Ah, it's Monday. It's Monday noon. And we have Mary Ann Sasaki. She joins us by Skype from New York. Because, you know, one way or the other, we need to do, she said, that's our show here at 12 noon every other Monday. So welcome from New York, Mary Ann. Greetings from the Big Apple, Jay. Yeah. Now we agreed to talk about gun violence today. In fact, we did a commentary over the weekend on it. We'll play that as time goes by. But I wanted to style this gun violence in America and unraveling. We have only half an hour to talk about it, so we have to move fast. So can you give us a praisey about what happened here? That's a good question. What's going on? What's different from, let's say, 30 years ago when there wasn't the proliferation of guns or 50 years ago and today? And I have a very, you know, I have one answer in a nutshell. And I think it's the lobbying efforts of the NRA. The lobbying efforts of the NRA have resulted in an uptick in the sales of guns in this country, in the sales of automatic weapons, and the concomitant violence that goes with having so many weapons. I think there are 50 million guns in the country. There's only like 300 million people. So that's a lot of people with guns. This reminds me of cars, actually. You know, we have a lot of cars. We sell a lot of cars. Some families have more cars than they can possibly use. In the state of Hawaii, there's more cars than people, believe it or not. And I say people, I mean man, women, and children people. And they're made well. They last a long time. And the same thing with guns. They're made well. They last for lifetimes. And really forever there's hardened steel. They keep on working. You don't have to do a lot of maintenance to keep them going. And you collect them. A lot of people collect them. A lot of people have many, many, many guns on the back shelf. And really, yeah, the result is an enormous number of guns. They come into the consumer marketplace, but they don't really leave the consumer marketplace. And you know, I'd like to take a point out of your commentary. And I think this is an operative feature. If you have one, you think about using it. You always think about what you might do with that gun. And I think a lot of people do it, whatever it may be. I think, you know, it's like any tool that you acquire. It's now part of your skill set and it's a way, you know, it's part of your skill set. I mean, for example, I don't own a gun. I would never think of resolving anything by a gun. So, I mean, that's just an anecdotal, obviously. But it just never would even come into my mind. But if you have it, obviously you've got to think, well, I'm going to use it. Why buy it if you're not going to use it? Now, the question it becomes, what do you use it for? You know, I mean, what do you really need an assault rifle for? What does a person need an assault for? You know, it's been said that you need to have a gun to protect yourself, you know, from criminals, I suppose. And maybe there's a point there, except that the criminals have guns too. And so you'll heighten the stakes when you and the criminal are going to have a shootout. Somebody will die and you're likely to be the one because you're not experienced in these matters. Right. I always think that's a ludicrous argument because there'd be less, you know, this kind of mass murder or violence if more people had guns. But you know what? I don't know very many people that would be able to retain their calm and cool in a crisis situation and be able to utilize a weapon, untrain people. And I heard somebody, but I heard themselves. The other point that's been made is, well, you need the guns to protect yourself from an unruly government, from a government that's run amok. And you know, my reaction to that is, well, wait a minute, the government has an unlimited amount of guns. And if you want to have a shootout with the government, they win. And even if they don't win on day one, they'll win on day two, three, or four. You will not survive that. And nobody ever has.  That's right. So there's no point in having a gun to defend yourself against an unruly government. If you want to fix the government, then vote. Well, I find it fascinating that the implicit message of the NRA is that you need a gun against the encroaching federal government. And yet they have such conservative values, but they sort of are spreading that grassroots radicalism. I find that very, very disturbing. You know, what occurred in the United States at the time of the Continental Congress is a very unique moment in history. And we're not likely to see the need for well-armed militia in any time in the near future, I think, in the United States. So I mean, it's nice that we preserve the right to have it, but I don't think the government, I can't imagine us rising up against the government in that fashion. Yeah, well, and what is a militia anyway? I mean, you know, I think I've been raised to see the militia as the National Guard, but the National Guard has become part of the military. It's called up in times of war or catastrophe.  I don't think there really is a militia. There isn't any militia. So what are we talking about here? Not militia is the way our forefathers contemplated them. Guns are not being used the way our forefathers contemplated them. I mean, I have to imagine they thought of them as tools for hunting and tools maybe to defend the family homestead from encroachers. And maybe a weapon to be picked up when you're going to revolt against England. But I really don't think that they could envision somebody stepping in to say a... Well, I don't think the forefathers contemplated what has happened here. I mean, we have such racial strife, and if we have guns all around, then the guns have got to be involved in the racial strife, and they are. And we now have more street violence, more shooting and killing in this country than, you know, person for person, than really anywhere. And we're an embarrassment to ourselves. I mean, other countries are warning the citizens not to come here. I agree. So, gee whiz, this is tragic. So many factors have somehow come together, and guns are at the center of it. What about our do-nothing Congress who refuses to even vote against even the slightest gun control measures? What do you think of those guys? The Republicans. You mean the Republicans, don't you? Yes. But I think the Democrats are responsible too, because what kinds of measures are these? Oh, if you're on the no-fly list, you can't have a gun. Doesn't mean anything.  Well, I would tell you, I had dinner last night with an old friend of mine from Australia, and they don't have a problem with gun control in Australia. One day they decided that nobody could have a gun anymore, or at least very few people could have guns anymore. And they said, put the gun in the basket, and we are going to chop off the barrel, and we're going to smelt it. So it's liquid molten steel, and there'll be no more guns. And if you don't do that, we're going to find you or put you in jail. And the result is that people gave up their guns, and now there are very few guns left in Australia. This is a good thing, don't you think? I agree. I wish we could do it. But you know what? The NRA will never let that happen. But I think there's a solution. And the solution, I think, is an intersection of interests with respect to controlling arms. I think the government has an interest in controlling arms. I think margin a lot, not marginalized, but certain groups like lesbians and gays who were attacked, people who were targeted, blacks, for example. I think different groups all have different reasons for wanting to limit the number of guns. And I think all these groups need to get together. And I think they need to bring the power of their voices against the monolithic voice of the NRA that keeps pushing for more and more and more dangerous and more access to guns. Well, what's the relationship between the NRA and Congress? What's the relationship between the NRA and Republicans? Well, the NRA, I looked at the top people that the NRA contributed to. And it's the Republican National Committee. It's various Republican committees of various states. And then going down the line, it's Republican candidates. But you know what? I'm not going to call this a Republican issue because I'm sure there are Democrats that take money from the NRA as well. And they're just too powerful. They're just incredibly, incredibly powerful. I can't see how they could be so powerful because this gets worse and worse. And the common denominator of all these, the hideous incidents, is guns. Too many people having too many guns. You know, there was an article in The Times over the weekend, I'm guessing you saw it too. And it was about the fact that there were some 15 or 20 guys walking around in that event where the shootings took place who had long guns in public. And they're wearing camouflage outfits and black jackets and bulletproof vests and walking around. And when the shooting started, the police, those of whom, you know, could focus on what to do, they couldn't figure out what to do. Because they were confused by the fact that there were people walking around with guns in the crowd who were not police. And this, you know, this is Texas. And Texas is really way out on this. We can't have this. No, you know, it's funny because in a way that's a free speech issue. I mean, obviously it's a right to carry issue. But dressing in camouflage and looking a certain way, looking like a certain paramilitary person, that's a way of expressing yourself. Well, we don't have the unlimited right to express ourselves in this way in this country when it's a danger to a group of people, it's a danger to people at large. I think, you know, holding yourself out as a military person by dressing in camouflage and carrying a long gun, I think that's not indicative of any right or it's not emblematic of any right that I see in the Constitution. Why am I reminded of, was it Justice Black who talked about shouting fire in a crowded movie theater? Exactly. That was not protected. Exactly. It's the same thing. You can't bring... I saw the article and there was this guy with an automatic weapon and full-clamp camouflage. The police thought, you know, he was possibly one of the assailants because, well, any normal person would. Well, you know what? You don't have the right to do that. You don't have the right to walk around in camouflage with a gun because you're holding yourself out as something that you're not. You're not. And this goes to the point of the militia again. I mean, there's these militia, I don't know, quasi-illegal militias that hold up somewhere and do illegal things there. And then the government has to root them out because they're doing bad things even to their own members. How many times has that has happened over the past several years? And guns are at the center of that one, too. And if that's protected right, I'll be a monkey's uncle. Absolutely. I think you know what's really funny? There was one group in California, anti-federal government, anti-government group. They were holed up and the... Not the DEA, but some section of the FBI, the firearms section of the FBI was, you know, they were in a standoff, right? And these guys who are against everything the federal government stands for wanted their postage, their postal package. They wanted food sent to them by the post office. So now these guys are against the federal government, right? But they want to use the services of the federal government talking about when they say they were opposed to the government.  