We explain how you can get a better night's sleep again. This is Simon. Simon has trouble sleeping. At night he can't get any shot at eye. So in the daytime he can hardly focus and is constantly tired, which puts him in a lousy mood. He wonders how he can get rid of his problem. What controls sleep anyway? It's not just based on outside factors like light and darkness. If it were we wouldn't have jet lag. In fact, it's mainly controlled by our internal biological clock, the body's rhythm which governs sleep as well as the activities of our organs. The brain coordinates this by sending various signaling molecules or hormones, including the body's built-in sleeping pill, melatonin. When the body has gotten used to a rhythm, the release of the hormone is well adapted and sleep is under control. When this rhythm is disrupted, that can cause a sleep disorder. Then the body needs clear signals in order to re-enter a regular sleep-wake rhythm. So Simon doesn't just doze off at night on the couch anymore. When it's time to sleep, he goes straight to bed. Now he can watch his favorite TV show again without getting tired because his body knows it's only time for melatonin when Simon is in bed. Following a bedtime ritual helps his body prepare for sleep. However, Simon doesn't watch TV in his bedroom anymore and from now on always eats breakfast in the kitchen. Working or doing other things in bed is off limits. Only when his girlfriend Simone visits can he make an exception. Now Simon refrains from consuming alcohol, caffeine and heavy meals because they worsen the quality of sleep. Instead, he makes sure to exercise. That way Simon is tired by nighttime. Now that Simon always wakes up at the same time each morning he also gets sleepy at the same time every evening.  If Simon wakes up at night, he doesn't watch the clock but just lies there relaxed. After all, the sleep cycle also includes built-in phases of wakefulness. One sleep phase lasts one and a half hours so it's recommended to sleep six, seven and a half or nine hours.  No pressing that snooze button. Now Simon knows everything he needs to for his internal clock to tick perfectly. He starts the day in a good mood, goes to work focused and has his sleep under control.


Welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re-invent 2021. We're running one of the industry's most important and largest hybrid tech events of the year with AWS and its ecosystem partners. And of course, special thanks to AMD for supporting this year's editorial coverage at the event. We got two live sets. We had two remote sets, one in Boston, one in Palo Alto. We got more than a hundred guests coming on the program. And we're looking deep into the next decade of cloud innovation. We're super excited to be joined by Ali Zafar, who's the senior director of platform strategy and operations at Dropbox. Ali, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Awesome.  So, hey, what's your day job like at Dropbox? What's your role? Got it. So I actually oversee the global supply chain at Dropbox. Also all of the capacity planning which entails both our budget and also capacity requirements at Dropbox. And then I also focus on the platform product management side which is basically building our build versus buy and our overall roadmap for our platform in the long run. Great. Thank you. So I mean, everybody knows Dropbox, but maybe you can talk a little bit about your business, your mission and how that's evolved over the past several years. So Dropbox is a global collaboration platform and our mission at Dropbox is to help design a more enlightened way of working. Dropbox has over 700 million registered users and over 550 billion pieces of content. So taking a step back, Dave, Dropbox helps you all of your content. Think of this as videos, as music, even your tax returns allows you to organize all of this content and then you can share this content with anybody at any time. You can also take Dropbox to work and actually it makes you even more productive in the workplace, integrating all of your tools seamlessly also allowing you to collaborate with all of your teams internally and also externally. Yeah, so thank you, Ali, when Dropbox was founded, I mean, the cloud was really nascent, right? So it was early days. And so a lot has changed since the mid last decade. And of course with remote work and hybrid work, that's had to be a real tailwind to your business. But maybe you could explain your cloud and your hybrid cloud strategy. Yeah, you're spot on Dave. So Dropbox has always been hybrid since its inception in 2007. And when I say hybrid, I mean, we have our own on-prem infrastructure and then we also leverage public cloud. Now, public cloud still to this day remains absolutely critical for Dropbox to serve all of its customer needs. And when we talk about the decision between public or private, we think about three or four key things. One is the total cost of ownership. We look at the market. We also look at our customer requirements and the latest technology that's available in the market. And then any international data storage requirements to make the decision of going towards public or private for that specific use case. Yeah, so I wonder if we could follow up on that. Maybe you could talk about the key business considerations as a SaaS storage provider. What are the real drivers in your business framework? Got it. At the end of the day, what really matters for us Dave is to actually think about our customers and delight them. And what better than to focus on performance, reliability and also security, right? So we want to make sure that the infrastructure that we have today allows Dropbox to actually solve for the specific use case for our customers.  While also doing this in a very efficient manage way. So to summarize that, looking at performance, looking at liability, looking at scalability, looking at efficiency and then also compliance. So that leads me to sort of my next question is about the EC2 instances that you use. I know you make heavy use of AMD compute. How did you come to that decision? Was it these factors? Was it all performance? How did you migrate to really enable that capability? How complex was that? So AMD has always been key strategic partners. The partnership is well over four to five years right now and we've been leveraging them on our on-prem infrastructure for compute. So we've always had AMD in our infrastructure and when the time came where AWS was also leveraging some of the AMD instances, we wanted to see how we can expand the partnership with AMD and AWS and also experiment with these instances. So we looked at some of the tooling updates that were required. We also looked at specific instances which are either compute optimized and memory optimized instances. And then we actually built our footprint on AMD. And what we saw is that the overall performance improvements and also cost improvements that we got for specific workloads was actually extremely, was overall awesome results for Dropbox and our end customers. And we have been using them ever since. What kind of business impact did that make? Did it make a difference to your business that was noticeable? On the business side, I think primarily it was more on the TCO side, which is where we got most of the benefits on the cost side. And then also for some of our internal workloads, we also saw benefit to our internal developers that are using some of those workloads. Well, so you guys have kind of become the poster child for hybrid, a lot has been talked about you all, but I wonder if you could help us understand what part of your infrastructure is going to be better served by public cloud versus kind of doing your own IT on-prem? What are some of the value drivers that make you push workloads into the public cloud? Help us understand that better and squint through that. Got it, yeah, I get asked that question a lot. So public cloud in general allows for faster go to market. Think about this as like product launches, feature launches, also international expansion. It allows us to scale and then also leveraging some of the existing technologies out there in the market for some of the common workloads. So just taking a step back and thinking about Dropbox, we keep on evaluating also the criteria and then also specific workloads on what makes sense on private or public cloud. And AWS had some instances like S3, RDS and EC2 that when we started looking at, we knew that some of our key services like data platform, some parts of our ML and AI and even paper platform would make more sense for us to actually leverage some of these in public cloud for that. So what are the sort of characteristics of the workload that are sort of better suited to be in AWS? You know, what's the ideal workload profile? You know, we talk about ideal customer profile. What's the ideal workload profile for the AWS cloud? Got it, so the way we think about it, at least we call it the rule of three at Dropbox. And that means we look at scale first. We look at technology and innovation. And what I mean by that is, is there faster innovation in the public cloud and is the workload common enough that there's already a lot of work going on in public cloud, then there's no reason for us to actually innovate faster than that, we probably can't. And if the scale is not large enough, right? So when we talk about our storage side like Magic Pocket, the scale is large enough where innovating there makes sense and it's better for the end customer. So we would probably go towards private cloud there. But then when we talk about like international expansion, when we talk about like faster go-to market or some of the innovation in the ML and AI space, it really makes sense to use public cloud because of all of the advancements that we've seen there. Yeah, so let me circle back to the sort of business benefits and impact of the sort of AMD based compute specifically, but you talked about TCO before. So there's certain things you mentioned on-prem, you sometimes use, right? If the thing's hardened, you don't want to necessarily rip and replace it, but if you can accelerate go-to-market and you spin up things in the cloud, that makes sense. You mentioned customer requirements, so that's just kind of depends and then the international expansion and scale. So it kind of comes down to those whatever, four or five factors, right? TCO, those other factors that I mentioned, kind of the high level benefits if you could, wouldn't mind summarizing for us, Ali. Yeah, I think you're spot on there. So it's looking at the overall TCO, right? The cost of serving the overall cloud, looking at like go-to-market in general, like can we leverage public cloud and go-to-market faster? Obviously meeting our end customer requirements. We also looked at like international expansion, like any of the customers data that is stored outside of the US is all on public cloud for Dropbox. No plans in the short term to do something different there. And then also just looking at, like I mentioned, anything in the technology space that is ongoing that we can leverage future site or the product site for our customers like at AIL or AI or ML, we are going to leverage public cloud there. So of course, we've followed the progression of semiconductor technology for decades. This industry is marched to the cadence of performance improvements. What are the futures hold from a technology roadmap standpoint? And particularly as it relates to leveraging AMD EC2 instances, Ali. Got it. So Dropbox is in a very unique position where we actually leverage AMD both on-prem and for public cloud, leveraging some of the AWS EC2 instances, like you mentioned. And Epic processors from AMD are what we're using today, both on the hybrid infrastructure side and the performance and also the TCO benefits are real and something that we are observing on a day-to-day basis. So we are going to be leveraging that technology even in the future. And the partnership with AMD continues to be very, very strong for Dropbox. Well, Ali, I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE as part of our coverage. It was great to have you. Love to have you back sometime. Awesome. Thank you. And also just last thing we wanted to also call out that we are also going to be experimenting with probably Milan that is coming out. Rome is the current processors from AMD that we have been leveraging. And as Milan comes available, we do want to continue to evaluate it and see how we can fit it in our infrastructure. Okay. So their generations are city-based. Are they all Italian city-based? We're going to run out of cities soon. Got it. Yep. Again, the partnership with both AWS and AMD is something that I'm very proud of. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dave. Great to have you, Ali. And really appreciate you watching. Keep it right there for more action on theCUBE, your leader in hybrid tech event coverage.


