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Welcome to CNN Live's daily report on the extradition hearing of Julian Sange at Old Bailey in London. I'm Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News. Well, today was a jam-packed day of testimony. It's possible to summarize everything that happened. The court has only ended about an hour ago. I'm going to do my best. There are several issues here, all of them significant in their own right. The most complex and substantive part of today's testimony was by Carrie Shanklin, a civil rights attorney in New York who was extremely combated with the prosecutor Claire Dobbin. It was a masterful display of lawyers trying to outlaw each other, and Shanklin may have done that. As a layman, I'm going to do my best to summarize that, but the testimony began this morning with Nicky Haga, he's an investigative journalist in New Zealand. He testified like other defense witnesses have that Julian Sange took extraordinary precautions in redacting the names of informants from WikiLeaks documents before publication. Now, we again are on the issue of informants which the US has zeroed in on. They are only charging him with publishing those documents, although he's charged in numerous other counts of receiving and possessing defense information, classified information. They're zeroing in on this informant's issue, as we've been talking about. Haga spoke about how important WikiLeaks releases were in his work as an investigative journalist, particularly in a book called Run about the conduct of a New Zealand special forces in Afghanistan that led to an inquiry in New Zealand. Later, he was cross examined about that because this inquiry said that they got some things wrong. Of course, the prosecution tried to present that to James Lewis as if he got it all wrong, but Mr. Haga was very good about taking his position that in fact most of what they had recorded was found to be credible by the inquiry in New Zealand and they got only a few things wrong. But he credited WikiLeaks, of course, for the enormous help that those releases in Afghanistan gave him in his work and he worked directly with as a partner with Julian Sange. He was given about 400 documents, I believe, to go through and redact himself. The prosecution tried to say that he wasn't qualified to do redactions and he didn't spend enough time only a few days on these hundreds of documents and Lewis pointed out that Stefania Morizzi, the Italian journalist, will be testifying. At some point, has said in her written testimony that she and another journalist spent nine months on 4,000 documents to try to show that Haga really didn't do such a good job. Again, trying to portray a Sange as somebody who was recklessly publishing this information, Haga pointed out first that in his interactions with Julian Sange that he wanted to say that the portrayal of his character in the media was completely at odds with his time spent with with the Sange, that he was a humorous and serious person and it's completely foreign way he's being portrayed and that he even had problems with his colleagues and friends and a family to convince them that a Sange was not the monster that he's portrayed as, but I guess it wasn't very successful. The documents that he used again were redacted and the prosecution tried again to bring up this dinner and I find this really something because if you recall on Wednesday, John gets the German journalist who was at this dinner at the Mauro Restaurant in London where David Lee and Luke Harding, which is along with Gordon Cromberg, Zaffer David, clearly the favorite reading material of the prosecution because they refer to it repeatedly throughout these first two weeks, which concluded today, Friday, that at that dinner, apparently, a Sange said it didn't matter if sergeant, sorry, informants were killed, they deserved it. Now, Gertz was not permitted to be questioned on that. That was a key moment in testimony on Wednesday, so it still hangs out there in the court that a Sange may indeed have said that. Of course, Gertz has signed a statement and he said in press reports that a Sange never said that, but he was not allowed to put that on the record for the benefit of Judge Vanessa Perreza. There was also the issue of the frontline club that Lewis brought up on a press conference in which a Sange said to the words to the effect that a weak leaks is not obligated to protect other people's sources from unjust retribution. A part of that sentence that a Sange uttered that the prosecution obviously did not want to highlight. Again, they want to portray him as a reckless man who didn't care about people dying from the publications of weak leaks. On cross examination, it was brought out that there have been cases where the press has published names of informants, when those informants were known to have been adjunct provocateurs who had committed crimes. Hage responded that that was a sharp edge of the question of journalism. They didn't really want to get into it, but the point was made that in certain circumstances informants, the press has published the names of so-called informants when they were misbehaving in egregious ways. Northern Ireland was pointed out by the defense attorney to show that that had happened before. Essentially, the issue of the redactions or not was at the heart of the testimony of Hage and the government again is trying to portray a Sange in a certain way and the defense is saying that it's not true that in fact it was David Lee and Luke Harding who first put out the password to the unredacted State Department cables that were then published first by Krypton in the United States and the next day was released by WikiLeaks. They're not accepting that. The government says that a Sange put out in August another 133,000 documents. They alleged there are informants' names in that. The defense has said that those were not classified documents and apparently he's not being charged for those. So that was Hage's testimony. Again, going over this familiar territory of the informants still being the main issue for the government and everything that the defense has said, of course, has not changed the opinion about that. So this is a key, key part of our hearing. We then broke and when we came back this extremely interesting witness, Khaled Almazry, was actually trying to log on through the court's online video link system and he was unable to. And I think it was Mark Summers who said he regrets that something like Zoom could not be used for this testimony, rather than this more highly complex court video system. But Hage did not respond to that, but it was put out there. So instead of him testifying and, in fact, James Lewis, the prosecutor, jumped to his feet to object that he should be testifying it all, saying that it was irrelevant, clearly the information that we're going to hear, I'm going to tell you about Almazry, was not something that the United States or British attorneys want to be heard in a British courtroom. It's rare to hear the kinds of absolutely proven horrendous misconduct of the US government in Afghanistan in particular, and in this case of Almazry, that we heard in this courtroom today. Alexander McCurris, the legal analyst who's been joining us on our weekend shows, said that in, again, Northern Ireland there have been cases where British government and its army has been accused and in open court of crimes. But this is something I think on a larger scale, because we're dealing with many different situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and here, Almazry. So to hear the US really raked over the coals by British lawyers in a British court is something you don't read about very often in the mainstream press, except when they published a weekly story back then when they partnered with them. Usually the role of the mainstream press, unfortunately, is to not ask those kinds of questions or, in effect, cover up illegal behavior, even criminal behavior by the government, and that's what we heard about. And that's the case of Almazry. In fact, there was an Arabic interpreter in the courtroom and R.H. or dismissed her because she was not needed. So instead, Mark Summers in defense turned red, the testimony of Almazry. And this is a man who, as Lebanese born, had become a German citizen after 11 or 20 years in Germany, was an upstanding citizen, according to Mark Summers. And he was on holiday in Macedonia in June 2014 when he was taken off a bus and kidnapped by CIA agents and sent, eventually, to a Black site in Afghanistan where he was sodomized and tortured. And that was according also to the testimony of John Gertz on Wednesday, the German reporter. Gertz actually found these CIA agents who did this in his investigation. And he wrote a cover story in der Spiegel that led to a German preliminary investigation, sorry, parliamentary investigation, and ultimately the filing of an arrest warrant by prosecutors in Munich for this CIA team because of Almazry being a German, they had jurisdiction over that. But the warrant was never issued for the United States. And now Almazry never understood why until he read the WikiLeaks' cables, the diplomatic cables, in which it was clearly written there, in black and white, that the deputy head of the German, of the U.S. mission after Zoom in Munich, but I'm not sure that wasn't said where, made de Marches to German officials that U.S.-German relations would be seriously affected if they went ahead and tried to arrest the CIA men. Now the thing about Almazry was that he was tortured and brought back and released on Albanian territory in the middle of the night. He didn't know where he was. He thought he was going to get shot in the back. So all the hearts that they perpetrated on this guy. And he was released by the U.S. under condition that you're not speak about this to anyone. Well, he violated that. He tried to get accountability. And he finally came to a German lawyer who started to help him. But he was being ridiculed and ignored and not believed in Germany, the things that he was saying in public, until Gerritz the Spiegel reporter got on the case and did that front page story in his very important magazine, Spiegel, of course, in Germany. And as Summers said, as a result of the cables, it's now known, but it wasn't known at the time of the warrant that Germany bowed to the pressure not to seek extradition of the 13 CIA agents. In effect, the U.S. threat also put an end to a parliamentary probe into this. Summers says that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in December 2012 sided with the Almazry story and said it was true. And that the grand chamber of that court actually mentioned the WikiLeaks cables were relied upon for them to make their judgment. Subsequent Freedom of Information Act lawsuits in the U.S. revealed that the CIA Inspector General had investigated Almazry's story. This is a guy who's completely innocent who was on a vacation and was thought to be some kind of an insurgent and was tortured and then just released and said, don't talk about it. But the CIA Inspector General, their report that was revealed in a FOIA only determined that Almazry's torture and detention were unjustified. Even the CIA admitted this was some horrible mistake. So Almazry, with that information, started a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia, which Summers pointed out is the same court that has issued this indictment for Assange and where he would be tried if he goes to the U.S. is Almazry sued the CIA there and that court in Alexandria. The CIA agents involved as well as those who controlled them. But guess what? The U.S. attorney in that court in Eastern Virginia declined to pursue the case. So here was a CIA report that showed it was wrong and it shouldn't have happened. So he tried to sue on that, but the U.S. attorney declined to pursue the case. This is the Justice, Freedom and Justice for All. Casual again, another good example in the United States covering up misdeeds by, in this case, the CIA. So the ACLU initiated proceedings