now you have to rewrite it. That's also bad. Also, it's complex because the communication between the two, the protocol is quite complicated. And it's difficult to check that the things fit together. So it's fragile. You change one. You still can run it, but it doesn't work properly anymore. Then you have to find out why the compiler doesn't give you any help. It's a mess. So we thought, well, this is two level stage programming. We should be able to do something better with all our programming language research knowledge. We should be able to come up with something better. So our idea was to say, well, for off-chain, let's use pure functions, Haskell. Good idea. Thanks. On-chain, also Haskell. Well, actually subset of Haskell, which we call Plutus DX. But now one nice thing immediately apparent. You only have to learn one language. Also, if you have code on-chain and you need the same data structure off-chain, well, you just use the same definition. If you have code on-chain and you wouldn't move it off-chain, just copy paste. Don't rewrite into new programming language. That's what you want to do, right? So how do we tie the two together? Well, we use meta programming. Meta programming was first introduced with Lisp. So it's another old proven idea of tying up a two-level language, which we are using here. So the result is something which is integrated, one language framework. And it is compact because you don't have to spread things across multiple files, tie them up in an ad hoc way. No, this can only live in one file. You can modelize this, of course, if you want to, but there's no need from the programming language.  So you get some information back on what works and what doesn't work. Now, let me give you a slight idea of how this looks like. And I appreciate not everybody's a Haskell programmer. So I won't go into great detail here. I just want to give you an outline of what such a contract looks like. And I'm just going to look at one function, namely, how can I contribute to the smart fund crowdfunding campaign? So that's a function contribute. It gets a campaign as an argument and how much you want to contribute. Well, then we should check that you actually want to contribute positive amount. And then this code, this is off-chain code. So the green, slight greenish background, that's off-chain code. So we get your public key from the wallet, from your wallet. Why? Because we have to be able to refund to something in case you get a refund.  Well, what do we have to give this function creating the transaction? Well, it has to get the script. I'll talk about this in a second. We have to tell it how much you want to contribute. And then it gets as the data item, remember, extended UTXL model, there's a data item, a data script together with the validator, which in this case is the public key of where refund goes to. And then we set up a trigger that if a refund condition arises, we can execute the refund code, refunding code, so you get your money back. All right. So now how do we get at the script for validation? Well, that's where it gets interesting. That's where we get the two-level language. And I don't have enough space on the slide to put it on one slide. So let's continue on the next slide. So what we do here, we write more Haskell. And this time we define a validator, which is applied to a particular campaign. And what happens in the validator code? Now you have some strange symbols, dollars, square brackets. This is just Haskell speak for do some meta programming. And we get blue into the blue part, which is the on-chain code, still in the same file. Now what does the on-chain code do? Well, first of all, it gets one argument called TX, which is transaction. And this is syntax for Haskell pattern matching, taking a complex value, splitting its multiple components. Because we have to get at the individual bits of the transaction to check, it's okay. That's our job. We are the validator. And then there are two cases where it's okay. Well, either we are in a refund condition, meaning the collection deadline has passed. All the payments in this transaction go to actually the person who made the contribution. And that person has signed with their correct key this transaction. So the signature on the transaction is correct from the right person. That's when you get a refund. Or it's time for the campaign owner to collect. In this case, well, we have to be after the campaign deadline, but before the collection deadline. And all the inputs have to add up to what the target goal of the campaign was. And finally, of course, we again need to correct signature on the transaction. If either of these two conditions is met, then transaction is good to go. Otherwise, we throw it away. So it's quite compact code. Of course, I appreciate if you're new to Haskell. It all looks like special characters. Once you get used to it, it's actually not hard to read. It's just a pure function. All right. So this rounds up the whole three pillars of Plutus. So the things which make Plutus special. But let me give you the overall overview. How does this all fit together?  Then you use the tooling we provide to compile this into a piece of code which communicates with a user's wallet or multiple user's wallets in the distributed case. And this provides the wallet with the ability to invoke what we call contract endpoints, the things the user is supposed to use in the contract, external functions in Ethereum. And by doing so, your off-chain contract code will produce transactions, including Plutus core, which go onto the chain. And then the wallet which observes what happens on the chain will notify the off-chain code of any events which are interesting to its execution. And this completes the cycle where the off-chain code notified by an event, such as the refund trigger we put into place in our example, can submit more transactions and so on. And that's the overall architecture. It's also quite simple. But simple is good, because for simple architectures, we can check that they actually always do the right thing. So overall, that's Plutus. It's built from the ground up using, with a focus on safety and security, using the methods of functional programming and type systems. It uses the superior ledger structure provided by UTXO ledgers, in this case extended with the extended UTXO model. And it provides a full stack environment where you can do on and off-chain code at the same time in an integrated manner. Thank you very much. So if there are any questions? I actually very like UTXO model and Bitcoin because its blockchain is small and it's quite important in these days because we know what happened with Ethereum. And when you're adding so much additional information to all the outputs, what do you plan to do with the growing blockchain and space? Because each time you're creating new output, you're adding code there and data. And if you're reusing it's like 10 times, that means that you have 10 copies of the same code in the blockchain. So it looks like a kind of big problem with the growing main layer. So the setup is exactly the same as with the plain UTXO chains. So the important data structure in the UTXO chain is the UTXO set. Well the U in UTXO stands for unspent, meaning you put all these transactions in there and all the transaction outputs which have not been spent yet, they need to be kept in the UTXO set. But the crucial thing is once you spend an output, it cannot be spent again. This is a double spend restriction. At that moment you can call that output from the UTXO set. This is not new to our extended model, this is the case in Bitcoin already. And so basically we have a natural form of garbage collection, which if you're a programming language person, there are many programming language people in here. It's like a linear type system. So if you know everything is single use, once it's used you can throw it away. You don't need a complicated reference counting, garbage collection or anything. It's just once it's used it's gone. And so the data structure, the main data structure which has to be kept in memory, the UTXO set grows and strings in the exact same manner as it does for Bitcoin or Cardano today. Hello. Well first of all, amazing talk. I really enjoyed it. And then we inherit a lot of really cool things about Haskell, but also some of the challenging things. And especially I would say the challenge of adoption, right? Is there any strategy that