Hi, I'm Andrew. This is Dylan. We both are software engineers at Google. We work on the production kernel theme. I've been at Google for about a year. And Dylan, do you want to say anything about yourself? I've been at Google for about two years now, just barely. Yeah, so we're going to talk about a new model for maintaining kernels at Google that we hope will eventually be realized as people at Google contributing more to upstream instead of sort of just focusing on internal efforts. So briefly, what we're going to do is we'll talk about Prada Kernel, which is Google's production kernel. Give a bit of an overview about it. Talk about how currently it detracts from our ability to participate upstream. And after that, Dylan will introduce Icebreaker, a new model for maintaining kernels at Google. We'll talk about some of the risks and then we'll talk about its current status and how we hope it'll turn out in the future. Prada Kernel, it's Google's, it's our name for Google's production kernel. It runs on most of the machines that we run our workloads on in our data centers. And it's a fork of the Linux kernel that Google deploys on its production machines. These are machines that sort of serve Google's like search requests and other jobs both externally facing and internally facing. It consists of about 9,000 patches on top of upstream Linux. And this isn't upstream in the sense of like 5.14 today. It's actually a little bit older than that. So it's a fork that isn't continually like kept up to date with upstream. It's comprised of some internal APIs. We have a multi-threading library called Google Fibers and it requires some kernel side modifications to implement it. Hardware support for various things, performance optimizations, and then other sort of tweaks that are needed to run binaries that we use at Google. Every two years, we rebase all these patches over two-year code-based delta. As you can imagine, that presents some challenges, some of them being that a lot of stuff can change over two years. And then even if you do think you successfully rebase your patch, if later you find a bug in it, that's a very large search space to sort of narrow down and try to figure out what's going on and how you can fix it. So you might think, why do we have prod kernel? Why don't we just use the upstream kernel? It's supposed to be applicable to many different use cases and if we have a new use case, we should just be able to upstream all of it and go from there. But we had some internal needs and timelines that NSS has hated having our own fork of Linux. This list isn't really meant to be exhaustive, it's just kind of illustrating some examples. Internally, there's different classes of network traffic within our data centers. There's some specific things we need to do to set quality of service for different packets from user space. We have specific rules for doing OOM kills, for jobs running in our data center. We added a new API to enable cooperative scheduling in user space, which I don't think it's something that exists in upstream Linux today. And there's also security concerns that we have since we handle user data. One such example is that we disable a sampling of the user stack in the Perf tool because if somehow we were able to get a little bit of user data, that wouldn't be the greatest thing in the world, though it sort of resolves a privacy concern. So prod kernel, the general idea that we wanna talk about is how it detracts from upstream participation and then how we want to fix these things so it's easier for our engineers to participate in upstream. So Google made features are developed and tested in prod kernel, which at its max can be probably two years behind upstream. So this produces two major hurdles. So if you're thinking about the workflow of an engineer, they get a request, a feature request to add a feature to prod kernel. Can do many things, but generally what'll happen is they'll develop their feature on prod kernel, which is two years or so behind upstream. Then it's a choice, right? You can either decide to put in the effort to rebase it forward across many years and send it to upstream. But this presents an interesting challenge, right? Like even if it was tested on prod kernel against lots of Google traffic and you're confident that it works in prod kernel, once you rebase it, it doesn't have all that testing and a qualification backed up with it, right? Cause it's combined with like a totally new source of a totally new set of source code. So while the feature might have been validated against Google production workloads on the old upstream base, it begs the question, how do we replicate that on a new upstream base without the rest of prod kernel? So you might say like, oh, just throw that kernel in production with that one specific feature, but it's missing all the other specific features that we need to run our workloads. So this can kind of be generalized to bug discovery. So we operate complex workloads at a very large scale. This sets us up to discover lots of system bottlenecks, bugs and deadlocks. The nature of our rebase means that there's a really large delay in discovery. So we're like a few years behind, we discover the bug and you might say, oh, we can report it upstream and that does work, I guess. If it's like we're on a LTS kernel, we can report the bug and maybe there's a fix that someone contributed that got back ported. But in general, we're probably kind of on our own if we find this bug. And then it's not really useful if we find a way to fix the bug, right? So we fix the bug on a year's old kernel. It's debatable whether someone actually cares about that fix anymore, right? Like the ideal situation would have been we found a bug on an upstream kernel we're able to contribute a fix for that. But it doesn't really work out that way by nature of how we actually do development currently. So we're like n majors behind upstream, which means that the bug we find is also x years old and we're x years late to presenting the issue to upstream. So by staying on a certain major for a pretty long period of time, a bug could be fixed upstream but we won't benefit again until we rebase again. So I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but a bug could have been fixed in like the most recent release, right? And it could be very well applicable to us but we won't really get that bug fix for free until we either rebase again or we back port the bug fix which is basically like the same issue as do we rebase our features to upstream them across the same sort of delta. So another issue that we kind of see is platform support and back porting. So as upstream adds new supports for platforms, it's obviously something we might be interested in, right? So if there's new platform support in say 5.15 we need to back port all the patches to our prod kernel in order to actually get that platform support. And it sort of runs into the same issue except sort of reverse, right? So we know that these patches are tested on say 5.14 and it's validated by the upstream community. We back port it and who's to say that the patches still work. They probably apply cleanly. We can probably do some tests but it's not really the same guarantee since you've sort of moved the base out from under it. Yeah, and then we need to back port over a large delta and even then it doesn't even be, it's not ended up tested against the same version of the kernel. So the bugs we encounter might not even be applicable to upstream. This brings us to the prod kernel rebase. So rebasing is extremely costly. It detracts from work that engineers could be doing otherwise because they have to spend pretty big amount of their time rebasing over such a large delta. Individual patches have to have their conflicts resolved against the new upstream base. So if there's a new API that's introduced or a function signature changes, the engineer has to go hunt that down and figure out how to integrate that into their existing change. And this is kind of magnified because you might be assigned to rebase a feature that you only wrote like a year ago and it's been working fine for a year and then all of a sudden you're thrown back into this code base that you probably only have a vague memory of and suddenly you need to resolve conflicts and bugs against it. And this isn't like a one-time issue, right? It's recurring over and over again. So the entire kernel must be requalified against Google's workloads with the new base and you can imagine that any bug that you do find is probably relatively unexpected, right? We all think we write perfect code the first time around. So when you do find a bug, you wonder, okay, so where does it come from? And this leads into sort of two avenues. It can either be in the rebase itself or it could have been in some potentially bad interaction with the new base. But either way, the search space is very, very large unless you have like a very good reproducer. It's a bit hard to bisect. You could imagine that if you had a patch series that conflicted on top of the new base for every single bisection, you still need to resolve those same conflicts and maybe with some clever scripting you could get around that, but it's still like a difficult workflow. Dependencies between patches are inconsistently documented. So it's very well the case that we have, I can have many efforts at Google that depend on each other. So we could have written a library that all these other patch series patches depend on. But it's not very clearly documented what depends on what. So usually the only way someone finds a dependency is that they try to rebase the patch series and they notice, oh, I'm missing this certain function or I'm getting this, it doesn't compile and then you have to go hunt down what other patches your patch series depends on. And in addition to having to hunt this down, the lack of documentation for this makes it hard to parallelize the efforts. So if you need to find all your dependencies, even if you do find them, it's unclear what those patches also depend on and it becomes a difficult task to sort of streamline. And then the delay associated with revases worsens like all these issues before, right? Every single time it sort of piles on more and more. Sort of the idea of technical debt, right? If you don't take care of it, it just kind of grows. So all these things kind of magnify and increase the cost of the next rebase. So we've seen that each subsequent proc, each subsequent prod kernel rebase increases in the number of patches that we rebase and the time to complete each rebase. So what this means is every single time we rebase prod kernel, we have more patches to rebase and naturally it takes more time to rebase. So if we kind of extrapolate into the future, we don't really see like a clear trend-liner bound on how long this process will take. Rather than see when this trend line becomes unsustainable, we want to proactively reduce our technical debt. So we need to find a way that reduces our technical debt by some new, I guess, model of developing and maintaining our fork of Linux internally. And effectively, our hunch is that by reducing our technical debt, we'll be able to have more time for engineer, suspend, participating upstream. So not only is the upward trend in patches needing to be rebased increasing itself, it also has a hidden cost of every engineer that takes like an hour to rebase a patch. That's an hour they weren't spent doing something upstream. So it presents a few hurdles for engineers to work upstream. Structurally, they're working on a year's old kernel and like we talked about this before, this presents the hurdle of testing on a new upstream base, right? So you have your feature that's tested and qualified against Google workloads on a different kernel base, you rebase the feature, send it for upstream and it would be a lie to say, yes, it's been tested against Google production traffic because it really hasn't, you rebase the patch series and it's on a new base. And then more practically, time is taken from an engineer's finite resource to participate in rebasing instead of upstreaming. So it's kind of like we need the step to rebase a prod kernel and that effort could have very well been spent on rebasing your patch series to send upstream. And I'll turn it over to Dylan to talk about our new model for sort of maintaining a more upstream friendly kernel. Thank you. So what is our plan for paying down this technical debt? So Icebreaker is a new kernel project at Google and it has two main goals. The first one is we wanna stay close to upstream. We wanna release an Icebreaker kernel on every upstream major release of Linux. And we wanna do that sort of on time, right?  