Templates help you get started with documents, spreadsheets, or presentations. We prepared some nice ones for common tasks like meeting notes, invoices, and slides. This is NextLoudText, our collaborative text editor. You can enable author colors, so you can easily track who wrote what. In the templates folder, you can simply edit templates or add your own.


All right, folks, here we are. The last long run before the race in 10 days. This is definitely, definitely the last long run. I promise, I promise. If you've been following on Strava, you know it's a little crazy, getting ready for a 50 mile race, but I wanna get my legs used to pushing through the pain, which basically hits me usually around mile 22 when you're going fast. But if you slow the pace down a little bit, reel it in, maybe 20 to 30 seconds a mile. I know, because I've already done it in training last week, you can push through that 32 mile barrier. And then in the race, if you get to 32, feeling decent, not perfect, but decent, you got 18 miles to go, 18 miles to go. So that is the goal today, push through that barrier. And I've got my Nathan handhelds. I'm gonna explain all of the equipment that I use for a long run. Once I get back, this is an ultimate direction best. Nathan handhelds, don't tell the owners of those companies, but I'm still trying to figure out which brand I like better. I'm, well, I'm leaning toward these guys, but we'll see. What else? Oh yeah, I'm dealing with some blisters on my heels. So those are all taped up, got those taped up this morning. Glad I remembered that. And from yesterday, no, two days ago, remember I had to super glue my Hokas? What? They're only like three weeks old, maybe four weeks old. So, Hoka, if you're listening to this, send me some new Hoka challengers. I would appreciate it because these guys should last more than three weeks, in my humble opinion. Well, I guess with the miles I've been doing, I guess with the miles I've been doing, I know, it's like crazy, what's going on here? With the miles I've been doing, I guess I understand, but anyway, they're super glued up. Hopefully they're good to go for today. I think they'll make it for one more run. All right, like I said, I'm off. I'll be back later today, and I will explain all of this equipment in better detail for you. All right, let's go. Are we good here? Okay, today's run, as somebody just commented on Strava, might fall into that don't do this at home category for children out there watching, don't do this at home. Don't go run 40 miles, unless you have experience and unless you have a little equipment, a little equipment, all right? And that's what I wanna talk to you about right now. What do I wear when I run 40 miles? Okay, so I have an ultimate direction vest here. This is an Anton vest 2.0, I believe. It's three years old. It's three years old. There's a bladder, let me take these out. There's a bladder that goes right in here and it can hold two liters. I think I had about a liter and a half in the bladder. Then it has two water bottles in the front, one here, one there, boom. And I believe these are 18 ounces, maybe 16. I think they're 18 ounces. So we're gonna call it 36 ounces of water in the front and then a liter and a half in the back. So that is my ultimate direction vest. I love it, the vest. But I must be honest, I'm being wooed and swayed by Nathan's design in their handhelds. So I also, these are handhelds that go in your hands as I explained earlier, boom, like that. You just go like that, whoop, whoop, whoop. So each bottle holds 12 ounces, so this is 24. So 36 plus 24 is, ooh, 50 ounces of water plus the bladder, a liter and a half. So that is the amount of liquid. I had three of the bottles had Gatorade, the rest was water and that got me through 40 miles, not bad. For food, I had two baby foods. So those pouches that you squeeze, the strawberry, banana, cream, goodness is what I prefer. And so two baby foods, two gels, which I did not use, a Stinger waffle, love it. And then two packs of Stinger gummies. And I only used one of the packs. So I didn't even use all the nutrition. I probably, it never hurts to eat too much when you're running that far, but I didn't use them. So I love, that's what I wear when I run 40 miles, this right here, whoa. But I must say, I might be getting swayed over to the Nathan side. My next ultra backpack vest, I should say, might have to be a Nathan. I don't know, I like this ultimate direction, but I literally have scars across my chest from these, these one second things here that clip. So these clips have literally given me scars across my chest from the rubbing and the chafing and literally bleeding. Like last summer was the first one. I ran, I think 20 miles, 22 miles. And I came back and I was like bleeding down my chest and true love just looked at me like, what, this was supposed to be a safe sport. It's pretty safe, it's pretty safe. Okay, so that's what I wear for nutrition. And then I got my North Face hat. I got my Smith glasses.  And so it's just easy to see everything, including the bears and the lions and the snakes. Oh my, I'm back. I almost forgot. And then this, remember two days ago, I said, one more run in these Hoka challengers, ATR three. I put super glue. It worked like a charm. Ace hardware, thank you for the super glue. It was amazing. In fact, I might get another 100 miles out of these babies, just kidding. But you never know. Well, okay, this side blew out. This side did blow out right there, but this side held up. This was the bad side. Like my pinky toe was literally poking out as of two days ago, but I super glued it. They did great. A new pair is on the way for the race in California in T minus nine days, baby. So, love you all, seek beauty, work hard, work hard, work hard and love each other.


So we have our article from John Rawls, and the question is, well, what question is Rawls trying to answer? Now, before we launch into it, I want to make something clear. Rawls is doing something very different than the previous philosophers we've studied. I mean, pretty much everybody we've looked at so far has tried to answer the question, how should you live your life? And they've all attempted to answer that question by answering a second question. Human Summoner said, well, answer the question, how you should live your life by answering the question, what justifies your moral beliefs? Glaucon and Hobbes answered the question, who's interested most important? Epicurus and Aristotle answered the question, what has moral worth? And then Aristotle gives an answer, how you should acquire, how should you acquire what has moral worth? Mills does the same thing that Aristotle does, what has moral worth and how should you acquire it? Locke answers the question, what is your right? Kant answered the question, what is your duty? Rawls is not doing, is not taking this approach. He is not trying to answer the question, at least not directly, how should you live your life? Rather, he's doing something else. He's trying to answer the question. Well, is there a decision procedure for ethical theory? So we have all these different approaches, which we just looked at. We have all these different approaches trying to answer the question, how should you live your life? Each of these approaches has their appeal, each of these approaches has their, how should we say, shortcomings. Sometimes there's disasters, results lurking in the background for some of these theories, yet they each do appeal to something, right? So we need a way to figure out whether one of these ethical theories is the right one, in which case we've got to have a way to decide between these different ethical theories, or we have to have a way to figure out a different moral theory that is right. A decision procedure is just a way of doing this. A decision procedure is just a series of finite steps to achieve that goal. So this is the question that Rawls is trying to answer. Is there a decision procedure for ethical theory, and what is it? And he says, yes, there is a decision decision procedure. And in the simplest and roughest terms, his procedure is this. First, you identify competent moral judges. Second, you compile their considered moral judgments. And then finally, third, from those considered moral judgments, you abstract away the applications, the moral principles that cover those considered moral judgments. And from that, you get your moral theory.


I get a lot of questions about specific error messages so I compile the list of the most common ones and I started making videos about each of them. That way whenever you search for those error messages you will find a very short explanation on how to fix that common mistake. I hope that is useful to you so if you want to check the playlist you can click on the link in the description or you can suppose search the kind of error you are getting and hopefully I will have a video for you. If there is any particular error message that you want to know please leave a message and I will try to keep making videos like this. I will try to keep them as short and concise as possible so I don't waste any of your time. Thank you and hope you enjoy the playlist.