Cardano or the bigger ecosystem is doing for these to be adapted into a critical mass for the environment, etc.? Yeah, that's an excellent question. Thank you very much. And the outlook is extremely bright. So as I think we've heard this morning and IHK has been doing for a while, doing training courses, educating developers in the use of Haskell. This is going to continue. So we are actively working in teaching people how to use Haskell and in extension from now on also Plutus. That's number one. Number two, if you look at what's happening in the wider developer community at the moment, you will see there's a seed change. So that's why I kind of flippantly refer to object-oriented programming as the thing of the past. Because if you read tech magazines these days, they're very critical of the problem with object-oriented programming and how it didn't fulfill the promises of abstraction, modularity, and so on. And there's a strong shift towards functional programming. And you can see this on a large scale. For example, if you look at the Apple development ecosystem, Apple recently they used to have all the developers write Objective-C. Now they converted everything over to Swift. Swift is a hybrid language, a hybrid functional object-oriented language, but it has a very strong focus on functional programming. And all the type system things we are doing, they are all present in Swift. The type system of Swift is not any simpler or whatever your metric is than Haskell. So what Apple has done in the last few years, they've taken this millions of developers like all the iPhone, Mac, and so on developers and converted them from writing Objective-C to Swift. Right? So it's not like large chunks of developers aren't able to make this move to functional programming. It's a matter of explaining why it's a good thing to do and providing the teaching material for people to achieve it. But I don't see this as a significant obstacle and I think Apple has proven you can do it. And if you generally look at the developer meetups and so on, there's a huge interest in functional programming. More and more people learn functional programming anyway, whether it's in Haskell or any other functional programming language. So what I would say, we are actually, we are going with exactly the times. We are running the direction of where everybody else is heading, as far as programming languages go, instead of being stuck in the past with object-oriented programming. Thank you. There was also a gentleman behind you. Thank you. I'm not a programmer, but I would like to be sure to understand. So I have two questions. The first question is, a programmer can make, can develop a program or smart contract with Marlowe and use Plutus for more complex to add some functionality? So the way it works at the moment is that Marlowe can be compiled to Plutus. So it's basically implemented on top of Plutus. And the two integrate perfectly as a result. So our Modus operandi at the moment is for Marlowe to be a self-contained system where you avoid having to have the developer experience and the domain expert can create contracts. Now, due to the integration of Plutus with Marlowe, what you're describing to use Plutus as a sort of extension language of Marlowe, I think is a plausible way of moving forward. It's nothing we have explored so far because to get to this day, we had to build the systems themselves. But I think it's totally feasible because you're using the same underlying infrastructure, namely the Plutus infrastructure. And then a collaboration between Marlowe contracts and Plutus contracts is effectively just two Plutus contracts collaborating. So that's totally fine. And the second question. Do I understand that you can develop multiple contracts with Plutus? Yes, sure. In the same software, in the same development, like I'm not a technical, but in Ethereum, you have multiple smart contracts that can interact with an interface. But I understand that with Plutus, you don't have those multiple contracts that you have to connect with the interface. Okay. So what I'm saying is that the on-line, off-line code is integrated. But in one program, you can. And typically, if you look at the examples we will provide in a second, then you will see that once you get to more complex contracts, a single overall Plutus contract will contain multiple on-chain bits. That's totally fine. There's no limitation. It's just that I use this color coding with the blue and the green. But there can be many blue things in one big green box. And there's no limitation on how many or anything. It's just, for the simple example, it's always one on one, because otherwise it doesn't fit on a slide anymore. Thank you. We can do one more. Yeah. Thank you. I had a quick question. I'm not a software engineer, so forgive me if this question sounds a little ignorant. But you were mentioning Ethereum and how someone who's coding has to do an on-chain and off-chain solution. So they have to code in Solidity and Java. But for Plutus, they just have to know Pascal. And basically my question is that because you're using more compilers, or why is the solution for off-chain and on-chain with Plutus so much different than Ethereum? Does it have to do anything with the compilers? Yeah, it has something to do with the compilers. Basically, what we are doing is an old thing, which my background is very much in research, programming languages, compilers and these kind of things. And what we like to do, what we compiler writers like to do, we want to make the life of people who write code easier. And in this case, instead of letting people manually use these two different languages and then manually kind of connecting them and handing all the build system for multiple lengths, all this complexity, instead of every single contract developer doing that for themselves, we do it for them. So we have a compiler, which is more sophisticated and which performs the separation of the one program into two or multiples, according to your question, and tying the two up and making sure that it all fits together. That's, we automate that. We have developed infrastructure, compiler technology, which automates these things so that the Plutus developer doesn't have to do it manually anymore. So it's a matter of automation through the compiler infrastructure. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. It makes sense. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we have to stop with questions here because you may be interested to actually see this in real life. And that's what's going to happen next. We will have Michael Peyton-Stones and Jan Müller presenting Plutus Playgrounds.


How's it going everyone Caleb here with late and sports cards? I'm gonna be starting out tonight with a random here for this card This is number three of ten. This was from flawless football case 2021 Break number 23. Like I said, this is through three of ten Joe Burrow drew briefs We did contact the owners. They did decide on a random of this card. This is a burrow rookie This is a 2020 flawless card. So that's all we're gonna start tonight here. Good luck. Thank you very much For getting into that break Breeze burrow here. We go roll of the dice here It's gonna be six times the team on top does land the card. Good luck here six times That is one two three four five six That card is gonna be going to the Saints Saints. Congratulations that hit will be coming your way