in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. That eventually led to the international criminal court taking up this case. They decided March this year to investigate Almazry's story. And the reaction of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said extreme measures would be taken against the ICC and its prosecutors. And I'm quoting Summers here. Mr. Almazry said that without the brave exposure of state secrets what happened to him, excuse me, would never have been understood that exposure of state secrets, of course, by WikiLeaks. So here's an attempt by the defense to show the court what WikiLeaks does, what they do for a living and how they help this individual immensely in order for him to try to get justice. So at least to clear his name, this is one of the main arguments of the defense, what WikiLeaks is actually all about. We then had a break and next up was a statement read on behalf of Jennifer Robinson, of course, is one of the lawyers in Sandra's team. And Robinson says in this statement read by someone else of the court that she was invited to a meeting at the Ecuador embassy back in August 15, 2017. Sandra still in the embassy then. And at this meeting was a sitting U.S. congressman at the time, Donna Robrocker. And he came on behalf he claimed of President Donald Trump to offer a deal, a win-win situation that Assange's prosecution would not go ahead, he may even get a pardon if he was able to tell the United States or give evidence that of who the leaker was of the Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 presidential election, clearly with that knowledge Trump would be able to say that he wasn't Russia, if that's what Assange said and he has publicly said it was not Russia, but they wanted to know who it was. And Trump would be able to win politically and also Robrocker, who was quite friendly towards Russia for a congressman, that he felt that there was a new Cold War tensions between Russia and the U.S. that resulted from this entire Russia-gate scandal and that by Assange giving up the name of who the source was that could lessen tensions and get Trump off the hook, it sounded like a good deal except Assange refused and he refused because he won't give up the sources, which is paramount when you're doing the work that WikiLeaks does, if any journalist dealing in these times with stories needs to protect their sources. So he refused. The U.S. prosecutor then stood up and said that while he believed that Jennifer Robertson's words were true, and what happened at that meeting, he did not accept what Robrocker claimed that Trump had sent him to effect Donald Trump later. He rejected that, denied it, said he was gone, he went on his own, he said, I believe he hardly knew Robrocker, met him a couple of times. Who could believe Trump on a story like this? But that was put on the record there and I think obviously to try to show again the political nature of this entire case from the United States, if they were able to make a deal, if the president was going to give him a pardon if he gave up the source, you know, well how serious are they about this kind of a term from a criminal law perspective to cross-secure drill in Assange. The last part was again the most substantive part. This was the resumption of testimony by Kara Schenckman, a civil rights attorney in New York and an expert on the Espionage Act, he's engaging in a study right now, a book he claimed the first ever real history of the Espionage Act in book form. And Schenckman had talked yesterday about a lot of previous cases, but the cross-examination by Claire Dobbin had been interrupted because they ran out of time and it was resumed today and it was quite a session and it was a lot to digest here and we do my best to summarize it. The key points are that Claire Dobbin, the prosecutor, was again saying very clearly now that the Section 793E of the Espionage Act does not preclude the arrest or the prosecution and arrest of a journalist for having unauthorized possession of cross-examination or defense information and or disseminating it, just having it is enough to be charged under the Act. He was trying to simply establish that but by doing that they have given up the pretense that Assange is not a journalist and that this is not going after the mainstream press, you know that this is not something sorry that threatens the mainstream press, I mean because this is the only thing that I've been saying all along since the first indictment came out right after Assange's arrest in April 2019. That's the only thing they really had him on that's technically still on the books in the Espionage Act. Of course most fair-minded people studied that realized that conflicts with the First Amendment shouldn't be in the Espionage Act but it's never been successfully challenged in court to have it removed from the Act. But this inherent conflict with the First Amendment runs through the entire history of the Espionage Act and the many many cases that Shenkwin brought up and that Dobbin discussed with him in this very intense couple of hours of testimony in the afternoon here on Friday. She was trying to establish that journalists can be prosecuted under that section of the Act and as a layman myself I would have said yes. She was looking for a yes and no answer and it seems on the face of it we would say yes because it doesn't distinguish who would be liable any person who anywhere in the world by the way because of a 1961 amendment which made this a universal jurisdiction not just the US territory. Anyone can be prosecuted for unauthorized possession of defense information. So again I would have said yes but this is he's a lawyer. Mr. Shenkwin is quite a lawyer and he outlawed her and to some extent I think he would simply not give her an answer yes or no that that's the case. He said that it was not simple and that there were many this what's the case law that he cited and also scholarly audit opinions to show that that's not so simple. She brought up the Pentagon Papers case now that was 1971 the New York Times and the Washington Post have been given injunctions not to publish any more of the Pentagon Papers and they stopped and sued and within a few days it was rushed to the Supreme Court and the court ruled the majority opinion was that the government could not exercise prior restraint there that is not they cannot tell a newspaper order a newspaper not to publish them however there was dissenting opinion in that case which said after publication the government could prosecute a newspaper for publishing defense information once it was published that goes back to 793 E which is that anyone who possesses an unauthorized way defense information and or publishes it can be prosecuted so that possibility was there and in fact we do know that Richard Nixon had a grand jury in Boston to go after Hendrick Smith and Neil Sheehan of the New York Times the two reporters on the Pentagon Papers case and it only collapsed when Ellsberg's phone had been tapped his psychiatrist office had been invaded by the plumbers to try to dig up dirt on him but Nixon went pretty close to to prosecuting a newspaper there so so Dobbin was trying to use that dissenting opinion to say isn't it true that the government can prosecute a journalist based on what was said in the court and again Shankman did not give a very easy answer he was quite argumentative and it got pretty heated between them he was simply saying that that case at the time the New York Times Pentagon Papers case was the focus of the case was prior restraint not this issue and it wasn't argued in that case so he didn't want to comment on it wasn't argued that wasn't he doesn't even know why those dissenting justices put out that bit of information but it basically warned Mike Gravel the senator Mike Gravel to whom Dan Ellsberg gave a copy of the Penningham Papers to put in congressional record the very night before the Supreme Court decision that we're talking about Gravel was in the well was in the basement of the Capitol and he read the papers broke down crying while doing that that also led to another case that came up in today's testimony Beacon Press case now Gravel brought the papers to Beacon Press a small publisher part of the Unitarian Church in Boston to publish as a book and Gravel knew that he was protected by the speech and debate clause on the Senate inside the Senate or anywhere where a legislative act is taking place you could talk about anything you wanted to any press information could not be questioned about it could never be arrested but once he went outside a legislative act to publish this classified material the Penningham Papers as a book he was liable to prosecution Nixon decided not to go after a sitting senator but we heard from Shankman today the details of what happened would be Beacon Press that they the FBI was sent there I knew this from Mike himself Mike Gravel told me about when we worked on a book together 2008 the FBI was sent there and bankrupt almost bankrupted this small publisher um and this was a point he also made shankman that it wasn't necessary because Dobbin at one point tried to say well the fact that there's never been a prosecution before this it's kind of contradicts the whole purpose of their indictment of assange but she said because there has never been a prosecution of a journalist before under seven nine three e means that there's been the governor's exercise restraint until now and he disagreed with that in fact he just agreed with everything that she said and he said no because even if it's not been prosecutions it's had a very adverse effect on journalism on many newspapers the ones they went after were barely almost bankrupted because of the legal fees and it sent to chill throughout the industry that they know the government can go after them and the reasons the government us government's gone after newspapers throughout the whole period of the espionage act is because they use those publications opposed the policy of the administration or the administration itself or or revealed misconduct by government so i mean how is this different one must ask from any jim pot dictatorship where they shut down media because they reveal wrongdoing or because they write things that the leader doesn't like about themselves i mean this is this is reminiscent of the 1798 tradition act of adams second president who didn't like what was being written in these pamphlets and of course it it only lasted until the end of the administration jefferson had it repealed and refunded the fees that the fines rather than people who were at charge i mean it's the same spirit of that you are not supposed to expect in the so-called democracy that united states itself has and great britain does too and he talked about a couple of other cases i think are worth mentioning a black newspaper african-american newspaper chicago defender fdr when i sent the fbi after them and charged tried to charge them with conspiracy then there's the case of america which is an interesting one this is a publication that had only about 2000 readers but was widely read inside powerful circles in washington and that after the second world war there was a debate in the state department amongst the china hands the people on the china desk about how to uh what u.s relationship with china should be with with red china after the of course after the revolution in 1949 and some of the debate was so fierce that some members of some state departments leaked documents to this small publication americia to most of their case in this general argument at the state department and the government went after them and tried to prosecute them and also accuse them of conspiring and shanklin wisely pointed out that this were elements because he was asked by dobbing that the case that you're with we're hearing today against julien son there's nothing to do with any of these he vehemently disagreed with that he said that there was they were trying to establish conspiracy between the editors and their sources and uh in the beacon press case he saw a