Well, you're touching on another element here. You know, this is an intersection. Guns are not the only thing at the intersection. There's, you know, a disconnection with government. And people don't treat government as their government anymore. You know, they worry about government infringing on their rights. They worry about the government do things like in Nazi Germany. They worry about the worst things coming out of government. And so you have a distrust and then you have guns disposed of that would protect you from the government. But you have a distrust of the police and the police have a distrust of you and we're unraveling. And arguably we're at war. This is like the Civil War all over again. It's an internal civil war. And I'd like to take one minute for everybody to think about that. And we come back. I'd like to talk about how we're going to fix it. Won't be easy. We'll do it in 15 minutes. That's Marianne Sasaki. Here we are. And he said, she said, talking about gun violence in America and unraveling. We'll be right back. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. And I am the host of Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea brings lawyers, mostly lawyers, to the audience of think tech to talk about ways that lawyers not just represent clients but bring people together across the sea. Law can be a means to bring people together. Not just fighting but resolving problems, working together and discovering cultures that help us make a peaceful world. And that's part of my goal here is to bring lawyers into the audience of Hawaii to explain the background that they have and the ways that we in Hawaii can progress through the law to reach across the sea. Thank you very much. Aloha. Okay. Welcome back to, he said, she said, Marianne Sasaki and me, we do this every now and then. Today we're talking about gun violence in America and unraveling question mark. Maybe it's not so much a question mark. So, you know, here we are. And, you know, and during the break, we're talking about how, you know, this is, this is really awful. And it's hard not to be excited about it. It's hard not to be frightened by it. I mean, this is like the country doesn't trust itself. The country is not so much a country as it used to be. This is a long way from Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Where are the high ideals now when everybody's shooting each other in the street? This, you know, sounds like we're moving into anarchy. So, so my question to you, and we have 15 minutes to address this. So talk fast. Okay. How do we fix it? Got it. Well, I, I'm with the Australians. You described the situation which Australia asked everybody to turn their guns. And if they didn't, then they would be incarcerated. And I'm, you know, I don't believe in this case in half measures. I think we should get the guns off the streets.  The government thinks we should, we should moderate the kinds of guns that are available to the citizens. Everybody agrees with this. This is not a, they may not agree to the extent that I say where I think nobody should have a gun, except, you know, maybe police officers in the army. But, but everybody, every right-thinking person to some extent or other wants some form of gun control. And we had it and it expired. And we lived with it for a long, long time until, until the NRA decided to, you know. Well, you get three factors working. One is, well, maybe four. You get this accumulation of guns. That's happening relentlessly. Two is you get the power of the NRA. Despite all the things, like Sandy Hook is a good example. All the things happening, they still, you know, get money and they still are effectively lobby, mostly Republicans in Congress. And then you have the racial strife and you have this distrust of the government. All these, it's a really volatile cocktail. And now here we are. We're in deep kimchi, actually. And so, you know, you say, well, let's get everybody to turn in the guns like Australia. But, but what about the NRA? How do you get around that? Or do we have to wait until we have so many tragedies where it's just so tragic all day every day. I don't think it's coming to that. I mean, there have been three or four tragedies in the past few days. I really feel that we've had it.  Well, defensive lobbying. They were afraid they were going to be, you know, undermined somehow by the event in Sandy Hook that people would rise up against them so they worked all the harder. Right. But you know, one thing comes to mind. I mean, it's a modern day with social media and all that, and maybe people in general out there across the country can come together on this all size of the issue, including the police. And they can do social media on the NRA and say, you guys better stop. And that means don't give any money to the legislature, to do any legislature. A lot of legislatures statewide have been bought by the NRA. Right. And a campaign on every legislature and every congressperson telling them, don't take money from the NRA. We've got to get past this. This is a sick situation and we have to work together on it. You can't be doing business as usual. What do you think about that? I think it's coming to that because, as you know, a group of Democrats, the congressman and some senators sat in on the House floor in opposition to the Republicans not wanting to vote on it, not even vote. When I say vote in any specific way, take any specific measures, they just didn't even want to vote for it. So the Democrats, you know, they offended the rules of decorum in the House. I mean, if you're having situations like this where you're having congressmen sit in and not follow the rules of the institution which they're a part of, that isn't unraveling. Well, that's not what the Founders intended. That's not the way the system is supposed to. This is like the Supreme Court confirmation. That's not the way the system is, you know, that's game-playing at the worst.  Get them on the phone. I wish. And ask them what they think about this and what they would do. And I think people might listen to them now. Yes, maybe. Well, you know, people think they have a direct line to the Founders. Unfortunately, nobody does. But, you know, I think we're really reaching a tipping point here where there's going to be enough discrete groups for whom guns are a really, really big issue that they're going to come together and there's going to be maybe a march on Washington. Or maybe it'll happen by a social media. Probably will happen by a social media where there'll be enough people who will get together accretively and have the power to, you know, basically you have to not vote for the candidates at the NRA support. You have to be very programmatic about it and vote those guys out and let them know why you're voting them out, too. How does this affect the election coming soon? I heard some talk by Donald Trump, and I think he was right. He was saying we have to train the police better. It sort of starts with them. They've got to be more careful. Of course, they're scared. You know, that's what happened in Minnesota. The cop was scared, and he didn't know what to do with it, so he shot somebody dead. And that's really tragic. We've got to do better at selecting and training the cops. We've got to make them really professional every time, every circumstance. I think that's right. I think there's too much militarization in the police force. I think that police are armed with weapons that they can't. I think you're right. I think they need better training. But did you hear that Donald Trump said he was the law and order candidate? Did you hear him say that? I'm the law and order candidate? Yeah, I did hear him say that. That's reminiscent of... I'm not sure if that really helps. What happened to tasers, you know, Marianne? Didn't we have a whole generation of tasers where you could stop somebody without hurting them? What happened? I don't remember the good old days of tasers, Jerry. No, I really keep waiting for somebody to pull out a taser and sort of defuse the situation that way. But they never do that. They pull out an assault rifle. So how are we going to fix this? I mean, what's the first step? I mean, the first step is that people talk to each other and... That's the problem. I wanted to say that.  You know, there's no chance to have a calm discussion because both sides are afraid. You know, that's like, I'm sorry to refer to animals, but dogs. You know, if dogs are afraid, they become dangerous. Isn't that true? That's a regular rule of dealing with a dangerous dog. If they are afraid, they become dangerous. People are the same way. So if you have people in a confrontation that are afraid and they have guns, they're going to have this happen. So I think you've got to take guns away. You've got to train the police better. My own view is Australia is right because there's no point in citizens having guns except for limited use like hunting. And I suppose that was an exception in Australia. And until we do this, until we take some really strong, decisive, you know, universal action in this country where everybody agrees it's going to get worse. The problem is, in my view, that if it gets worse beyond a certain tipping point, and we may be past certain tipping points already, that it's unrecapturable. You can't fix it. I would pass the tipping point. I think, you know, I think we're so far past the point of being of some place like Australia where you can say to people, all right, volitionally give up your guns.  I mean, we have to get some—there's no regulation. It's an unregulated market. I mean, imagine if—well, imagine if cars were, like, unregulated in this way. Anybody could drive a car, any—and you could drive a hot rod down the street, something— an Indianapolis 500 car. You could drive that on a highway or—drugs were not regulated or—their guns are not regulated. Any attempt at regulating gun sales, people start howling about the Second Amendment. The NRA starts howling about the Second Amendment. The God Dealers have to—they got to—they can't be doing this. They got to be either put out of business or very closely regulated. And I'll tell you, one thought occurs to me is that there ought to be an amnesty program for the people who will be willing to give up guns. Well, you know, New York City did that, actually. Did it work? They—they—one year I remember—it was about—I guess 20 years ago, they said basically, turn in your illegal firearms. No questions will be asked. Just come and turn them in and nothing will happen to you. And they got a really—a pretty large turnout, as I recall. I mean, people were—people understood that that was a benefit to them, actually, in the end. So, you know, I know a lot of people, Jay. I know a lot of really smart people. I know a lot of really physically fit people. I don't know anybody that I would trust with a gun. I swear to you.  He should have a gun. Do you—do you know people who you think—oh, sorry, from like law enforcement or police? I mean, they're just not trainable enough to carry a gun, to own a gun. It's also a mindset. You have to be completely rational all the time. You know, having a beer in a bar and having a gun, that's a bad recipe. Remember what happened with that secret service guy who shot somebody dead here a few years ago? Anyway, I mean, we're out of time, but I think it's a good conversation. We have to continue it. And I think we all ought to be talking about it. And maybe the social media idea is good. The amnesty idea is good. Retraining of the police is good. And this is not going to encourage policemen or rather applicants for police jobs to, you know, apply for those jobs. Policing becomes more dangerous now. And you really wonder who, in his right mind, would apply to be a policeman right now. I agree. I think it's a very dangerous, very dangerous job and not as well-paid as it ought to be, actually. Well, I hope other people are thinking right about this and look forward to talking with you some more about it, Mary Ann. I can't wait to see you. The same here. I love New York, but I miss Hawaii. Hawaii's home now. Give everyone in New York our best regards, Mary Ann. I will. I will. All three people that I'm going to see.