yo this piece is just so like I'm geeking just look at this bro it's insane it's just insane what is up guys and welcome back to the Johnny Q daily vlog thanks so much for watching in today's video we're gonna do some Johnny Q spinner so let's get it right begin I gotta get my leather jacket on because it's essential let's go boom just like that we got a leather jacket let's call so for today's first spin piece we're gonna be doing a video reply to someone who's getting open heart surgery because of their heart condition so really sad uh but we're gonna do that one first so let's go yo but before we start though because I'm waiting on my hat my my wife's oh here it is thank you we got the hat now we're good to go anyway just before we start look at this jacket though it's getting it's getting pretty sick huh all this paint I'm digging it man I'm digging it let's go let's do this guys here we go also I've been forgetting to mention if you guys are a fan of what I do on tiktok instagram and youtube you guys can now send me fan mail okay it's awesome so I set up this PO box specifically for this reason so if you guys want to send me any kind of fan mail Christmas cookies presents letters all the above you're good to go okay that PO box is Johnny Q PO box 103 Columbia Missouri 65205 so uh send me all this Christmas cookie actually don't send me Christmas cookies because of COVID-19 restrictions all the above maybe not that but a fan letter will suffice can you do one for my daughter because she's having open heart surgery she suffers from a rare heart condition holy moly I'm so sorry and guess what I'm gonna make you guys a painting so that when she gets out of that surgery she gets to look at some cool art to help her feel a little bit better and as parents I'm sure you guys are just so freaking so freaking scared about this but hopefully everything goes well and hopefully she recovers soon so listen for you let's get this there you go hope you like it and then right there's the first spin of the night right here it is uh someone's little daughter or someone someone's daughter is getting open heart surgery so we're making this piece for her she love pinks we got some pinks uh some magenta some fuchsia some white and some black um that's gonna go out to her so hopefully um everything goes well in the surgery so for this next piece another video replying and it's the red among us character so I got red white black blue and gold so uh let's go let's get this can you do among us the red one please yeah you know I've been playing among us and it's actually pretty dope uh I get the imposter like five times in a row and then people don't believe me and they think I'm the imposter and then I try to trick him it doesn't work so I do like to play among us so this one's for uh the red among us character it's put some red some blue some white and now some gold so uh let's get this here we go there it is among us oh that's actually pretty sweet I love it yo this one actually turned out super cool I think I'm gonna call this one like reptilian I don't I just I don't know I like it it looks super dope right right at one by 14 so I gotta open up this package of a canvases this next piece is actually going out to someone who beat leukemia I think she was one year old and she's thriving now because of her bone marrow transplant so pretty pumped gonna make one for her and her family so it's gonna be awesome mine's gotta unwrap this canvas all right so uh let me grab one out of here put the rest off to the side just like that it's unwrapped it's unwrapped let's go can you do one for my daughter she's one and beat leukemia and now she's recovering from her bone marrow transplant and is recovering and thriving yo I love to hear that stuff so this one's going out to her she's brave and I hope you guys are all doing awesome hope you like this let's get this here we go there you go hope you like it you got this love him by 14 there it is and can we just talk about how a one-year-old beats leukemia and gets a bone marrow transplant that's insane that's tough you gotta be a tough cookie to go through that that's that's crazy so crazy all right peeps this next one 14 by 14 just like this it's just a square it's just like a big old nice canvassie squareie square square I honestly get asked so many times johnny can you do a galaxy bro can you do one of the johnny cute galaxies and I'm just like bro sure why not so this is uh this is not a galaxy which you would think I'd make one after that intro but I think I'm gonna try to make something a little bit more modern-ish with some color just like this kind of kind of seeing what I can do here uh different colors different approach but still classic johnny cute you know how I beat you know how I do so uh um by all by all means let's uh let's get this here we go oh yeah yo this is gonna be hella sick oh yeah let's do this and this 14 by 14 epic love this just look at the colors look how they just mix together they flow that's awesome look at this another 14 by 14 another square canvas we're about to do a marble um inspiration uh spin art piece so yeah I don't think I've I've not done one like this in a long while so we're gonna see what it turns out like and I think it's gonna be super super cool so uh let's get this these colors already look so cool right here these colors right here look though so for today's vid we got a 14 by 14 right and it's one I've never done before like this color scheme well I haven't done it in a while but uh it's like a not like a marble and anything and so I think I think it's gonna turn out pretty dope let's uh let's test that theory yeah so uh let's look in here some more black all right let's uh let's get this all right here we go right there this guy's magical 14 by 14 this marble piece sick is this piece I love that there it is guys and for this next piece the people of my tiktok live are asking for one of the bigger pieces that I offer which is a 22 by 28 this is what I have on hand Michael's is sending me more canvases larger canvases but this one's the one that I have one of the bigger pieces that I have on hand so we gotta unbox this and get the spin so let's go all right this one's gonna be hot diggity dog man next piece is very important because it's a 22 by 28 right big canvas and for big canvases I like to just like really focus on colors the way it's mixed the way it's poured because it truly does make a difference people might say it doesn't but when you put the paint on the canvas and the way it's poured the way it all kind of flows together is very very important and I don't want to mess this up so I want to focus and make sure that these colors are gonna work super super well that that is modern I love that oh my gosh well guys that is it for today's vlog I hope you enjoyed it I hope you guys like watching all the spin art please let me know down in the comments what you guys want to see more of I hope you guys are following the Johnny Q vlog and are enjoying the Johnny Q vlog and as always guys thanks so much for watching thanks for your support and I'll catch you next time on the Johnny Q daily vlog piece yo this piece is just so like I'm geeking just look at this


All the important stories and events in the world of emerging information. Now it's time to extract the data and turn it into action. Live from the SiliconANGLE Studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, this is Extraction Point with John Furrier. Welcome to Extraction Point. I'm John Furrier, founder of SiliconANGLE.com, SiliconANGLE.tv. My guest today is Mike Morellus, who's the founder of Speakertext.com and an entrepreneur living in San Francisco. Just close some fresh financing, seed financing, series A seed financing with a bunch of good investors, one Chris Yeh, who was on the Cube with me here in Extraction Point. We're going to extract the signal from the noise in three areas, the video market, crowdsourcing, and overall technology around social data, keywords, metadata, all this stuff that's going on. And Matt, thank you for coming in. Welcome to the program. I know you're busy. It's raining in California, but you made it here down from San Francisco. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So here inside the Cube, but we had a big day yesterday around big data. Totally. You're an entrepreneur in San Francisco, all the hot action. First question for you is, tell me what's the signal coming out of San Francisco in terms of the startup community? It's pretty robust right now. It's pretty hopping. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's growing. And I mean, I think just from a very geographic perspective, what we're seeing is soma is becoming saturated and companies are starting to move into what I call soma loin, you know, where soma meets the tenderloin to the mid market area. Areas that were traditionally filled with like Chinese sweatshops and whatnot. And that just is, in my mind, is a signal of just how hot the market is and what's happening is these places that before startups never went are now suddenly there's everybody's moving there. It's a golden rush. The vibe is pretty, pretty hot, though. I mean, there's a ton of activity. Tell us what's going on. Just give us some sound bites of just anecdotal things, parties, events, meetups. You guys have a roof deck I hear in your new office, so I'm expecting to be invited to all the hot events if my wife lets me.   