All right, well, this is tagging your world with RFID, or how to annoy your friends, family, and pets, which is something I'm a bit of an expert on. You can find me on Twitter at adicontius. You can also follow my live tweet stream that has extra information, links to details about RFID tags, that sort of thing, at hashtag rubyRFID. So I work in laboratory information management software. Basically what we do is I personally attract vials and robotic freezers using RFID tags. It's freaking cool. It's a lot of fun. And the company that I work for, JMI Laboratory, is we actually test the antibiotics and find out which antibiotics are developing, basically bacteria is developing a resistance to. We've been doing this for 15 years. We pass the information off to the FDA. We pass the information off to the European Health Agency. And then, of course, we help drug companies develop better antibiotics as a side effect. Lots of data to sift through. It's a lot of fun. And while I'm up here, I also wanted to promote Ruby for Good. I'm sure some of you have already heard about it. If you haven't, you can visit rubyforgood.org. Also talk to Sean Marcia or talk to Chris Sexton. It's basically a weekend hackathon where you're helping nonprofits and open source. And we go out. And last year, we had kittens, because we worked with the Humane Society this upcoming year, where there's going to be red pandas. We're going to actually be at the Smithsonian Mason Research Center in Virginia. And it should be pretty interesting. So a couple of personal things about me. I think I'll understand what I'm doing later on with some of the hardware. For those that don't know me, by knowing that I'm a little bit of a weird dude, I tried to bring back this 40-spin stash that did not work out. I generally hike in a kilt in crocs. I was a professional chef. Not before IT.  I go to a lot of punk rock shows with my daughter, who is 18, and surprisingly not too embarrassed by me. I'm Batman. So I work remote. One of the big reasons is because I have a, this is what I was known for when I worked in an office, is I was the person that did these horrible things to their office maze. But here's the thing. I didn't actually have that many coworkers. So it was mostly just this guy. We're still dear friends, for the most part. Random factoid. So this is a photo outside of the plane on the way here. Absolutely beautiful. Absolutely fascinating to me. And I've done quite a bit of traveling. But at the age of 38, this is actually the first time I've ever been on a plane. This is also the first time I've ever spoken to a group this large. So I figured it's a whole thing at first. So let's actually move on to what is RFID? So RFID is a radio frequency identification. It's the wireless use of electromagnetic fields to transfer data. You can do this for automatically identifying tracking tags that are attached to objects. That's kind of the Wikipedia definition there. But really no explanation of RFID or magnetic fields and that sort of thing is going to be complete without talking about Tesla. I'm sorry, Nikolai Tesla. Tesla was without a question the greatest geek that ever lived. And actually, if you're following that tweet stream, there's a link to an explanation of why he was the greatest geek to ever live. So in 1894, Nikolai Tesla used resonant inductive coupling to wirelessly light up phosphorescent and incandescent lamps. Resonant inductive coupling is the near field wireless transmission of electrical energy between two magnetically coupled coils. Resonant energy transfer is the operating principle behind passive RFID tags, which you're going to see here today. Wireless charging, which I think a lot of people have probably adopted at this point, as well as contactless smart cards, which if you were working in the government, I'm sure you've dealt with. So thank you, Nikolai. There's a lot of practical uses for RFID and a lot that many people in here have already used, such as races. Race timing of the bibs, as well as shoe tags, have become very common, very popular. TVDK asks, I don't know why I put this one here. These are going to be gone in like a year. Authentication, doors, computer systems, medical cards. This is going more and more and more common. Toe collection, I'm sure that quite a few people here have EZPass or whatever is common down here in Texas. And asset tracking, this is the bread and butter of the RFID industry. This is what has driven prices down. It used to cost several dollars to buy a single RFID tag, not that long ago, and now you can buy a paper tag for 13 cents on a giant roll because companies like Walmart and Best Buy and all these large big box stores are using it. Manufacturers are using it to track their assets. It's easy, it's cheap, and it's starting to become more and more accessible to the rest of us, not just to those industrial purposes. And getting back to access tracking for a moment, that's what I get to do, which is really fun.  