Like, you never get results as fast as you want them to get, you know?  You can work on your business as much as you want, it's still going to take time to grow. There's a famous quote, I don't remember the name of the guy who said it, but it's something that along the lines of success is both patience and urgency. You want to be urgent about the daily actions you need to take, and you want to be patient about seeing the results. So, I'm not a patient guy, I like to see results fast. So that's why I take massive action, but then again, even massive action is not really a way to get instant results. It just means that there will be more results faster, so you have to be relatively less patient. So what I do is work on all areas of my life at the same time, and then what happens is one day I'll open up my Instagram, and I'll see, oh, nice, I got to 5,000 followers in a month. And then the other day I opened up my YouTube, I'm like, oh, I grew by 30 subscribers in a week. And then the other day I look in the mirror, I'm like, whoa, look at my body, it looks so good. I've built up so much muscle. There's many more examples of stuff that I learned and meditation experiences. So it's just a piling up of wins. And every win reminds me, Robbie, the process works, the process works. Just maintain the process, the process works, just keep it up, keep it up, keep it up. I get these dopamine hits multiple times a day, which really helps me get jacked up and stay enthusiastic about all my goals. That's why it's very, very dangerous to just focus on one goal in life, and that's just one of many reasons. But just for the sake of this conversation, vis-a-vis what we're talking about, you want to have as many things going for you as possible. Now again, this doesn't mean, I'm not saying diversify in a way where you get just a bit of everything, because that's not the way to go.  It means that you get nothing from everything. What I mean is, for example, if you want to be healthier, then even doing like 10-20 push-ups a day would be a nice boost to your motivation, because you start doing that, even from that, just doing that daily, you're going to see some results. And then these results are going to make you more motivated to keep doing everything. So it all feeds to everything. That's why people that really succeeded in one area tend to succeed much faster and much more reliably in other areas of life, because they know the process works. So this is my tip for the day. Let me know how this works for you and how can I help you. Subscribe to the channel if you like the content, and give me a message if you want me to help you get better.


Hi, good morning and welcome to today's products and focus and yesterday the markets kind of had a very interesting start Where we had that kind of initial rally falling on from that kind of positive momentum that we had on Monday Only for it to start to tick down later on in the session. Now most eyes were of course on gold prices Yesterday and of course crude prices of gold has been coming off quite a lot Having reached some quite impressive figures at the end of last week as US rates are quite distant And the markets were a little bit more volatile. It really really come off quite hard as the risk gone came back on equity markets wore back into life But it's also all about crude oil prices yesterday and the fact that there has now been a freeze in production agree between Saudi Russia and some of the other old pit members now the reality is Productions almost at an all-time ever high so that that freeze of production means almost nothing Secondly the Iranians weren't involved and they're going to be bringing other five six hundred thousand barrels to the table So what you've seen now is that crude oil has begun its slump right that down again because nothing has really changed So there are three other major considerations for a lot of traders out there in regards to the US stock market to consider Well, we also got the FOMC statement coming out soon But let's talk about three major pieces of information that said there one is an association of American fund managers have come out and basically said that the the fund managers have got their lowest allocation of stock than what they've had since 2012 which means a lot of these guys are sitting on cash. They're not rotating it all into equities So that's kind of adding a little bit to the bearish sentiment as well Which is the second the second factor for us to consider. There's been a lot of bearish sentiment up until now The question is are we going to get this big kind of turnaround? So one Fund managers have had the lowest allocation of stocks in 2012 to you've obviously had quite bearish sentiment in the markets For a long period of time But the question is is that going to turn around at some point soon and three when we have a chance to have a look at the US 30 have we reached a technical bottom because when we look at the support There's maybe kind of a double bottom that has presented itself So when we have a look at that in a second that will give you a bit of an idea Well, you can make up your own minds at home if you think that's the case or not But certainly we've had two really strong sell-offs followed by a big bounce We've had our most recent bans just now and undoubtedly there is this kind of support level Potential support level that is visible. So that kind of gives you the kind of common themes right now people are still looking at gold people are still looking at crude and A lot of traders are asking is this the bottom of the market in the short term anyway after all the sell-offs that we've had And also China's kind of coming back to life a little bit The Chinese government have just kind of doubled the number of large infrastructure projects in the country In order to try and get things kind of tickling on there more nicely So that's the that's the fundamentals. Let's have a look at some of those technical factors as well So as ever let's start off with US 30 There is that double bottom right here that we potentially talked about and you've obviously got that longer term potential support right here as well We're at about 15,000 314 but this looks like quite interesting point Looking at the candles and more of a short-term position. We are above that 21 period SMA We do have the three tips of these candles right here showing that there is selling interest above here We really want to start getting to 16,460 to get any proper momentum behind us Though some percent seems to marks clients are currently short. They obviously think that this could sell off that little bit more jumping then on to the UK 100 three advancing soldiers here really strong candles was great recovering commodity prices to an extent obviously could all came off a little bit yesterday Helping to spur that on kind of a dodgy formation there in the short term We are turning above the 21 period SMA potential cap of the 55. The other technicals are relatively neutral 65% of CMC Marcus clients are currently short. We still end a potential downtrend looking at Japan 225 I really love it when when products really conform to technical analysis nicely and you can see that Japan 225 Hit potential resistance at 16384 then retreated down very very strong graveyard doge information right here I guess you could say it's a shooting star, but We have followed through with a negative candle so far again today 53% of CMC Marcus clients are currently long. The other technicals are relatively neutral And we look where we are kind of longer term That gives you a bit of a flavor So it does look to be 16384 is a significant level that we should all be aware of there on Japan 25 Now dollar yen a reversal yesterday and move lower at the moment We're in between two two ranges 116 is potential resistance 111 spot 61 is potential support If we have a look at this kind of longer term It doesn't look that great when the sideways moving market is broken lower To be honest It's kind of hard to look to trade something like dollar yen right now when we're quite firm in the middle of two ranges So I think we just see what happens 57% of CMC Marcus clients are currently long Showing you that little bit of indecision So moving on to crude oil West Texas and look at this candle Failing to break and stay above that potential negative trend line Quite a bearish candle yesterday. It's gone negative again so far today Next potential support is it's still at 2672. We're trading below that 21 period SMA The other technicals are relatively neutral and 60% of CMC Marcus clients are currently long Moving on to gold you can just get an idea of that move and gold This is again There's another brilliant example of technical analysis and full flow where you've got potential broken resistance now acting as potential support at 1191 we're going to bounce off that level yesterday Obviously it sold off bounced off there. It's followed through a little bit higher today The question is where does it go from here now anybody who's interested in this the next potential resistance is always at 1307 it really depends on the FOMC Statement tonight and the likelihood of lower rates for longer And what the Fed members continue to say they have been quite dovish recently But we have seen in a little with an acceleration in the US dollar and I'll ask a couple of days So this level definitely strategically significant So moving on to euro dollar Again it conforming quite nicely to a potential support. We had this sell-off We got quite close to one spot 11 spot 05 had a bounce there yesterday bounce again today 66% of CMC markets clients are currently short. So there they must be thinking the support level won't hold And obviously very much depends on Mario Draghi He still keeps on talking talking up the idea that he might do QE But that seems unlikely at this stage, but they'll save that for when it's really really necessary You've got a bearish crossover on on the MACD. You've got a bearish cross on the slow stochastic So a lot of technical factors aren't in its favor, but these are only secondary indicators the primary Technical right here is the support level and it's still on the right side of that And if we just finish up with GBP USD Pearls, Sterling's you can't get a break even though recent CPI data was actually okay It's come off again negative day yesterday. What a shame 87% of CMC markets clients are currently short Anticipant when you look at the trend is not massively surprising the Sterling is not as strong as it used to be incidentally so One spot 42 28 its potential support then fall by one spot 41 29 And if we finish up with our market calendar as ever the market calendar Bring that on to the correct screen you got unemployment data today from the UK housing starts industrial production And then tomorrow CPI and PPI from China unemployment claims and petroleum data from Thursday And then Friday you got retail sales CPI and of course that consumer Confidence index from the Eurozone to finish up the week well guys That's it for me very good luck with your trading and join me again tomorrow to find out what happened next Thank you very much and goodbye