And by doing that, we want to help Googlers participate in upstream much more easily, right? They sort of have this platform now to do upstream first development. But then in addition to that first requirement, we wanna be able to run arbitrary Google binaries in production, right? We want this kernel to sort of be a real production kernel. And the idea is that we can take the qualification of upstream patches out of the critical patched path for a prod kernel rebase before it was sort of like we had to do a prod kernel rebase to start even testing out these patches in production. And so now we're sort of piling everything into the tail end of this two year period. Whereas with Icebreaker, we could be doing it much sooner. We could be doing it as soon as the kernel gets released almost. So these goals are important because it really just boils down to we need better participation upstream. As an engineer working on a fork that's super far from upstream, it's really difficult to sort of see the benefit of sending things upstream, right? Your things go into production on a really old prod kernel, and there's a whole extra set of things that you need to do to get it to go upstream. You need to first rebase your feature and untangle it from prod kernel. You need to test it and make sure it works upstream. And then you need to propose it upstream and you're not even sure if it's gonna get accepted, right? Versus there's sort of, you could just wait for the rebase to happen, right? And then you have time budgeted for you by your team to sort of get the rebase done and then the actual upstreaming of the patches never happens because by the time that rebased prod kernel is qualified, it's already too late and it's already too old. So the other sort of side of this is we want the opportunity to qualify these upstream patches in production, right? Because sort of loading all of these, the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of upstream patches into prod kernel all at once is really what we're doing. We're sort of taking our patches and putting them somewhere else and we don't really know what's happening. And there's not really an opportunity for us to sort of amortize that load of new patches coming in from upstream. So what does Icebreaker actually look like? And there's sort of two sides to this. There's the side of development, like how do I get my patches into Icebreaker and deployed in production on an Icebreaker kernel? And there's the side of how do I upgrade my patches or get them onto the new Linux upstream base? So it sort of makes sense to start with saying, okay, well, we're gonna fork off our upstream base. Let's say the latest is 5.10 and from that we fork off feature branches. So these feature branches are really just a collection of feature patches that sort of make sense in the context of each other and they implement one sort of piece of functionality in the kernel. And so you really just have upstream Linux, the feature patches and nothing else. And so this is useful because, right there, that's sort of a patch series you could propose upstream. And so you're really starting with something that's upstreamable and not going the other way around. And then so you can develop, you can add bug fixes and eventually things get merged into subsystem specific staging branches and they get tested. And we finally merge into a next branch where things get released. So the next branch is really like that's the Icebreaker kernel that's fully composed and ready to go. But it still has its roots in these feature branches, right? And so the final step after we release is we do a fan out merge into the staging branches to sort of reset the heads and everything back to what the released Icebreaker was. But we don't fan out to the feature branches. The feature branches sort of stay pure, so to speak. They just have the feature patches because that's what's upstreamable. And so if we look at one feature branch we can actually see how the upgrade happens. So normally a prod kernel rebase would be we take all the patches and we reapply them on the new base. And we could do that for individual feature branches but it's a lot more sustainable to say, okay well we could just do a merge and we could create our new 511 based feature branch and merge the 510 base on top of that to bring in the changes from the old base. And then so we say okay, that means we get to keep our known good shot ones in the previous version of the kernel and then we just have to qualify or we just have to validate this new one merge and any conflicts are sort of resolved in that merge commit. And if you can think, you wouldn't really be able to do this for prod kernel at all, right? Because one massive merge commit is gonna have every conflict but you could do it for each individual feature because it's actually something that can be done in bytes and in pieces. And so bug fixes really work well in this kind of workflow because if you say okay well there's a bug in my feature I can go to the oldest supported version of that feature and fix the bug, right? And so I have a buggy shot one introducing the bug and a fix shot one and those two shot ones aren't really gonna change I can merge it forward because the histories are continuous. And in really any branch in Icebreaker those shot ones are gonna stay the same because it's sort of stable and the histories are staying the same. So it's really powerful to say like, this commit fixes this shot one because that shot one is always gonna be the commit that introduced that bug. So how does this affect upstream? Well, if you remember prod kernel we have this sort of model where we were committing our feature commits into basically the staging branches and we were just doing fan in fan out. And so the thing we were developing on top of was all of prod kernel and then on top of that or prod kernel and then that prod kernel was on top of a really old upstream base. So it was really kind of difficult to sort of untangle all of that onto an isolated feature branch which is what we need to propose at upstream and to actually get that on the most recent upstream release. And then even if you do get them to pull apart you have to revalidate everything but with an Icebreaker feature branch you start it out with your feature branch that you validated and then merge it into Icebreaker but then you can merge the other way. You can say, okay well I have this feature branch that's been validated I can propose it upstream. And so actually proposing a feature branch upstream should be as simple as just a get rebase. So if you have get re re re enabled it really is sort of straightforward you run the get rebase and if you don't have it enabled it really should be okay well I know I resolved these merge conflicts already they're in these merge commits. I can just look up the merge commits and get that information. There should really not be a blocker to getting things upstream. So there are some risks with Icebreaker unfortunately. A big risk is we need strong feature branch testing. I think there's sort of this risk that feature branches can kind of turn into these filing cabinets that's just say, okay well I have these patches that are kind of all related to each other so I'm gonna put them together in a branch and I'm gonna forget about them and I'm gonna merge them where I want them to be but that kind of isn't very useful because we don't know if it builds or boots or passes any tests because we haven't tested it. So if we can take a feature branch and just with the feature branch build it, boot it and validate it then when we merge it to somewhere else we can say okay we started at a known good feature and we're gonna merge it now and make sure it works again versus if we merge it and we didn't know if it was good to start with then there's not much utility in that and we're just sort of complicating the process of getting these patches into a kernel and then also for upgrading the same point applies and then also dependencies between features can sort of cause some problems. I think really that the model of Icebreaker is sort of based off this idea that Linux is just this big ocean of patches and our contributions are these drops in the big ocean and so feature branches are gonna kind of be far apart from each other in what they affect and so they're not gonna depend on each other that much and that does hold true for the most part except we do have some dependencies between features and so those can take the form of like a non-trivial merge conflict it can take the form of one feature is using an API provided by another feature it can take the form of even just like some sort of difficult to understand performance optimization that makes the other feature only work in that situation, something like that and so to sort of resolve that we could do it on the staging branch, right? We merge one to the staging branch and then the second one that needs the dependency can sort of resolve everything on there and we figure out the conflicts right on the staging branch but the problem is that staging branches aren't carried forward when we upgrade to the next upstream base so we're really sort of losing that information because only the feature branches are carried forward so what we need to do is do emerge on the feature branches to resolve that dependency and so that does work but it sort of introduces this little problem of like okay well what's the rule for what can merge into what how crazy can we let these merges become what are the rules for saying okay well these two things should just be on their own feature branch versus these two things should merge and there's utility in that and it's really like something we have to solve on a case by case basis icebreaker is a lot more decentralized than prod kernel we have to put our trust in feature maintainers for them to actually create their feature branches correctly write good tests and all that stuff we need to put our trust in staging branch maintainers who have to sort of look at these merges as they're coming in to icebreaker and say okay are these merge conflicts non-trivial are these dependencies correctly resolved on the feature branches and then finally we need buy-in from other teams they need to trust us that this new workflow that's sort of new and confusing is actually going to pay off and we're actually going to be able to reduce our technical debt and improve things and so the final risk is we need to get things upstream in icebreaker right if we don't send things upstream then we can just keep piling commits into icebreaker and it grows and grows and grows and it kind of just turns into prod kernel again right and eventually we're not going to be able to keep up with upstream and it's going to sort of fail it's going to turn back into just the normal prod kernel routine so we really need to sort of leverage the fact that we're really close to upstream and we need to get our commits upstream so that we can stay close to upstream and if that doesn't happen we're just going to fall behind into the same old habits turn it back over to Andrew so to sort of I guess take it away from just theory and things that would be cool to do we'll talk a bit about how icebreaker is actually going in reality and sort of cool things we've found along the way while implementing and running through this project so currently we're on icebreaker 513 which if you think about it we were on a, I don't know, some many years old kernel and now we're, I don't know, I think two stable releases one stable release behind upstream