Cool, don't touch that. And actually, there's a couple of other random uses that I wanted to mention. One is wireless access points and smart dust. There's a thing called the Monza X2K. It's a UHF RFID reader. Sorry, that's not it, ignore that. That it holds about 9,000 bits. It can actually be attached to a circuit board and or to a microcontroller and can be used to pass information to the processor, even if the device is turned off. So where is this getting used and why is this handy? So Microsoft is actually starting to use them in some of their tablets. And the idea is, you go into the store, you purchase your product without anybody really even noticing that it's occurring, it gets activated as you're purchasing it. And a signal goes that turned off device and lets it know this was a legitimate purchase, this is now under warranty and joy. However, if you take it and you try to walk out of the store with it, you'll never get to turn it on. That's kind of cool. It's also kind of scary that you can wirelessly transfer information to a turned off computer. There's also a thing called SmartDust, which are tiny RFID chips that are actually used to create wireless sensor networks. These are starting to be used as neural networks to control artificial robotic limbs. I mean, this is wild stuff. And then of course, I think most people are probably familiar with RFID ear tags that are common industrial farming, as well as with your pets. That's a fairly common use. And also people, they're used to track movements of personnel within a building at doors, in elevators, that sort of thing. Which every time I've had this conversation somewhere, of course it's gonna, it brings up that question. There's the privacy question, there's this question. So I did link the Google search to find these. It's great, just pages after pages of Google images. So RFID is cheap, it's becoming more and more common, but it's still not necessarily that understood by the wide populace. The range for reading one of these embeddable RFID chips is centimeters, not feet, not even inches. So the concerns that you might be being tracked by RFID tags are a little bit blunt on a proportion. There's still certain reasons to be cautious. However, the reality is that when you're running around with these networked computers that are getting your location from space in your pockets, I'd be a little more concerned about that. It's a lot easier. But, this is a great picture. I just wanna say, if this still really is a concern for you, let me just give you some advice here. Do, do, do, do, do. Oops, oh that went tiny. Okay, so here we have an RFID tag. As we can see it read, no problem whatsoever. Find yourself some tinfoil. Go ahead. Put on the tinfoil hat. All right, so limitations. There are certain disadvantages to RFID tags. I'm sure that people that are aware of I-beacons and other kind of competing technologies, there's areas where they're just quite a bit better. There's physical limitations. You can't read through aluminum foil. So how are you gonna track people? It's difficult to read them through liquids. There are, there's a thing called signal collision. So if you try to read too many tags in a single spot, things go bad. Just as if you have two readers that are trying to read a single tag, it doesn't know who to communicate to. This causes issues. Now the higher end you get with your hardware, they're more like collision detection there is and the more it works against it. And then of course standards. For the most part, there are standards. Generally when you scan an RFID tag, such as a UHF Gen2 tag, you can look at the first three numbers of the tag and immediately know the manufacturer if you bought it in the US. Everywhere else is just, who knows? And there are privacy concerns. There's a lot of people that have been working on this and one of my personal favorite are zombie tags. So zombie tags are really cool. So you go into Best Buy, Best Buy uses these by the way and say you buy a high end computer. It has an RFID tag in the box that gets picked up at the front of the store. Now you can imagine the potential security issue with that of there's an RFID that might be linked to a product. You leave the store. Is it possible for somebody to pick that up from a distance and know that in your car is say a new MacBook Pro? This is a concern and this is a concern privacy advocates have and I certainly have had as well. So they came up with zombie tags. So as you purchase the product, the tag is said told you're dead and it no longer responds. It might actually pick up a magnetic wave and it will resonate, but it won't respond unless it gets a very specific code in which case it goes, oh sweet, I'm alive again. And of course, why would you do that? Because somebody might return it to a store and you have to add it back into your store ready for sale. I mean, come on, that's awesome. So why Ruby? And why am I just like rambling on about RFID tags and all this goofiness and tinfoil hats. So there's a bit of a lower technical debt. When you looked at this industry 10 years ago, it was like, you got to get your electrical engineer in the room to help you write your software. It was ridiculous. There are libraries now, there are ways of accessing it. The manufacturers are getting better at this. So they're exposing APIs, they're exposing web sockets that makes the language like Ruby perfect. And in my industry personally, where I'm dealing with scientists who oftentimes already