Now with Thanksgiving coming to a close, it's time to take out and put on your red Santa hat and head down down to downtown Bemidji tomorrow for the annual Night We Light Celebration. This year's attendees can expect a truly spectacular show. The parade will start at 6, but you might want to get there a little early. For the first time ever, a new event called Cards of Care will prelude the parade where attendees will have the opportunity to donate to the food shelf. Other classic Night We Light activities returning this year include the Tour of Homes, Santa's Workshop, which all begins at noon. It's going to be awesome. We have goodies. We have crafts. We even have letters to Santa that the kids can write. So I'm super excited to get everything going and I'm hoping to see some pretty cool floats this year. We've heard a couple of rumors about a couple different ones, so I'm super excited. It's going to be a very close contest this year for the float, so I'm super excited to hear about it. Now be sure to head down to Paul Bunyan Park directly after the parade for the lighting ceremony. This year there will be over 200,000 lights illuminated and not to mention the first lighting of Paul Bunyan's giant Christmas tree. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Hello, everyone. This is Dr. Surajuval Keshav Jaiswal, first year radio diagnosis junior resident in Dr. D. Y. Patil Hospital Colapur. I would like to thank Indian radiologist for allowing me to present this paper in the conference of city bus. My topic is hiatus hernia and gastric volvulus imaging. This is the paper presentation. I would like to thank my mentor, Dr. Pradeep Patil, who is professor in department of radio diagnosis in D. Y. Patil Hospital Colapur, aims and objectives. The aim is to study the multimodality imaging features of hiatus hernia and gastric volvulus association. The objective is to learn the various imaging features in hiatus hernia and gastric volvulus cases. So the introduction and background, hiatus hernia is a condition in which upper part of stomach or other internal organ bulges through the hiatus of the diaphragm. When there is laxity in this hiatus, gastric content can back up into the esophagus and it is the leading cause of gastroesophageal reflux disease. In hiatus hernia, the stomach pushes through the opening in the diaphragm, hiatus and into the chest and compromises the lower esophageal sphincter. This laxity of the lower esophageal sphincter can allow gastric content and acid to back up into the esophagus and this is the leading cause of gastroesophageal reflux disease. While a small hiatus hernia is often symptomatic and can typically be managed medically, large hiatus hernias often require surgery. Approximately 55 to 60% of individuals above the age of 50 have hiatus hernia. However, only 9% have symptoms and it depends on the type and competency of the lower esophageal sphincter. The vast majority of these hernias are type 1 sliding hiatus hernias. Type 2 parisophageal hernias only make up about 5% of hiatal hernias where the lower esophageal sphincter remains stationary but the stomach protrudes above the diaphragm. Classification type 1 is the sliding type which represents more than 95% of the cases occurs when the G-junction is displaced upwards through the hiatus. Type 2 is the parisophageal hiatus hernia which occurs when part of stomach migrates into the midiastinum parallel to the esophagus. Type 3 is when both the parisophageal and sliding hernias are involved where both the G-junction and part of the stomach have migrated into the midiastinum. Type 4 is when the stomach as well as an additional organ such as the colon small intestine or spleen also herniate into the chest. The gastric volvulus is a specific type of volvulus that occurs when the stomach twists on its mesentery. It should be at least 180 degrees and cause bowel obstruction to be called gastric volvulus. Epidemology organoexial volvulus is more common in adults responsible for 60% of presentations. Mesenteroexial volvulus is more common in children. Clinical presentation Borscha triad is classic and it includes the intractable reaching without vomiting, inability to pass an esogastric tube and sudden severe epigastric pain. So this image shows the two types of the volvulus. When the stomach twists around the long axis it is known as the organoexial type and when it twists around the short axis it is the mesenteroexial in which the pylorus goes above the level of the G-junction. So the organoexial volvulus it occurs when the stomach rotates along its long axis and becomes obstructed with a greater curvature being displaced superiorly and the lesser curvature located more cowardly in the abdomen. Entrum rotates enteros superiorly and the fundus rotates posteriorly. The mesenteroexial volvulus occurs when the stomach rotates along its short axis with the resultant displacement of entrum above the G-junction. Rotation is usually partial and is not associated with a diaphragmatic defect. Twist greater than 180 degrees in an organoexial and if a positive oral contrast is administered it is retained in the stomach. In mesenteroexial the stomach it is not retained in the stomach if a positive oral contrast is used. Organoexial is more common type and the mesenteroexial is less common but is more common in the pediatric population. Methods and materials. Few of the suspected or incidentally diagnosed hiatus hernia cases and gastric volvulus association on various imaging modalities which include plane radiograph, barium study, ultrasonography and computer tomography in the department of radio diagnosis, Dr. Debye Patil Medical College Hospital and Research Institute, Kolhapur included in the study. Case one is a 70 year old female presented to the ophthalmology department with clouding of vision. She had no other complaints. She was diagnosed to have cataract before posting the patient for surgery. A chest radiograph was taken for surgical fitness and the plane radiograph shows a retrocardiac capacity with gas fluid level in the PA and the lateral views. Single contrast barium swallow was done in this case which shows upward displacement of the gastroesophageal junction through the hiatal opening in the diaphragm which suggests sliding hiatal hernia type one. Next case is a 24 year old male who came with the complaint of vomiting and epigastric pain since five days. No other complaint was there. Plain chest CT was done including the abdomen. It shows the gastric distention with rotation around the short axis from lesser to the greater curvature and herniation through the hiatus indicating an obstruction. G-junction is shifted above the level of the diaphragm as we can see in these images. Suggestive of mixed type of hernia in which G-junction and part of stomach is herniated. Case three a 34 year old male came with a history of road traffic accident complaining of chest pain. He also had a neck femoral neck fracture on the left side. Plain radiograph and an ultrasound in this case shows a gastric shadow in the lower lung zone. Suggestive of herniation. On further scan a plain chest CT scan was done and we can see the gastric rotation around the short axis with herniation through the hiatus and a bilateral pulmonary effusion is seen. The gastroesophageal junction is seen below the level of the diaphragm suggesting a parisophageal type of hernia which is type two where only the gastric content is herniated and the G-junction is below the diaphragm. Next case a 77 year old male presented with the complaints of epigastric pain. Contrast CT was done. Now we can see the gastric distinction with the rotation around the short axis again from lesser to the greater curvature and herniation through the hiatus can be seen. Pylorus can be seen above the level of the diaphragm and G-junction is seen below the level of the diaphragm. It is suggestive of a parisophageal type of hernia in which only the gastric contents are herniating through the defect. So the conclusion this study underscore the importance of various imaging modalities in the diagnosis of herniated hernia along with the associated gastric vulvulus and shows various imaging features in this cases in the modality modality imaging. These are the references. Thank you.


Hey, how's it going everybody? My name is John Hammond. I wanted to give you guys a little bit of a background as to what this video is So a few weeks ago someone had reached out to me on discord. I think his handle was muffin And he asked me like hey, John. We really like the stuff that you do Would you be willing to do sort of like a podcast with us? I'm like, yeah, man. Absolutely. Sure. Good by me so they invited me to their discord server which I guess is a sec army and It was really really cool because they just wanted to ask me a couple of questions it was sort of like an interview style thing and This is the podcast that we kind of put together. So I wanted to share it with you in case you guys have any interest in it It's just me talking I don't know if that's if that is anything that might interest you but here it is on the internet in case you do I'll try to include the questions down at the description with a timestamp as to what was asked when So if you want to get a little bit of insight into my brain, that's what this video is So thank you guys. Please enjoy and I'll see you Later, I guess enjoy the video. Thanks everybody so we'll start up now and If you have a question or shall we in with now? Yeah, I guess we can go ahead and get rolling. Thanks Okay, John. So just before I start the recording, it's just a little bit of introduction and then we proceed further. Okay, okay Thanks Welcome guys and this side Akash aka terabyte from psych army Welcome to our new podcast and Today we are going to talk about something that everyone Want to know about and they have been a lot of questions every time we put some Instagram stories on this topic which is for capture the flag CDF and You talk on this today. We have a really great guy. He's a star pen tester a very known one He's the guy who created this amazing tool called CTF katana. It's on GitHub. You can check that out It's a big time help and assistance for CDF players all around He's also the guy with a mighty over CP certification. So yeah, he can boast about it He owns a CDF team as well. Well, that's something great and he ranks of the team ranks basically on the fifth 58th position in the world and Yeah, he's a great guy to go through and he's also a good friend of live overflow and Yeah, the guy we have today is John Hammond. How are you John? Hey there? Hi, I'm doing I'm doing well How about yourself Akash? I'm doing great. Thanks for asking mate. It's been thank you so much for joining us today It's been really pleasure talking to you and thanks a lot for your time So John today as you know about the topic that you're gonna talk a little bit about CDF a little bit about the infosec domain and Some tips we're gonna get for pen testing and other stuff So would you like to give a brief about CDF and how it's you know How it's effective in enhancing the skill set for a big enough. Yeah, absolutely. Sure So I guess I don't really need to put out the background because I'm sure a lot of the Audience and listeners might already know what a capture the flag is But I guess I'll do it anyway just just for context So a capture the flag is kind of a gamified competition within cybersecurity where there are kind of challenges or tasks or really just exercises where you the player are kind of given a prompt and and something to do that might De-involving some sort of technology or some kind of computer system and Maybe it's just a puzzle it kind of varies in kind of the extent of what it is but you'll be tasked with maybe exploiting some vulnerability or Deciphering some cryptography or finding some hidden messages Inside of media like steganography tons and tons of stuff and it's all gamified and that there's a scoreboard There's a little bit of a leaderboard. So You have some Motivation to keep trying and keep trying to solve other problems because that'll help encourage Hey that player to I don't know keep learning and get better So honestly, I think that's awesome at enhancing one skill because a lot of times with the capture the flag You kind of have a really small and narrow and specific Cyber security flaw or something some technology some technique That's just distilled down and that challenge is trying to emphasize it and highlight it so that you can learn and Be a little bit smarter even with the real-world stuff with information security and that I don't know I think that just that does it in a great way because it is a game. It is gamified until it's really engaging Yeah, right. So, yeah CD has like help in engaging into activities and performing like real-time stuff Dealing with different kind of challenges as we talked about different kinds of like cryptography steganography and etc Right. So I also want to know like you made this great to CD of katana So can you also shed some light on it? Like how do you think it's gonna bring? Like some help or some sort of assistance in terms of CDFs and to the CD of players Yeah, no, absolutely. No, this is funny. It's like we're starting off with the bang. We're getting into it So, yeah katana has been a labor of love for about a year and I guess two years really Because originally I put together just a document on my github repository that was sort of supposed to be like a checklist It was supposed to be like hey if you don't know what you're doing or you've hit a wall with the CTF challenge Check out this resource that just has a list of things you could try or don't forget to try this Because I was always beating myself up if I was looking at a capture the flag challenge and then when the write-ups came out I realized oh, I just needed to run strings on this specific stock on this specific file Or I forgot to try steg hide without a password or I didn't use steg solve on one specific thing It was annoying because I think some of the The more guessy challenges or the more esoteric stuff Sometimes I would just overlook something so I made that repository and It's just it was just originally a text document with markdown and some suggestions But I had the thought in my head. Well, man I really want to make a tool that will do this for me that'll like look through all the low-hanging fruits that'll try and Go ahead and I don't know rip through all the potential tools and tricks and things to beat up a CTF challenge And it's funny. I live with I live with my roommates Caleb