that's pretty good it's a lot closer than we've ever been so one cool thing we noticed if you run the numbers is that our tree has actually dropped 30-something patches between when we started and where we are now and you might think like oh Andrew that's 30 divided by 9000 not that big of a number but it's a start it's certainly not something that was going to happen without a project like this so we hope to sort of keep seeing this trend we're actually working on getting to 514 now and we've actually dropped whole feature branches in that process because we were back porting stuff from upstream into our original kernel and that's technical debt right you're like back porting and then it's on the new kernel base and it's not qualified with the upstream kernel so in that sense we're actually reducing our technical debt and hopefully it'll become easier and easier as we keep going along and lessening sort of the number of features that are in our icebreaker tree some other cool things are by virtue of being close to upstream we've found some issues and sent fixes upstream or cc'd them to the stable tree to be back ported to 513 and I think that's something that wasn't really emphasized before with prod kernel by virtue of being like further back in time now that we're kind of closer to upstream we sort of feel the same issues I guess that upstream sees most of these were just build fixes but someone else cared about them besides us otherwise they wouldn't have been taken so that's a plus looking forward we plan to catch upstream around 515, 516 at this point kind of like a whole new world opens up right will be in a sense like riding the wave of what upstream actually is and at this point we think it'll get a lot easier we can actually relax the cadence at which we need to upgrade our tree I think the number one sort of issue with this project so far is that like Dylan says we have to place a lot of trust and emphasis on maintainers of future branches and the number one thing that sort of you get pushback on right is like you take it from this model where they only have to rebase every two or so years and all of a sudden you're coming back to them in this case like every three to four weeks saying okay can you help me fix this conflict with upstream and that's not something like they were I guess I feel like if anyone asks you to do something every single month when you're used to doing it like every few years you might not be too happy but at least now since we're getting closer to upstream we can actually relax the cadence at which we do that so now we can sort of conform to the release cycle for actual upstream so you know we can maybe do it every six to eight weeks instead of playing catch-up and doing it every four weeks and then another interesting idea that you know maybe we'll try out in the future is trying to test our feature branches of top release candidates this way we can actually participate in the testing of Linus's release candidates so it's sort of a cool idea right you know the purpose of having these RCs is so people can send in new fixes and wouldn't it be great if we could you know use our you know the engineers we have to sort of test their features on sort of on top of these release candidates as a mechanism to try and see if we can find bugs and send them upstream and you know participate more in upstream and then after that we'll try to open up the scope of Icebreaker to allow for more upstream development right now because we're still trying to catch up to upstream it's not really the best vehicle for developing a new feature you plan to test on upstream ideally if we were on this exact same stable release as upstream was it'd be a lot easier because you say like oh okay I'll send you a patch series on top of 515 but if Icebreaker isn't at 515 it's still like the same problem right you have to rebase one more time but it's like a smaller delta so hopefully that's easier and I think once we get to there once we catch up to what upstream currently is on I think it'll just be you know a good ride we'll be able to have a feature sent upstream it'll be easier for us to actually apply ourselves and find bugs and send them upstream to fix yeah that's don't have an end slide but that's it if anyone has any questions we'll happy to take them and answer them as best as we can I don't know a good way to convey who I picked in the black shirt we're starting by doing both Icebreaker and prod colonel and we're hoping to sort of see if we can move away from that rebase I think like one thing well it might seem like double work it does give like the Icebreaker project time to sort of figure everything out right like it's new it doesn't have all its processes figured out though by still doing I guess this rebase it's not the end of the world if like we run into a question that takes a bit to figure out but gives some breathing room so it's kind of nuanced in what parity is right so I guess the patches we have in prod colonel can be broken down into things you need to run binaries that are compiled at Google with our special libraries versus things that are I guess I don't know performance related right so parity in this sense is functional like it'll execute correctly not that it'll be everything in prod colonel otherwise like that's probably like a little bit of an intractable task right like it's you're not just like really deep in a hole you have to figure out a way to you know stop digging it deeper yeah um yeah maybe not yeah I think we do need to have a lot of platform support but I think that the benefit of that supporting Google hardware is that those patches don't actually conflict with upstream as much as a lot of changes to the core colonel and the core colonel changes are a lot more applicable to upstream um so you're right that there are a lot of patches that we're gonna end up having sort of sit in icebreaker but our hope is that those are actually gonna be pretty easy to upgrade each cycle and I would say that's a good question I don't think I have a hard number for you but I think I can also answer another point you were talking about like things were invented at Google before there was like a stable upstream API right I hope this doesn't come off as like kicking the can like down the road or whatever but I think there's been an emphasis on when we come across these like things that were invented at Google and now there's like some sort of like almost equivalent API upstream we kind of push folks in user space to use the upstream API instead so we can deprecate the thing that was invented at Google or is Google specific as long as there's like an equivalent upstream it's like usually like if it's a general use case right like there's hopefully something there or we can propose something that is general enough for everyone but fulfills the needs at Google I guess can you define cycle more? We sort of have an icebreaker LTS that sort of stays at the most recent upstream LTS and then we have an icebreaker upstream which is kind of a confusing sounding name but we've gone, we started at 510 and that's our first LTS and we're working on 514 now So that's three versions? Three? Yeah, three. Math is hard. I think like every single time we do it it gets quicker and easier, right? Like all the people that are involved like they know what's coming that they'll have to resolve conflicts and tests and unlike the side in terms of like automation there's more and more so it's kind of converging on like almost like it's getting closer to autopilot except for like you know resolving conflicts and debugging test failures I wouldn't go that far I think it's definitely a goal, right? But I think we're trying to get the process and then make sure like all our tests pass as a stepping stone but the LTS one is getting tested with I guess tests that would qualify as things we get production with in the blue shirt I think it says to repeat the question so he asked is prod colonel used everywhere or is it just something specific to cloud? So it's not, I think it's used in the majority of cases, right? But like you know you can think of exceptions like you know I'm using a Mac here or like our Linux workstation is not prod colonel and anything in production basically, right? There's a little bit of deviation between like cloud and general production but I think they're all versions of prod colonel. Oh. Oh, no. I think that's a completely different team. I don't think so. I think that's a completely different team. Yeah. Right, yeah like we're trying to get to I guess like a two kernel world, right? Where like ones for I guess customers that need stability and then the other one so we can qualify upstream changes against our specific Google features. Cool. I think, oh, you first then the hoodie. All right, so the question was how do we handle I guess merge conflicts with upstream and subsystems. So Google we have a, I guess a team for every subsystem, right? And this boils down to like the person that initially brought the feature into Icebreaker. They kind of like signed up for, you know dealing with these conflicts with upstream, right? And usually like if someone wrote the feature they have a pretty good idea of like how it should mesh with upstream. And so far we haven't run into any situation where it's like a change that can't really be meshed together, right? I think the hardest thing is when we have like a API that's upstream and an internal API that sort of do the same thing. And then you get to the part where it's like almost a feature parity, but not completely. So I think that's probably the only sort of edge case I can think of where it's difficult to manage. But even then I would only seen that like once or twice. Yeah, I think the biggest impact to reducing the merge conflict resolution workload is good testing. Because even if you don't know that there was some weird stuff happening in the merge maybe it appeared to merge cleanly but didn't. Just there's sort of a big piece of mind that you get from just having an automated test run on the whole feature that you can iterate fast on and see if things actually work the way you think they do. And the conflict thing isn't like entirely bad, right? It acts as a pretty good forcing function. If you get annoyed at the fact that you have to keep resolving these conflicts it kind of is like a hint like hey you should make an effort to either upstream this or deprecate the feature as something that is upstream. I think you had the next question. There have been some discussions of it. But nothing concrete. It's something we eventually hope to have, right? I think there's varying opinions on how useful it actually is, it would be. But I think it'd be a cool thing to try to figure out. I think it'd be useful if I could send my conflict resolution to Dylan for next time he might run into it. Hopefully we can figure out a way that you never have to resolve the same conflict twice but in the case that you do, I think that'd be something useful to share. So we have a lot of tests that currently are not upstreamable in our prod kernel repository. And so it is sort of a big piece of technical debt of how do we deal with this and how do we make that more upstreamable. And I think the path that seems most attractive to us is to sort of take the things and the shared libraries and the weird test partners we have that's sort of not upstreamable in Google and sort of turn that into a more upstream friendly thing by putting into self tests and sort of contributing to self tests really and making that better. In the red hoodie? I think it's, I think the using icebreaker to get internal patches like upstream, I think that's one of the main goals. I don't think it's like the other way around that bring upstream closer to prod kernel. Yeah, it's really, we're trying to drag ourselves closer. We're trying to align ourselves more with the upstream community. I think it's the more pragmatic thing to do, right? Like instead of being forked off from many, yeah, yeah, it's a numbers game, right? Any other questions? Cool, thanks for coming to our talk. I hope you learned something and enjoyed it.