And I mean, I think, you know, what gets lost in that is that there's just, there's this wave of creation, of people doing this really, really cool technology.  And I don't mean, it's an amazing place to be. What can I say? So Ben Horowitz from Andrews Horowitz, who I've never had a sit-down with, wrote a post. And I was kind of critical on Twitter last night, but he was saying it's not a bubble. I was saying it is a bubble. But he brings up a good point. It's a quasi-bubble. There's some over extension on some valuations. But for the most part, it's an exciting time. People see the market and people are making money. So it's unlike the dot-com bubble that I lived through. Right. You know, people were just getting public on nothing. Totally. And so, we're talking about your business, but you guys are doing business deals already. So you actually, you haven't announced it yet, but you talked off camera, you're doing some business.  Totally. You're doing business deals that keep you funded and, but you're optimistic at the same time. Is that an accurate assessment of kind of the scene in San Francisco? Yeah. I mean, I think there's, there's a mix. I mean, I obviously, I wasn't around for, for sort of bubble 1.0.  But, you know, not necessarily crazy revenues. But, you know, companies like ours, you know, we're doing deals. We're making money.  We're not just sort of, you know, a startup or just a product. And I think, you know, I think there's a lot of companies like that.  You know, people are making it. You know, and even the companies, the huge companies, the Zynga's, the Groupons, this isn't just, this isn't bubble valuations. Like, they have massive revenues and massive revenue growth.  How could Groupon be valued so highly? Well, I mean, they're making a lot of fricking money. What Ben Horowitz talked about yesterday on his blog really was a good point and worth acknowledging is that, you know, don't confuse bubble with boom. You know, the attitude of the entrepreneurs that are out there are aggressive, but they realize they don't need a lot of cash to get going. And, oh, by the way, they're living in the market that is just once in a lifetime, every 20-year inflection point. You know, App Store, Apple, Phenomenon, mobile, Android. Your company, which we'll talk about is in the video space, which, you know, I launched a startup in that area when it wasn't really ready. But, you know, you've got cameras everywhere now. A company just got funded with $41 million. The entrepreneur who founded OpenWave, Bill Nguyen, done a month at LaLoft, founder. On a business plan and prototype, got $41 million. Right. Okay, Flipboard just got $100 million, $200 million of valuation. Right. That's insane. That is crazy.  I mean, it should take you on the working capital side. Yeah, I mean, so I think what we've seen happen is that Facebook exploded.  Everybody laughed when, you know, Facebook raised that, you know, it was $100 million valuation from Trinity or, I don't remember the UTLs, but early on they had some crazy high valuations and people said that's insane. Excel. Excel and grade lock. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. And then, well, now Facebook's like ginormous. And so, everybody's kind of says, the social thing is huge. Let's go chase after the social startups, right? And so, like, in a way, the market has been validated and people have made money off. What do you think about the term social proof that's been kicked around? Is that positive or negative connotation? The angel of skies, Nivea and Naval using that as kind of like a positive thing, like social proof means validation. Some are saying it's just the sheep following the sheep kind of thing. I mean, look, humans are, we are herd animals, right? You know, I mean, we don't survive in the wild solo. You know, people are social. People follow each other, you know. We're memetic creatures, right? We see there's mirror neurons that we have. We see what other people are doing and we copy it. That's just part of our fundamental biology as people. To say it's good or bad, I mean, part of it's good. It's like a nightclub. Everyone says, hey, that nightclub is really hot. People go there because it's good. And they go and they make the judge themselves and if they like it, they tell somebody, right? You know, that restaurant's really good. I want to go back. So that's word of mouth. Right. I mean, and it's also, there's reflexivity. I think George Soros coined the term, right? Is that, you know, even in public markets, right? Is that it's not just, oh, there's, what is fundamental value? You know, part of that is the perception of value, right?  So if you buy, then that changes the price, right? And then other people buy, you know, like because you bought and then that, you know, there is no sort of like static state of where you are able to about judge fundamental value. So much of it is seeing what other people are doing and what happens to the market.  I'm here on extraction point with Matt Morales, who's an entrepreneur, founder of speakertext.com in San Francisco. Hot startup, great small team, the opposite of what people would call a bubble. Thanks for coming on and giving us the highlights of the San Francisco community. But you're an entrepreneur living in San Francisco and you're also plugged into some pretty cool trends. I looked at your company, you got kind of a machine learning thing going on.  You got some technology, so you got some science. You mentioned people being kind of social animals. Let's look at it, we cover computer science meets social science. But let's dive into that. Let's talk about crowdsourcing. So we're living in social media, social networks, social world. We're connected. There's new data out there. And yesterday we were talking about big data, big data analytics, advertising is going to be a science, less of an art. Your business has a crowdsourcing element. So I'd like to get your opinion on what your angle is on the whole crowdsourcing phenomenon. And how you're looking at it and what are the benefits of that. So I think there's a mega trend on the internet. And it's an old trend that sort of people are making new again. So in the history of computer science and artificial intelligence research, there's all these people in the labs trying to make intelligent machines. And they're smart, but not that smart. And they hit some inflection point where you get diminishing returns and the machines aren't getting smarter. And in the late 90s in search, this is exactly what happened. There was AltaVista, there was Excite, etc. And they're all trying to create machines that read our web page and said, okay, what's the best search result here? And then this little company in Palo Alto came out called Google. And what did they do? They were one of the OG crowdsourcing companies, right? They said, okay, we're going to combine the intelligent machines with what humans are doing because the real fundamental intelligence is in the human. And they were doing it in terms of linking and back linking on the web. And then Google came out and the world changed and the web was organized. And if you see what happens in the AI labs, the artificial intelligence research, this is like the trend, is that there's pure machine approach that doesn't really make it out of the lab, doesn't really work. AI has been in the lab for decades, right? Because just the religious argument, what is AI? But now you've got some practical data to work with. So go ahead and continue. That's a good thread. And so what happens is that you add on some actual human intelligent layer on top of the AI, on top of these intelligent machines, and that's how you actually get something that works and is useful as a product or a service in the world. And SpeakerText is very similar on that front in terms of speed recognition, in terms of turning it, for us, our main focus is video. The web was created as this web of text documents. Video is not a text document. So what does Google do? Google goes around and reads the web. Everyone's been trying to crack the video search market for years. Yahoo tried, Google tried. I mean, this is a graveyard of carnage. Oh, totally. You know that, right? You've seen that. But you've got a different approach. So talk about your approach to video. So what we do is we turn video into text. So it can be searched, found, and engaged with and shared. And also to really cool ways. And how we do that is a hybrid model that combines, you know, more traditional AI approaches with crowdsourced labor and leveraging the web as a labor platform. So historically, you've either had, you know, either an outsourcing shop in India somewhere. Or a mechanical Turk and things like that. Or a mechanical Turk. A mechanical Turk ain't bad, but becomes this huge quality assurance problem, you know. So you can either A, have a house, you know, a transcription shop, an actual physical building with a manager.  