Yeah, first thanks everyone for either coming out and waking up this morning or potentially staying out and rolling in this morning. Yeah, like Larry said, we're here to talk about some radio stuff, so let's have fun. So first, a little bit about me, like Larry said, my name's Blake. I'm a consultant on the industrial control system team at Mandient, a FireEye company as the slides will remind you throughout the day. I've been a radio hobbyist for about the last 15 years and have been using radio more and more in my professional life for about the last three to five. I started my career in critical infrastructure security about five years ago working in electric power generation for a company in the US Midwest, Align Energy and more recently spent some time as the security engineer liaison for the information security team at Amazon to our fulfillment transportation and logistics practice where I got to play with all of our phone robots. So today we're going to talk about trends in industrial wireless communication and the exploitation that is possible with the additional tax surface that wireless provides and how you, most importantly, how you can get started understanding the radio frequency environment in the systems that you protect. So first, a bit of background, why radio at all? I think the natural answer to a lot of questions about radio in industrial environments is don't bother. What's the point? You're just opening up additional tax surface. But the reality is that lower per sensor component costs combined with the falling cost of storage decreases the marginal cost of tracking additional points of a process. That combined with cheap access to computational power and increasing availability of analytical tools means that engineers have more and more desire for more and more data. Not just from the process itself, but also sometimes less critical points that weren't worth tracking before. Things like machine performance data for predictive analytics and the IOT, so shots, right? So, but why radio? So engineers are limited by the practical constraints of running additional I.O. Most DCS I.O. cabinets look a little better than that, but there still is just the fact that running an additional cable to every sensor just doesn't scale. Sensor placement is limited when you have to run cables to every drop and with the availability of ultra low power embedded systems and sensors you have the ability to monitor additional points in your process with no additional power or communications cabling sometimes for months or years on end. There's also the field. So wireless communication has always been the backbone of long distance SCADA communications and telecommunications networks. Transporting signals reliably over long distance to very rural areas that are poorly served by traditional ISPs and telecoms has always been the provenance of microwave communications. And fundamentally some systems just move like my old friend the Kiva robot there. Systems like robots, trains, planes, automobiles aren't stationary and need to be reached with critical control traffic wherever they happen to wander. But yeah, fundamentally this isn't the pitch for the Wonderware Expo over in Henderson, so why do we as hackers care about industrial RF? The threat model is fundamentally different than hardwired networks or hardwired I.O. because of physics. It's fundamentally public. No antenna is perfectly unidirectional in practice and many systems are point to multi-point or multi-point to multi-point meshes which necessitate the use of omnidirectional radiating antennas at least in some endpoints. Even those systems that are designed to be constrained within a single facility often leak through the walls and the receivers on those systems may be sensitive enough to pick up signals that are sent from outside. So the types of attacks that end up possible, I really encourage everyone that's here and interested to check out the talk from yesterday, Radio Exploitation 101 that was Matt Knight and Mark Newlin from Bastille. Their slides are already up on the DEFCON Media Share so I'd really, really suggest checking that out. They go into detail about the form of several wireless attacks. Most common, obviously denial service are jamming but this is a very well-known and well-understood reliability issue for wireless systems engineers with decades and decades of research mostly going back to military electronics warfare. So this threat is generally very well understood and accounted for by any system engineer who's considering the use of wireless communications in practice. But protection from other types of attacks, the type that we typically see on IP or IT style networks have traditionally relied over time on protection by obscurity which is everyone's best friend. So things like data injection, malicious device association with networks have typically been dismissed over time as simply not needing treatment due to the lack of skills and a lack of availability of open source equipment to attack wireless implementations. So what changed? So now we're here, that's the background and you're all here because you want to be radio hackers too. Maybe you've even walked through a plant with a USB wireless card running Kizmet before, maybe you've even found some rogue access points that are stuck in an employee's drawer with a power cable drilled through the back of the desk to feed the AP. Things like that. So 802.11 has its benefits in that there's off the shelf hardware purpose built for security assessments even available online. The same applies to Bluetooth and to some extent even RFID. But historically the challenge has been that for every protocol and frequency pair that you want to assess you require either the purchase or the design and fabrication of purpose built hardware. Which is a challenge again for scaling arbitrary security assessments across multiple types of industrial facilities. So that's where we enter SDR. So that's the real heart of the talk today. Software defined radio is a family of applied digital signal processing techniques that leverage high speed analog to digital converters, that's the far right hand of that board. As well as DSP algorithms implemented in FPGA hardware interfaced to a companion CPU as a peripheral. So those are a lot of words but practically what it means is that it frees us from the need to implement specialized hardware for every type of radio system that we want to assess, understand and characterize. So to the left there is a EDS Research USRP B210. That's a software defined radio that covers from 70 megahertz to 6 gigahertz. So quite broad set of frequencies at an instantaneous bandwidth that's really only practically limited by the speed of the USB bus that you attach it to. And to the right I just have a screen shot from GNU radio companion which is the graphical user interface front end GNU radio. And this shows what's kind of become the canonical hello world program of receiving wide band FM or commercial FM broadcast. So the goal today is hopefully with a brief overview we're about to give that you'd be able to get to this hello world type program on your own with limited investment and maybe just an additional couple hours of your time. So to start there's kind of three components I would say to succeeding with a software defined radio project. One is the hardware because there are some hardware requirements. The second is the software which is really where your brain meets the problem. And the third is obviously the knowledge and theory that you have to understand in order to be at least skillful enough with digital single processing to get something done. But the good news is that because of advancements in both open source software and open source hardware this type of work is accessible even to those of us myself we don't have advanced degrees in electrical engineering and the community that supports this type of work is very strong and helpful as I've found over time. So to start with the hardware. So even until relatively recently software defined radios had a serious price constraint. We're talking professional test equipment running in the tens of thousands of dollars to even get started. But the good news is over the last five years primarily due to the reduced RF integrated circuit component cost driven by development of 4G networks primarily the cost has been falling and continues to fall to get started. So the most common way people get started is with an RTL SDR dongle. This is a general term for a family of USB devices based on a real tech integrated circuit chipset. They are receivers only so they're relatively limited with a general range of about 40 MHz to 2 GHz which is great for starting. It gives you enough to do that hello world program that we saw in the last slide. It also provides sufficient coverage of some industrial frequencies for example the unlicensed industrial scientific and medical bands at 430 MHz and 900 MHz in the US. But because they top out somewhere between 1.7 and 2 GHz you lose out on the unlicensed 2.45 GHz ISM and 5 GHz and above licensed and unlicensed space. So enough to get started, enough to learn, enough to get dangerous but once you get the taste you'll probably want to move up to some of these fantastic really hobbyist grade gear. So for about a single order of magnitude increase in price we're talking about between $300 and $400 you can move up to a really full featured and sensitive transceivers. So something that's capable of both receiving signals, decoding them and actually transmitting signals that you synthesize in software. I cover a few here they range between in their RF front ends between several hundred kilohertz up to about 4 GHz. I believe the hack RF will get up to 6 GHz but suffers some performance degradation above 4. They have relatively wide bandwidth, relatively sensitive receivers. So really if you want to toy around reverse engineering, you're garage door opener at home or even doing some simple assessments in your own environments or clients environments it is enough to get started. The industry standard really though for professional grade gear, are the USRP line from Edis Research. I have no affiliation to them. Don't consider this an endorsement but it is what I use for client engagements. Very well regarded in industry. The prices range into the thousands here but low thousands and so if you have a commercial need to actually support repeatable assessments it quickly starts to make sense. These cover like I mentioned I think a slider to before up to 6 GHz out of the box at an incredibly wide instantaneous bandwidth giving you a lot of flexibility for design and synthesis of your protocol decoders. So good times that's the hardware. On to the software. Really the heart of all of this is GNU radio. GNU radio is essentially a set of C libraries for digital signal processing algorithms. But the good news is that it also ships with a very nice GUI front end called GNU radio companion. What GNU radio companion allows you to do is essentially attack the problem as a visual programming language, building out a flow graph that describes the processing of your signal from source to sync. Allowing you to manipulate the data along the way using both its standard library of DSP algorithms as well as a large and growing set of community open source modules. I will have links to all of this. They're currently pushed to my github which I'll have a reference to at the end of the talk. So I'll be able to find all of these later. The next I put up there is actually what's pictured to the right. It's called GQRX. It's also an open source project and its primary use is for exploration of spectra. So this is very helpful for identifying previously unknown signals or confirming your understanding of signals that you believe might exist but aren't sure exactly where they are or what they look like. This is where I start. If I'm on a new engagement at a new facility and it's also helpful for capturing those signals for later offline analysis. This is where having one of the slightly higher end SDRs really pays off because you're limited. The width here that you see on the screen is dictated by the instantaneous bandwidth of the RF front end of the SDR hardware. Simply what that means is that the wider the bandwidth the less tuning around you're going to have to do to find new signals. The more you see at once. So this is where those, you know, definitely moving into that hobbyist grade gear up from the RTL SDR has the biggest dividends during this exploration phase. There are also options for automated scanning across wide set of spectrum. One is called hack RF scan which not surprisingly works with the hack RF and the hack RF only. But if anyone here in the talk has recommendations for me I'd love to hear about other kind of automated scanning tools especially any that implement the UHD hardware API. So come find me or raise your hand during the questions we can talk. The last thing here is in spectrum. I don't have a screenshot. This is a tool for offline analysis of a