So the sediments associated with glaciers have some very specific characteristics or facies. So sometimes you can see the specific types of landforms. So we mentioned, for example, the pavements that are ground flat by the glaciers. Often the glaciers create U-shaped valleys because they erode across a very large width of the valley. They often leave striations on the pavements and other aspects of the other places in the bedrocks. And then there are a host of other features that have a ton of different names. And many of those are in the form that the diamigthite is left behind. So, for example, moraines as an example. For our facies, we're actually going to talk mostly about the sediments and the rocks that are actually deposited from them. And so we're going to talk about the grains and how they're arranged. So we have the grain composition. And because physical weathering is more abundant than chemical weathering, it's basically the same as the bedrock that's eroded from the glacier. So for example, if the glaciers are eroding granites, most of the grains will have a granite composition. If it's eroding carbonates, most of the grains will have a carbonate composition. We also have the grain size. And glacial deposits have some of the widest grain sizes of any produced in environments. So that grinding process that creates pavements creates clay-sized grains of lipid glass because they have the same composition. So we often call that rock flour. And it'll go all the way up to boulders. And the ice can transport any of those. And so when the ice melts, those are all left behind. So if they're all combined together from the ice, we end up with the diamic type, which is unsorted with a mix of grain sizes. And we also have things like lone stones that might drop from icebergs into mudstones. So these are two types of rock that are not uniquely glacial but are very common in glacial faces. They're things to look for. There are also some characteristics of the grains that are common in glacial deposits and not anywhere else. So we have unique characteristics. And those come from this grinding process again. And in particular the faceted clasts, and especially if they have striations on them. So the only way we typically form clasts with one surface that's ground down is by that transport of ice over the bedrock and the grinding of those clasts against each other. And then we have often, we can define associated facies, which are environments that are next to these glacial environments and ones where some of the sediment is reworked. And these would be, for example, braided streams or river deposits, lake deposits, and some marine deposits or ocean deposits. And in the lake and marine deposits, you often see these lone stones. And turbidites are all often common due to the rapid deposition of sediment from the melting of the glacial ice. Thanks for watching.


Adafruit would like to remind parents this Halloween to please carefully inspect your kids candy We found doom running inside this Milky Way bar Remember do not eat if it's Turing complete


I'm Marianne Sasaki, you're watching Life in the Law. I'm thrilled today to have our guest today, another really difficult get. I've been begging him to come on the show for since I started, and finally he acquiesced. So I really appreciate it. I have Manmi Rana from Clay Chapman. Did I say that correctly? You said it right, yes. Okay. I go by Manu at the office. We refer to him as Manu at the office. We work together and we're here to talk about the life and times of a young lawyer in Hawaii. So once you- I'm not young actually. You're young. Young lawyer division is 36 or cut. But that's just- I'm talking about a law. Okay, okay, all right. The middle tier, the middle level associated with the experience we're gonna talk about today. So but tell me about why did you go to law school? I know you went to the University of Hawaii and you graduated cum laude, which is very impressive. So did you always want to be a lawyer or- Well yeah, I decided after college actually. Oh yeah? I was looking to be a teacher. A teacher? Yeah, but then I saw I got student loans. Right. And no, and you know, I'll make the big bucks. I know, yeah, yeah. Well actually no, what I started off with I did AmeriCorps while I was at Seattle University. Really? And I used to tutor like homeless kids or transitional children. And I just didn't like what was going on within the educational system. Oh, it's horrible, right? It's falling apart. And then also, oh sorry. No, no, go ahead. Also found out about their families. And one of the issues that kinda got highlighted during my last year at Seattle University was a lot of single parents, but also particularly single mothers. And especially if they're going through abuse and a lot of transitional families. That's a lot to take on. You really have to have a super calling for that, right? So it's something I wanted to be interested in. And so I wanted to be able to represent them. And I know one particular lady, she went through a divorce and it was not a great result for her or for a child. Yeah. And so that kinda started. I wanted to do my interest in public interest, but also particularly working with domestic violence. Yeah. And you did that, didn't you? Yeah, I did. My first internship, actually my first internship in Hawaii and then my first job, I mean, attorney job was with the domestic violence clearinghouse, which is now the domestic violence action center. I can't, I mean, that is such hard work. I mean, I've done just a very little bit of family law and it's really, really, it takes a special person. Well, it was good. I mean, in the sense of the work, it was, I mean. Challenging. It was not, it's nonprofit. So it was exactly the big bucks or anything like that. But coming out of law school, the good thing about the domestic violence action center, and this is what family law in general is that you're kinda thrown in court as soon as you start.  Yeah, and me, we started with TROs. And it was working with victims and representing them in family court. You know, TROs, it wasn't like, it's not something that you'll see on TV or anything or something that's kind of... Yeah, but there's so many. But it wanted to professionalize it through you in court. So you have to face a judge, you have to face opposing counsel, you deal with your client, and yes, you help her, not only you, usually her, sometimes me, you gotta help them in court, but also what happens outside of court. Right, you're sort of like a counselor, like shoulder to lean on, and like, I mean like a personal counsel, a counsel legal counsel, but also like they, I think you solve a lot of problems that aren't legal problems too, I mean, helping people. Yeah, but I think that's part of being an attorney. Is helping people? Yeah, I mean, especially for your client. I mean, you may have different goals. That's the right attitude. You gotta be a counselor to them, and you know, I mean, and Julia, I had a situation with shiny attorney and he was a counselor, and so that kind of helped me out. Right. So I think that's not, somebody can learn a law school, that's something that's got to offer. That's something that you're sort of born with that you learn in life, right? I, yeah, I wish I was more of a counselor. I think you're more sympathetic than I am. What are you very sympathetic? I don't think so. I like to do deals. I like, you know, transactions and you know, but so. You still gotta take care of your clients. I do, and I would do anything for my clients. I love my clients, I would do anything for them. And you gotta counsel them, although they may have different obstacles. Right, no. It's still a counselor. I'm there for them 24-7, they know that. And they take advantage of that too, a lot of them. I'm there for 12 hours a day, maybe eight if it's on a Friday, then after, no, I'm just kidding. I want to talk to the young lawyers and tell you that you're always a lawyer no matter where you go in a matter, what you do, right?  Every situation people look to you for whatever. From the grocery store to- Really? And you know, that's how the clients come too. Yeah, that's true, that's true. So I heard a story, I don't know if this is a true story, that you came in for a job interview at Clay Chapman and you were hard on the spot. No, that's not true. I took me three interviews, actually. Really? But they kept not saying, we're going to find something for you. Because they liked you so much. Yeah, well, yeah, well, it's not too like. Yes, yes, don't. But no, I heard that Jerry Clay was basically said, shook your hand and said, well, you know, welcome or something like that. And- Yeah, I know, Mr. Clay was great. When I found out about the job, my first day went to his office and thanked him. He's a great guy. I mean, it's a great firm. Clay Chapman's a great firm to work for. It's the people are very, very smart. They're very, very industrious, but they don't have any elevated attitude, which is a big problem usually with lawyers.  