And then you end up investing a lot of time yourself trying to, you know, ensure quality.  And so what we've done is we've built this hybrid workflow process. And the core of which is an autonomous quality assurance system, an artificial intelligent QA system on top of these various crowdsourcing platforms.  And there's a lot of things you can do with this. For one, search engines, right? Now suddenly the video is searchable. It shows up on Google, you know. You can get that long tail of search traffic. But, you know, we've built a product called CaptionBox that you show the transcript and turns it into an interactive tool with the video. Let's people engage with the video so they can search the video just like it was a, you could search through the text document. You can share quotes from the videos and it will link back to that exact moment inside the video. With that quote. That was the holy grail people were trying to, hey, three minutes in. Right. Epic soundbite. Totally. Or great content. Yeah, deep linking and telling people what's there. You know, some money quote. You tweeted it out. It links back to that money quote on your page. So it's really good experience for the consumer as well as for the producer, you know. And that's really the core of what we do. And it's, you know, the edge of this mega trend of, you know, online video which has been, you know, exploded in 2004 with YouTube and has been, you know, maturing since. And now we're seeing this focus on the metadata layer. Right. So one of the challenges early was, you know, with YouTube is actually just being able to stream video and get it out there. And now, okay, we've figured that out mostly. And so how do we make this video discoverable? How do we, you know, enable contextual advertising? What's your angle on, before we go to the advertising side, because that's important. Because I think the SEO, SEM market's dying for a new product. This might be it. But I want to get your angle on big data. Obviously it's an area that we're fond of. We've been covering like a blanket, both at a tech level and a business level. Because you're talking about, you're talking about these keywords that you're saying, meta-layer. And this is big data. You got unstructured data. In some cases, quasi-structure.  Also, we're here at Cloudera where they do revolution is born. What's your, as an entrepreneur, how do you look at this big data? And how would you describe it to someone out there?  Right. And with increasing data sets, you can find really interesting statistical correlations and things that you couldn't before, because the data just wasn't there. For us, frankly, a lot of it's proprietary, but, you know, searching through and analyzing all the transcripts we create, looking for connections between them, but also what people are doing with the videos.  One of the things just... What kind of tech is involved in some of that stuff? What's some of the tech? Well, there's... Without going into the trade secrets, but I mean, generally, is it AI? You mentioned AI earlier, machine learning. Yeah, no. I mean, there's a lot. I mean, it's a lot of AI and machine learning, some speech stuff, you know, and I mean, the core is creating an artificially intelligent quality assurance layer on top of, you know, a hybrid process of humans and machines, and that's really, really hard to do. You know, QA...   It looks good at the beginning. It's kind of like a golf shot. It looks good off the tee, and then, you know, like, what the hell's going on? Total. Times wasted. You know, I've used it, which is why I wanted to talk to you guys, because, you know, I'm curious. I mean, this is a problem. I mean, getting the data out of the video is a really big problem, and there's more and more video, because the machines can create the contextual linkage between what people are sharing and doing, whether it's, you know, on the go, mobile, or interviews like this. But so let's talk... Let's drill further on the advertiser side, because video has two functions. Online advertising has always been keyword-based. Talk about Google. You know, obviously, ad words, innovation with ad, and keywords. There's no rich media involved. They've been experimenting with it. You know, video ad sense has kind of been gone nowhere. But here, for your customers, they can literally have search, use text to get the anchor into the search results. But also, the trend in online advertising is to get that embedded as a company, after the name of it, just the pictures and links to the photos inside of it. The guy from Facebook just joined as a board member just saw the news today. But you're seeing more of these different approaches. It's not your standard just picture or text links. And also, TV advertising, right? Totally. Where's the future of video going? Is it on the ad side is going to be more robust ads? What are you seeing for the future of the video market online in particular? Well, so part of... What's happened is there's been... Talk about big data. There's been this explosion in audience data. So people now know... There's all these sophisticated tracking systems where people know who's watching videos. But what hasn't happened and what I think we're really at the cutting edge of is actually understanding what's going on inside the video itself. So there's very little data. Nobody knows what's happening at any particular moment inside the video. Is it an interesting quote? Are people swearing? Is there hate speech? Is there something funny thing happening? Understanding that. There's a bunch of technologies... Content's locked up in the video. If you do a seven-minute video, you're talking about seven minutes of huge time commitment for the user experience. Totally. I mean, when you're at work, it's not a lean-back environment. If you're on the go, maybe if you're sitting at the airport, you can bring up your iPad, but you need iTunes. Right. So iTunes might not be compatible, right? Right. So you get lean-back at home on the couch, but you're in the office, hey, what's going on in this seven-minute clip? Or worse, we're doing a 30-minute interview here on extraction point. Totally. We're in, what, our eighth minute, ninth minute? Right. This is a pretty important topic about advertising. Right. No. I mean, the content's totally locked up, as you said. And not just for the consumer, but also for the machines. Think about it. There's all these sophisticated machinery algorithms that understand text, whether it's a search engine, AdSense, some sort of contextual advertising, sentiment analysis, et cetera. Once you have the text, you can apply all these other existing technologies in really new and interesting ways. Give an example on that. Well, AdSense, just straight up. AdSense looks at what's on the page and says, okay, we're going to serve a contextual ad. The problem is you have no idea what's going on inside a video. And so that's where we come in, is we say, look. I mean, we basically did that yesterday for our big data special. We saw that Gigong was having a big data conference in New York City. And at one o'clock, we just pulled the trigger and did six hours of live programming where we had guests come in. And we actually went in to our library, essentially deep-linked and pulled back out content. I mean, that's metaphorically the same as just saying a tweet with a link to an embed into your model, right? It's the same thing. It's just some access. Right.  