captured signal. So once you've maybe identified a new signal using GQRX, either one that you didn't expect or don't understand, you can use the recording feature of GQRX to capture a raw IQ sample and open it up and in spectrum. This gives you a similar view to what you're seeing in GQRX but critically what allows you to do is pick out a single signal, add a variable bandwidth from the capture and take derived measurements from it. So like a derived frequency domain plot. What this will allow you to do is start to reason about not just what the signal looks like in something like a waterfall graph but actually the nature of the digital modulation of the signal. So when you're starting to try to understand the signal and build out a new radio flow graph you're going to have to make a critical set of decisions about where to start. And in spectrum gives you the tools to at least reason about and understand the protocol before you start trying to just implement a receiver blindly in the software. Alright so that's a lot and I know if you're not taking vigorous notes you probably don't know exactly where to go from here. And honestly this topic is a little bit more than what you can cover in a half hour talk even to get started. But the good news is that even without a strong electrical engineering background I really believe you can get started in dangerous in about less than a day of reading and studying. If you start with some of the resources that I have up on the slide here. So the first one Michael Ossman who's the designer of the HACRF that was mentioned a few slides ago has a video lecture series on his website openly available. So this is a training that he sells at actually relatively high cost even earlier this week at Black Hat. But he makes at least a large portion of it. I'm not sure if it's the whole thing. Available for free on his website. Great Scott Gadgets. Again link will be in the GitHub. So at this point I think he's up to either eight or nine video lectures. I've watched them all. It's a fantastic introduction to SDR in general, DSP fundamentals and terminology and the HACRF in particular since that's the device that he makes. But realistically the lectures and the exercises in that series can be completed with any SDR including really with an RTL SDR dongle. And even the first three or four lectures are really just on digital signal processing and you can do just after downloading a copy of Canoe Radio without any external hardware to get up to speed with some of the fundamentals. So that is definitely the place I recommend everyone to start. Eight lectures about an hour long a piece and you'll be up and running and quite dangerous in less than a day. The second resource I have here is a blog called Carriers Everywhere. Bastion Blessle is a European radio researcher with a security hobby maybe or security passion. And his blog is where he documents his experience reverse engineering, multiple consumer and industrial protocols. His work has influenced my workflow quite a bit and you'll see some of his open source software projects later on in the slides when we get into 802.15.4. And even his work with mobile traffic light reverse engineering informs the Modbus work. We'll see in a couple minutes as well. The last two on here are textbooks. So if you have a little bit stronger interest and you want to round out your practical skills with some theory. The first one there practical signal processing is actually a very skinny textbook and it's really made for people that are using DSP technology not people implementing DSP technology so it's the perfect level to familiarize yourself with the GNU radio modules that are in the standard library to help make sense of terms like rational resampling which fundamentally means multiplying by a constant and dividing by another one. Not nearly as complicated as it sounds but without some of this guidance it might seem a little maybe too intimidating at first. So definitely a good place to start a couple hundred pages. The last one is a bit thicker. Complete wireless design. It's not DSP specific. It really focuses on the analog sides of radio frequency theory. So again it's a good resource if it's something you'd like to take on a little bit more seriously. So this is a grounding in the fundamentals of oscillators, filters, mixers, radiators, all of the fun analog RF stuff. And when I use this book it's to solve challenges that I run into that have to be addressed in the analog world. Some things simply can't be done in DSP. For example due to limitations of the RF front under your SDR. So an example of when I've used this book as a reference was on a recent engagement when I was asked to assess a signal for an oil and natural gas client that they were running at 11 gigahertz for their microwave backhaul. Well the USRP that I have only goes up to 6 gigahertz so how do I do this? There's really no SDR that covers 11 gigahertz at least not at reasonable prices that I could find. So the answer really is in this book with the design of a RF down converter which again seems intimidating. But once you break it down to its individual system components it's something that I think anyone who's a hardware hobbyist can achieve with a couple weeks effort. So these are all very good very good resources for someone getting started and for someone learning maybe over the course of their first three to six months of really digging into software defined radio. Like I mentioned links to all this on GitHub. Alright so enough background. When you get out into the field where you gonna find? What do industrial signals look like? What are these protocols? Why not just 802.11? What are you gonna find when you get out there? So the first example I brought today is a protocol called wireless heart. Wireless heart is an international standard process automation standard developed initially by the heart foundation and transferred to ISA as ISA standard 100. It's a field communication layer for talking with sensors and actuators in the field so there's layer zero and one devices. It's just a wireless implementation of the heart protocol which has a long history we won't get into. Wireless heart though depends on the 802.15.4 physical layer for transit so that's the same physical layer that's used for ZigBee and other popular home automation devices. So we get lucky here because there's been a lot of security research into home automation protocols that are built on 802.15.4 and ZigBee and now we get to leverage that in our research into the security properties of wireless heart for industrial automation. So a little background it is a mesh protocol where individual sensors can store and forward messages to a network manager which is typically a process manager or controller or gateway. So talking about the way that home automation security research paid dividends here you might see in the top right hand corner my flow block there for wire shark. So to give you a little bit of a walk through here this is the source block that defines the interface to the hardware radio that I have where it defines the center frequency at the 2.41 gigahertz with some offset that I think I had to find up there. This block the 802.15.4 OQ PSK Phi luckily we don't really have to understand what it's doing in order to get what we want. This was implemented by Bastion Blessle whose blog I mentioned earlier but because this open source work has been done we can just kind of ignore it. It's a black magic box. I plumb the lines in, I plumb the lines out and in the top right hand corner I get wire shark and the good news about wire shark is, oh geez, good news about wire shark is we know this all right. We're security researchers, we know wire shark, this is exactly what I want to see. So once we get in to wire shark we can find some critical findings right off the bat just by looking into the 805.4 headers that wire shark will understand out of the box. So if you look up here in the frame control data field the highlighted field as you might imagine the fourth bit from the right there in the frame control security enabled false. So what have I learned already about this wireless heart implementation? Well they're not leveraging the authentication and encryption features that are part of the 802.15.4 standard. But critically wire shark doesn't ship with a wireless heart protocol deceptor out of the box so I'm still left with this kind of mysterious payload in the bottom right hand corner and for all I know maybe they're implementing authentication and encryption further up the stack. But what we find is, well no. Turns out wireless heart does use authentication encryption as far as I can tell in the messages that contain sensor values or control statements. But critically what we've observed is that it does not give that treatment to advertisement messages. So the wireless heart standard is closed. It's a bit pricey to access and unfortunately the license for the one the price that I paid does not allow me to release tools based on it. I'm lobbying internal for us to spend the cash so that we can open source the work that we've done. But we do need to work that out with the heart foundation first. But what you'll see here is the kind of the broken down version of the protocol message on the last slide. And what you learn from looking here is that well malicious actors can't necessarily inject data values. What they can do is join the network as their own nodes by injecting advertisements which potentially congest the link layer of the protocol and can affect network routing because it's a mesh. So yeah if you see that Knight and Newland paper that I mentioned earlier you might get some more ideas about how you could abuse open advertisements. And I encourage you to check out Joe Weiss's talk at this village this afternoon on why you care about vulnerabilities in process sensors and actuators not just the controllers that they interface with. All right last couple minutes. Modbus RTU. These radios are ubiquitous for process control in North America. Everyone knows Modbus TCP is unauthenticated and so is its predecessor Serial Modbus. So what happens when you take the bits from Serial Modbus shove them into a modem and push them out in antenna. Fun and profit. So pictured here two really common modems both are well kind of by GE now. But this tradition extends all the way back to the 70s. You know it's not GE's problem necessarily. To now defunct manufacturers such as Daniels. They use a physical implementation a modulation called AFSK or audio frequency shift keying which is essentially a 180 degree phase shift and audio signal that's then encoded onto or modulated onto narrow band FM. So kind of similar to what you listen to in your car. In the case of the two radios pictured here these are unlicensed 900 megahertz spectrum but you can get them in licensed spectrum as well. The newer ones have encryption as an option but it's generally in my observations not implemented because they'll ship in what's called a compatibility or interoperability mode with no encryption. So we'll see here this gets a little more complicated right and the reason it gets a little more complicated is because this work hasn't been done in the open source literature before so there is no black magic box for me to just pipe signal through. But fundamentally I think again with a few days of research you could actually understand what's going on here mixing down to baseband, resampling to change the sample rate, you have an FM demodulation, clock recovery to match the beats, a squelch and then slice it out to binary and throw it out to a FIFO file sync. So what's that give me? Not perfect. It's cool enough and we can simulate the matrix so I don't even see the code. It's just anyway. Alright so what I'd like to get to next from that is this. So a functioning integration with a software Modbus server or client. So this was actually done offline because of some issues with my implementation of the framing for Modbus which we don't have time to get into the details of today because I'm out of time. But what you can see here is actually Pi Modbus essentially reading and writing coils as a Modbus client and decoding the Modbus server messages on the back end. So the implications here should be clear. These radios are deployed widely in North America for oil and gas pipelines as well as municipal water systems and they are fundamentally just public over the air. Alright so that's my time. I think I'm over by a minute. So I just want to thank Larry especially for dealing with me. The organizers, sponsors and volunteers at the ICS Village and all you guys for coming out and waking up this morning. That's about it. I do just want to mention I'm on the Mandiant team at FireEye industrial control systems we are hiring. So if this is the kind of work that interests you, you want to learn more, come talk to me after. And that's my GitHub that has the links from the talk, my Twitter if you want to continue the conversation that way. So that's it. Thanks so much. And if you guys have questions.