This is my first, I mean, I started a year ago, my first time really working in a firm. Really? Yeah, because it was a non-profit, then I worked for a private attorney. Not to say one was better than the other. This is better. I work for a private attorney. I work for a firm. I'll tell you, a firm is better. Listen to me young lawyers, a firm is better unless you have find a very, very special soul practitioner. You have to find a very, very special person. Otherwise you tear your hair out. I mean, it's really hard. For young attorneys, the way, oh, for me, what my experience is, there's kind of a bit of looking. Not in the sense that I was in the Wild West prior to Clay Chapman, but you have somebody checking on you and saying, okay, this is what I need to be done. I mean, not that they don't want to hear your opinion, but it helps a young associate or a new associate. Training, like a new associate, yeah. Well, there's processes in place of how to do things and their people came before you and you don't have to recreate the wheel every time you do something, which I don't know if it was your experience, but it was my experience when I was practicing with a soul practitioner, I was on my own really, pretty much, left on my own devices, so. And by the way, the story you heard about me being hired on the spot, I made that up. Did you really? I just spread it around. So that's, well, Mono's like the up-and-coming lawyer to look for. That's marketing right there for you. Yeah, you want, okay, so you want to go to Mono for what kind, what do you practice and what do people want to come to you for? Right now we're doing bankruptcy and we're doing evictions and then I do some collections, but that's kind of been transferred to Jonathan Gilbert also. Oh, really? Oh, okay. So, but when you say bankruptcy, like what kind, not personal bankruptcy, do you? Well, right now, we represent the creditor and usually it's in the context of, we have a chapter 13, the debtor wants, and it's in connection with a foreclosure usually in the state court. So debtor usually wants a payment plan, wants to be able to stay at their home. So we obviously represent the interest of the secured creditor. So any banks that are listening out there, they should take note of your credentials and the personal service you that you will receive at Clay Chapman. So do you find the work challenging? I mean. Because you didn't have any experience in this area before, right? So you've been learning, right? Very little. Prior to joining Clay Chapman, I had experience in foreclosures. It is a different, it's different in the sense that not necessarily you're trying to conduct a sale, get a sale confirmed or working with borrowers to see if a loan modification happens. It's pretty standard documents, but one minute you could be doing a chapter seven or 13 and it just comes down to protecting interests of the client. And his business, good know. I mean, obviously post-2009, business in foreclosures and bankruptcies was tremendous, I'm sure. But yesterday came out in the paper that Americans' income jumped most significantly since the early 1960s. So is the area still very busy? I mean. It's still busy. There has been a steady, I guess, or a stop of an incline of bankruptcies being filed in Hawaii. Well, nothing could be like after 2009, 2010, yeah. That opened up a whole. That was a really scary time. Yeah, it was. It really was. And I represented banks and lenders and it was quite a balancing act. It wasn't just straightforward now. This is what foreclosure is. Foreclosure defense came around at a time. So one thing I learned from Mr. Ramora, it is kind of, it's not so straightforward as it used to be. It is, now it's more litigated now and it is things. Well, people know if they're right, they know their rights and they know how to work the system a little better, I think. And state court judges and bankruptcy, the bankruptcy judge, Judge Harris is taking notice of that. So it's not so much where you got a contract and there's a breach and there's no reason you can go straight forward. We can talk forever what happened in 2008. But like, so tell me, how does it get complicated? Like, is it things that the bank does, things that the person in the house does? It could be what the bank does. Because the chain of title is a huge thing, right? The chain of title is the sign of mortgages. There was issue of, was some documents notarized properly and what does a transfer to another from one lender to another finance institution, what is required? Right, do you need acquiescence from the borrower? I mean, does the borrower have to agree if you sell on a loan like that? Or, I mean? Well, I mean, if you're going to one lender to another, no, that happens all the time. Student loans get one minute, you're paying Sally May the next minute. So it doesn't really matter. But there can be a rupture in that chain of this. It can, and it's something that you, as an attorney for the lender, you need to be well versed in and aware of. Well, I'm going to take a quick break and you can tell us how we should be well versed and aware of what the bank does with our money. You're watching Life in the Law. I'm Marion Sasaki with Manu Rana. We'll be right back. Aloha, everybody. My name is Mark Shklov. I'd like you to join me for my program, Law Across the Sea, on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Aloha. Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you, my talk show, I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. Hey, everybody, my name is David Chang and I'm the new host of the new show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you secrets on giving yourself a smart edge in life. We're gonna have awesome guests and great mentors of mine from the political, military, business, nonprofit, you name it. So it's something for everybody. Hi, welcome back. I'm Marion Sasaki. As I said earlier, I'm with Manurana. He's an associate, my colleague at the law firm of Clay Chapman. And we're just talking about bankruptcy law and the difficulty sometimes tracing the, alone as it goes from bank to bank to bank. And what do they do? They don't assign it, right? Or there's a trap in the thing?  They, you know, why has a recording system? So I mean, They do a recording system. No recording system. And so generally that's how, especially if a mortgage gets transferred, that's how it's something you can keep track of. And, you know, for the most part, the assignment mortgages are not an issue. I mean, if there's a break of chain or something like that, then that's obviously something we bring up with the client. So it just comes to, you know, making sure that, you know, the eyes are dotted and the keys are crossed. In the sense that making sure that, you know, recording is done properly. It has to be perfect, they'll still reject it. Right, land court, you know, it's very particular. And you get, you know, if it's recorded in land court and then, you know. It's solid, right? So it's a sigh of relief for a lot of lenders and stuff.  See, this is why people, nobody on earth would do the job a lawyer does, like with dotting the eyes and crossing the T's and reading the documents we read. It's the most, you know, I remember when I first started practicing, I was like, I can't do this work. We should give this to a lawyer. I'm not, you know, but it's just hours and hours of making sure everything is perfect and fixing, fixing other people's mistakes, which is even harder than making sure things are perfect in the first place. That's why you need a good support staff.  I like to jump around. So, well, so how long have you been practicing? About seven years. Oh, so that's not very long at all, really. No.  I do do pro bono. I do do some family law. Really? And I still do some, yeah, mainly family law if it's pro bono, some divorces and unfortunately guardianships. Oh. And like recently I just finished a guardianship. Really? A guardianship of a child? A child, yeah, a child, yes. So I mean, because I told you I worked at DVAC, domestic violence. So I always wanted to kind of stay within family law of some sort, but, you know, I'll see my obligation to the firm come first. Right, right, right. But it is a fascinating practice and you know, we do trust in the states, I do trust in the states and that's a type of family law as well. I think, oh, sorry, from my experience, that's the second, is family law or trust the state? That's the question, you're gonna get the real story. They're interconnected and it goes from birth to death, and everything you need in between, that's what you really need a lawyer for, you know? I just, that's where I was earlier today. I was, we did a will and a trust for some people. And that's, I really feel like that's helping people. Like family law also, you get the sense of helping people.  Right, right. You have that interpersonal connection with the client. So where do you see yourself in five years? Do you have a plan? Do you have a, what would you like to do? I'll see, I'm gonna, you know, try to excel. Work hard at the firm? Yeah, well, I'm gonna hang on your co-pills. Yeah, no, we're gonna work hard together. I want an office with that kind of view, that's what I want. Yeah, well, yeah. You should, that's what I want too, actually. I have a little tiny sliver of a view.  