that you might have seen him in some other videos or some things that I put out He had helped kind of create the software for Katana with me because we were at Man, we were we were literally just at a bar like we were at hard times cafe. I don't know if anyone knows that spot but it was like I Don't know there's a back room that's like totally smoking permitted and there's pool tables and everything We were just having a drink and I was like, man, I really want to make this thing because I think it would be Yeah And he was like no, this is totally doable like we could probably put together a framework that might be able to I Don't know determine what a challenge is and then run things that are applicable to it And then we can make it like recursive so that once it found new results It could reassess it and reevaluate it and keep trying to drill down until it found a flag so We built that A lot of people ask though like hey, what the heck like why did you make this? This is just helping script kiddies. This is just this is just ruining the learning of capture the flag And we've had a sorry Yeah, no, I got a fun question like do people also ask you like you were high when you were creating this Yeah, I Don't know because originally I wanted it just for hey so I stopped forgetting to run those stupid things like strings on something specific or stag hide or whatever the case may be and then it became kind of so much more because we added in new units and more functionality and Then when we were like hey, let's let's put this out to the world We had that reaction like why did you make this because this is hindering what CTF is all about? It's all about learning so we kind of had the standpoint like Look this is only gonna help with the low-hanging fruit like this is just for the baby challenges the things that could be detected by a Computer that don't need like a human eye or some manual testing So it's not gonna solve everything. It might get you 200 points at the beginning of the CTF But it's not gonna get you 2,000. It's not gonna make sure that you win It's just to rip through kind of the baby stuff But yeah, I like the point that you have mentioned that it may majorly You know focus on the low-hanging fruits because that's where most of the city of players do lag You know, but yeah, that's really good tool then the concept behind it is to help out with stuff that can be helped with you know and Please maintaining what kind of things you might have forgot of my you might have missed That's what commonly see the players do. But yeah, I really appreciate what kind of framework you have made and Kudos to you and your team for that Thank you. So You're welcome mate Also, since we're talking about capture the flag we're talking about strategies and we're talking about skill sets. So You tell me this like what are your what are your views on the essence of bug bounty culture? Yeah, yeah So I really love Bug bounty and kind of all that it is and kind of what it stands for because it is all about For one thing information security and I've heard someone say like the industry is called information security not Insecurity right because as much as we kind of love being red team as much as we love being pen testers As much as we love like breaking stuff and doing the sexy hacks. It's all about Making things better like it's all about actually improving the software So if you have a bug bounty or a hackathon the whole thing is so that hey people can start to Break your software so that the developers so the creator so the maintainer can make it better So they know the flaws So I really really like the stuff that hacker one does And plenty of the other bug bounty programs bug crowd and everything Honestly, I wish I could make more time in my life to do it because it'd be super fun And like the rewards are insane like you see people that are like hey over a million dollars on on hacker one, which is crazy It's crazy actually So how often you do bug bounty truth be told I Registered with hacker one. I went through their hacker one CTF and try to poke around at it and Man life gets in the way between all the other stuff that I'm kind of trying to juggle Obviously YouTube is a passion of mine. I obviously have a day job I obviously have a lot of other projects and things that I like to do So I hadn't gone back to it, but I know a lot of the guys in the scene stock stoke and Nomsack They do any crazy cool stuff and I I wish I could do that just as well No, but you're doing great job who does your YouTube channel as well. Thanks, and yeah, you're welcome so you talked about like you do it not a frequent but Just tell me like for a reference like what would be your go-to exploit when it comes to my application security Yeah, okay. Cool. So so web is like my favorite category I love just kind of experimenting with that stuff because for one thing it's like really real world, right? Every single organization or company or enterprise Probably has a public-facing website and that's a lot of what bug bounty is I think there's a lot more cross-site scripting a lot more CSRF LFI, etc. So I think web is really really cool my favorite exploit or I guess my favorite thing that That's a funny question I really like local file inclusion when I find that it's like, oh, what can I do with this because It's it's just a little bit of a tug and like you can pull on that string And maybe you could leverage it to remote code execution if you can do some log poisoning Or maybe you could steal some sessions because okay You can see the location where the PHP sessions are being stored or hey You could find out how that program ran because you can leak into like proc Proc forward slash self. I feel like there's a lot of cool things that can be Found and taken advantage of with local file inclusion. So if I see that I get pretty excited. I Like the sound of it and it really appreciate the way you explained it I Yeah, my favorite has been SSRF LFI RFIs. Yeah, so yeah, so we have a little bit in common. I can say thank you Yeah, yes, it sounds like we're gonna date off this Yeah, that's not gonna happen anyways, so so you have been into penetration testing for a few while and Just wanted to like discuss a little bit about that as well. So What would be your like favorite platform when you talk about somebody beginning into this field or in this domain So what would you suggest to the big? Hmm, I get I Guess can I kind of I guess zoom in on that question when you when you say platform? Do you mean like learning platform? Do you mean like technology? Yeah, learning learning platform. Okay, wait sweet, so It's funny because I try to recommend a lot of resources a lot of the time because a lot of people ask Obviously for capture the flag stuff. I kind of point people towards Pico When it comes to like penetration testing and some like red teaming stuff Hack the box is obviously in the mix and that's fantastic Something that I've really found lately and I love and I'm trying to share a lot about it And I'm trying to help people grow and learn about that platform is try hack me. Oh Yeah, yeah I think that one came out like a year and a half ago or some point and I finally jumped on the bandwagon to make some content about it But it's I think it's fantastic for learning because their whole philosophy is like look Here are all the answers like here's how to do it. Here's a guide Here's a step-by-step process of what you need to do and here are write-ups that already give you the solutions If you're stuck so I think for someone trying to learn Try hack me is is fantastic. They have a lot of really friendly Beginner-oriented stuff and they certainly do ramp up with some of their harder stuff, too Yeah, yeah, right, right, right. You're right about it You already gave out like a lot of the resources for the beginners I would say like which one's your favorite if you have to name one. Oh my favorite of the of those resources Sorry, I'm thinking That's alright one of the one of the talks that I had tried to give some time ago was How to build a CTF team or how to build someone getting into cybersecurity and I just had this laundry list of different training platforms like Geez peek or CTF obviously hack the box obviously there's ring zero. There's micro corruption. There's lower sequel injection There's Rob Emporium Poneable XYZ. There's just so much stuff So again, we have a list of them One of them one of my favorites that is I guess it comes every now and again So it's hard to keep track because it's not oh, I guess they are always online The sands holiday hack challenge. Have you guys heard of that one? Yeah, yeah, right so sands puts out there a kind of free learning platform as it comes around to Christmas time and it's always fantastic like they really ramped up their stuff in 2015 and Now they've been doing some like red team challenges and this year They did a couple blue team challenges But they make the like interactive game and some interactive world to move around in and solve the challenges with But it's always super high quality and I learned a ton from that. So I Do really like and without the sands holiday hack challenge All right, cool. Thanks for that. Yeah So you just talked about some of your talks that you haven't given out and I have personally watched some of your Videos and besides as well. Thank you. Yeah, that was Yeah, you're welcome. So So I want to know if you can maybe tell like what has been your road map, you know Which gives you this perfection and the skill set and I am pretty sure like the listeners would like to hear that from you Okay, um, oh Geez, I always like I'm always stumped at this question because a lot of people always ask like hey How do I how do I get started or what's the what's the? Trajectory or the ladder or the road map And all I remember when kind of when I was in I guess college honestly I would stay up really really late and I would try and Just solve challenges on over the wire. I would try to solve challenges on pico I would try to solve challenges and all those different war games and if I couldn't solve it Which a lot of time at the beginning I couldn't and some of them. I still can't I Would honestly look up write-ups. I would honestly look at the solutions because that's the best way to learn is like, okay Someone else already solved this. What can I glisten? What can I learn and understand from that? Because all the information is already out there Like people are always willing to share and that's kind of one of the best things about the whole InfoSec community is that people do want to spread their knowledge. They do want Everyone to learn and everyone to be sharp. So they write blog posts. So they make videos So they put all these resources and cheat sheets together. So When people ask me like hey, what should I start with? normally what I tell them is install Linux and Try to go through over the wire bandit So you learn the Linux command line and then once you feel like you're good with that excuse me Once you feel like you're good with that Try and learn Python as a programming language and then go tackle Pico CTF because that's gonna like light the fire That's gonna make you really excited about it and want to learn more and more That's really good to know that that you would you just say like it seems like we speak the same language now You know a lot of times like we also get some questions like this like what should we start with or how can I build you know This kind of a skill set and we do often have this kind of confusion on telling us like what should we exactly do? I do get questions like how to stay up late at night Yeah, it's really hard because the way that some people learn is different from person to person, right? a lot of my good friends just can't stand watching a video, but Ipsak puts out incredible stuff for hack the box Obviously live overflow the cyber mentor just tons of them are do it in a video form and sometimes with write-ups With just a wall of text sometimes that can be really overwhelming So it's it's really really hard to nail down and figure out how a person might learn best But I think getting hands-on keyboard like jumping in to a Linux command line Then you're gonna start bumping around and you're gonna learn stuff You're right No, you actually write about it because that's pretty important because this can be highly variable person to person So it's sometimes very tough, you know to just explain a whole lot of people altogether Like what should be the roadmap it can highly differ Anyways, that was really good. What he explained. I also want to know on behalf of the whole community Like I have seen likes beginners are pretty allusive and pretty confused with the question And the question is like which shirt like they usually ask which certification should I apply for or And I have no prior experience in the infosec field in the domain And you know what kind of certification I can go with so can you suggest something to them as well? Like what kind of certification they should go with yeah, oh boy The certifications is like a whole nother can of worms, but I totally necessary because you're right tons of people ask about it So when I got started trying to work through certifications my Philosophy was that I don't want to be like a cert warrior.  