Welcome to rehash on the internet. We're all news is old news. We bring you the best and worst of what's happening today Hey guys, if it's our hair and you my friend, you're watching rehash. Also, you're the better on Facebook Yeah, sorry. Thank you so much to Wolfie's RR who provided our intro if you'd like to be an awesome person like her link in the Description where you can provide an intro for this show just keep in mind We're looking for something super personal super awesome and shows your creativity All right, so we've got a couple of news you type whatever so we want to discuss with you the freedom family today Um, and I'm gonna go first because you went first yesterday. I do okay I wanted to talk to the freedom family about a new game that's been added to the dashboard called the maestro's I wanted to talk to the freedom family about a florida man unfortunately doing some not so good acts to an alligator Okay, yeah And then I wanted to talk to the freedom family about what happened the other night while you may have been sleeping Best buy had a super duper glitchy sale I wish I was a part of it and on top of that I wanted to talk to the freedom family about a man who faced six months in jail For disagreeing with someone on twitter That seems like a pretty hard sense. We'll get into that first story of the day We're gonna be talking about the maestro's a new game added to the freedom dashboard where all freedom partners can play this game For free it's in early beta. We actually the freedom family has early access to this.   I'm going just saying I agree But of all of the animals that I could imagine I don't see this one as one that would I don't see the attraction. What's the story here? All right, so I'm not going to say the guy's name because I don't want to you know She had liked a person who did this horrible act link in the description if you want to know the name But nonetheless This guy was caught having sexual acts on an alligator because he was out fishing in a swamp An alligator had came up and tried to bite his pant leg and pull him into the water So as an act of revenge He tied the alligator up and for multiple weeks performed sexual acts while the alligator was tied up and blindfolded as an act of revenge And that's a whole nother level a minute. No, no, no, he gets even crazier In a public statement, he would call the alligator names as an act of revenge And he planned to play super loud music and is so much more do we have video because I have a I have a I have a picture of this guy in my head this guy right here He probably talks like this and This is the picture I have of this guy right here probably that but way worse Oh my good. Well, I guess it's about time for us to move on to the next hour Yeah, if you guys are going to check it out, we'll be down below five in the description All right So the next door I want to talk to you the freedom family about is best by selling gift cards on our website of a $200 value for $15 I wish I wanted that well You almost don't because this became public very quickly. Thanks to uh to reddit Who are always, you know at the forefront of you know being able to Be helpful. Let's just leave it at that So reddit made this very public and thousands of people purchased these gift cards now normally speaking Best buy is really good about owning up to their mistakes and saying hey, look, you know what for like 20 minutes Something was sold for the wrong price. We're gonna give it to you Okay, they did this with I believe ps4 is a while back and and a few other things But with thousands of people purchasing these for such a massive discount The company would lose a massive amount of money So I am fairly certain that people will be getting refunds of their $15 So, um There's got to be at least a handful of people who purchased a few of them and then bought stuff right away So there's got to be at least a few people. Well, that's the thing you have to wait for them to be Like shipped to you or it's not like an oh, it's not all on code.  So the story goes as follows A guy and some name state, you know in the united states obviously Made a game about a feminist where they would punch the feminist over and over in the video game The feminists started calling the local newspaper where the guy lived Etc etc. Now the guy who was arrested didn't make the video game The guy, you know, who made the video game simply posted it via twitter The feminists were like saying hey, you should like take the game down And didn't they also? Put out a bunch of stuff basically saying like never hire this man Yeah, they even contacted employers and more so this has nothing to do with it. So anyway, the guy On twitter contacted these feminists and disagreed with them. He didn't like was he was a belligerent He was very professional, but he simply disagreed and is now facing six months in jail for it Okay, so I have this to say I do not align myself as a feminist. I consider myself to be a humanist Which is a real thing Basically, um, you know, I don't believe that women are better than men or men are better than women Um, and and there's actually a lot more that goes into being a humanist, but um I This this sickens me because they're Within our Within our culture, uh, globally um, there seems to be this idea that you know, um Feminists feel that they've been held down. Therefore they want some of them want to reverse those roles And and hold down others. I I don't I don't like that. I don't agree with that Um, and this is a very small section of feminism. This is not everyone. Okay. I have friends who are feminists I have family who are feminists both men and women Um, but this is I think from the information that's been given From what I've read from what I've seen horrible. Yeah, like this is this is not evening the Um, the tables this is this is like Skewing to the other direction, which is also not good So, uh, Yeah, I think this this one will go down in history as the exact same as like Remember the person who got sued because or the person who sued mcdonald's because the coffee was too hot Yeah, the old lady. Yeah, this is going to be one of those lawsuits where people hear about it and just roll their eyes All right, um, so that's all of our stories. We kind of buzzed through that rather quickly. I guess we did it They seem like forever Was it because I went on too long about feminism? No, okay. All right. Now. I guess we get to talk about the comments your comments Down below We do feature comments fairly often in fact We're trying to make sure that we have a comment at the bottom That's in front of the laptops at the bottom of this show all the time We want to fill up every episode where we have your comments down there But we need a hundred comments though. Yeah to make that sustainable We need at least 100 comments per video because some comments are not usable some are and some Stop 100 100. I messed the pillows up. We're gonna get at least five comments about the pillows now. Thanks Comment number one comes from game destroyers who answered our question that we posed yesterday About at what point would you Decide it's not worth saving someone else's life. Like at what point is the danger or the risk not worth it Um, and he gave us a very detailed comment that would take me five minutes to read It is down there. You can read it here and to sum it up Basically, he says that he did save someone's life and he didn't think about it until afterwards Adrenaline is a crazy thing. It is and I have to say bravo. Good sir. Yeah, congratulations Um, and uh, you had a comment you wanted to have so comment number two comes from taser gaming and reviews He's asked 24 seven rehash episodes. Please make this your life. He he he hashtag rehash Uh, this show is already my life. I hate to say this but between uh, researching filming and um, and Editing um, this show burns anywhere between 10 and 12 hours a day And I hate to admit that but that's that's about what it takes to keep rehash alive Um, we get a lot of comments about things like the pillows being out of order or not Right and we get a lot of comments about, you know, minor things that are wrong Um, and though we appreciate those and we are working to to make those better, um You know, it's it just kind of goes to show you just how much it takes to get everything just right and make everybody happy all the time So we couldn't do 24 seven couldn't do 24 seven though There is an idea floating around for us to kind of sprout off onto a second channel with some additional content That might be possible if I can find someone else to edit the episodes Which will save me four or six hours a day comment number three Comes from timmit who says nice hats. They look very good on you guys Wait a minute. We weren't wearing hats yesterday Our heads were cut off. That's a really good one. That's sly right there All right. I got to give you props on that one. It took me a second That brings us to the end of the comments section. Now we get to talk about Wolfie's raw I would like to say congratulations on putting together your channel Your channel trailer. I personally believe is a little bit rambly now There are some youtubers who kind of get away with that as part of their style Um, I really don't feel that that's part of your style. I could be wrong Um, and I really believe that if you were kind of going for the rambly thing as a planned thing It doesn't come across as a polished professional ramble type thing It kind of comes across as maybe you turn the camera on and then just sat down um Which again some youtubers get away with I really don't feel that that is Your style yet. You could be developing it and that's fine But um, it it didn't really move me to want to subscribe and just change Yeah, then aside from that, I've noticed that in your thumbnails, I tend to complain a lot about them But in your in your newer thumbnails, you're improving a little bit But the color scheme is so difficult to understand what the text is Luckily for me, I can zoom the webpage in but a normal person won't even take the time to do that To even look at a thumbnail and if it isn't appealing normally a lot of people won't click the videos That's why you see youtube's biggest content creators with like amazing thumbnails I mean thumbnails are a huge asset to getting views. They are um, and Thumbnails are definitely something that you will get, you know to be You know to be better with over time I'm noticing with a few of your thumbnails you're showcasing entire like bodies of safety of legends characters and whatnot And though Body language can definitely convey something for instance yesterday's thumbnail We showed a little bit of body language because it was it was relevant to the message But Try to to limit this and go with faces a little bit more Facial stuff can actually convey emotions and we just lost a bottle. This is exactly what we're talking about We're just gonna keep rolling May the force be with you. That's what we should have done. I think you did it So you keep this in mind and as much as I hate to be self promotional Take a look at rehashed thumbnails. Take a look at thumbnails that you've seen previously on youtube.com slash mgn and I really want you to look at the lessons that we're subconsciously trying to teach the freedom partners about thumbnails Text is important. However, if you can communicate visually, it's a lot better Um, oh and also kudos on your descriptions I'm noticing, you know, you've got a fair amount of text Describing your video actually describing what it's about Which I know takes a few extra minutes It would be nice to see a little bit more linkage going on as far as like other social medias um potentially Like a t-shirt shop that kind of thing Um, and I I really feel that you know, you are one of those channels that is You know in need of a little bit of polish, but you're you're on the right track. Exactly the right track. Yeah also People like girl gamers. I'm just gonna say it and I know I'm probably gonna get hate in the comments for that but Yeah, anyways, is that is that pretty much rabbit's up? Unfortunately. Yeah, unfortunately You really want to do the 24-7 thing, don't you? I really think we should Till next time don't forget to like subscribe and do all those things that make us love our jobs. Are you picking on me again? I'm not doing it. Uh-huh Also be awesome to yourself and amazing Bye freedom feeling