We don't want much, just give us a little money and a view and we'll work 12 hours a day. So yeah, well, I think this is, Clay Chapman is a great firm. It's wide open. I think it's growing. I think the practice is being elevated. So I think it's a great place to be right now, you know? Right, the thing I was impressed with and I think Mr. Ramoro said this, they want to be a generational firm. Right, yeah, they want to say it. Did you really call Steven Ramoro, Mr. Ramoro? No, no, no. You're just doing it on TV, right? I'm doing it on TV, right. It's Steve Ramoro.  Yeah, yeah. I call Jerry, Jerry. Hi, Jerry, how are you doing? Well, I think you deal with him more. A lot, I deal with a lot. And poor Jerry, the name partner in our firm is laid up for weeks and weeks and so I hope he's watching today and see that we're, I hope we're doing the firm proud, Jerry. So. Where do you see yourself, five years? Well, I would like to be, I would like to be a partner, you know? I'd like to be Bob Chapman. If I could be any partner, that's who I would be. Aim high. Like, you know, that's one thing I learned about going to Harvard, right? Like, I wasn't even going to apply, right, to Harvard Law School. And I didn't want to spend the money and it was $50, I didn't want to spend the money. And my husband was like, you're, this is nonsense, you just send it in, you never know. And because I was so certain I wouldn't get in. And lo and behold, you know, the following fall I was going up to Cambridge and I was going to Harvard Law School. So like, I think if I'm going to dream, I'll dream big, you know, so, yeah. Well, big names to drop, Cambridge, Harvard.  If you put one foot in front of the other, you end up in Harvard. That's all you have to do is please everybody every step of the way.  So, now you spend time in New York as well, right? Actually, I took the bar in New York. Did you think about going there? I did, I did. I was in, I guess, transition. I took some time off from work. And then I was thinking of doing international law. And really the only way, I mean, from Hawaii, unless you started from the beginning and, you know, you worked with businessmen or various institutions, is, I was thinking of getting my LLM, but I think. I thought of getting my LLM. I applied to get my LLM. Oh, did you? Yeah, yeah. Then I didn't take it. I wish I had, actually. Well, I stopped you from. Well, it was my last year of law school and it would have meant one more year of law school and I just couldn't, I just couldn't deal. It was in taxation, which I happened to love. But they accepted me, but I was like, oh, do I really want to go to another year of law?   So I didn't do the, I took the money grabbing, not the academics look. Oh, you got it now. So, did you spend any, well, like what? Actually, I, New York only visit like three times and I was there for like maybe a week or so. So it was really because I was looking to Fordham and to go into that area. And plus international law, I think you did. Does Fordham have an international law program? Oh, they did. Oh, okay. An LLM program. So I was looking into that. But I wanted to get into practice and then I started doing my own family law cases for a little while. Right. It's fun to have your own practice. It is. It's challenging. But it's fun. You have to work all the time.  You know, but you have to just keep hanging in there. I mean, I think that's the answer, right?  Oh, it's a business. And any business you got to be, you got to hang in there. Right, yeah. Keep going, keep going, keep going. So, and now you're married. Yes. You have a lovely wife. Thank you. And she's studying to be an accountant, maybe. Right, yes, yes. So that'll be, you'll be a power couple. The most boring couple. No, that's a perfect couple. I'm a bankruptcy attorney and I count it. That's great. I need, I think I'm going to change it. I see you in Kakaako. I see you in a penthouse in Kakaako. So. Well, you asked also what I wanted, five years. I do want to get back into more family law. Do you? Yeah, working with DV victims. I'll support you at the firm with that. I, because I really, I think it's fascinating family law. And I think there's like, it's like, it's a good revenue stream, frankly. I really do. Right, but it's probably for me, it was the, although I do feel like I'm a lawyer, a bankruptcy lawyer, I just felt most fulfilled at that time, personally. Right, right, right, right. Well, we should, we should, we should come up with a plan and put it before the, well, yeah. I learned that doing pro bono, I mean, I could do more, you can always do more, but that's something, one avenue I'm going to continue. Are you active in the bar? Yeah, I'm, right now I'm in collections and bankruptcy. And I, I go once a month to the family law. You do? Yeah, yeah, I was, they're the most, out of all the associations, one of the best organized. The family law? Yeah, they're very organized. Section, yeah? Yeah, probably in the country too. Really? Yeah, they really take their, like, bar meetings, conventions seriously. You should come to the Hawaii Woman Law Association meetings. The men come all the time and it's like a great, because they understand the complexity of balancing work, life, you know, experience and a lot of them are single mothers and a lot of the work they do is to, you know, encourage young women lawyers or women who maybe are single mothers want to become lawyers. It's really kind of a fascinating group. It's really, yeah, I think you could find a lot of connections there. You could meet a lot of people there, I think. Well, yeah, I mean, that'd be great. I'll take you next time. I mean, I was raised by a single mother, you know, from up in when I was eight years old to now. Really? Yeah, my dad passed away, unfortunately, from cancer. Oh.  Really?  No, let's hear, I'm so curious. A week after my dad died, she went back to work. A week. That's amazing. A week. I mean... She's tough. Yeah, five times ever. I don't know, I'm not tough as her. Well, you know, I have to say, and I hope this doesn't, but Indian mothers made a steal, man. I think so. They really are. It's like, I hate to say, you know, I've been mothered in general. Mothers in general, it's true. But, you know, the intellectuality and the determinist and the persistence, it's a cultural. I think it's a cultural phenomenon, you know? So I can sort of imagine how determined she was when you were young. And was she, did she have high expectations for you? I don't know, I mean, she always wanted me to do well. Yes. I did. Gotta do well in studies. But she wanted me to have, like, outside life. She made sure I went to dances. Right, right. Usually I went stag, but... So what do you like to do in your spare time now? Do you swim? Go to the beach, swim. That's what I try to do after work, like a magic island, swim. And not to eat so much, but I'm not done. No, not doing so well now. No, you know, I... I do like to eat and swim. I love to eat, too. Oh, and I have to say that Manu, Manu's wife, but Manu and his wife, supply some of the most delicious Indian food I've had in Hawaii. I think, I mean, I think we need to have a better Indian choices. It's like killing me. I used to eat Indian twice a week in New York.  Or she needs to give cooking lessons, would be probably the best thing. Spread her knowledge around. Now, she's from India, Nidhika, yeah? Yeah, she is. And so how does she like Hawaii? How's she adjusting? She's doing all right. Yeah. Yeah, she's liking it. Yeah? It was hard in first, but she's getting used to it. Yeah, you have to make friends. Yeah.  You know, you don't have anyone to talk to and everything seems very different. Right. And how's her learning had to drive? I was going okay. Yeah? I still don't know how to drive. Everybody should know that, that I'm terrified of driving. If you have any driving tips, join the conversation, call<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'm terrified. Tell me how I can learn how to drive. Can you hypnotize me, maybe? I don't know. But definitely call in if you have anything to say,<PHONE_NUMBER>. So do you have any tips for me driving? Why am I terrified, man? I'm not terrified of anything. Why? Because it's a giant machine that you can giantly harm vests. You've got to take control of the giant. It's the one thing that has eluded me. I really, very little has eluded me. I failed three times. Two times, oh my God. I was that 16th. Oh, I find that to be a very uplifting story. That's very good. On that uplifting note. My mom passed the first time. Did she? Of course she did. My dad did it. So there you go. There you go. The indomitable, what's your mother's name? Oma. The indomitable Oma Rana. Thank you so much for producing Mano. Mano, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. I hope you all enjoy the show. You can see us obviously every week here on Think Tech Hawaii from one to two, one to one to two, one to one 30 on Wednesdays, Life in the Law. I'll see you soon.