I just kind of Bit myself. I went against what I was saying But I've always wanted to go for like the practical hands-on applicable like application oriented real challenging certifications. That's kind of what I tried for but Disclaimer when I was first getting started and when I needed to get a certification for the kind of the jobs that I was looking at They told me like look dude We need you to get security plus at minimum We need you to be IAT level 2 compliant for I guess the US based Department of Defense stuff so comptia security plus is Kind of a high-level certification that's talking a lot about cyber security and the exam is multiple choice So it's not on the keyboard hardcore doing real real stuff But that's what I started with just to say like hey I can I know the stuff I learned a little bit about it and I can show for it So I actually would recommend that for people getting started because security plus kind of gives you a wide bird's-eye view of everything in the scene And if you don't want to dive into on the keyboard real lead hacker stuff just yet I would say hey do a little bit of research on security plus and see if you feel like it could help you once you're done with that then totally jump and Do some of the cool stuff OSCP obviously if you want to like go off the deep end I really really really like E-Learn security there. I guess they're kind of a up a budding new Certifying body and some of some of the stuff they do with the junior penetration tester EJPT. That's fantastic Like they are really good on learning stuff Yeah, so your certification in Twitter Thank you So yeah, you're right like oh you're right about level certifications Can you just like give a minute on CEH or easy counsel? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I picked up CEH Truth be told It was sort of for like the HR thing like, you know Hey people that are trying to hire you or you're looking for jobs You're in the job market some of them will say like we'd like you to have CEH Truth be told I went for CHV 10 Which I think is the latest now and I know they released the CEH practical So I haven't taken the practical to be honest. I did take the multiple-choice CEH and It was interesting because it was showcasing a lot of different tools and there's certainly ones that are necessary and ones that you would use for pen testing But I wish I had taken the CEH practical if just to kind of see okay How are they asking me to use this? How are they having me do it because the multiple-choice that's all about the practical stuff Without the practical stuff felt a little weird, but I really wish and I guess I should take that practical version of the exam Yeah, sure. In fact even I'm planning for the practical examination for UCSA now. Nice We don't have gone for the CEH MSEQ based. So, yeah, maybe we'll talk about it after this podcast. Yeah, for sure Sure. So, yeah, you talked about like CEH and these Comsia plus security plus certification covers up a lot of major you can say concept information and tools as well, which are necessary. So I I Just got this question out of the context like how does successful enumeration depend on a pen test I mean what are your tools or your Accuracy that you recommend for an immigration? Okay, so oh man for one thing disclaimer, I am not some Elite authority uber hacks or I'm still learning, right? I think we all are so I don't know as much kind of advanced Windows pen testing as I'd like to some of the stuff with active directory that I think that'd be crazy cool and I want to learn more about that but Bloodhound is a quick and cool tool to throw in there if you're doing that stuff or evil win RL I want to learn a lot more about those I Guess kind of my go-to because a lot of the stuff that I look at lately is Linux I Again also a little bit of web in there because they have typically have an outward facing website If it's totally allowed if it's in scope, I will absolutely throw Go buster or der buster or Pie buster, I think is a really cool one that one of my some someone in my discourse over Raj had put together which is crazy cool and Nikto, I think I always use Nikto actually fun tip for those that are looking at OSCP Nikto will help you a lot I Agree on that makes yeah, yeah, which is surprising because I feel like Nikto you kind of just put it off to the wayside It's kind of easy to forget because sometimes it'll help you sometimes it just spews out a ton of false positives But yeah You're right so Yeah, after this thanks for your Shedding some lights and yeah, you're right about this thing like we are all learning You know, I'm also learning right now on active directory because we CP just have changed their standards And I think I need to upgrade as well So yeah, we'll just like divert a bit from the regular topic, right? And I want you to keep going like we want to know more about your achievements and your milestones that you have achieved You know like pushing knowledge in various topics and on different kind of talks different kind of events that he had been So like from your basic ciphers to real-life basic exploits, you know, so what's a special kind of message you would give or You would like to encourage a morning with people, you know, who lose patience easily and just like going through a phase What kind of message you would like to give out for them? Yeah, okay? I Guess I'll I'll try and answer that one in in two parts I guess to two cornerstones for what I like to try and then tell people You hear a lot of time kind of the offensive security motto try harder, right? And I always kind of like struggle with that one because I get what they're saying. I know We all we all do that. We all try hard.  I kind of change it in my mind to keep trying because I Remember when I mentioned Some time ago when I was staying up late when I was trying to like every day that I could if I could find time for it I'd I'd go after this stupid challenge in behemoth from over the wire because I that was the first time I'd ever done a buffer overflow and I could not understand it for the life of me Like what are these knob sleds? Why is this EIP thing so important? How am I controlling that? I don't understand why the bytes have to be in this order rather than that order It was there were like a lot of struggle points but Try harder doesn't help. It's hey keep trying like don't give up Even if you fail even if you want to take a break. I do that literally all the time I don't know some people like I feel like I'm just doing stuff all the time I got to be honest Sometimes I will take a break and like go play Super Smash Bros for a little bit just because I need to And that's totally a thing So so that that's sorry. That's position number one is keep trying And then kind of position number two is share Like totally tell people what you're working on what you're learning how what tools you're using etc And I think that really comes with the whole community vibe is or we're all trying to learn We're all trying to spread the knowledge. So keep working at it and then share Yeah, no, I really appreciate the second point especially that yes, of course like the more you share the more you know about it and the more You'll grow the community by yourself as well One more thing I would like to add to this because Excuse me. So we're talking about it And one more thing I need to tell that I just this thing that strikes my mind that my friend Used to keep telling me this like every single detail is counted So yes, even if you're failing might be that it's gonna be helpful maybe in the future Oh, yeah, just discovering a whole new concept altogether. Absolutely Yeah, you should as he said John said like keep trying is the thing and share and Shout out to my friend that in the genre for just telling me this thing every single detail is counted All right, so moving forward You share a lot We have already talked about your events that you go to so anything memorable that you remember from any of the events Or you like to tell something about it any fun thing that he did Just just tell us the funniest one The funniest one, okay, so This is I guess something that you might If anyone is I guess keeping up with some of my stuff We recently took place in the B sides Nova or Northern Virginia capture the flag and that was a king of the hill style game So it was it was pentest oriented where there were a lot of boxes in the range And you were supposed to hey find the vulnerability exploit them get on the machine and then lock it down So you can make it your machine like king of the hill like So we had Myself and my teammates the guys that I live with and just because it was a local event, which was a lot of fun Once we got on the machine We could see okay Some team members are some other teams external players are booting us out and that was annoying And they actually had a little kind of game mechanic where there was an apt or someone else already on the box It could kick you out so Eventually because this was a two-day event We were able to have the overnight to go home and rest up and work on it So whenever I do an in-person game, I'm like pretty gung-ho about it So I'll spend that night like trying to script things or trying to make tools or help build the arsenal So that the next day like hey, we can we can really go guns blazing so I wrote a couple things that were like an access script and a Maintain script so the access script would be able to like automatically log in As soon as it saw either hey default credentials or the box was reset because they would revert every hour So there was more of a chance for someone else to break in and the the maintain script the maintain script would try to Okay, send out a beacon so that we have control of this machine It would try and look if any other team members or any other teams were using their own beacon And then it would try and like kill that and stop it But the best part the one that I guess cuz it's kind of funny If if funny is the answer we're going for We would cat dev you random and redirect it into the other Pty's or the pseudo terminals So if anyone else was on the machine that wasn't us all the sudden their terminal would just be flooded with random characters and bites and escape sequences and some guy behind us had the sound on on their computer and Somehow randomly it would hit the escape sequence for the the terminal alarm or the bell So behind us I could hear as soon as I fired the script off. They were like ding ding ding ding And that was just kind of funny because if they'd be like squaring maybe swearing and throwing things and be like God Yeah, that's funny, that's funny.  