similar recollects in that uh just the way we can this is trying to create a library of documents to that the public has a right to know secret documents that beacon press was trying to publish the entire four volumes of the pentagon papers um that senator grovel brought to them so he saw lots of similarities in this constant theme of going for political reasons going after his publications large or small that threatened an administration um at one point when he talked about beacon press i think is when claire dobbing said um that this is frivolous and nonsense it got really testy there at other points shanklin was telling her i don't want to tell you how to do your job but you know and we're wasting the court's time and my time and this is not relevant to what my testimony is and i don't know what you're allowing a questioning and one point he said i know where you're going with this you're going to try to ask me this and let me answer it right away and venezia beretzer cut him off to let the question be asked so it was um highly a tense exploration of various cases another one i should mention is the marison case this is the man who was working with the navy and he leaked some photographs uh that were apparently classified to jane's defense weekly in the uk not to the soviet government not to china but to a newspaper and and he was arrested for that and he his argument was that he had first amendment protections because it was just he was just leaking to the press and the judge russell was the lead judge i guess because he said that it uh he did not have first protection and protection rights that it would be an abuse of the first amendment that he had no right to give those documents away uh he was a government employee and of course he was charged under the espino jack he actually served two years if i'm not mistaken uh it was only on cross on redirect rather than that that the defense attorney i think it was summers for charl i'm sorry i don't remember um pointed out that the other two judges on this case there were three judges wrote a dissenting opinion saying uh that they didn't agree with russell this with judge russell that there was no first amendment defense here so this this type of argument was uh underscored what shankman was trying to get across while he held his phone to his face because the audio was bad that these are not simple open and shut cases black or white that there's enormous dissent and disagreement within the legal community with an academic community about the meaning of these espino jack prosecutions of the media there've been a whole slew of them none of them have gotten to the point where we are with julien assange and the and that fact even though dob and tried to say that proved restraint by the government but that fact uh is is destroyed that argument is destroyed by the fact that this prosecution has gone forward against julien assange and this is what makes this so historic it's never been a case like this of a journalist being pub being and they are admitting basically he's a journalist thinkers they're saying uh and i thought correctly that the that the espino jack allows prosecution of a journalist because of this unbelievably broad and there was a huge argument over the vagueness of broadness of the espino jack is so broad that anybody who can uh who comes in possession of classified information that means you if you read a download a wiki leaks document that's still considered classified and you email to a friend you have essentially broken the law as well and dob and tried to argue that martin in that case study was established that the government would not go after people like that but only certain uh people who were really damaging that damage to the national security interests of the u.s had to be proven but again that's not what the espino jack says this is what law uh in cases that dealt with the espino jack builds up over time and this is why shankman was saying that well you can't give easy answers to this these are no binary answers to these questions no legal scholar who's aware of this uh who studies the espino jack could give you the binary answers that you are looking for there was another argument that was interesting and that was uh she dob in uh went after shankman because he apparently in his written testimony had said that the executive branch basically uh is writing the law on this on the espino jack because they determine what is classified and what is not classified they determine what is national defense information which does not need to be classified so it's so broad it's so broad that in this case the u.s governors decided that naming informants even if there were some inadvertent ones and totally ignoring all the testimony about the care that sounds put into it but naming informants was was the informants names themselves were defense information and therefore they could charge them on publishing those few names or some names that came out despite all the efforts that were made not to publish the uh the names of informants so uh she really took issue with the fact that uh shank and shankman were saying that in essence the executive branch which has no role in making law of course it's the judicial it's the sorry the legislative branch that does that that the executive innocence in essence was making law by saying what is classified and what's national defense because that's some of the pitfalls of this broad confusing incomprehensible as marxon was called it yesterday espino jack the government could do basically what they want and it's politically motivated as we've seen from these other cases and clearly they're he's trying to say shankman that this is a politically motivated case they made a decision at the highest levels not at the department of justice but in the white house and the attorney general took instructions and they already made statements session said that they were going to go after assange as paio did when he was cia director so uh it was very clearly laid out again and only a very close-minded person on that bench would not understand how complex this issue is how fraught it is how dangerous it is for press freedom and also this it's not been proven yet how national security of the united states was harmed by any of this this is a key point i think we're probably going to hear more of that in the weeks coming up but that has not been established yet either in fact we saw how the people of iraq and afghanistan and mr l mazary was harmed by the united states and that the revelations by wiki leaks helped this man's life and and helped the public to understand what their government is doing i won't get into the long argument that they didn't suit about the rules of engagement and whether uh because uh at the end uh uh mark summers i believe read out the testimony of dean yates yates was a 20 or 30 year reporter with borders and he was the bureau chief and fagdad in 20 in 2007 april when the events of the collateral murder video took place when two rodas journalists were killed and yates was lied to uh he later found out why because the wiki leaks release of the video that the government lied that this was a firefight and that uh you know the pilots thought that the camera of this word is photographer was actually a rpg and when yates saw the video just like when mazary saw the video just like we've heard in other testimony when wiki leaks released matters of public interest they're making this clear in this case what wiki leaks does that he understood he was lied to and he's only recently in the this year yates came out and he put his statement on the record in the court as testimony vernessa berets have tried several times to block summers from reading this because asan has not been charged with releasing the collateral murder he has been charged with receiving and obtaining and receiving the rules of engagement without which you cannot show that that was a crime i mean you could look at that video and pretty much understand that that was a crime there would hardly be any military's rules of engagement written down anywhere in the world that would say you can open up fire on civilians anytime you want but the having the rules of engagement prove that the rules of engagement were violated in that instance that was not known until asans leaked uh sorry published a rules of engagement and that video so he was able to get that on the record uh it was a long long day uh again the defense for a fair minded person i think made certain gains uh it was the it was a difficult uh slot between dobbing and shank went up there and the enormous amount of uh case law scholarly opinion uh cases that were discussed but she was simply trying to say that a journalist can be prosecuted under the espionage act and shank was saying well not so fast because the constitution is the law of the land and that's part of this issue too in other words no law is really set in stone and he even said in testimony yesterday that if these things are black and white he'd be out of a job that's what lawyers do he'd go through the enormous gray areas in the law and try to fashion arguments so it was a wild day in court flurry of activity uh the weekends upon us the people in the court will rest but we'll put together a weekend show for you at fact two of them one we can't discuss yet because it's a barcode but we're going to have our regular show uh on saturday to wrap up this week's events and i can announce that two of our guests are daniel ellsberg depending on papers a whistleblower who leaked depending on papers who testified on wednesday he will appear on our show and on the show to discuss that with him and the rest of us is john pilger the famed australian filmmaker and journalist and we've also invited a few other guests so please tune in that will be uh on saturday we'll release the details timing etc in different parts of the world and then we have this other video so we've got uh we need that coffee so please give us the five dollars that i asked for yesterday if you could please ground around this one of our videos got over 3000 views all in our over a thousand we're not asking for all thousand of you or uh but a few of you if you can't and pledge five dollars a month to our patreon page cn live that is patreon.com backslash cn live and we will see you on saturday for our wrap-up show so four sort of news and cn live this is joe laurea reported