What's up guys and welcome to trendy updates of our SPM buzz now onto the trending news today is the Kamene Goro Who has clapped back at critics for criticizing how she cooked her omena? Now yesterday Kamene Goro took to her social media platforms and posted a video Teaching DJ Bones and Ogawa Obina how to make omena in our way Now Kamene was washing the omena with detergent and hot water and say that that this is how she Does it to make omena clean? Like it is a story and by laser cupata a lot of a mixed reaction online and Kenyans on Twitter quite Revealed that this is an hard of a recipe and that's a video of washing omena Using hand wash a soap to disinfect omena is something that has not been seen before And of course the Kenyans on Twitter reacted with a lot of reaction including Food that's I am to stand by laser for semi It is not healthy or wise to wash food any food material with soap or Retardant because in the personal view you might think it's every call, but little do you know foods? I've semi-permeable membrane that allows entrance of external Substances who food scientists and as I was saying, therefore if you eat it It might cause infections disease or even cancer.  I'll go by the beach read that again Come in a girl. I'm gonna mess up. Oh, I'm beer. Mm-hmm. Wally. I'm bow. I'm gonna worries. Yeah Yes, I see you cook a beach having a good time See do his story I come in a girl. I'll go wash a zilla. Oh, I'm in now. I'm not see magic Lakinia meza kuambia. She is having a good time. We're welcome. Oh, compressed read that again Kenzo Matata comment section and a similar to tight amanda mano cupia sissy Sissy at the do is sad eyes. Sissy to now you are omena. Haha. I a busty Let us know down on the comment section. What are your thoughts? But in the meantime keep it trendy updates SPM buzz Bye bye


Welcome back to Why In The Morning and if it's Tuesday, it matters pertaining entrepreneurship at Y2-54 Channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles that Michelle Ashira is where you can find me across all my socials. So I say that as you are a trader or running a business that your clientele is the best platform so to actually learn if you're doing well in business. So today we're looking at choosing the right platform when it comes to matters pertaining e-commerce. Today I'm joined by Priskila Anjanga. Priskila Anjanga, she is the manager at Global Shoppers. Thank you very much for creating time to be with us Priskila. Thank you. How have you been? I've been good. How is your money coming along? You're Tuesday. Wow Michelle. Yeah, today is Tuesday. Oh yes. Yeah, it was a good morning. I can say it was okay, there was no traffic when I was coming. It was all good. Alright. So Priskila, how did you find yourself in the space of e-commerce? At the beginning I used to ship items and I had a shop in Kasarani but it didn't do well, it didn't do well because of COVID and I decided to think of doing something else. So I came to think of how I can, instead of buying bulk things, I bring them to Kenya and then I'm left with dead stock. So I decided it's good if I can have a website where people can come and search one item, maybe two items, what they want and then in the end I'll not have anything left. Okay. Yeah. How did Global Shoppers come by? When after I finished with the first business I decided to create the website. I have put different shops on the website, there's Max and Spencer, there's Argos, there's IKEA, there's eBay, there's Amazon, I have so many shops in the website. So all what you need to do is to just go and search. If you want to buy Max and Spencer items, you go and click. We have a phone number. If you want to item which is not on those websites, you can call us or email us and we can be able to get stuff for you because we can shop for anybody who is in UK, I mean in Kenya, from UK. All right. You know, the first time I got introduced to Global Shoppers, it's from, I think it was in Asia, just getting for people in Asia, but this time around, this one is from the UK. So how did you link up with the company? Well, our one is called UK Global Shoppers because we want to be global. We are helping our clients to buy things in China, so we can get shoppers, like if you want a shopper, we can get you a shopper who will help you to buy items in China. So we are trying to be global. So our one is called UK Global Shopper. All right. Yeah. Okay. So for someone who is from the other end that they have particular products and they want to market with you guys also just to increase on their sales, is there an opportunity of the sort? At the moment, we haven't started there, but we are thinking of starting something which will help people like we want to start like a car boat where people will come, they can park their cars, they can sell their items like if you have instead of selling online, you can sell the items in the car boat and people will be coming to buy them like we have so many people in that place and it can be like twice in a week, not every day.  We want to create like a marketplace where people will come and buy other people's items and in that way we can also talk to those people on how they can, we can get their items from China or from UK. Okay. So when it comes to, you've mentioned a couple of sections when it comes to the website, if I'm coming to buy anything from that particular platform. So what are these sort of products or services that you're offering in this particular website as a potential client? Like for example, we have Max and Spencer. What does that entail? It has clothes. For example, if you want to buy men clothes, shoes, shirts, they have very nice clothes and most of the people who are in Kenya, they like Max and Spencer items. You'll find that we have a shop in Ruiru Bypass. We have those items. We are selling them. We sell them, but at the same time, we want to show people what we have and what they can get. So we have Max and Spencer items. We have clerks. If you buy a clerk shoe, we have the clerk website. It is there on the website. So if you want to buy a clerk shoe, it is there. It is expensive, but it stays for long. You'll wear it like a year and then you'll put it aside. Then after three years, you come and get it because they are very durable. And for one who wants to start like or build an online store, what does that look like? If you want to build an online store, which we haven't thought about it, at least you have told me, which I can look into. It could be if somebody can be encouraged to do their own thing like they can do it on Facebook at the beginning and maybe they can create their own website. But the way you have said that I haven't started it, I can look into it. Probably maybe after three months, you'll find we have it on our website. All right, so you're waiting for that? Yes. Of course, so how can I, like if so, for, okay, I was about to go and ask for someone who's going to start an online store and you guys maybe just host them on the space of opportunity for them to also put their products and how to customize them. But you guys have said you've not done that yet. We haven't done it yet, but I'll look into it. Okay, so in this particular platform, how do you like maintain or rather take your customer service? Because there's no one-on-one interaction. Yeah, at the beginning it was very difficult, especially with COVID-19. So we started this year, we are not that old. We started this year and because of COVID-19, it was at the beginning, it was very difficult to get clients. But now, because people are getting vaccines and people now have come to know what COVID is, things are getting better. We have buyers, like we have people from churches who are buying keyboards. We help them search. Like, for example, somebody will go in their website, go to eBay or maybe Amazon. They will search for the keyboard because the website is there. And then when we talk to them, we can get it cheaper for them in the same eBay because when you go to eBay, you find there are so many people who are selling. Some of them they sell expensive and it is the same item. So when you keep going checking, you will find there are people who are also selling cheaper. So we support them and we help them. And they trust us because we have one customer who bought a keyboard and we were able to deliver it in five days from UK. Okay, speaking about delivery, so how should a client determine the shipping cost of everything? Because I'm in Kenya, I want my keyboard, for instance, from UK.  We normally ship it, you pay on kilos, like 1kg. It is from up to 1kg. Even if your item is less than 1kg, you have to pay from 1kg. So 1kg, we charge 9 pounds and 20 pounds handling charges here. Okay, and for someone who wants to get into this form of business, probably start an online shop and do anything like that. What would you, when it comes to like, how do you create the best product, image and description?  So how do you actually like create best image and description of the product that you're selling? You have to be true to your clients because if you say something is like, this is going to be durable, it can stay for months. You have to make sure that your clients will trust you. So you have to give up the description of your item. Like if it is cotton, you have to say it is 90% or 30% cotton. You have to say what it is in the item. So that the person who is buying knows what it is. For example, some people may go and buy things online. They don't check on the description. So it is very essential for customers or the clients to check on what they are buying and also to check on other website to see what the description is. And I'm so wondering, how do you guys actually deal with the returns? And has there been crises over returns? The moment I haven't had any returns, but because me, I was born in Kenya, it is very, I have people, I have connection with the people from the airport. If something wants to be returned, it's going to be very easy for me to return it from UK to, if it came from Amazon, I'll be able to return it to Amazon. And Amazon are very quick.  Yeah, it's very easy. And when it comes to tracking the level of your success, when it comes to, like how you guys are doing in business, how do you go about that? Ideally, we, like for example, if you want to buy your item, you have to check on how many days is going to be delivered in our office in UK. So for example, if you buy an item, if it is delivered, it will say like three days. So it will come to our office in the UK after three days. So after three days, if it comes on Thursday, your items are going to delay. So it is good if they can come like Wednesday because if they come on Wednesday, on Thursday, they are shipped to Kenya. So it will take like seven days, five to seven days. Okay, all right, all right. And I'd like to also know the marketing strategy that you guys use so that you can, you know, reach out to also guys who also want to shop with you guys. We have Facebook and also we have the website. We have leaflets, we have cards. We go to events and we have a table and we talk about our UK global shopper.  