Holy cow I have no idea I guess background I Guess I had started in the in the capture the flag scene maybe Six years ago now five years ago There was a there was a competition called cyber stakes that was for a lot of the United States Department of Defense and they're the military members So I had kind of taken place in that and it was incredible. It was the first time I'd ever seen something like it It was the first time I ever heard of CTF time first time I ever heard of over the wire It was like man That just opened the floodgates because now I want to learn all the stuff and I want to get good at it And that was a lot of fun. So from 2014 2015 whenever there was a an event on CTF time and I could try and make it I would So I have old write-ups and I'm sure there's over hundreds Maybe even I don't even know if a thousand is even correct or not, but I would think tons I would think over a hundred for sure I must say but the video telling me it must be more than five hundred six hundred idea. I don't know it's weird because Sometimes I look at myself and I'm like I'm not improving. How come I'm not improving. How come I'm not learning anything new? And I to be honest Thinking back to to those days and I and I know I had mentioned it a lot Because I was able to stay up late and try those things that was all in the realm of academia when I didn't have regular life kind of getting in the way between a day job between the significant other that I really want to spend time with in social life etc etc People say like man, they hate being in school To be honest, I think that time if you seize it and you realize it like dude This is all the time I'm gonna ever get to really hunker down and learn stuff That you got a you got a fight for it There were some golden days where you could study and just do what just the things that you wanted to do The good old days. I don't know. It's weird because no one no one thinks of maybe their school as all the good old days But I remember just being like a an information gold mine Did I just made you nostalgic a bit yeah Yeah, no problem. So, okay, let's move on further like let's talk about your creation katana So you made your own tool you coded by yourself and with your friends. So For the beginners what kind of languages you would suggest like you should All right, I'm gonna go a couple different places in this question My immediate answer is learn Python Python is absolutely what I would recommend it is absolutely a hackers language It can do so much. There's tons of built-in libraries. It's so easily extensible with other libraries Python is absolutely my weapon of choice That is the sword that I reach for and it's like a knee-jerk reaction If there's something that I want to do I'll do it in Python Oh, I Guess background on that. Sorry. Did you have something? No, that's it When I was learning when I first got started My dad my dad was the one that taught me like HTML and my dad taught me CSS and my dad And that was all stuff to like build out a stupid website because I wanted to have a I wanted to have a website when I was like nine years old and And then I was like, oh man I could I could get my own server so I could host my own website and then like well if I want to get a server I guess I need some hardware and I don't know what to do to make a website hosted on a server and then I found Linux and When I was reading all about Linux, I found Richard Stallman and I found Eric S. Raymond and You know how every kid like will Google how to be a hacker or like how to make video games somehow Yeah Somehow I found Eric is Raymond's blog that was like if you want to be a hacker You need to know Python and you need to run Linux. So I'm like, okay And and that's why I opted for for Python When uh, sorry, can I add just one more? Because you mentioned Katana and now why we wrote that in Python Originally, there was a lot of talk like it would be cool to make this in something like rust because I know There's so much like Mainstream cool hipsters. They're loving rust It'd be and I needed to learn it so I could try that or we thought like oh Let's write it and go because that would be super fast and be crazy for all the concurrency stuff We tried to write it and then we're like this this just isn't working for us. We can't we can't prototype We can't develop the way we want to We were just fumbling so I we just went for our tried and true Python But that's good, uh, I in fact I have been like using Python for almost like three four years now and Relate to it like why Python? All right, so uh, I got to like I just got a little bit glimpse of your past like how you started so And like, you know, everybody here is Struggling and hustling enough in the security domain and they are trying out to share those stuff as well They are making blogs and they are making YouTube channels. They are making communities like we are trying out as well So I want to know from your perspective like what kind of problems did you face when you started in the briefing in them? Yeah, okay? So if you if you like go through the deep dives and the records of my my channel Archives you can see there's some videos that are out there Like 10 or 11 years old and there's me messing with like game maker and an adventure maker some baby stuff and I remember For the longest time just waiting to see if that could ever take off Because I wanted it to grow and it was a lot of fun to put them together But it would be it's even more fun if people watch it and people enjoy it So I kind of flatlined and Had those growing and would try to do stuff for like programming tutorials So I tried to teach Python when I was way too young I tried to make videos on Windows batch when I was way too young. I know it still exists Those are still out there, but that's not really kind of what my channel is now So when I started to do the capture the flag stuff those years ago, I started to record those And those kind of grew a little bit But to be honest, I reached out to live overflow, which I'm sure everyone knows and I asked him like hey Dude, do you want to do Google CTF together? Or do you want to like tackle something that we could we could do something together on it? Because you're sitting there at like 200,000 subscribers and I'm here with 10 So give you that to give you a good push And honestly that that's kind of what it was is I literally had I think 10,000 at the time Which isn't which isn't incredible, but it's also not Nothing, which I guess But when I did that video with him, it's like the old Google CTF video I remember that jumped me up to like hey 20,000 and then I was like, oh dude now we're now we're climbing So let's move keep moving keep moving and that's always been just a hedonic Treadmill like something that I really want to do because it's it's fun But I guess my advice with the actual original question there Don't hesitate to reach out to the people that you feel like are in a solid spot Like when I was like fanboying over live overflow when I was like oh man He's got everything set because he has X amount of followers or he does X amount of things It's cheesy to think that way because you can't compare yourself to others Something that I learned is like you can't compare yourself to who other people are today You need to compare yourself to who you were Yesterday because that's the best delta like that's that's the best baseline is I see how you can improve And if you feel like that there are giants out there There's nothing wrong with just reaching out to them like saying hey, man I really love the stuff that you do Can you lend a hand like I'm trying to grow my own thing too and live was fantastic And when we met last year that was incredible But They're all people right we're all people and I think a lot of us I hope and I it seems to be in the community that we're in a lot of people are extremely friendly and want people to learn and get better So reach out. Don't hesitate. Be be a friend Exactly our little help is never helped Yeah Yeah, right. So that was amazing talking to you man So this is the last question I have for you Um, this might be a bit more, you know, disclosing a little bit more of your future plans So what are your future plans in this domain?  What kind of good things we are going to see?  I don't know Oh man, so a lot of people um have been asking like hey, dude Can you make a course? Can you put out something on udemy or something? Because a lot of people might want something like that. They like the way that you they like the way that you talk They like the way that you teach And I really flattered by that. I really love kind of everyone's support and I cannot say thank you enough for that sort of thing Um, and it's easy to get really pie in the sky and and think about like wow. What what else can I do? Um, because I want to build things. I want to make things. I want to keep putting out content Um, I'd like to keep kind of ponying around a capture the flag Competition that I built that I put together I'd like to build something into discord and I've had a lot of thoughts for this Uh Because our discord server we want to have a lot more engagement and a lot more conversation So I wanted to have a ctf that was literally built into discord where everything is public Like you can request a challenge and I'll put it in the same channel that everyone else is in You can submit a flag in the exact same channel everyone else is in Because the way that would work is that the challenges would be dynamic and generated solely for that user And that might look like craziness. I have no idea, but that's been kind of fun. I've been uh, I've been tinkering with that Uh, I've also been trying to put together a little auto ctfd generator that will help spin up a ctf D instance with like the dynamically regenerated challenges. So you don't have to deal with that interface because that's kind of annoying Um Sounds cool. I want to keep making videos You know, like there's so much on the to-do list um, and if well people want a course I'd love to do that too it's it's funny because uh You got to think about like life and how annoying money is The the necessity of finances because Obviously I put advertisements on some of my videos and it would be incredible if I could keep making this into something that I could really flourish in But I support is necessary for that.  You look at all the other other people out in the industry and they they they roll in their own thing Right. See them all. Yeah I don't think that's bad because If if you do something and you if people like the way that you do it Well, they'll come to you they'll go to you and that's why having your own show or having your own business or having your own thing Is is necessary. So maybe in however many years I'd like to try that. I have no idea Sure went on because you're doing it. You you're really good at making youtube videos and I'm gonna say that and you haven't doing a great job for a long time. I see well, thank you and Yeah, you're welcome. And I really appreciate the efforts that you're putting out in the community and sharing this much knowledge and I appreciate your time that you gave us And on this podcast and shedding light on some questions that people have been asking for a long time So anything that you would like to add in the end of the note Oh, for sure. How do we do is this is too long? Is this a perfect time? Like how do we do? That's a perfect time. Go ahead. Cool. Um No, I mean this this has been fantastic. I'm honestly Really really flattered I I try not to I don't see myself as someone that anyone should particularly like Be curious about or care about I want to know the opinions of so I think it was muffin that had asked me like Hey, can we do a show with you? Can we just chat with you and then seeing all the questions that you guys had prepared? It's just uh, I don't know. It really it's surreal and I and I'm very very thankful So thank you guys so much for wanting to do this with me. It's it's an absolute honor and pleasure. So John is a lot of pleasure. It was really nice talking to you as well. And thank you so much for coming out And yeah, we will be in touch for definitely and I'm pretty sure like people are gonna reach you out more now Because you have already cleared a lot of stuff and they have already been curious about a lot of things Um, I wish you good luck for whatever future plans you have and I'm I'll be really glad if I can be a part of it As well later. We'll see how it goes Well, absolutely. Thank you man. The same to you Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you so much and on this note guys. We are ending up our today's podcast It's been really nice talking to this amazing guy. He have told us a lot of stuff I and I hope you enjoyed this whole discussion as well Um, if you have a question reach us out at Sakarmi or you can reach John directly as well. He's available on social media on twitter We'll leave all the handles in the post as well And thank you so much John again. You have a great day and uh on this note. We end up the session Thanks guys. Take care Take care. See you soon So that's it for today's podcast for Sakarmi. We hope you enjoyed the stuff and see you guys soon It's your host terabyte and keep tuned into Sakarmi Right, John. Thank you so much man. Sweet. Yeah, this was a blast. Thanks so much Yeah, thanks a lot.  Appreciate it. I hope it was fun It was actually I hope I didn't stomp on you too much whenever you wanted to interject or something.  It was it was I really Like enjoyed whatever you're telling about and it was really funny and indulging myself. So that's good awesome All right, anything else we would like to talk about um, I would like to I guess share this on my channel Is that something you guys are totally cool with? Uh, yeah, we'll be cool with it. Do you have the recording? Can you share that with us as well? Yes? Yeah, I have uh, I have the video that's still going so Yeah, mate, uh, it will be really good if you can share the video as well and uh, yeah Maybe muffin or somebody else will be like getting in touch with you for the same, right? Okay Do you guys care when or do you need me to do you need me to wait a few days or however much time in between Putting something out or uploading this Uh, mate, I believe muffin will be a better guy to talk about this I guess he's typing it and he'll let you know like when we are going to because we are still in the process of making the posters, you know And we're gonna make it a big thing that we are, you know, gonna put up a podcast with you sweet Sure, and thank you so much mate. This was really nice Appreciate it. Same to you Take care guys. All right You too.