know Python, it's not that big of a jump. And I can write a script for them, pass it off and go here, enjoy, and they can change it if they need to in the future. And Ruby makes me happy. It really does. I was a PHP dev for many, many, many years. I was dead inside. And then I found a Ruby. And it brings me absolute joy. It really does. So this is a bit of a high level overview. If you want to talk more in depth, if you want to talk about the frequency ranges for UHF tags versus HF versus NFC tags, I'll be more than happy to tonight. After Matt's talks, let's grab a cup of coffee. We'll spend all the time you want. If you need something written, of course, just buy me a beer and I'll just write it for you. That's fine. Let's actually get to the fun part. Let's talk about the not so practical uses. So this is Betty. Betty is my dog and I am so thankful to the RubyConf organizers for doing all this, but they did say that no, I could not bring her today. So this will be Betty for this demonstration. So Betty has recently, she signed up for Twitter. She's been tweeting a little bit. It's difficult, no thumbs. Oh God. So this is real. Okay, you know, people go and we create goofy things when we throw them up as a demo and a talk. I have an RFID antenna by my back door and I have this software running on a Raspberry Pi because I'm a goof nut because I will let my dog out and I'll go sit down and go, I'm gonna get this test passed real quick and then I'll go let her back in. Then like an hour goes by and I hear the scratching and she gives me that look of just you've betrayed me. I feel terrible. I love my dog. She's absolutely wonderful. So I had to come up with a different solution. And so basically what we have here instead is let's go ahead and run betty.rb. I'm now watching the door for betty. Betty around her collar, the real betty, not this betty, has an RFID chip. So when betty goes outside, whew, whew, whew, whew, whew, whew, whew. Pretty sure that picked it up. Oh my God, you didn't do this to me, did you? Hardware talking, that'd be great. Oh then, I wrote a failsafe in there. Whew, whew, whew, whew, whew, whew, whew. Really? Yeah, that could be it actually. That's not working. Let me examine real quick. Like I said, hardware talks. Okay, I'm talking to it, that's fine. Let's actually go back here. So I'm gonna just sock it. Okay, that tag works. Well, you're dead to me. So, if betty had not betrayed me, what would have occurred and I will just, I'll do a proof of concept here. I'll just go to the page where we can find this. She has been basically tweeting me and let me, I'm not logged in here, never mind. So she's been tweeting me, letting me know, Adam on my outside, please don't forget me. If you visit that website, you will actually visit her Twitter feed. You'll be able to see the past tweets because I'm sloppy. And when I let her back in, it actually just goes ahead and it lets me know how long she's been out. This is the code. If somebody notices why it doesn't work now, feel free to let me know after the fact. We're just basically, we're observing a web socket. That's all we're doing. And then we have a conditional there where we're looking for betty. If we're finding betties RFID tag, we're performing one of two actions. This is one of the reasons I love Ruby. It's just so quick to throw these things out and or break them. Let's move on to the internet of things. I don't like this phrase. I really don't.  Everybody's into this. And so Julie and Chil on an episode of Ruby Rose was quoted as saying, why should your fridge be internet connected?  I mean, what a great point. There's no reason to have a smart fridge. That's why I built a smart trash can, which will work. So, oh my God, you better work. So here's the idea.  Thank you very much, smart trash can.  So I have just gone to the store and I've deleted my test data from last night. And I have, say I wanna log these items so that in the future, I'll know when I run out. I mean, why else would you use this smart trash can, right? All right, so I bought several items with me today. This is, I mean, direct from my house. This is representation of the things that I usually have around. I have, of course, some taco shells. We have some mason jar covers, because I can. I dropped soup. I had something else. Ginseng tea, love tea. And, so you're stool softener. What? So we've scanned our items. I actually, I have a little API connection here that goes up, looks up the barcodes and pulls in the items. I'll show the code for that, I promise. But now, we've stocked our, oh, by the way, does anybody notice the iPhone up there, the 4G cover? That's the taco shells? I don't know why. I submitted a request to them. Not my problem.   I am not even joking.  