I know Kenyans and I would like them to have this idea of going online to buy items because if I'm most of the people, they go to the shops. If you go online, there are varieties of items which you can buy and they are cheap. So I would like them to have that idea of going online and buying. And like Facebook, people put items on Facebook and some of them are fake. They need to know like you can go, for example, go on the reviews and check whether this person sold me this. Was it good? That way you'll be able to buy a good item. But if you don't check the reviews, you'll not be able to know what you're doing or what you're buying. You might buy something which is not what you wanted. When it comes to sales, as Kenyans, have we really embraced the aspect of just purchasing things online? Considering people always feel on the issue of protection or, you know, the information as your customers. Because there's also the issue of cybersecurity. So how do you guys handle that? Well, like now, I'm still young in the business. I know about the cybersecurity. But how do you intend to handle the issue? For the sake of also the person who's watching and wanting to get into the encomass state? Yeah, like our website is maintained. So you have to keep maintaining your website so that it's not hacked. And also you're not like you don't go through those because you can be hacked. And then somebody else is selling items or is doing the same thing. But the money is being sent to another person and it's not you. So it is maintained. We have somebody who is maintaining our website and it is well looked after. Okay, yeah. I would like you to take us through what it looks like from your perspective. Consider that you run the e-commerce platform. So the people you like collaborate with, the sellers, the different brands that you work with. For instance, you told me this was sausage pillows. Yeah, we got different types of pillows. It depends on the size you ask. And also we can design for you. Even if you want to put your face there, we can design it for you. Like for example, we have this one. Somebody told us they want this design. So we had to create a design which has the eyebrows and all this. And when you're buying, you can buy like different style. So yeah, so this one is called a sausage pillow. Like the ones, I don't know whether you have air. You have to say the size you want when you create or when you want to buy something. So we can also change, we can make you big ones. It depends on the size you want. So when you're buying items from us or you are shopping from us, we can be able to talk to our shopper and they can be able to get the design or the style you want. Okay, Praskilla, the question was now, like for these guys, how did you like connect to them and know that whatever they come to you with that this is what we do is legit? It's very difficult to get to know the person. At the beginning, there is a time I went online and I bought items. And if you find somebody telling you to put money in the bank, for example, put money in my bank, don't do that. It's better to put money on the paper because if you lose your money, you will get it back. But if you put it, somebody tells you to put money in the bank, you're going to lose your money because at the beginning, that's what I did. I was buying items and the person sent me the samples which I bought them very expensive. And then after that, I sent, and the person told me to send money in the bank and that I lost my money. So it's good to put your money on paper or so that if you claim and ask for your money, you'll get your money back. So you have to be very careful. What are the benefits of running an app? Just opening an online store? It's because when somebody shop with you, you can, if you deliver the item, maybe even they can open when you're there. Like us, we can deliver the items to you and then you can open and if you see the item is not what you wanted, it can be returned and then you get your full amount. So I don't know about other online business, what they do. Maybe if, for example, the item that they don't want, maybe they don't return them, but in our case, we can be able to get the item and return for you and you'll be paid the full amount. Along this, in this particular space, couple of challenges that you face along the way? At the moment, the challenge is getting the clients. We have, we are building up clients and the trust with our clients. And at the moment, we are doing very well because you can see like now the shops are opening. Even in UK, the shops are opening. So before we had challenge and at the moment, we don't have many clients. We are still having clients asking questions. We have people who are buying from our website. They go to Max & Spencer and we have items ready for them. If, for example, you want to buy something from Max & Spencer, we have items from Max & Spencer. So it won't take long. You can come to our shop and see what we have. So the challenge which we have is we are still looking for more clients. Although we have many people who are coming forward and it is very positive. I mean, it comes to someone who wants to run e-commerce. Do you guys run 24, 7 or is there like a time frame? It's from 7 to 8, yeah. Okay. There's another issue when it comes to online shopping. I don't know how you will probably give a different angle on this one. Like if you are shopping online, you tend to do more impulse buy because it's just on your phone. You'll be like, this one, this one, this one, this one. So what is your take on that? And I think people also shy away from online shopping because it's easy access and your card is close by. It's linked, just shop, shop, shop. And then you put it up? Yeah, the people who have, there's also people who have issue with that impulse buy. So what is your take when it comes to just handling that? By handling when they come to paying. When it comes to shopping online? I didn't get your question. Okay, so we see, like if you and I were to go to maybe a physical little store, right? Yeah. There are people who tend to buy, who are impulse buyers. So what they opt to do is just have a list of this is what I'm just going to get. If I'm going to a supermarket, this is the only thing that I'm going to get. And this is how much I'm going to spend. So when it comes to online shopping, most people feel like, cause it's so easy to access. So it's on my phone, I'll just scroll and I'll be like looking and I'll be looking. Oh, nice duvet, get them. Go over, look at nice dress, get them. Nice shoes, get them, get them. At the end of the day, you'll spend a lot. So what's your take on impulse buying when it comes to online shopping? Yeah, those that we have people who are shopaholic, they just want to buy. Exactly. Yeah, they just, you find the eyelashes here, I'm going to buy that. Oh, nice gel, they'll buy that. They buy so many things. I think you have to check on your budget, like you're getting paid maybe for example, 30,000. You have to check on your budget. You have to make sure you want to buy the right thing for that time. Don't buy something which you want to keep for tomorrow. Just buy something which you're going to work with it within that time. Yeah. Okay, now what are a couple of financial lessons that you've learned along the way? Say it again please. Couple of financial lessons that you've learned along the way. Well, I have learned like you have to plan before you do something. So you have, for example, you have money with you and you want to start something. First of all, you have to search and know what you're doing, what is happening in this business, what is happening in this. You have to then start planning and it is good not to use all your money because if the business fails, you've lost all your money. So it is good to start at the beginning with less money and then you start building. Like when I started this business, I have started with like very little money and then you can see I'm having clients who are coming, they pay and I'm getting money and I have started building and I can feel is getting better. What was the initial capital? It was 100,000. And what did that cater for? It catered for the samples we have for the companies like Max and Spencer. And also those samples, we have loads and we are buying them cheap. We have a company which is called John Pie. When you say samples, what does that exactly mean? Like for example, we have coats like for Max and Spencer. We have shoes from Clarks. They are samples, but we have others if you find the sample is good, you can buy it. So we have all those samples ready. And if you want, you can buy, it's not gonna take long. You can come in our shop, you can see them touch and then you can buy, although they are a bit expensive because they come from companies which are, they're like designer shops. All right. And okay, so what would you say for someone who runs a physical shop or business? What would you tell them in terms of e-commerce? Is it really needed for your business? I think it is. For example, like when you talk about e-commerce it's like something like we have a big market online. Online, yeah. At the beginning, the market I have, it may look big because they have so many websites on it, but it's not big for me because I'm gonna be handling one customer at a time when they buy items from different shops. There is something else I haven't put on my website. Like, we have people like in, who sell second hand clothes, they sometimes they don't know where to get items from and we have a lot of second hand clothes in UK and to help other people build up their business if they can join themselves like into groups of 10, 10 or maybe five, they can have a 20 foot container which I can ship for them and it's gonna be very cheap than going to Gikomba and buying a bale. So if you can buy like, for example, you say, okay, I can afford to buy 10 bale or maybe I can afford to buy five bale. If you like, you are like 10 people or 20 people or those people who sell second hand clothes I can be able to ship for them. And what would be the huge difference between just getting a bale, because in the Gikomba and coming together as 10 people and reaching out to you to get maybe a container? Like, I've been to Gikomba, I have bought bale in Gikomba and when you go and buy a bale in Gikomba what you get there, you go at a loss. But for example, me myself, I'll be able to buy them good things which are from UK and I'm just shopping for them, you know? So I'm not interested in their money. I'm interested in shipping. So I'll be able to buy for them and ship for them. So when they go to Gikomba, they will buy an item for maybe 15K and when I ship for them it might be even 12K. So it will be more cheaper for them than going to Gikomba. Okay, I've always been, oh sorry, continue. So to go online when you trust somebody is good. So if people can trust me, because I have trust in other clients who have been buying things online and I have also another potential buyer who wants to buy, she has a big shop of second hand clothes so I'm still negotiating with her on how we're gonna do this. So it's going to be good for them if they can trust me. All right, so how can people find your clothes on your social media handles if they want to keep the conversation going but you're going to buy it in Gikomba? So they can go to UK Global Shopper. Sometimes it's very difficult for people to go online. We have our email on the website. We also have our phone number. Our phone number here is 0716-333-088. I will repeat. Yes. Our phone number here in Kenya is 0716-333-088. And my phone number in UK is plus 44-75-17-15-76-75. Fantastic. I'm sure guys back at home got those digits. They were really saying very slowly, you got them. Thank you very much Fiske Langega for creating time to be with us. Telling us on what is pertaining Gikombas and choosing the right platform. Thank you. So guys, we've come to the end of the show. Remember we do this again every single Monday to Friday right here on Y in the morning. Make sure you follow us on all our social media handles. That is at Y254 channel. Make sure you have a bright day, a good day.  Make sure you get jabbed at Misha Lashireza. You can find me on Y254 channel. We have so much of programs coming your way. Have a nice day.