This talk is about security analysis of Calta Diabici, a national standard of random number generator. Our Viet Tung Hoan and his joint work with Yavin Shen. As I mentioned earlier, Calta Diabici is a random number generator, or ING for short. Syntactically, an ING is a stateful algorithm that keeps refreshing state via inputs of high ambient entropy and provides pseudo-random outputs upon request. The ING that we will discuss today is Calta Diabici, which is the most popular standardized ING. It has been used in numerous cryptographic libraries and operating systems such as OpenSSL or Windows 10. The security of these systems crucially depends on Calta Diabici. Despite the importance of Calta Diabici, for a long time there have been very few papers analyzing this scheme. These limited analysis, however, consider just some simplified components of Calta Diabici and therefore cannot support security claims in these documents. In 2019, Woodard and Schumann point out that some options in the overly flexible specification of Calta Diabici might be exploitable. Shortly after their theoretical observation is confirmed by the work of Carney at all, the latter gives a side-general attack on real-world implementation of Calta Diabici. The lessons learned from these two papers are, First, you should deprecate in-sql options in Calta Diabici. Next, if you are a developer, you should be mindful of misuses such as, using licky table-based AES, or failure to repress a state periodically, or using low entropy input. Still, that remains a big question. That is, if we adopt all these recommendations, is Calta Diabici secure? Our work gives an affirmative answer for this question. Before we get into the technical details, let's define what we mean by security. Our target is the robusted notion of notice at all, which is a standard goal of RNGs. Informally, an RNG should still provide security even in the face of state compromise or adversarial input. In particular, we will consider a pair of adversaries, A and D. The sampler D would generate the inputs, the adversaries A would try to compromise the state and also distinguish the outputs with truly random strings. If the RNG is based on an ideal primitive pi, we will give A oracle access to pi. The sampler D, however, doesn't have access to pi. In other words, the RNG has a huge seed, namely the encoding of the ideal primitive pi. In addition to pi, the adversaries also give other oracles. For example, it can get the state of the RNG, or it can set the state of the RNG to evaluate lines, or it can force the RNG to refresh the state. The adversary, however, doesn't control the random inputs. Finally, adversaries A is perceived as a real oracle that provides either the real outputs of the RNG or random strings of the same length. This oracle, however, will provide real outputs if not enough mean entropy is supplied from a last state compromise. We define the advantages of the adversaries A and D as a normalized probability that A can guess correctly whether it will receive real outputs of the RNG or the random strings. Let me now give you a bird's eye view of Cal.diabG. This construction is based on a randomness extractor that will go condense, then encrypt or CTE. Cal.diabG consists of three algorithms, one to rewrite the initial state, the other one to refresh the state, and yet another one to generate outputs. The state of Cal.diabG consists of a key K and an IVV for AES. For example, if you want to rewrite the initial state for an input I, we will apply CTE on I, we will then use Cal.diabG under a 0 key and a 0 IVV to encrypt the extractor string. The resulting cell text would then be passed into K and V accordingly. If you want to generate an output, we will use the Cal.diabG mode to encrypt a 0 string under the key K and IVV from the state. The resulting output would be passed into an output R and an updated state K and V accordingly. Our result bounds the robustness advantage of Cal.diabG via two terms. The first term measures pseudo-randomness quality of outputs produced by Cal.diabG mode. The second term measures how well we extract randomness from CTE. Here's our bound for the pseudo-randomness quality of outputs produced by Cal.diabG mode. In particular, because we'll use Cal.diabG on many keys, so the first term bounds the multi-user PRF advantage of Cal.diabG mode. And the second term bounds the advantage of guessing one of the key Cal.diabG via at most key attempts to bound the quality of extracting randomness from CTE. We'll use the generalized leftover hash lemma from Barak et al. In particular, if egg-random input has lambda-base of conditional width entropy given other inputs, we recommend that lambda to be at least 216. For the rest of the talk, I will elaborate more on randomness extraction in Cal.diabG, namely the CTE construction. This picture is a blueprint of CTE. In particular, given an input i, it will add some prefix-free encoding and a padding. It then iterates through CVC mark up to three times with different constant IVs. The resulting cell deck is then passed into a key and an IV of a yes. We will use this key and IV to encrypt a zero string under CVC mode, and the cell deck is the extracted output string. As mentioned earlier, CTE is based on CVC map as a building block. Conventionally, CVC map uses the zero IV, but in CTE, the IV is non-zero. A classical guide for using CVC map as a randomness extractor comes from the work of Dulles et al. In particular, if you want zero random outputs, egg-inch would should have high conditional mean entropy given the past inputs. This recommendation is however violated in CTE. In particular, CTE uses CVC map on essentially the same input multiple times. It is one of the biggest challenges in analyzing security of CTE as a randomness extractor. To get around this obstacle, we realize that the outputs of CTE will be used to rewrite a key guide and an IVV for the counter mode. Therefore, if we model a yes as an ideal cipher, these outputs only need to be unpredictable instead of being zero random. As a result, we can circumvent the requirements in the classic work of Dulles et al. As an added plus, because we only need the outputs of CTE to be merely unpredictable, we can reduce the mean entropy requirements from 280 bits to 216 bits. Before we analyze the unpredictability of CTE outputs, let's define an unpredictability notion for key hash function H. In this case, we first sample a random input i of random bits of mean entropy. We then generate a key k uniformly at random, independent of i. We then hash i under the key k to produce an output z. We then define the guessing advantage of an adversary a against h via q queries as the probability that a can guess z via q guesses. Analyzing the unpredictability of CTE is rather tricky. Let's begin with an intuitive approach. In particular, we'll first show that CPC MAC is an almost universal AU hash function. That is, it will pick two distinct strings x and y and sample a uniformly random probability pi. Then if we hash x and y under CPC MAC or pi, then this is unlikely to result in a collision. x will employ the generalized leftover hash lemma or product at all, which essentially says that any good AU hash function is also a good randomness extractor for unpredictability applications. As I mentioned earlier, we want the collision probability of CPC MAC to be small, but how small is enough? If we use the classic analysis in the work of notice at all, it gives a good collision bound but only for x and y of the same length. If we use this analysis in the context of CTE, it means that we are effectively assuming that the length of its random input is linked to the adversary a before it makes guesses, because the length is a part of the entropy of inputs. So it means that we are wasting entropy of random inputs and it is undesirable. Alternatively, we can use the analysis in the work of Bollary, Piesek and Raoult's way or Ja and Nandi. These analysis can handle arbitrary x and y, but the resulting bound is inferior for our purpose. Let's now try to find a different way to give an unpredictability bound for CTE. As shown in this picture, the output of CTE is the sabotage of CPC encryption. In order to predict this sabotage, one needs to guess both the key and the IV of CPC. In our failed attempt, we only require the adversary to predict the key and as a result, the bound is poor. We now can have a better bound if we require the adversary to guess both the key and IV of CPC. Realizing this observation translates to a multi-collision property of CPC MAC. In particular, we need to show that if we pick two distinct strings x and y and then sample a random permutation pi, then if we hash x and y under CPC MAC or pi with different IVs 0 and IV 1, then the chance that we have a double collision is small. In our work, we can show that the chance of this multi-collision is at most 64L cubed over 2 to the 256, where L is the maximum block length of x and y. This multi-collision property then implies that it is hard to predict both the key and IV of CPC encryption inside CTE. As a result, CTE is a good EU hash function. We can prove that without squandering entropy of random inputs. Finally, we will employ the sterilized leftover hash lemma to show that CTE is a good determinist extractor for unpredictability applications. It is the vow for the guessing advantage of an adversary against CTE for Q guesses. In conclusion, our work shows that if you adopt the recommendations in the work of Pudak and Schumann and coordinate all, then counter-DIBG is robust. Moreover, our work also shed some light in the design of counter-DIBG. In particular, this construction looks quite cumbersome at first. However, underneath that, it contains very neat design ideas for getting around the limitation of using CPC MAC to extract randomness.


In this video, I'm going to be showing you the optimum settings to use with e-cam live when using it with the RODECaster Pro 2. Now, if you are completely new to RODECasters and the RODECaster Pro 2 is your first device, then hopefully this will be very useful to you. But even if you are upgrading from the RODECaster Pro 1 to the 2, and so you have got a little bit of experience with RODECasters, then you'll still find these useful because there are a few things that are done differently now in this version than they were in the original model because of the extra functionality that they've added in. So, with that said, let's just get straight over on into it, shall we? And I've got the RODECaster Pro 2 here set. I've got my microphone coming into this channel. All of the other faders are down for the moment. And what you can see is just down below me here, I have got the RODECaster coming into e-cam live. And you'll see that it's showing up there as RODECaster Pro 2 main. And you may wonder why that is so long. Well, I have got the USB plugged into the computer, and there are actually on that USB, there are two separate channels. So, we've got RODECaster Pro 2 main and RODECaster Pro 2 chat as well. I'll talk about the differences with those in a minute. But there is, in fact, a third potential channel there, and that is because we've got a second USB. So, that's one of the big differences between this and the previous version as well, is that there are now two USB outputs. Now, you don't have to have them both plugged into your computer. It will work fine with just one of them. You could have that secondary cable going into a different computer, or you could have an iPad or an iPhone or something like that plugged into it. It also will plug into external storage to record to it. But I digress. The fact is, you can also have that same cable or that second cable plugged into the same computer. If you do that, there'll actually be three devices that show up on your inputs and outputs on your computer, and those are as follows. RODECaster Pro 2 main, chat and secondary. So, that main and chat, as I say, are both on the first and the main cable, and then that secondary is with your second USB. If you are connecting to your computer, then you will always default to that first cable. That's the one that also gives you access to the memory card and things like that, and for updating it using the RODECENTRAL app and so on. I'll be covering all that in separate videos, but for the time being, just know that you can connect both of those cables, and these three outputs will appear, and inputs. So, it will default to this main. That is going to be the sort of primary input output that it is going to default to. But what is the difference exactly between main and chat? Well, I'll come on to that in a little while. But first of all, I just want to talk about a couple of settings that you might want to just check when using it specifically with Ecamm Live. It is an input and output device, as far as your computer is concerned, so you can either send the audio from your computer into here, and we can add it into the mix, and also here it's in our headphones. It's an output device in that sense, but then it's also an input device. So, anywhere where you could select a microphone, like in Ecamm Live, for example, or in Zoom, or in Teams, or whatever, then this can be your microphone, so then you can take all of your audio from here into there, and indeed anything you're going to mix in, in terms of sound effects, things like that, music tracks, all of these things that you can fade in and out, then that can all feed into those applications. However, there is one small caveat, and this is one thing that might catch you out, is if you are using the Roadcaster Pro to main as your input, then you do just need to check one thing in Ecamm Live specifically, because what you would expect is, as