Welcome to Sister Power. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Our guest, Dr. Deborah Butler, will discuss her new book, I Don't Need to Fit In. I'm Custom-Made. Dr. D shares transformational messages of a world traveler with a collection of her personal memories in a way that allows readers to relate more personally to her experience. Aloha, Dr. Butler. Sister Power is so excited to have you join us to talk about your book. Thank you very much for joining us. Aloha and thank you for having me. Well, this has been, you know, you and I have been talking about your book. I don't need to fit in. I'm Custom-Made. And if this is your book, the timing is absolutely perfect. It's on time. And we have a lot of people out there trying to figure out who they are, what they need to be. And all they need to do is be themselves. So what I want to ask you, we all have a book in us. What inspired you to write this book? I would have to say, I have about 5,000 Facebook family and friends that I've shared my life stories with. They have asked me if I would write this book. I didn't write it for me. I wrote it for my family, my children, their children, my grandchildren, their children to live as a legacy. What inspired you, the cover of your book? I like the color and the letters are bold. Tell us about, I don't need to fit in. I am Custom-Made. Well, green is my favorite color. And the photo shows where I'm not trying to fit in doing my own thing. In this book, I share transformational messages of being a world traveler with the collection of my personal memories in a way that allows the readers to relate more personally to my experience. My book doesn't focus on the entire timeline of my life, but instead I share stories from the traveling experiences to give readers insider knowledge of my favorite places where I have lived and where I have traveled abroad, places like Jamaica, Australia, different places. Also, I'm sharing experiences with celebrities that I've worked with and the impact that they have had on my life. Celebrities such as Mike Tyson, Prince the Artist, Les Brown, BB King, a DMX just to name a few. Yeah, so this, your book summarizes in one to three sentences. If you were speaking to someone unfamiliar with your book and topic, just elaborate a little more about your book. Well, I'm Custom-Made. I don't need to fit in. I am Custom-Made. It makes you realize that fitting in with people is so overrated. And in each of our lives, there is a time when we want to fit in. But you will be much happier being yourself than faking it and forcing yourself to be someone that you're not. Yeah, well, where does this book take place? Well, here in Honolulu, Hawaii, when I moved back here from Australia a little more than a year ago, I decided to settle down and write this book during the pandemic. There was not much else to do except reflect on memories and write this book. Well, who are the main characters in your book? I don't need to fit in. I am Custom-Made. My main character in this book would be my father. But there are many other characters that this memoir shows a personal and unique perspective that conveys so much more than an average memoir, both in content and style as it delves into my experience in a search for meaning and insight. There are many, as I've stated before, celebrities and some amazing people I've met in my travels while traveling around. I've met some of the most amazing people you can imagine, and they too are some of my main characters in my book. Yeah, I noticed that you have a picture with you and Mike Tyson. I would go to Las Vegas any time Mike Tyson would fight. We were there. Tell us about your experience with Mike Tyson. My experience with Mike Tyson was a very respectful experience. I was the only female working at the time for him and with him as his executive protection specialist, and he didn't allow anyone to disrespect me from the entourage. He was very caring, he was kind, he was going through a lot during that time in his life, and it was after he came to Honolulu for the training camp for the Linux Louis Mike Tyson fight. He came to the Pro Bowl in Honolulu and some young lady grabbed him, hugged him and kissed him, and he politely shoved her away. She filed an assault charge and cost him so much money he decided he needed a female bodyguard just to keep the females away, and that was my job to keep the females off of him. It was a job because they would be grabbing at him and pulling at him, trying to hug him, trying to kiss him. And I enjoyed it. If I had it to do all over again, I would. He and I became, we had a lot of heart to heart talks. We became good friends like brothers and sisters. I referred to him as my little brother. He referred to me as his big sister because his middle name is the same as my oldest son and my oldest grandson, which is Gerard, and his birthday is June 30th, my June 25th, and my two grandsons are June 28th. So we had so much in common, and many of our conversations were very heartfelt. And yeah, you know, we just lost DMX, the well-known rapper. Tell us about that experience you're working with DMX. Working with DMX was pretty much working as a life coach. And DMX said he enjoyed having me as his life coach because I gave him my undivided attention. And he said, if there were 10,000 people in the room, I would, he would have my undivided attention and he enjoyed that. Now that has to be, that is so heartfelt. We could feel the love he had for you, Dr. D. So why do you think that this book will appeal to readers? Well, that's a good question. Why would this book appeal to readers? So you have three collections of memories, you know, that are relatable with universal appeal. So let's talk about the shine light on the lives, loves and deeds of people around you. Well, to talk about how it were late, I would say that my life has been quite a ride. There's still a lot I don't know about life and what the future holds for me. But I do know myself. My father taught me to be unique. He taught me to explore and he taught me not to give in to the pressure from colleagues and friends to fit in and to just try not to be other people's definition of the word normal quote unquote. Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. Well, how is your book relevant in today's society? Well, it's because of the coronavirus. The corona pandemic has profoundly disrupted some social circles and in many places across the world, people are following similar lockdowns and shutdowns of social distancing and still trying to fit in. I strongly advise the readers to just look at this by putting a perspective that to win the war against COVID-19, we need to make sacrifices and develop a coping mindset. This book helps you to set that mindset to cope and to do that without trying to fit in. So I share information on how to cope with the challenges of wanting to fit in and how to view the situation through a lens of acceptance because you don't need to fit in. Again, you are custom made. That is so relevant. And I think many of our young people need to hear this lesson. They have so much peer pressure that if you just be yourself and just do you, your voice is enough because it's part of you. That's true. It's part of you. I mean, I just really, I resonate with your book tremendously. So is there any subject currently trending in the news that relates to your book? Well, you know, the pandemic is quite the subject that that is that we're living right now. As we work to accept the new normal as it is and cope as necessary, we have to ask ourselves, are we only saying yes to please the other person because we want to fit in? Because we have a need to fit in and be accepted by others? Are we adjusting to life during COVID-19?  There are so many things out of your control. And so many of us are used to being in control. It may be a tough pill to swallow, but one thing you can control is how many risks you're taking during this pandemic. Even if those risks may be beneficial to your emotional well being, we need to know that it's okay to say no to social gatherings during COVID-19. We need to know that it's okay to not fit in. It's okay to just do you and be you and stay alive and be safe because we're living in different times now. We have to adjust to that. And fitting in is not the answer to adjusting to our new world order.  And I think this is what people can take from your book, that if you just love you, do you, that you are just fine. You can just glide in this world. So what do you want readers to take away from your writing? Oh, that's a good question. What I want readers to take away from my writing. Actually, I want them to know what a small enormous world it is and how it's overflowing with amazing people in amazing places that even with non-lifetime, you wouldn't come close to seeing it all. I'll travel the world extensively. I've met people that were in the same place at the same time as I was once we started discussing our travels.    So pretty much, yeah. Yeah, I also noticed that you work with Les Brown, the motivational speaker. Tell me about that experience working with Les Brown. Well, it was a treat working with Les Brown. He taught me how to be a motivational speaker. He allowed me to go out before he come out and just kind of motivate the audience and get them ready for him to come out. And I will never forget the one Christmas he called me to wish me a Merry Christmas and I wasn't able to answer the phone. And the message he left on my phone was, for God's so love the world, he gave his only begotten son and you, Deborah. And that just made me feel so special. He had a way of making people feel special. So working with him gave me a lot of confidence in myself that I didn't have prior to. Wow.  Prince the artist. You work with Prince. Yes, working with Prince, I learned a lot about business. Prince taught me when I was working with him because anytime he came to Hawaii, he would call me to work as his executive protection specialist. And he talked to me about starting a limo service and I did what's called debonair limo service. He helped me get it started. And I was teaching also on the West side and told him how hot it was in my, I was teaching in portables, how hot it was in my portables. He furnished air conditioning, paid for them to be every portable that I taught in, Prince paid for air conditioning to be installed. He said, oh, those poor kids, he had a soft spot in his heart for kids with disabilities. And I taught in the special education department, kids with disabilities and with the special soft spot he had in his heart for kids like that. He said, there is no way you were going to work another day in a hot portable with those poor babies. And he took care of that. And then he, he taught, I learned a lot from him, business wise. Yes. Wow, those are some great gifts. And also the legendary BB King. Yes, the way we came to find out that what we had in common, he said to me one day, he said, you look just like a cook I used to have in Chicago. This is one particular day I cooked a soul food meal for everybody, BB King and the band. And he talked about how good the food was. And he, that's when he told me I reminded him of this cook he had that lived in Chicago. And he described her and which didn't mean anything because anybody could fit that description. And when he said her name, Carol Lee, I said I have an aunt named Carol Lee and that's not a common name. And I called my cousin Joseph Dixon, he knows all the family history. And he said, yes, I'm Carol Lee worked as BB King's cook. And when, when I told him that that was my aunt, we had, we laughed and just from that time, that moment forward, we bonded like family. Yeah, you know, people reading your book, tell us something that we have not spoken about. Give us some lessons that people can take away for reading your book. But one thing we haven't spoken about that, a quote, one day after training on Maui with Mike Tyson, his entourage and I were standing outside the gym and we were talking. And Mike asked me, he said, because during that time I was boxing. And he said, how in the world do you call yourself a minister and you around here knocking folks out, explain that to me. And I told him, I said, well, Mike, as a minister, I'm a servant of God.  