That was a manual process. Huge pain. Tons of labor costs. Good product. Totally. A lot of production costs. Right. But I mean, these are things that machines should be able to do. And if you have that video in text form, if you have it transcribed and all that text is time-synchronized with the video, then it's just a matter of searching through the text and highlighting and clipping-based using the text, which is you can do what your brain can do way faster than you could sit there and physically watch it. And within the online marketing or outside of just search engine optimization where you can use the leverage of the text, a lot of the advertisers are going social media. So we went from consumer companies like Ford, The Gap, to HP, EMC. They have social media teams. They're pumping out tons of video. Now, granted, some of the videos are very boring, very vendor-specific. But that's their game. That's their world. They want text, right? Right. What do they go to? Is this something you guys are targeting that audience as well? Yeah. I mean, for us... Or is that kind of going to go to that different? Going to go to that later? I mean, so for us, our main focus right now is serving media companies, people like yourselves who are putting video on the Internet and have a big incentive to get it found, get it watched, and to turn that into money. And for us, we help you do that. We help you get found by search and then caption box and some of the other tools we've created. We boost engagement and sharing. So, you know, in some of the early trials we've done, we've seen caption box, which is our interactive transcript tool. We've seen it doubling in the amount of time people spend watching the video. So, you know... I can tell you right now when we were at Stratoconference, and for the folks out there who have been following us, we'll know, Tim O'Reilly had an event in our girl Stratoconference. And we had two days of live programming there. And the CMO of Green Plum didn't believe us, but we did, and I tried to get in front and improve the numbers, but it was shocking. Two days, 1.2 million views, 500,000 views of the live stream, and 500,000 views roughly split 50-50, almost right down the middle. Once they watched the live video, they went right to the on-demand. So, this notion of using the video to capture the awareness, it's like the perfect commitment. If the video is good, it provides great aided awareness. And our numbers are clearly showing that video captures the user. Because the commitment to watch the video, and if the content is good, they're going to want more. It's like the appetizer. So, I think this concept of a caption box or having more discovery, more engagement, more stuff, is a huge value. And I just don't see anyone doing that right now. No, I mean it's... No one goes to the searcher and says, hey, let me watch a video about big data. Right. No, I mean, and the thing is that up to now it's been, people have tried to use machines to solve this problem. And it just, frankly, hasn't worked.  So, some people will say, hey, what's the turnaround time? How fast does it take? Is it a week later? Is it real time? Is it near real time? What does that mean? So, it depends how much you want to pay. That's a... Coin-operated, premium service. Let's just go basic and just take us through the basic service and just say, we're running an Obama press conference. Yeah, so, I mean, our approach is like the Tony Shea, Zappos kind of under-promise over deliver. So, on the website we say, guaranteed turnaround time, 48 to 72 hours. It's pretty fast compared to transcriptional firms. Not bad. But, you know, it's not real time. It's not a week. It's not a week. Most of the time, most customers get content back within 12 to 24 hours, realistically. And one thing that's actually really cool about our technology and how it works is it doesn't matter how much content you give us. We break it up into chunks and then we send that to hundreds or thousands of workers. So, a lot of the stuff can be done in parallel in a way that, you know, a traditional firm could not. And so, we can get really fast turnaround time even with large volumes of content where doesn't, you know, you don't have sort of the linear, you know, if I give you one hour of content it'll take X, you know, and if it gives you two hours it'll take two X. I mean, it still takes X. You create the, how you break it up, optimize even algorithm on how fast that turns around. You can understand. Cool. So, you have a white glove service for rapid turnaround. Yeah. Not real time, but someone needs it fast. Yeah.  So, you know, and we're, that's in the works. Yeah. And that's something we've actually heard from the market loud and clear. We're here with Matt Morellis, entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I see you can call him kind of the same. Not really these days San Francisco is building a name for itself. Always had a great reputation, but now it's booming in San Francisco. You got the rents going up, Cloudera just recently moved their engineers up there and it's hot. So, Matt, we're talking about entrepreneurship. We're talking about your company, speakertext.com, and we're here at the extraction point extracting the signal from the noise. And the next segment I'd like to drill down with you on is something that's near and dear to your heart, entrepreneurship startups. I know you write about it on your blog.  You're living in a great time. Oh. I wish I was you, younger. I'm too old to do startups these days even though I'm doing Silicon Angle. But seriously, what is your take? Love to get your perspective, very candid perspective around how you see the market. There's a lot of noise out there around Angelgate, AngelList, early stage. Don't do a convertible note. I actually just saw a blog post yesterday from Manu at canine and I actually agreed to them. I did a convertible note. I will never do a convertible note again from my perspective. But what's the vibe as an entrepreneur?  What's it like? There's all these different stories. What are you seeing? What's the climate like? Are people like VCs stay away from them?  But what's the general view? Are stuntings getting overfunded? Well, I think what's happening is that there's a wave of entrepreneurs and of companies like myself, like SpeakerText. I started this company three weeks after a Lehman collapse in October 2008. And this was RIP good times. Everybody was saying, are you insane? This is a horrible idea. Come on. Get yourself together. Sequoia is not funding. No one's funding. Right. And it was a long drought. I bootstrapped the company. I worked on an ambulance to pay off my college loans and keep the company alive. It was just a dream back then. And over the last year, year and a half, the market has just radically, radically changed. I personally think that incubators are overhyped. Y Combinator, brilliant idea. Techstars, good idea. Incubator, 9,700, whatever. I think that in six years from now, those will mostly be gone with a handful left. What I think is happening is that the cost of doing startups is collapsing. There's more people on the internet and mobile than there has ever been before. So mega stuff, good. Actually being an entrepreneur though, I'm of the rocky school of thought. It's not about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep going forward. And in times like this... Rocky Balboa you're referring to. Oh yeah, Rocky Balboa. The Italian Stallion. The Italian Stallion. Climb those stairs, drink the raw eggs. Rocky one by the way, right? Yeah, no. Rocky three. Yeah, no. And I think that... That's a good point though. Entrepreneurs have to take the lumps. It's no gravy. Right. Walk in the park. That's not the fantasy people are reading about or dreaming about. They want to be entrepreneurs, right? Take your lumps and... One of our advisors, our main advisor, Mark Randolph, the original founder CEO of Netflix, we're having some issues or whatever in the company and we're talking with him and he sent me this email and he's like, look at Netflix and any entrepreneur who made it in the valley, pissed blood for years trying to make it. This stuff is hard. And I think incubators tap into a certain mindset. Not all of them, many of them are really, really good. But like, what I do fear is that there's people who... False hope. There's false hope. Also, they add structure. And it feels like applying to graduate school. It feels like school. It feels like structure and that lowers the barrier to entrepreneurship, which is good, but at the same time... I call it the community college. It's like more access, which is good. Right. But it's not high-end. Right. And so... High-end is being creative, focusing on the objective, building the product, being loose, being creative. Hate the word pivot, but working with it, right? Getting the market. Well, I mean, also, you know... Put the team together. The pirate, you know, like Mike Errington had this great post a few months ago, are you a pirate? You know? And you know, when you make it like graduate school, the density of pirates drops. That said, I mean, I do think it is really, really good and really... You can't have a lot of pirates. There's only... The seas can only handle only a certain clumber clan of pirates. You know? Well... Are you a ninja or a pirate? This is one of the debates I had on Quora. Are you a ninja or a pirate? Ninja or a pirate, you know? So it's like different characteristics. Pirates working in packs, which is a Silicon Valley kind of legend. But also, you know, you can be a ninja and still be successful. So... But it begs the question, is it oversaturated with entrepreneurs? I was just seeing a conversation saying, there's the best seed market ever. We need more angels.  