I'm talking, if I move this fader down, that you would see a change in the volume, and you might be hearing a slight change in volume, but if I move this all the way down to the bottom, I now can't hear anything, and that's what you would expect. If the fader is down at zero, you would expect that there is zero going out of it. However, you can still hear that. I know that you can still hear that, because just down below I can see that that little meter is bouncing up and down, and obviously you can hear it, but I can't hear it in my headphones. So why exactly is that happening? Well, that is a little setting that we need to check in Ecamm Live. So if I just bring up the preferences of Ecamm Live, what you want to do is in the audio settings, then come down to this one here, map input channels one and two to left and right stereo. We just need to make sure that's set, because we do have a stereo outputs coming from the Roadcaster into Ecamm, and so we do just need to make sure we have got that one set. That, having been done, what you'll notice now is as I move this slider down to zero, hopefully my voice will disappear, and there it is. It's completely gone, and I could see that because of the meters stopping going up and down, just down below me, and obviously you wouldn't have been able to hear that. So that solves that problem. There is, however, another problem with using the Roadcaster Pro 2 main as the microphone and also the output. So you'll notice that if I come over to my settings again, I do also have my speakers up here set to Roadcaster Pro 2 main. It could also be set to system default, and as I say, it might be set that the Roadcaster 2 main is your system default. But in any case, what is the problem with this? Well, what we're doing then is we're giving the audio from Ecamm is coming into the Roadcaster, and that's how I can hear what's going on, like if I'm playing any audio in Ecamm, for example, but then also that audio is in the mix and feeding back into Ecamm, and that's what would give you what's called slap back, or where you're basically hearing the same sort of thing twice. And I can demonstrate that quite easily because this fader here is that particular channel. So that is the Ecamm, sorry, Roadcaster Pro 2 main. So now anything that I play in Ecamm is going to come into here. So if I play a sound effect, what you're going to notice is, first of all, it's coming into the Roadcaster. So you'll see that this bounces up and down here, this little meter. But what you'll also notice is down below, any sound effects that I play in Ecamm would normally occur here. So you would see that this, just as we've got a green bar bouncing up and down on the meters in Ecamm here when I'm talking, any sound effects that play, you would see the meters bouncing up and down here. Now, when I play this sound effect in a moment, what you're going to notice is, first of all, there is a slight duplication of the sound. So you're going to get this slap back. But also you'll notice that as well as the sound effect registering here, I won't be talking, but the sound effect will still be registering up on this top level as well, which is where it's coming back from the Roadcaster. So you'll see what I mean right now.  So you could see there that it registered on the Roadcaster and it registered on the sound effects and then also because it was registering on the Roadcaster, it was coming back and you were hearing that thing. A lot of people would call that echo, but it's actually slap back. You're just hearing the same thing back to you again. So that is the issue with using the Roadcaster Pro 2 main setting in Ecamm Live because obviously, this is a great audio device, the Roadcaster Pro 2. We can do lots with this. We can play sound effects. We can have our music. We can fade music in and out and things like that. But let's not forget all of the great audio functionality that's already built into Ecamm as well. So you have, for example, like a countdown timer for your live stream where you've got a music playing in the background and then as the scene changes, it automatically fades the music out. So there's lots that we can do in Ecamm with audio as well. And we want to take advantage of that. It might be that you're also playing movies or something in Ecamm where the audio is coming out from the movie as well. Or it could be just that you're using interview mode in Ecamm Live. And so you've got interviewees coming on and you want to hear the audio for them. It needs to come into the mix and you don't want it feeding back. What we need for that then is something called mix minus. And mix minus is basically where you've got a situation exactly like I was just talking about and it solves this problem. It means that the audio that's coming from the computer into the device is subtracted or minus from the mix that's going back to the computer. And so it's just basically digitally removing that audio that's coming in from the signal that's going back out to the computer again. And that is the difference between those two different settings RODECaster Pro 2 main which doesn't have mix minus and RODECaster Pro 2 chat which has mix minus permanently switched on. So if I come into my settings here and I change this one here from RODECaster Pro 2 main to RODECaster Pro 2 chat and then also if I make sure that I come into my settings as well in Ecamm and I'll go to the speakers and I'll change that also to RODECaster Pro 2 chat. What that's going to mean is now the audio from the Ecamm is going to RODECaster Pro 2 chat. It's going into the mixer but then it's been removed minus from the mix that's going back in as the microphone into Ecamm. And so what that basically looks like now is now that I've got that set. If I play that audio again and first of all what I need to do is I've now swapped from this one is now my RODECaster Pro 2 chat channel so I'll just take this one down. Now what you'll notice is if I play that audio again you hear that clearly without that slap back going on. I can still hear it in here because it's coming into this channel and you can actually see the fader moving up and down here. But you're just not hearing the slap back so it completely solves that problem. Now these settings will apply whether you're using Ecamm Live for recording live streaming or as a virtual mic and virtual camera to go into the likes of Zoom, Microsoft Teams and so on. And if you are doing that what I would suggest is you have the setup exactly as I've just talked about and then you do still use the Ecamm Live virtual mic to go into your Zoom call. Now there is a bit of a niche use case though whereby you might have people on interview mode in Ecamm Live, you're feeding that as a sort of production into Zoom. Maybe you're doing a workshop or something like that and giving a presentation and bringing people in. But where you still want the people on the interview mode to be able to hear the people who are on the Zoom call as well like if you're going to bring people up to ask questions and things like that of the panel. Now previously this was still that last little outstanding use case that we would have for Loopback in conjunction with Zoom and Ecamm Live where you want to have that sort of two-way routing of the audio. Well one of the great things about the Roadcaster Pro 2 is it does have that secondary USB output and this can be used for a number of things. Not least what I've just talked about there having that two-way communication with Zoom and sort of incorporating people into the production but not necessarily having them in there all the time as it were. But there is another use case which I'll be using this for as well which is if you want to be doing a live stream for example but then you want to have literally a live back channel going on Discord so that people can join in the Discord and maybe you can bring them up to ask live questions or things like that or maybe you want moderators that can literally talk to you as you're going on your doing your live stream to tell you you know if your audio is dropped out or for anything like that there's all the things that people like to tell us about on live streams so this can all be done by utilizing that second USB plugged into the same computer. Now that is getting a little bit more advanced but I'll be telling you exactly how to do that in the next video that's coming up here. I'll also leave a playlist for all of my other roadcaster videos up there as well.


So, this is my lab notebook and it can be a really helpful tool for you to remember past experiments that you've done and to remember past techniques and protocols and it also serves as a document, an official document of what you've achieved during your time in a lab. So, the most important, what I would argue is the most important thing of a lab notebook is your table of contents. It takes a little bit of extra time to do, but it's really helpful when you're trying to look back to a past experiment or technique and you need to find it quickly. And it also helps you keep very organized. The next important thing is, so here's a page of my lab notebook and you can see it's numbered and it has sections up here for both the project and the title of whatever I'm documenting here on this page. So the project is really important because that will allow you to differentiate between different projects that you might be working on, so sometimes you might be using the same assay for a different project and it helps sort of differentiate. It's also really important to have a detailed title that will help you remember sort of what you did at a glance. So I like to talk a little bit about what technique I'm doing in that section as well as sort of basically what sort of cell type I'm looking for with and so forth. It's also really important just to write a quick sentence about why you're doing this experiment, what your objective is that helps sort of keep your eye on the prize and helps you sort of remember why you're doing it. It's also really helpful to actually have printouts from equipment that you've used and your actual data that can help legitimize what you're doing and can also help you also help when you're looking back and trying to double check things and so forth. It's also really helpful to have images of what you're doing or what you've done, especially if you're doing cell work. It can be really helpful if your cells change morphology or structure over time. It can be really helpful to be able to look back on that. For instance, on one day these cells were really monolayer, they were growing in a monolayer and they had a very spindle-shaped morphology and seven days later they formed this giant structure, this blob shape. So that was really helpful for me to look back and say, oh yeah, these cells are, they definitely changed over time. Lastly, it's really, really important to outline your protocol. So I like to write down every little step, even something that doesn't seem relevant at the time because later on you may actually want to look back and say, which media did I use there and how long did I incubate that for? And if you take really good notes you'll be able to actually look back and get that information. It's also really important to note down which materials you use because, oftentimes there are hundreds of different medias you can take and choose from and hundreds of different antibodies and so forth. So it's really helpful to have the name of whatever you're using as well as tablog numbers and lot numbers that can save you a lot of time later on as well. So another really important part, another reason why it's really important to take really good detailed notes in addition to helping you out as a researcher, enabling you to look back on what you've done and remember everything. It's also, your supervisor may also want to take a look at your notebook. And it serves as almost a diary or a log for them to actually be able to look back and understand what you're doing and why. So it can serve as an official record of what you've done.