Mike laughed so hard, I called him off guard. He laughed so hard, I thought he was going to choke. Because in his laughter, he said he just wasn't ready for that as an answer. But as I've said, this book was shared with you how there is still a lot I don't know about life and what the future holds for me, but I do know myself and I do know that my father taught me to be unique. He taught me to explore and he taught me not to give in to the precious from colleagues and friends to fit in and to just be me, just do me. And I always believed in my father because my father always had unconditional love, always have given me full support and blessings without which I could not have made it to where I am today. Because it was my father's belief in me and vision in me that I had for myself until my own belief in me, until my own belief in me feel, until I was able to have belief in myself, I believed in his belief in me. So I'm very in debt to my both of my parents because they were there for me. And I'm honored to have had such loving, supportive, strong and caring parents. And actually, the book was shared what a small world it is and what a big world it is and how the world is not as small as we all think it is. And all of the amazing people that are just waiting to be met in this world. But most importantly, most importantly, you realize that you cannot meet all these people, you cannot see all these places. And that's what the book brings out.  There are approximately 7 billion people on this planet. And if you disappear tomorrow without a trace, how many people do you think will actually care? As a child, I learned to just get in where I fit in. Because, you know, when I was a child growing up, there were a lot of kids who wouldn't play with me because they said I was too high yellow.   But I hate it being called red.  And I hate it being called high yellow. Those were fighting words to me. And when I go to Jamaica, I hate being called browning.  So I thought, how ironic that the first hostility will come from my own race of people, if you will. I've never been sensitive as far as people and bullies go. But my book will teach you how, when you learn to accept yourself, it would teach you how to accept yourself. Because when you learn how to accept yourself, you realize that fitting in with people is so overrated. You would be so much happier just being yourself, just being you. So you don't need to fit in.  You are not a Xerox copy. You are custom made. It's okay to leave people behind when you have someone that you're not with, when you're not with them anymore. It's okay to not be with them anymore. It's okay to leave those people behind and go on your way.  And just because you used to belong with certain people doesn't mean you have to continue to stay with them now. You have to learn how to let go and just let God lead you, guide you and direct your path instead of looking up to man and looking up to people. Yeah. So those are words of wisdom for sure. Is there a particular passage from your book you'd like us to utilize? And so please provide. Well, my book shares and this is, I hope nobody get offended by this, me writing this, but it's my, it's my story and I couldn't understand why my own race of people act like dark skin and light skin or two different races.  We're all one. And our race is human. I don't care how you match up to the brown paper bag. You are human and that is your race first and nothing else should matters. It's time for a change and that time is well overdue. So that time for that change is now and I hope my book will help make that change because we as a people, we must learn to love one another and stop hating on our own skin color because as a people, as a race of people, we come in all flavors if you will. So even within nationalities and ethnicities, we have varieties of every physical feature, all of which we can appreciate. So love those who appreciate you and those who celebrate you and not those who tolerate you. So not just skin tone but eye color, hair color, facial and body features, they should draw us all closer together, not separate and alienate us. It doesn't matter if your hair is kinky, curly or straight. Love who you are and love the ones you with because all of our differences should make us closer together. And Toni Morrison says it best. She says, listen baby, people do funny things, especially us. The cars are stacked against us and just trying to stay in the game, just trying to stay alive and in the game. It just makes us do funny things. She said, it just makes us do crazy things, things that we can't help, things that make us want to hurt one another. And if you read Toni Morrison's songs of Solomon, she talks about this and this is why I get a lot of my wisdom from reading Toni Morrison's book about our race of people. I love it. It's all about self-love. That's what it boils down to. It's all about self-love. Well, in closing Dr. D, where can sister power viewers purchase? I don't need to fit in. I'm custom made. Well, it can be purchased on BarnesandNobles.com and then just type in the title. BarnesandNobles shipped the book faster than Amazon or the publishers. So amazon.com, you can go there and then just type in the title. And then the publishing company is Libris. Also, if you'd like to have your book signed by me, direct message me your address. And I will mail sticker book plates. This is a sticker book plate.  You just peel it off and you stick it. You just stick it to the inside cover or front matter of the book. The current pandemic has halted many of the in-person gatherings, the book signings, you know, have thankfully continued on through the use of my personalized book place. My personalized book place is a safe way for me to just send my signature to anyone from booksellers to readers while abiding by the social distance measures. I can't meet you in person to sign your book, but sending a signed personalized book plate to you is a great alternative. Oh, well, you know, that is so creative. Well, thank you. See, I have, I'm a walking, I'm a walking billboard. This is okay. I don't need to fit. You don't need to fit. All right. All right. Well, thank you, Dr. D, for joining us. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. This is Sister Power. Aloha. Aloha and thank you for having me.


Wait, this is being recorded. Surprise, Spencer. I know I agree. I consented to all of the everything I do. I'm following the conduct code. But I didn't know that, I thought this was like a, you know, informal hangout. And now here we go. Now I got to, I guess you change out of my hoodie. I know. And listen, I feel the same way. I want to kind of spruced up a little bit. Yeah. My God. Well, I mean, we can always. Haley to stop the recording. I think we'll be okay. So welcome, everybody. Welcome to the Thursday. I mean, Wednesday. Gosh, second time, the Wednesday. Like show, we've got one more. We'll do this again on Thursday. So I hope. Thursday, Thursday. We'll see you tomorrow, Thursday. But today it's Wednesday, so we just have to make it through this one. So we have another late breaking news announcement tonight. Yeah, congratulations to Raya and Emma who won our trivia contest. Officially the smartest people at the conference. Congratulations. Amazing. I don't know what your prize is, but congratulations. Yes, organized by Tina and Amelia. Thank you, Tina and Amelia. And Raya won the T-shirt. Nicole says it's a T-shirt. Very good. And Raya won the taco competition. So you're on a roll. On a roll. On fire. OK, let's see. So we will be using Menti tonight. So everyone who wants to participate that way can go to Menti.com and enter the code that's at the top of the screen for some of the fun voting. I do want to go through introductions first. So hi, I'm Emily Reagan. I'm hosting our late show. I'm at Metropolitan State University of Denver and also have served on the Steering Committee for OpenED20. So this is my fun little contribution to the conference. And I have a lovely co-host, Hailey. Yeah, hi, everyone. My name's Hailey Bab. I'm one of the open education coordinators for Spark's open education team. And I've been working on the conference organizing team. I'm based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  And I have three lovely guests. So first, Bob, would you be willing to introduce yourself? No. Hi, my name is Bob Awkward. Yes, this is just the way it's spelled on the screen is my last name. And no, I'm not. So we'll take care of that. I'm in the love of state and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the Department of Higher Education and the OER coordinator for our public institutions and on the program committee. And I'm here hanging out with this crew and all of you. Awesome. Thank you, Bob. And then next up is Spencer. Hey, everybody. My name's Spencer. And I'm from the Commonwealth of Colorado. Actually, I don't think we're Commonwealth. Are we? We're only three. There's only three. Oh, that's a trivia question for tomorrow. Raya, no cheating. One, two, three, four. There's four common laws. There's four common laws. Maybe we can determine what those are by the end of the session. I have a similar job to Bob. Actually, one time we were at a conference and Bob and I sat down and we started speaking the same kind of language. And we were like, wait a minute, we kind of got the same job. So I work at the Department of Higher Ed in Colorado. And I'm happy to be here with you all. Thanks for letting me join. Fantastic. And last but not least, we have Jonathan. Hi, I'm the only one who got the sartorial notification. We're supposed to wear a gray shirt and a red scarf. Apparently the morning session was all in uniform. And so this is my attempt. Anyway, I'm Jonathan Portz. I'm in the math department at Colorado State University Pueblos. There's a bunch of Coloradans. I'm, I think, the farthest south in Colorado of this group of people. But, and I'm also the OER coordinator on the state of Colorado State University Pueblos. And I've been on helping in a very minor role. I don't know what the name of the team I was on was program team or something. Anyway, but I've got to do some volunteer work with, got to host a session several times so far. It's been a lot of fun. Yes, you've been very helpful, Jonathan. Yeah, you and Bob both were on the program team. And yeah, that was, I really appreciate it. And you guys have been working as session hosts and doing lots of cool things. OK, so we have some chances for audience participation here. So hopefully you've been able to get into mentee or you can hop on using that code there at the top. So how is your conference experience going? And thank you to Nicole for letting me adapt these fun slides that had been used previously at some of the community meetings that some of you may have attended. Do I need to do something to display? There we go. There we go. Brainful, yes. I know that's right. And we like the corgis. Nass pace, yes. The avalanche is going to catch up with us. And Bob loves that cat right there. Whoa. Now I like Elmo, yeah. That's what I picked. Elmo's world. Oh, man, that's a throwback. Who's that guy that's exploding brain? Is that somebody famous? Isn't that Alan Rickman? I honestly don't know. So anyone else want to chime in as to who? I'm Googling it. OK, fantastic. Who is it? Google will let us know. OK. Google's on the case. I will report back. Fantastic. OK, well, I'm going to move on. This is kind of a more even distribution, I think, than we've seen. I mean, I haven't asked this exact question before, but we're in a lot of different places is what I'm getting from this. OK, let's see here. OK. Advance our little slide. So now you have a chance to enter a single word, although you can do it multiple times. So if you have multiple words, you just cannot help but share. That's available to you. And we'll see if I need to. There we go. Busy. Yes. Adult switch sketch comedy theories. Uplifting, distracted, welcoming, pondering, like the thoughtful that's misspelled, I think. That's that's me typing. That wasn't literally me, but it could have been me. Fun. Oh, fun is big. I like it. It's big. Multiple people voted for fun. That's awesome. It's holding. This is Kathy. I'm down on one screen, but if someone could type in amazed into them at tea, so that that's at least captured. Thank you. Thank you. I'm someone can do that. There we go. Here. Maze. Oh, now it's now it's. Now we've all done this. Oh, I love it. Fantastic. That's super fun. Yeah. Crowdsourced, I guess. I'm totally amazed. It's beautiful. OK. Well, thank you all. Coffee. Yes, thank you. OK. And then finally, kind of our free response part. So what is the highlight of something? And it can be from today. It can be from earlier in the conference if that's what's really sticking with you in this moment. You know, make this what you want. Honestly, if you saw something amazing that you think other people need to go back and see, everything's being recorded, right? So this is a great chance to, you know, let us know what we need to go back and watch if we missed it. Oh, Discord and the plenary sessions. I know I have really, really been enjoying the plenary sessions every single day. They're awesome in their own way among us. I missed among us. Oh, we need an update from that. Oh, that's great, Nicole. Yeah, my favorite part of the day was Nicole's mom coming to the session. Oh, that was so cute. Yeah, among us is in here multiple times. It's a more interactive stat book. Oh, yeah, the Miha keynote. Absolutely. OK, I missed Nicole's mom coming. What was that? She just came to watch one of her presentations and it was very wholesome. That is so cool. I missed that too. That's fantastic. It was wholesome? It was very nice. Like part of me. The science is not my thing session is amazing, so nice. That's one I want to go catch up with.  