So... I don't know, yeah. I'm trying to figure it out. I have my opinion, but...  Right?  And we'll see, you know, there'll be this cycle and we'll wash out and see who comes out.  Right? It's that, you know, the times when you get punched in the face.  You're looking at Rocky right here. I mean, I live through the... the ball of scar tissues. I've been booted out of my company and I started with venture backed and started here, scratch with no cash. So I'm with you on that. Totally, totally right on.  Totally.  You know, that's cool. Great for them. But I mean, on top of that... No, okay. So that said, Angelist, I think, is the most amazing invention, you know, in startup financing since the internet. I mean, this is... Excuse me. It's essentially functions like a public market for, you know, early stage companies. You know, before you used to have discrete financing events. Now you can kind of do these roll in closes and, you know, just sort of like a public company.  And that... Yeah. And it's opened up the market to new angels, but it's also startups, you know, it's just... It's really... I'm a member on Angelist so I can tell you that the deal flows good on there. And at first, I was kind of like giving a little bit of criticism to those guys. I mean, I know Neval and Nivy are partying with those guys, but to me, it's a revolution. Hmm... Major improvement. And I think what's interesting is that it can go the... what I call the eBay route. Where, yeah, it can get there. But what I find the most compelling is that those two guys are very cool, good guys, and companies are getting funded. Totally. It might not have gotten funded before. I've seen it with White Combinator.  To me, the guy from Minnesota can walk in a Silicon Valley based on their own merits. Yeah. Get funded and not have to go through and kiss the ring of Ron Conway. You know, offense Ron, but the old way was, you know, go through the gates and get... Well, I mean, but I think, and that's a very good point, but I think that's a key difference between White Combinator and Angelist.  The endorsement. The endorsement, you know, you've been blessed. Angelist. Whatever that means, right? I mean, yeah.  He's got great deal flow, so he has to make some filtered decisions. He's got overflow. Oh, yeah. Even on the Vestercite, I was talking to a one other VC told me they can't get into White Combinator because now you can only get in if you were a previous investor. Hmm. So, interesting. I mean, they're doing some really interesting, but I think Angelist is more sort of like the Android, you know, it's an open platform, right?  How did that go? Oh, it was awesome. And helping me out when I was a total nobody. How, Neve and Naval? Yeah, Neve and Naval, Neve in particular, who's less of the public face, but back in November or December of 2009, you know, I reached out to those guys right before we had sort of launched the most beta of beta versions of speaker text, you know, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.   He's a very cool guy. Those guys are very cool. And they really care about entrepreneurs and they're really trying to do the right thing. And I think it really shows... There's two types of people in the entrepreneurial world, people who want to help people and all the successful entrepreneurs and mentors and investors are the ones who really want to help. Yeah. And I think that's very key in these... which groups you kind of work with, Angelist and, you know, Paul Graham and those guys. So, you know, I think the more that happens in this market, the better. Right? I mean... Totally. And the excess of the money, even better. Angelist is phenomenal. It's like an email blast. Oh, yeah. It's like a subscription document. The most influential people in the sort of startup financing world today. You know, I think it's really interesting because, you know, where do these... why are these people matter? Right? So, Paul Graham, you know, he sold a company to Yahoo for $50 million in 1997. I mean, you know, I wouldn't be too bad, too disappointed with that outcome, but like, kind of big whoop. Right? He's not... But, how did he make his name, his essays, right? His writing, right? You know, Andy Warhol said, you know, anybody could be, get 15 minutes of fame in television, right?  Look guys, like Fred Wilson, he was a VC in New York when, you know, New York was not cool, right? You know, on the consumer side, he's number two behind Greylock, David Z. So, you get the two guys, I think are the best there. Right, but he's, he's not in the valley, right? Like, you know, Fred Wilson. Yeah. Well, either it's Rich Lebendorf, and you know, all the best deals were done were by guys not from Silicon Valley. Right. Zynga, Twitter. Totally. And then, Cliner came late to the game. Look, I mean, look at, what do these people, you know, make names for themselves? They're using the internet as a publishing platform.  It came out of venture hacks, right? And, you know, content as a, as a, as a strategy, right? As like the core of authority. Good content, good content. Oh, yeah. Good original content, serves value, not just page views. Yeah, and not, you serve the customer, you create a brand. You know, that's how you create a brand. And I think, you know, a lot of people, they say, oh, on the internet, we're going to make, you have money, we're going to put some content out there.  Well, we're siliconangle.com. We're making a brand for ourselves to high quality content. Mike Morales here, founder, entrepreneur from San Francisco, speaker text. Thanks for coming in on the extraction point today. Final parting words. Yeah, possible mega trends, if you will. Things that are, you can't put your finger on it yet, but you can feel it. Is there anything that you can talk about that you say, I feel it, I see this coming. This might be big. Oh, I mean, I don't, I mean, people aren't talking about it, but I mean, it's definitely going to be huge is the verticalization of the crowdsourcing space, right? So there's this, there's this dream, you know, two, three years ago, that somebody's going to create a generalized work platform, right? Where you, it's labor in the cloud, mechanical Turk, you know, cloud crowd, these companies that did that. And what's happened is, is that, A, the technology in that, doesn't really, there's a technology problem, there's also a marketing problem. So what you're seeing is companies like, like speaker text, you know, and like my Gango, that are, are attacking specific verticals and they have a specific workflow and process for leveraging the crowd, you know, and combining, you know, artificial intelligent, systems on top of it. And, you know, I expect this to happen in a lot of industries that, you know, machines in AI has sort of had middling success or not really knocked it out of the park. And you're going to see a huge verticalization in the crowdsourcing market over the, over the next 24, 36 months. Man, you're speaking our language, the stuff that we'd love to hear is exactly our mojo here at Silicon Angle, verticalization. We're doing it up and down, research data on our end. You're going to be a hit. I think you're going to do a great, got a great space, great vision. Love that last line. Video's hot. You're tackling that. Either way, I think you're going to be successful because you're in the right area. You're tackling video. You got the metadata. You got the technology. Mike Morellis with Speak Your Text, Entrepreneur of San Francisco. Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it. Thank you.