Hello and a big welcome to Sound Sensation. The show with Nia and Peter, we're taking a break from our day jobs at Medell to host a special show. It's going to be a big celebration of all things music and hearing implants. Yes, we've got a packed show. There's an interview with one of the world's leading hearing implant surgeons, videos from all over the world and three fantastic guests here in our brand new studio. What if we start with some music? That's a great idea. So while this first performance comes from Mayor Tom, a Spanish musician. Yes, he wanted some performers to join his latest music video. So we ran a little competition where hearing implant users sent in videos of themselves singing, dancing or playing their instruments. The winners were Ludmilla, a singer from Argentina, Paulina, a dancer from Colombia and Fabio from Spain who plays the piano. Congratulations. Very cool guys. Check them out in the new music video for Mayor Tom's song, Tu Paredes del Sonido, which means your sound barrier. It's a new version of the song that Mayor Tom wrote a few years ago for his daughter. She has hearing loss, but thanks to her cochlear implant, she can enjoy her dad's music. Let's go check it out. What a way to kick things off. I love how that song starts quiet and builds momentum. I totally agree. What do you think, Rami? Would you like to have them in your band? Absolutely. So Paulina, Ludmilla and Fabio won a competition to take part in that music video, but it certainly wasn't the first competition for hearing implant users. No, one of the longest running ones is Beats of Cochlear in Poland. Of course. And the man behind it is famous ENT surgeon, Professor Henrik Skajinski. Well, he's behind a lot of things actually. He runs the World Hearing Centre and has been performing hearing implant surgeries for more than 30 years now. And he's even been getting involved in the film industry, I heard. That's right. But why not ask the man himself about his work with music and hearing implants? Somehow he managed to find some time to talk to us about it. Hello and good evening. Professor Skajinski, in 2022, the eighth edition of the Beats of Cochlear music festival took place. To the people in our audience who might not know about it yet, what is Beats of Cochlear? The International Music Festival for Children, Youths and Adults with Hearing Disorders, Beats of Cochlear, is an occasion to present the extraordinary achievements of modern science and medicine. Users of all sorts of hearing implants show off their musical abilities. They present both their communication skills and their musical ones. They perform as singers, as musicians playing all sorts of instruments and as composers. When we look at our patients, it's crucial to see more than just a person who we help to communicate with their environment. From the beginning, we wanted the festival to showcase the success of many hearing implant recipients, so they could become ambassadors of modern science and medicine. Thanks to these people, we can show the potential effects of rehabilitation. The festival participants are extraordinary. They are often professionals in various music genres or music enthusiasts. We need both of them because they support our activities and strengthen the positive image of all of us. And how did it come about that you initiated a full-length cinema movie about a man that regains his love for music through a CI? Probably more than one person came up with this idea, and indeed, I was not the only one. The idea had come up in the past because of many talented people. We wanted to show their skills, we wanted to show them to the world, so they could raise awareness to potential candidates through their music. The Sonata movie shows the story of one of our patients from his point of view. And could you please now tell us a little bit about the plot of the movie in a nutshell? The plot of the movie looks at what Gregorosh was experiencing and the problems he encountered. It shows the experience of people who helped him in the diagnostic and rehabilitation process and helped him in developing his communication skills. The breakthrough moment for Gregorosh was an operation and the new possibilities that had opened for him. He took advantage of these new opportunities brilliantly. Gregorosh can freely communicate within his surroundings, finish music school and follow a profession, continue his career and follow his passion. And I have to ask, how does it feel to be portrayed by famous Polish actor Yershi Sztur, who appeared for instance in Nani Moretti's famous movie, A Famous Papam, from 2011.  I have been asked frequently if Yershi Sztur played my character well or not. I always answer that we gained one more surgeon, Professor Yershi Sztur. So when did the film premiere and how has the reception been so far? The film first premiered last year at a festival and was released in cinemas this year. The film has aroused great interest. It received prizes at various festivals. It was awarded a special audience award. The film was warmly welcomed by disabled communities. Gregorosh's various issues and the numerous barriers he overcame in the end give hope and chances for others. Not only people with hearing loss, but also other people with disabilities. So in your opinion, do you think that the movie has the potential to raise awareness of the barriers and the treatment options for profound hearing loss or do you consider it mainly a cinematic experience? The film addresses the deep-rooted issues faced by the main protagonist and his family. The film shows the challenge of overcoming a whole bunch of problems. The film shows the gradual overcoming of what seemed impossible to achieve. The film shows the gradual overcoming of what seemed impossible to achieve. The film shows that applied therapy, treatment and modern technologies like hearing preservation in partial deafness are not only a media or cultural occurrence. It shows, most importantly, the scientific and medical breakthrough through modern communication means and popularizes achievements and problems of the disabled among various communities. At the same time, we see that many obstacles in life can be removed and that we can help almost everyone. And what role does music play in your personal life? Do you make music yourself? Music is essential to everyone's life. It is important for me and I enjoy it, although I was not always able to fulfill my dreams in this area. In my high school years, when I made my own electric guitar, I did not manage to create a music band. In my student times, when I actively worked in a student's music club, Medic, we organized numerous cultural events including festivals, student song reviews and other musical gatherings. In my everyday clinical work, I use music to support various groups of patients, tinnitus patients, hearing aid users and hearing implant users. Thank you so much for your time, Professor Skarzynski. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you and greetings to Inzmruk. And now let's end by taking a look at the trailer of the movie. I don't want to say that your son is supposed to feel the sound in the low register.  Sonata, do you want to learn how to play Sonata?  Send us here. You won't learn in our school. I don't have the time to play Sonata. I don't have the time to play. You believe that he will play. We believe that someone can teach him. Who is it? Bravo. Great. Today is the day. In my opinion, in his case, he should appreciate his heart. It's important to have a logic. I'm talking about music. If you already learn it, you can teach me, okay? You know what?  Pennis, very nice. Women don't have them. They all have them. Sasha, do you have Pennis? Yes. Why Pennis? Because God wanted it that way. A crocodile? A smiling crocodile. Okay, I see. Let's get somebody in who can explain it all to you. Please welcome Dagmar Hermanova. So, thank you very much. Thank you for making your trip here and joining us in the studio. It's great having you and thank you for making the time. I would like to interview a little bit about your project, the Smiling Crocodile. And how did it come to the name Smiling Crocodile and what is it all about? Okay, this crocodile is called Smiley. And it's a mascot of the charity called Smiling Crocodile. And the name came out about 15 years ago when I set up the charity.  But we wanted to have it something which is positive and which everybody would remember. And that's why everybody's asking me actually the same question. Why Smiling Crocodile is called Smiling Crocodile? But this is for it. And also the crocodile is a cool animal. It's a brave animal, right? And a crocodile has a power so it can fight for these children in developing countries to get hearing back. Great. Now, but I can see the name is very fitting for it. And it's a very cute mascot you have there. So regarding the charity project, what were some of the Smiling Crocodile's highlights in the past years? Okay, we have two main projects so far. One is in Czech Republic. And there we have a big center for children with severe complex needs. Or four children with severe complex needs. And they are that severe cases that they would need or they are already needing the palliative care as well. So we have currently the kindergarten and elementary school. But we are aiming to have the children's hospice in the next couple of years and also respite care. So this is Prague Czech Republic and abroad. We are supporting thousands of children with hearing impairment or complex needs from emerging markets developing countries Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, English-speaking Africa, India a lot. And there the project is about the awareness. That's one thing. But also we are supporting the rehabilitation, education and integration of these children to the mainstream society. That sounds great. And it sounds like very far-reaching as well, stunning. But I also believe that music played a big role in this project somehow. Music is a big thing for hearing impaired people. Everybody knows it or not maybe everybody, but that's where we are here. This is the part of everybody's life and also for hearing impaired. It's important. And yes, during the therapies abroad, in developing countries, mainly we do a lot of music sessions, but it's not enough, you know. And when we were thinking about awareness four years ago, the music is a great connection and everybody likes music and it's rememberable. So we have created the campaign for CYHE I Live and the major thing of this campaign is the song which now I would say it could be named as an anthem for the cochlear implant users in developing countries. And we've recorded the song with a professional singer from Czech Republic Milan Perotka and the children or the main musicians from developing countries in 12 different countries in 10 languages. And this music is just going on. The songs were number of times used in the media or during the concerts, during different shows and it helps the children to get the awareness and get the influence. That is amazing. So maybe we should have a little sneak peek into the video of the song. Sweet child nice smile that he is lots of different dreams dirži s nadežda nogo znáči because nice melody from the heart because zvuki maj tuši a piac zavu wunai darikomom xiwong cai cung qiši cingshō těnġeġ nice melody from the heart chōka mundi ma wona ku wālā wona ku lande kā wona cing van de kā mi kāndi ba mue hňaňaňaňaňa vana mai I live forever, I'm not afraid of the sun, I'm not afraid of the moon. countries intensively since 2011 actually and not just Medell but also Dr. Hochmeier personally and because of Medell a lot of projects could be done and a lot of children could be helped in a way that they could receive their habilitation and education if they are for example living in slums or they are orphans they would never be able to get any rehab without Medell support, Medell kind support. That sounds lovely great just regarding the charity project that you're running in India what's what are you raising money for? Okay in India as I said we support their habilitation and education of the children which are living in disadvantaged areas and you know one part is that they get their habilitation in the center but India is a huge country and these children living in the slums are living sometimes hundreds of kilometers away from the centers and from the therapies so they need some transport and we are fundraising also for the transport for these children and they used to pay the tuk-tuk service taxi service in India but we came we