Why did I mention this? No, it was really nice. And I was just thinking about it. Like my mom has never seen me present before in all of the years and all of the places and all of the conferences. But because this was virtual, it was possible. I was thinking. Yeah, one of the ways. Yeah, like, what is it that my daughter does at these things? That's cool. Yeah, getting connected with people, open pet incubator. The science is not my thing. It's popped up a lot in the Miha keynote. Yes, well, so anyone else? See if there's anything new coming in at the end. And then we're going to we're going to move forward. And the picture I found for today is is open to interpretation. Jonathan's first thought was we hit the wall. But I'm really like these are people that are like kind of curious and listening. And I don't know if I just ran across it. I thought it was a fun photo. So this is supposed to help us generate some discussion. And my my crew is is ready to just kind of free form some conversation here. Oh, man, I want to know what the inspiration is behind behind this art. I like that. We started going down a rabbit hole trying to find out where this sculpture came from. And it wasn't a very deep rabbit hole. We kind of like Jonathan did a fancy image search that we ran into a website that we couldn't understand 404 air. And then we start talking about something else. I think we all have really short attention spans. Well, I know I do. Deep for myself. No, I think you say we found it was in Indonesia. Not sure where yet. But yeah, it seemed to be I did a reverse Google image search and it seems like what the on Google image seemed to come up from some website that I mean, I've seen a lot of Indonesian recently, I had as there was a person who is in the creative I'm a facilitator for the Creative Commons certificate course and there have been lots of people who come to it from other countries and we let them submit lots of things in their own countries in their own native language. And so I've been doing a lot of Google translate of long essays written in Indonesian and then to try to grade them or give feedback. And so I've seen a lot of Indonesian lately. So it looked like this is an Indonesian website. I'm going to quit sharing just because I think this has provoked our got the wheels turning and now we can just kind of chat with each other. So like Jonathan, what what do you tell people about the Creative Commons class? Like if people are like, should I take it? Should I not? What is it? Do you have an elevator pitch or something for it? Good. And now I'm going to follow on to him, too. You know, I it's funny, I just got into a little bit of trouble on Twitter because a mathematician I know posted a link to a book. He said it's a great free book on a very complicated mathematical thing. And I looked and I followed the link and it was a it looked like one of those PDFs that someone scanned an entire book and just posted on the net. It had a copyright statement on the second page that said copyright some name 1977. And I said, I replied, I couldn't believe that this man had just posted something which is quite illegal to do, you know, making a public trend, you know, publicly distributing a copy of copyrighted material is really not kosher. And so I tweeted back to him, I actually know this guy and I said, what do you what do you mean by free? And I was hoping he would say, oh, it's actually been released with a Creative Commons license more recently. And so he never replied by which I take it that he hadn't thought about this and was embarrassed to have posted a link to an illegal copy. So I feel like the Creative Commons courses is to me it's it's like, if you were a doctor, you'd learn something about medical malpractice law.  And just in the Bayer copyright law and but there's this nice hack that comes from around 2000 of Creative Commons licenses. And so I feel like it's a tool that makes us twist intellectual property law to be more in use more useful to the academics, the educational worlds and many other worlds too. But I know academia better than others. And so I think it's a great thing to do.  And anyway, I think it's a great course. And the other great thing about the Creative Commons world is it's a little bit like the open-aid community. It's it's a very collaborative, supportive group. People can share insights and communications. I think someone some there've been some great presentations in open-ed about diversity of viewpoints makes it richer, makes us better understanding each other, understanding our students and see solutions that someone else has dreamt up in Indonesia to the problem of getting through a brick wall or, you know, and I think it so the Creative Commons is also very global community just like the open education community. It's nice to meet these people and I now have friends I regularly correspond with on seven, no six confidence that I've met through the Creative Commons world. So that's not an elevator pitch, but unless we're going up a long distance. And then Bob, you wanted to chime in. Well, only because the yucca and all of this and I just saw another connection point here on the screen is that I just took this course with Jonathan this summer and so did Sarah.  When I saw you at the Plenary Recession on Monday, he's like, that's why. So I am going to make the elevator pitch or make the pitch for the program. It is excellent, is excellent. You know, I, one of my folks here in Massachusetts does presentations and he usually does the part of the presentation on the on the legal piece, etc. And I've always was impressed with like, how does he know this stuff? And then I took the Creative Commons course and now I know how he know that stuff. If you want to know that stuff, you need to take that course because you really get exposed to the, you know, the whole, you know, get to go behind the scenes and understand the underpinnings that supports all of this work that we do. So, but let me caution you, it is a lot of work. I'm not going to say it's not. It is a lot of work. And I think Sarah, we're Sarah and she just moved. She agreed. It's good because that's why you learn, but it is a lot of work. But when you get to the end of the line, it's like, wow, wow, this is all the stuff I never knew. But you need to know this if you're in this space. Let's see the link to the Creative Commons stuff or the link to the, there we go. Okay, so how many people here have taken the Creative Commons course? I'm actually taking it right now. Are you? Yeah. So I haven't completed it, but I'm, I have a question. I'm sorry, I'm late to this. I don't know how to do it because I don't know anybody to sponsor or vouch for me to even to do that part. And I said, I don't know anybody. I try to look for anybody. How do I go past that? So that's for joining the global Commons or what is that called? Right. Help us out with that. Yeah, it's called the global network. And you need to have two people who are in the network to vouch for you. But yeah, I usually just sort of vouch for anybody who asked me, but they yelled at me for doing that. So I guess you should find something to actually know. I looked through all of them and I, there wasn't anybody, I mean, that's kind of sad that I couldn't find anyone that has gone through that. And this is my exploration to, I think, for OER. And I'm really excited about this process. And I saw about the Creative Commons certificate. It's $500, but I think it's really worth it. And I saw that it might be a scholarship with it. And I said, oh, OK, well, they give, they wrote in that there is a part of it where if you were a Creative Commons global network, then they'll give more of a... Oh, is it necessary to be in the network to get one of the scholarships? Yes. Well, not, they'll give more of a shot for those who are in it. And so that led me to the network. And then I was like, there's nobody in the network. I know. Are you located in the US? In San Antonio, Texas, San Antonio College. And we're just exploring OER like that. Yeah. A lot of the country chapters of the Creative Commons will sponsor some of the people in their country chapter. But I think the US country chapter is a little bit non-existent because... I'm going to do this kind of... Yeah. Yeah. The emoji of... Someone pointed out in the chat that being the Creative Commons, all the materials for the course are publicly released with a CC by license. So if you wanted to self-educate, you can go through those materials and you don't get with this sort of official certificate at the end of that process, but you could get all the knowledge yourself by going through it. You know, another thing you could try is there's a slack. There's a big slack. And it has a lot of different groups that are interested in different things. So if you go get involved and maybe meet a couple of people who are interested in those same topics that you're interested in, then you might be able to work it that way. And it's open for anyone to join that slack for Creative Commons Global. I hate to interrupt, folks. We only have about two minutes left. I know that went by so fast. I lost track of the time as well. But I want to make sure that we touch on some of the highlights that we have for the next day before we go so everybody all has the same information. So up next, we've got a couple of things coming up both tomorrow and Friday. On Thursday, we have a fantastic plenary session planned. So that's going to be applications of open education and social justice inclusion and anti-racism. So be sure to attend that from 4 to 4.25 Eastern. Should be, yeah, Nicole says, seriously, go to this. I'm really, really excited. It looks like it's going to be fantastic. Perfect. And then as usual, we have a few more sort of like asynchronous talks and content available.  I mean, unless you're really committed, good for you. But of the ones that you do watch, be sure to vote for your top three favorites. We have a little feature to be able to do that under the 2020 tab on our website. And the link to do that is right below here too. And then I think we have a couple more, just like just for fun sessions coming up tomorrow. So we have the V Connecting going on at tea time from 1.30 to 1.55. This is all in Eastern time, as well as yoga again tomorrow. So if you missed it the first time, there was a lot of hype. Definitely try to come tomorrow. Is that it or? Oh, yeah. Oh, oh my gosh. How could I forget? And Kara OER V. So that's going to be tomorrow at 7.30 Eastern. And that is going to be the must attend event of the conference.  Yeah, that's going to be right after our last late show. And we're going to be doing wine tasting with Nicole Allen and Daniel Williamson tomorrow. And so that's going to be awesome.  Does Sarah have her hand up? I'm thinking some people's hands are still up from when I asked about the creative moments. But yeah, this is like our last moment together. But come back tomorrow for the early show with Amy Tan. And I know they're having a lot of fun with that. Amy, you saw how Jonathan and I matched. Do you say that?  I'm just saying, there were four of us and we were all wearing red. You all look very nice. Very nice. Well, thank you all for joining us. I hope you had another fun and full day at the conference. Like you can see tomorrow's going to be another fantastic day. And we look forward to seeing you all then. Thanks, Emily.