We've just held a very useful, I might say brief, but also I will add a very moving discussion with Chairman Yunus Kallis of the Islamic Union of Muja Hadin of Afghanistan and other members of his distinguished delegation. I expressed our nation's continued strong support for the resistance, and our satisfaction with the large step the Afghan resistance took toward unity in choosing a chairman for the first time. This new political milestone demonstrates that the people of Afghanistan speak with one voice in their opposition to the Soviet invasion at occupation of their homeland. This increasing unity has already made itself felt on the battlefield. During the past 18 months, the Muja Hadin fighting inside the country have improved their weapons, tactics, and coordination. The result has been a string of serious defeats for the Soviet elite units as well as many divisions from the Kabul Army. Chairman Kallis and his delegation are visiting Washington following the November 10th UN General Assembly vote, which with a record vote once again called overwhelmingly for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan. This is the eighth time since the December 1979 invasion that the General Assembly has decisively called upon the Soviet Union to pull its forces out of Afghanistan. And let there be no mistake about it, the withdrawal of the Soviet forces is the key to resolving the Afghan crisis. Our other issues that have been raised to divert attention from this fact only extend the combat and prolong the suffering of the Afghan people. General Secretary Gorbachev has publicly stated a Soviet readiness to withdraw. Both in April and September of 1987, I asked the Soviet Union to set a date this year when that withdrawal would begin. I also stated that when the Soviet Union showed convincingly that it was ready for a genuine political settlement, the United States would be helpful. After all, the Soviet presence in Afghanistan is a major impediment to improved U.S.-Soviet relations and we would like to remove it. The Soviets should want to do so as well. Unfortunately, the Soviet answer on a date for rapid withdrawal has been silence. Instead, we have seen the Kabul regime announce a phantom ceasefire and propose a transitional government, one that would leave this discredited and doomed group in control. These gambits have been rejected by the only voice that really counts, that of the Afghan people speaking through their resistance representatives. Any proposal unacceptable to the resistance is destined to fail. And as the resistance continues the fight, we and other responsible governments will stand by it. The support that the United States has been providing the resistance will be strengthened rather than diminished so that it can continue to fight effectively for freedom. A just struggle against foreign tyranny can count upon worldwide support both political and material. The goal of the United States remains a genuinely independent Afghanistan, free from external interference, an Afghanistan whose people choose the type of government they wish, an Afghanistan to which the four million refugees from Soviet aggression may return in safety and yes, in honor. On behalf of the American people, I salute Chairman Khalis, his delegation and the people of Afghanistan themselves. We were a nation of heroes. In the name of God, merciful and compassionate, as far as the Afghan problem is concerned, the president has shed light on some important points. I have no doubt that the U.S. promises of support and commitment to the Afghan cause will be honored in the future as it has been in the past. I'm grateful for the opportunity to express the voice of the Afghan people to the world. This is an important opportunity for us. In Afghanistan, we have more than one million martyrs and many children have been killed, villages have been destroyed, and the war continues and intensifies. In the face of these sacrifices or these costs, we have continued our resistance, and we have continued our resistance and we shall continue to do so. The morale of our resistance is very high, and we shall continue with our struggle. In the face of these sacrifices or these costs, we have continued our resistance, and we shall continue to do so. Although the United Nations overwhelmingly has called for the withdrawal of the Soviet troops and conditional withdrawal of Soviet troops, but the Soviets have continued the war, and this war, in our view, is likely to continue. In our view, the struggle in Afghanistan is not only for Afghanistan. The Soviets are using Afghanistan as a base for training their forces and using their weapons, but they also would like to use Afghanistan, should they be victorious, as a base from which they will threaten the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and Western interests in general. This is therefore an issue that involves not only the Afghans, but the rest of the world, especially those who are seeking peace. As a result, it's important that these countries should continue their humanitarian and other support for the Afghan resistance and, in fact, should increase it. In Afghanistan, it's only the Afghan people that should determine the future government. We do not accept any right on this issue and do not accept interference by anyone as far as this issue is concerned. The world should rest assured that no matter what kind of regime the Afghans establish out of their own free will, that regime will not threaten anyone's interests and shall observe all international laws and live in peace with all its neighbors. I reiterate that our struggle shall continue until the Soviets leave Afghanistan and until a government that the Afghans accept comes to power. We do not accept the preferences of others as far as our government is concerned. But we also would like to point out that we would like increased political support and recognition for our movement consistent with increased military achievements that we have achieved. And then I would like to call on the press to give adequate and correct information and analysis of what goes on in Afghanistan. That was the last point that the chairman wants.


whatever you did wrong, leave it behind and move forward. It's that religious inheritance of yours that is filling you with guilt because you did this and that and now go and confess about it and say 10 rosaries. This is your inheritance, even if you yourself are not like that, your parents are not like that. It's a religious inheritance that has filled you with this barrier of fear between yourself and your soul because you're not even supposed to surrender to the soul, you're supposed to surrender to something out there. Take it back, put it back inside and start surrendering to it. And when you surrender to the soul, then you can love Jesus. I mean, extrapolate it now to whatever you want to love. You cannot love Jesus if you don't love the soul, if you don't surrender to the love. And whether it's Jesus or it's your boyfriend or it's the dog next door, love is love is love is love.


This study examined antibiotic use in nursing homes in the United States. It found that 54% of residents received at least one systemic antibiotic, with the most commonly prescribed being fluoroquinolines, cephalosporins, and urinary anti-infectives. The median duration of an antibiotic course was seven days, with higher facility antibiotic use rates correlating positively with higher proportions of short-stay residents, for-profit ownership, residents with low cognitive performance, and having at least one resident on a ventilator. This article was authored by Sarah Kobani, Stanley W Wang, Laura Elditz, and others.


Ring in the New Year with amazing savings from Appalachian Wireless. Get the Galaxy S7 for just $49.99 when you sign a renew a two-year service agreement. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. Thousands of pro-life supporters gathered in the nation's capital today for the 44th annual March on Life. This year's event made history as Mike Pence became the first sitting vice president to address the rally. But even those who weren't able to make it to Washington today have found a way to support their, show their support for their cause with other marches around the country. At this very hour, one of those demonstrations is taking place in downtown Pikeville to get a feel for how it's going. Let's go live now to EKB news reporter Shelby Steele, Powered by the 4G LTE network of Appalachian Wireless. Hey Shelby. Hey Sean, we are live here in downtown Pikeville at the very first March for Life held in Pikeville. It started at Pikeville City Park with an open prayer. Everyone was welcome to add to the prayer and then everyone walked from the city park here to the social security office in Pikeville. I'm standing with Madison Jones who was a participant in the walk and she's going to tell us a little bit of why it's important for everyone to be here today. I believe it's important to be here to speak for the small children that can't. The children that do not have a voice to speak up for themselves, the children that do not deserve to die. And I believe that even a person that is really small doesn't deserve to die. I believe that everyone deserves to live. I also spoke with the organizer earlier today where she told me the march was open to everyone no matter which side of the spectrum you stood on. A special connection to the right to life, I don't want to call it a movement because it's not just a movement, it's a knowledge. If you know that life begins at conception, there is no choice because if life begins at conception and you abort a child, it's murder. So there's no choice if you believe life begins at conception and I do. The Bible says that God said I formed you in the way and I knew you and consecrated you before then. So I've always felt very strongly, very strongly about it. Organizers say since the event was so successful this year they plan to continue to do it in the future. Reporting live from downtown Pikeville for EKB News, I'm Shelby Steele.