came to the idea to have our own tuk-tuk smiling crocodile tuk-tuk which would be regularly transporting the children from the slums to the centers so currently we would be happy if anybody would help us to fundraise for the smiling crocodile charity tuk-tuk specifically for this transport of the children. I understand and so how if people would like to contribute or donate something how would they be able to donate towards your tuk-tuk? They can definitely go to our website www.smilingcrocodile.org and they can push the button donate and donate whatever they want you and thanks very much for anybody's help. Are there any more questions for me there? There are not on here but there would always be of course but I would just like to say thank you so much again for coming for joining us here it's amazing work that you're doing and I hope that I'll see you again very very soon thank you Dasha. Thank you very much for having me over and thanks to everyone which is which is supporting us and which is willing to donate to smiling crocodile children goodbye. I'm really loving the energy of our band today actually now would be a good time to introduce them. Yes that's a good point okay so like us they work at Medell headquarters we've got research manager Rami on vocals and keyboard. Technical writer Marina on vocals and the acoustic guitar. Anaketa who manages ENT relations on bass. And software technician Jacob on the drums. And I must say they sounded very in tune. Yes maybe they got Marcus Seutel involved. Who? Marcus Seutel he tunes and repairs organs for a living. Not that kind of organ but real church organs in Europe Asia and even Australia which is especially impressive as he had all those chlorosis and uses a bone bridge bone conduction implant to hear. Let's go check it out. My job is to bring it to sound in this style as it is always is. But I tune the organ and I tune it. Yes and three and a half years ago I was in the middle of a project. It was just one in the morning on the left ear. It was a waiting feeling. I thought it would be a little dirty and with more research and tests it was then diagnosed orthosclerosis. That means my hearing bones can no longer transport the skull into the inner ear in normal success, let's say. Of course, we made great care at the beginning. A little hardened with my fate, which maybe everyone would do. Because I also hang a lot on my job and I do that with almost 30 years now with heart blood. But my doctors and also the technicians of the company Medell have made great courage from the beginning. And so of course I decided for the implantation and was then supplied with the implant in November 2018. And that was of course an incredible moment because I could hear everything. That was very impressive. Of course, my brain gets two different information from the right good ear and the implanted ear. And that also took a certain time until it all went back to normal. But now that's all no longer a problem. For these fine settings, my dear colleagues from Medell have already been in the hall in the cathedral with me. After I had activated the implantation for three months and they made such great changes that the hearing experience for me was much better. So not only the hearing experience, but also that of course hearing from the highest note to the loudest sound. And from this point of time I really work as normal as before on my job. It's amazing that he can carry on with his work even after hearing loss. Yes, just like Beethoven. He also used bone conduction when his hearing got worse. Of course that technology was quite different to an implant. Basically just the wooden stick between his teeth, still Beethoven managed to compose true master pieces. One of them was Ode to Joy, which leads us to our next video. Yes, this is a choir workshop for hearing implant recipients held right here in Austria. Let's take a look. The most important thing, I think, is that there is a lot of practice and the music that belongs to it. The music is one of the most important therapy forms in the CI history. I'm Astrid. I come from Switzerland, from Lucerne. I was also there in the Lucerne Kantonspital, and now to experience my music with the implant. As a child I sang a lot and music. I also come from a musical family. And then when my hearing was taken off and I carried hearing devices, the music was no longer pleasant to me. So I avoided listening to music, because I needed a lot of rest and it didn't sound good either. And then with the implant, at the beginning it was also a bit difficult with the music, because all the saved music pieces, until they somehow sounded like they used to sound, it was already a transition that wasn't so easy, but with time you learn to listen to music again. And that comes automatically, because I then started listening to a lot of music again on the radio or at concerts. And then it was a pleasure again. And that has always come to me, that I then also returned to the music field and I started to sing. That was actually some music. That was really nice. Oh, the Sankt der Flügelweib. What a surprise. It looks like one of the choir members is here. Welcome Mr. Heinz Kirchschlager. Hello. Hi, nice to meet you. Hi, good having you. Please take a seat. Thank you. So Heinz, tell me, how was the workshop in Sankt Pilten? It was a great experience to sing, dance and have a good time with 18 people of different countries. Also we got a small final concert. It was lots of fun. And the new family was founded. The C.I. singers. That sounds amazing. But I hear that you're not only a singer, you're also a musician, right? Actually, I started playing folk music with the C.I.R. It's like an accordion, quite late in life. I was 48 years. But my hearing got worse and worse. By 2017, I was almost deaf on my right side. So I gave up my music making. But then you got your cochlear implant and that changed everything, right? I got my C.I. four years ago. Adventure back to the C.I.R. a short time later. I soon realized that the instrument is the best hearing training and therapy for me. Now I own two new harmonicas and regularly I do performance with two friends. I regained back the joy of music. That's amazing. And now, of course, we would love to hear you play. Sure. Great. Oh, the man came prepared. It's beautiful. Thank you so much. Well, and Heinz, before we let you go, we saw that you brought another instrument, a very unique, a very special one, one that you designed and crafted yourself. Wow, what is that? This is a cochlear shaped alpone. That's incredible. The first worldwide what I made with my friend out of Brucewood. Beautiful. And how did you come to the idea to build this instrument? I knew I must have worked hard with my new C.I. And I think I must do something crazy those alone. It sounds perfect. Could we therefore hear a few notes? Of course. Great. It's awesome. And I hope for all two more pieces, you can. Oh, did you? Can we? Yes. That would be amazing. I, me being the gentleman, I would say ladies first. Okay, Peter, it's game on. Hold. Here we go. Ladies first. Ladies first. Okay, thank you. I may be a little competitive, so here we go. I want to do the high note, low note. You ready? Please do. There you go. I got multiple notes. Okay, Peter. Okay, I have a go. For you. Thank you very much, sir. This is fantastic. It sounds more like calling it out in the wild. Thank you very much, Heinz. Thank you for having you. Thank you for your inspiring story. It was awesome having you on the show. And I really hope that we're going to meet again very, very soon. Thank you for being... ...sincerely showed us how it's done. Next up, Eurovision. You joke, right? But one of our hearing-implant users almost made it. Really? Yes, one of our Bonebridge users, WoW judges in Israel's Eurovision selection competition in 2019. And Medell also had a special role in Eurovision this year. Wow, really? Yes, indeed. We had an extra studio set up for people with hearing loss at the Song Contest in Italy, with special assistive listening devices, subtitles and sign language to make it fully accessible. Roughly 80 people with hearing loss, hearing aids and hearing implants get to enjoy Europe's biggest music competition, Life in Turin. Okay then, in that case, let's check it out. The fact of living together with people who have your own sign language, however, is that, like you, you sometimes find yourself facing difficulties that seem insurmountable, it helps you to not feel alone, and, on the other hand, to find a bit of inspiration in your daily life. For the first time, we've heard and included listening to the music, which is usually your sound, but, of course, I don't understand a lot, so it's been a great experience. It's really amazing to see how far technology has come. It's easier than ever before for people with hearing implants to enjoy music. That's true. There's a constant progress in implant sound quality, streaming technology and even in music training software. Our next guest is working on just that, with a tool that has huge potential for hearing implant users. Welcome to one of the men behind the innovative Melodia app. Thank you for being with us here today. Thank you for having me. Okay, to start off, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the Melodia app and what led you to develop it? Definitely. So, basically, many people think that we can't change our perception of music, of sound, even of the world. And at Melodia, we believe that this perception can be changed. Okay, so we can change the way we react to sounds, the way we react to music. And this can be done by the right triggers. And when it's being done, it can trigger also some emotional breakthrough, which are very good, like, for example, enjoying better to listen to music. Would it be fair then to say that it's almost training your mindset or retraining your mindset? There is definitely an aspect of it.  And in terms of the content of the app, how did you go about creating that? Well, Michael Fonder, Vincent Chintrier, has been working for 25 years, accompanying more than 3,000 people from all musical levels, all ages, and has developed a way to increase the musical potential, but also the listening abilities of those people. So the idea was to create some exercises in an interactive way to follow his patterns, to follow his method. Okay, so he was basically out in the field for many years? Yeah, it was basically one of the biggest field research possible in different kinds of music with different kinds of people. That sounds fantastic. Okay, so in terms of the app itself, I mean, there are several apps out there, I'm sure you're aware. What sets Melodia apart from a normal music app or a rehabilitation app? So an interesting thing about Vincent Chintrier is that he has some hearing impairments, he has some tinnitus himself. Ah, that's interesting.  