So what I would like to talk about today is the data challenge that is posed by multidisciplinary research. And I will also tell you how we can solve the data problem. So as you may notice, a lot of research currently is moving towards multidisciplinary research. So I think this will be like the kind of next generation of research. And as Marie already said, I will focus here on health and well-being. And in health and well-being, there are two big questions that are usually looked for and answered by the researchers. And one question relates to diagnosis. So who is at risk, for example, for low well-being? Another question relates more to treatment. So why is someone at risk? In answering these questions, what we see over the recent years is that the answers are coming from different domains from different disciplines. So, for example, in accounting for risk factors, not only at lifestyle, one looks, but also, for example, at environmental exposure or also at genetic constitution. And insight is growing more and more that often these different factors jointly into place. So for someone, genetic susceptibility may be the main factor of risk, but for someone else, the genetic constitution may put him at risk, but the environment may protect him from the risk occurring. Also, in answering the question about the mechanisms, so why is it that someone ends up in a situation of low health, we see that the answers are coming from mainly the biological and behavioral domains. So there is a big rise of bio-behavioral research where in fact people are really trying to get a feeling of the intricacies that play between those two domains. And this is very important in developing multidisciplinary treatment plans because you want to know who should get mainly lifestyle advice, who should get the right medication, and who should get a combination of both a change in lifestyle and maybe some support by medication. Now, this means that in collecting data, the different views enter. So nowadays, you often find that big collections of data are gathered where not only from one discipline information is obtained about the same group of patients. And here, I used colorectal cancer survival as an example. So we are not only looking, for example, at their personality and their lifestyle using questionnaire data, which is something where psychologists would typically do, but we also look, for example, at their genetic constitution using biomarker data. Now, this kind of data because they represent different disciplinary views are called multi-view data. Now, more generally, these are called in statistics in data analysis, multi-block data. So you have several blocks of data on the same group of respondents. And within the blocks, there is some kind of homogeneity with respect to the information you're displaying. And these data really pose a challenge because you have one problem that is more related to the fact that you are collecting a mouse of information, and you are looking for new types of relations. So there is a discovery component in this type of research. So it's difficult to know where to look. And given that so much information is collected, and often in an un-targeted way, think about genome-wide associations that is where you get millions of genetic elements that are just measured because they can be measured. It's hard to know where to start looking. So finding the relevant variables just by your data analysis method is one of the main tasks that has to be accomplished. Another fundamental problem that comes with this type of data is that you have data blocks that are very heterogeneous. So not only in science, for example, questionnaire data usually is just about a few variables while the genetic data is representing a huge block with 10,000 or even millions of variables. And this can be solved fairly easy by pre-processing steps. But what we also see is that there is correlation within blocks that is much stronger than correlation patterns associations between the blocks. So finding these relations between the different views, and that's what we are really interested in, that is a very difficult task because it's hidden information. And in answering these kind of questions, what people usually do is that they rely on methods for analyzing a single block of data, either by just doing separate analysis on each of the data blocks, which makes it difficult to find links. Now the other option that is very often used is just to put everything together to concatenate the data, and then to apply standard techniques that we have. Now this is not working. So multi-block methods are really needed to analyze multi-block data. So to illustrate this here, I have synthetic data where you have, on the one hand, questionnaire data with fairly strong correlation between all variables, and then on the right side, we have biomarker data with two sets of variables that have a weaker correlation, but still some correlation. And very interestingly, there is here these sets of eight variables, three from the questionnaire data, and five from the biomarker data that are correlated. But the correlation is quite weak. If you apply a method just for concatenated data for a single data block, so you do not account for the multi-block structure, what you will typically find is either a representation where all correlations are displayed, also the spurious correlations, those that are in fact not meaningful at all, or if you try to penalize for the spurious correlations, you will lose also these small correlations that are of interest between the different data blocks. So the answer to handling this type of multi-block data of multi-view data is to take the block structure really into account. And this is something on which I've been focusing during the past five years, and I developed a principal components type of model that uses block regularization, so that really tells the data analysis like, you know, there is this block structure, and we're interested both in finding these view-specific, these block-specific associations, but also in finding these very small relations between the blocks, and applying this type of methods to the synthetic data that I just showed you, indeed well recovers the type of structure that is in your data. So on the one hand, in the top panel, I'm showing the view-specific mechanisms, and there you'll find that indeed for the biomarker data you have this big group with all correlated variables, and for the psychological variables you have indeed also a correlation between all psychological variables, and the method also picks up this joint mechanism that is linking the two types of data blocks, and that is what is displayed here in the bottom. Now having a quick look under the hood, what is done is telling this principal component analysis that it should penalize coefficients to zero, and in this way you get this automated selection of the relevant variables, but in penalizing to zero we impose the block structure, so we tell the method like you know some of these mechanisms are view-specific, so that means that you should cancel out the order block completely. Okay, now there are two types of coefficients in effective principal component analysis, and people usually are not aware of the fact that these different formulations of PCA are using different types of coefficients, and what I call their weights and loadings usually are denoted in the literature by loadings. Now as we recently showed, choosing whether you put this type of zeros on the weights or on the loadings really matters, and if you're really interested in mechanisms then you should put the zeros on the loadings. If you're interested in prediction answering the who question then it should be put on the weights, and this was now published recently, we got the acceptance letter yesterday in a paper which was written by a data science PhD student. Okay, now to illustrate the type of methods that I developed together with my team. Here I have an example where we're interested in family dynamics, and we have three blocks. We have questions relating to the mother, answered by the mother, questions answered by the father about his feeling about parenting and his relation, and then also questions posed to the child, so these are the three blocks. Now what is interesting to see is that you get an easy interpretation, many coefficients are just zero, and furthermore you clearly get these structures of the block, so you immediately see that for the child there are only a few specific mechanisms at play. The other example here at the right is a prediction example where I used data on vaccination to predict whether a vaccine is working well, so I think this is a relevant example for the time being, and using my methods, which is the SP cover methods, the top line in the table, we get an out-of-sample prediction that is much higher than for other state-of-the-art methods. Now what is interesting here is that I had 55,000 predictor variables, and the methods only retained 200 variables, and these because its genetic data were annotated with a tool, and it shows that in fact this was a very interpretable set of selected genes all relating to viral sensing and the immune system. Okay, so to conclude the major challenge for multidisciplinary research is to deal with multi-block data in an appropriate way, and for principal component analysis we have done work that does the job and also for clustering other people are working on similar type of approaches that are also working, but for many methods still developments are needed, and I think this is one of the main fields of data analysis for still a lot of work needs to be done, and I also see that the number of papers is increasing very rapidly, so this is becoming one of the main types of tasks for people developing novel statistical methods. If you would be interested in applying this type of structured PCA method, I have both an art package and also freely available quotes on github. Thank you for your attention.