So he's always been very sensitive to what it means to be in the world with tinnitus or with hearing impairments. What it is to have, to develop some things in your mind to get around this condition and to be in the world with that. So what specific benefit can people with hearing implant or hearing implant users gain from using Melodia? So the first thing is about music perception and music enjoyment itself. Our goal is that through the exercises that music appear as more enjoyable for them. The second one is about being exhausted at the end of the day because you've been listening and your brain has made so many efforts. So the idea is that through those very targeted listening exercises to develop some focus and attention and also to help the brain spend less energy. With the things of everyday life. And the third one, which I think can be very important, what we have in music is interesting. In music, everybody can speak at the same time in a way. So you have different instruments playing different voices. In Melodia, we have some exercises with, for example, two voices played at the same time and then playing the high one again or the low one again. And the idea is to be able for your mind can actually separate, can discriminate different sounds played at the same time, which can be very helpful in noisy environments. Like, for example, in a restaurant when you have to focus on someone's voice or someone else's voice and filter the other voices around. That sounds actually like quite a fun game and very useful for hearing implant users. We often have the conversation that being in a restaurant or a noisy environment, as you said, saps the energy sometimes or takes a lot of concentration. So yeah, that sounds actually quite fun. A fun game. In terms of using your app for education, is this something that could be used, for example, in a classroom with both hearing-implanted children and people with normal hearing? Definitely. Most definitely. We have lots of schools, music schools, but also general schools, using Melodia all around the world. And what teachers said about that is that it develops a state of listening. Like, you know, creating this inner listening, creating some space inside to let something come and really listen to it. And it's not just about music, right? It's about having some more listening children in the world as well. Well, exactly. And that actually ties in very nicely to what Medell is about with overcoming hearing loss as a barrier to life. So we want to be out there enjoying all that life has to offer. Okay, so for all of our hearing-implanted users out there, could you let us know or let them know how they can locate the app? Where could they find it and download it? Definitely. So it would be through My Medell. And we have implemented a way for users to go on Melodia and connect with their My Medell credentials in order to have a one-year unlimited access on Melodia. So I'm interested. Have hearing-implanted users already used the app and have they enjoyed it? Oh, yes. Since 2017, we were first contacted by UCSF and Dr. Charles Limp, who conducted a study with cochlear implant users. The feedback were very good and the results as well. Then we started working with Medell in 2018 with Johanna Boyer from Medell in America. And she did a study. She also helped us fine-tune some exercises at Melodia so that they are completely compliant with cochlear implant users and during the studies she even proved that every cochlear implant user can actually start with Melodia, that the exercises, the first exercises, are simple enough for them to start and to make progress onto the app. So the feedback was also amazing because they started to say that their world of music, their perception of music was changing as well. So yeah, we are very excited with this new phase of making Melodia available to everyone in the world. That's fantastic. So the history with Medell and Melodia actually goes back quite some time and so this is the time now. We're ready, we're ready to go. It is. Well, Bastian, that's all we've got time for today. So I want to say thank you so much for coming in, explaining everything to us. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Goodbye. So don't miss that chance and get your free one-year Melodia license via mymedell. Find everything you need to know down here. And with musical training, the sky is the limit. You can listen to music, sing, play an instrument and some people with hearing implants even go beyond that and produce their own albums. One of them is jazz musician, bass player and composer, Dizzy Yoshimoto from Japan. And another one is Roy Smith an American banjo and guitar player with cochlear implants who recently released an album. Here's some clips behind the scenes. Actually, let me just change my processor program okay to mic forward which I think gives me better control over my voice. The definition of cyborg is like park man, park machine and I am one. So what does it feel like to be a cyborg, Roy? Feel any different? Can you run faster? No, no, but I can suffer more when a fire engine comes by. I've realized that it's very important to me to be holding a guitar or a banjo and feeling it. For some reason, I mean I can use a pitch of instruments and the timbre of instruments pretty well but vocal pitch, my own vocal pitch is a real challenge. So this is where I'm pushing the limits of what's possible. When I got my first hearing aid and began to sound just like noise, I put my instruments literally in the basement.  It dazzles the eyes with its chemical dyes. Going by with its harlequin charm.  It's really good. Great, I loved it. And here it is, it's Mended Spirit. Yes, and if you want to see more world-class musicians with hearing implants performing on the big stage, make sure to watch Sound Sensation, the grand finale. Live from Vienna in Austria. Along with the premiere of Virtual Voices and Band, an online band made up entirely of hearing implant users. That's all from us for now though. A big thanks to all our guests, the studio team and of course the Medell Band. And also a big thank you to you for watching. Have a great time and keep the music playing. you


Welcome back here to the channel. Big announcements are being had today if you have a guest by that intro clip and you can see the car running here at Tale of the Dragon that R35 Monster with the ESTA door cards. Well that is because today I officially announced my partnership and working with Steve Connor, a pro driver of ESTA, getting a chance that I've been working for for a very long time. If you guys have been fans of the channel from back in the fours of more than four seven days, you guys know I was trying to get into ESTA. I was trying to get my license. I was working with TUS. I was running in SSR to try to get my seat in ESTA. Well I have been given an opportunity that I can't even still wrap around the thing that I was given this chance. Steve Connor, a pro ESTA driver as well as ESTA's media and sponsorship personnel and staff member has given me the opportunity to take what they're calling the celebrity spot. The celebrity spot in ESTA is for going his championship spot in the ESTA series to open it up to myself and some others to compete in various rounds rotating through each other in the ESTA pro championship in the 2021 season. So all my hard work has come to this point. This is not a full seat, it is not a full license. I get a chance to try and qualify into some rounds of ESTA and show that I deserve to be here. So I was definitely tuning and testing the car here on the Dragon, had one or two offs. I was trying to get comfortable in his R35. This part is a monster and I can't thank Steve Connor, ESTA and all the staff, die and everybody for allowing this to be an opportunity for myself and others such as Slap Train and the few IRL pros that may be taking the seat in the various rounds of seven rounds of ESTA. As of right now I'm slotted in to compete in round two which is in about two and a half weeks. So definitely trying to dial the car down, got my livery and everything. I definitely love the color scheme and what I was able to come up with for this livery.  This car is nasty, it's aggressive, it's so much fun to drive and it's definitely something that has way more power than I personally am used to. And like I said this is a seat for me in ESTA but it's not going to come easy. So the competitors such as all the big hitters, winner of round one, JSI Mystified and all the other JSI members, you know, OMT, Itandem and all these other big name teams that are competing, the competition is tough. So for me to actually get into battles is going to take a lot of effort on my part and a lot of practice to be able to actually qualify for the round. I'm not just going to be given a spot in battles, I need to qualify high and actually qualify in 32 to get into battles. But the chance that I have to be able to be sitting on the start line here in a set of Corsa on ESTA qualifying day is something that I can't even fully wrap my head around yet. And you know, I'm so excited to bring you guys this and bring this out to you guys. It was something in the works for a little bit of time and I'm so excited that I can officially announce it to you guys. And once again, a big thank you to Steve Conner for giving me the opportunity to get behind the wheel of his R35 and take it into ESTA. He, with the media and his family, he's unable to compete in all the rounds and he wanted to open this spot up for people that could potentially be in ESTA next season. So I'm definitely going to be going hard in qualifying and doing my best, trying my hardest to show that I deserve to be there because, you know, driving and drifting in a competition aspect is not something for the pain of heart. And at this caliber of driving with a caliber of drivers that are in ESTA, it's not an easy feat. So even able to qualify for a round is something in a win. I went off in the dirt there. So we're going to take a look at this car a little bit more in depth here. So let's go take a look at the car and see what we're rocking with for this season. So we're taking a look at Conner's R35 that he has built and was running in round one. As you can see, it's a different livery than his monster energy drink livery that he rocks. But this is my personal livery that I'll be running. And like I said, pulling out all his big name sponsors, Vossen, Podium, Big Duck Club, Next Level Racing, Nexon Tires, and of course my main sponsor Energy Innovations. A big thank you to them for constantly supporting me. And they are supporting in this ESTA endeavor. So the R35 is definitely different. I've never seen a Targa Top Style R35. So it's definitely a super aggressive looking car. The interior, you know, full blown out race car. It's an amazing car. Love what he's done with the car. Hopped in the car, ran some runs at Long Beach, felt super comfortable in it. Definitely gonna be doing some more tuning. Gonna be getting with, you know, some bigger named ESTA drivers that are helping me through to support that I'm getting in this endeavor that when they found out that I was gonna be running some rounds is incredible. Definitely love those headlights. And it's got some underglow in there. You can't really see it right now, but you know, daytime and all. So I'm getting a lot of help from the ITANDEM guys. I'm getting a lot. I'm gonna be getting help from the OMT team. There's a lot of people that are willing to help me and help with what I need when it comes to getting this car ready for the competition. They have been longtime friends, new coming friends and things. It just goes to show you the community that ESTA has brought together. And I can't thank the staff of ESTA die. Everybody that's involved for what they've brought for the competition community. It's insane. And I am so excited to be a part of this. I can't thank everybody enough. Super excited to bring you guys prep content for the next couple of weeks. You know, ESTA prep, tuning tandem practices. Once we find out this end of this week, what track it's gonna be on. Well, you know, I'll be running a lot of practice got my buddy Christmas always ready to help me always ready to throw down. We were running some tandems with these cars, you know, just so that I could get some tea time. And I can't thank him enough. Like I can't thank Addy enough for willing to help me adjusting the car if I needed to and, you know, Connor is definitely willing, you know, to make changes. He even was offering to change cars if I needed to to give me a comfortable spot. It just shows you the type of people that are in the community. And the community that I've built from my channel is just another bracket of this. This is a whole nother aspect of the community that not a lot of people get the chance to see. So once again, a big thank you to everybody at ESDA, all the staff, Connor, especially for allowing me the chance to take his R35, his baby that he refers to as and get behind the wheel and sit on the starting line of the qualifying run and try and qualify my way into a round of ESDA. That in itself is an achievement in my mind. Qualifying for a round would be a win in my books, but going here and getting the opportunity and being considered for this chance is a win in my book because obviously I've made an impression on people and, you know, that's why I'm getting this opportunity. I can't think everybody enough. I'm going to do my hardest and, you know, run my best foot forward to try to make this happen and get into battle so I can bring you guys some amazing content. I'm going to take you guys along this journey into ESDA and hopefully I'll be able to compete in the Cedar Series at the end of this ESDA season to get my full official ESDA license and a seat for next season where I'll be bringing out a very unique car. You guys know what it is on the channel, very unique and can't wait to be bringing my own team into, you know, the Cedar Series. It got a lot of good drivers in mind that I'm going to be bringing with me, going to be building a team for tandem competition. So make sure you guys follow me on all social media, all of which are down in the description box below. And as always, I thank you guys for watching. I'm EvilRabbit. I'll see you guys on the track.