Look at that. There you go. And now we've disposed all, and now we have a shopping list and anybody can view the list from a web browser. Your loved ones can be out shopping and go, oh, he had that stool softener problem again and they can just go ahead and pick them up. Which that's what loved ones are for. Yeah, I've never talked to a loved one before. So that was the trash can demo. It was actually, the code for it's very simple once again, just listening to a web socket and performing an action in an active record and also hitting this weird funky API that I found someplace that apparently doesn't work completely. Somebody pointed out to me when I had actually discussed this that if you wanna take this a step further, you could actually get RFID bracelets, give them to people and find out who's the most wasteful in your house because there's no better way to win over your family than by tagging them and then harassing them. So there's lots of other things that you can do with RFID. Personally for me, I'm not the best dresser and I've been accused of playing golf because of my bad choices. So I want to come out with a better way to deal with this. So I have an RFID scanner in my bedroom because I'm that guy and it's a fashion portal. Once again, very simple, we're observing a web socket. I'm actually not going to, I'm actually missing the original portal I was gonna bring so I'm not gonna bother with the twice in a row situation but we are going to discuss kind of a pick me up, how to deal with your special clothes for special occasions which I don't know about the rest of you but I live a very rich fantasy life and I personally, I enjoy being entertained and I enjoy it when I can get put into an excellent mood first thing in the morning. So I have a list of clothing, they're rated based on different uses, I don't know, tuxedo, lab coat and so basically the end result of this, let me actually get off of this now. I'm gonna switch this again. Is when I get up in the morning and I grab my clothes and I have a special purpose I am going to get psyched up about it.   When you're walking out like that and to say, you know, you get off and you have an event after. I really thought I had cut those down a little bit, sorry. Oh, I'm sure Evan, you wanna go ahead and guess what this was gonna do? I will do one more and then I will stop feeding on this dead horse because it entertains. I was up in the hotel room like all weekend just playing and having fun with it. And my last one was I know that this tie looks good. Good Lord. Once again, simple, same pattern. We're listening to a web socket. I have been, like I said, there's been some information tweeted out because there's a lot of different devices out there. You can get RFID readers now that are $200 range. Not this setup, but you can get cheap working RFID readers on Alibaba, several other sources. And like I said before, one of the things I didn't cover is I didn't cover writing. I would love to talk to anybody that's interested in that. I did not talk about password locking, kill commands. Didn't cover any of that because the reality is RFID has its own conferences. It's a huge topic and it's just too much to go into.  This language, the happiness that comes with it, I think you can spark creativity. And I think it gives us an opportunity to, instead of beating our heads against the wall, we can explore and we can have fun and we can entertain ourselves when we get up in the morning. So I'm hoping that what everybody takes away from this is that they kind of see there's all this stuff out there that you can go play with and you can make anything that you want. However, I do realize, I said this was about harassing, I'm sorry, not harassing, that's horrible.  Now, okay, admittedly, having this music playing here, that annoys your loved ones at home. The pets, I don't think she's dead to me. But what about your friends? So I want to tell you a story and I actually want to invite you to explore some of the possibilities here a little bit more. This is Dana, Dana Scully. Don't look at me, I didn't name it. This is Coraline Ada M. Keys, Teddy Bear, that she brought with her from Chicago. Dana's missing, by the way. So if after Matz's talk, if anybody wants a little something to do and you're not leaving tonight, this is your starter card, Coraline. Grab some people, I'll give you this barcode scanner. As you reveal the correct RFID tags, it will give you the next clue. I hope for your sake that you get them all. So I think with that, and everyone heard that threat, I think that's it. So thanks for letting me talk, if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. Does anybody want a foil hat? It depends on the kinds of tags. The higher end tags have like a 0.01% failure rate.  Probably somewhere in the 85% range. So generally speaking, what you do is you would load these into like a, I see Brady makes an RFID printer. You start printing the spool, it'll read the tag first, write a corresponding barcode to the tag, verify that it operates and continue printing out.  No, I am. Yeah, it's NFC. So it's in a different range than I've been showing up here. NFC is really interesting, but it has a range of a few inches. I can actually, the tag that's in Betty, who's dead to me, can be read from about 30 feet away with this equipment in theory, I guess not, or not. So there's a big difference there. But yeah, NFC's great. I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff that you can do with it and definitely a lot of fun. If you have an Android phone, it's even more fun, so. Those, I'm sorry, are those? Oh, those are tiles, these are iBeacons. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Talk to Chris Sexton. Oh, the antennas are like 300 each and the reader itself is 15 to 1600. Yeah, this is industrial equipment. This is not home equipment. So I shouldn't like cover that. There is cheaper play equipment out there. And in fact, actually, if you have a Raspberry Pi or Arduino or something of that nature, there are now UHF Gen 2 shields that you can get for them, which is like 50 bucks, which is a little cheaper. They can take a bit of a beating. Most of that comes down to the casing. So one of the things that you find with RFID is things like antenna shape play a big role, which limits how you can package them. You can't mount them to metal as well. So they usually have to be, they're usually backed on paper or they're backed on paper that is then sealed inside of plastic. Betty's, okay, she really is going. So Betty is wearing a fireproof RFID tag and as well as the real Betty, because I don't know why. They put them on steel beams in case they get crushed, they'll survive. I mean, they're usually used in industrial applications where you might see a construction site, piles and piles and piles of beams everywhere. They put RFID tags on them. And they'll go through and they'll read a pile and they'll know exactly what they have and they'll have the GPS coordinates for it and now they have their inventory. So they have to take a beating and those tags in particular last, I think they're guaranteed the last 20 years, but I would suspect they'd probably at least last 50. So yeah, when several tags are trying to respond at the same time, you're gonna get a signal collision. Generally it comes down to the reader, gets to deal with that. Industrial readers like this, I can read about 100 tags at a time within a span of, I don't know, like 500 milliseconds. With lower end, like, hobbyist type readers, you might be able to read five at a time. And it's all about sorting through that. You know, it's like packet collision, similar concept. On the other side of that, if it's caused from two readers reading the same tag, you just screw it up the placement of the readers. You're gonna have to figure that out. Yes and no. So a tag can only respond to one antenna at a time. So generally what you do, actually here's a great, we'll probably enjoy this. The company I worked for, we had actually wired up a anti-doping lab in the Middle East. And what we did was we put RFID readers, which were, they were a very low range reader, into carts. And in the ceilings, like every six feet, more readers and antennas. And then when the athletes would come in and they would give their urine sample, it was sealed in a glass container that had an RFID chip built into it. So now as it would move through the doping lab, they saw who had it because they had a tag. They saw what cart it was on. They saw which floor, which room. Because as you would pass each tag, it would just take a log of it. The only way that you would know though, which direction it was going, is because the previous reader had read it. So this becomes kind of the issue. And because you can't read it with two different ones, you have to play with location and worry a little bit about that. But yeah, I mean, it's the exact kind of project that it's becoming more and more common for. I think we're good. All right, well, once again, thank you everyone.


Healthcare and Workforce Job Training were the hot topics for Senator Al Franken today as he visited the Brainerd area this morning. Senator Franken talked with seniors, pharmaceutical representatives and healthcare professionals at home instead senior care before touring the Avantech plant in Baxter. A very own Clayton Castle followed Franken to both stops and has that story tonight. It was all business and Brainerd on this holiday as United States Senator Al Franken made a stop at home instead senior care to discuss rising pharmaceutical drug prices as this is a top priority for the senator as Congress discusses changes in healthcare. And that we're getting we have a situation where people and we were talking specifically about seniors but people aren't taking the medications that they need to take and that that is not cost effective. Senator Franken met with representatives from pharmaceutical companies, healthcare centers as well as senior citizens to listen and ask questions about what he can take back to Washington as a member of the Senate Health Committee. Franken says that the complexity of the issue is a challenge but it's important to hear from those directly affected by the rising drug costs. Always good to hear these discussions and it always gets into when I say the weeds in this these details that I I have difficulty comprehending I can imagine how difficult it is for the average senior who's or average just average American average Minnesotan who is trying to navigate their prescription drugs. Hours later Senator Franken then switched gears to talk about the current skills gap in America leaving millions of jobs open due to the lack of candidates with the right training. Franken toured Avantech in Baxter which is the largest manufacturer of aluminum rotation molds in the world. Franken praises companies like Avantech that offer a partnership with local schools to allow students to train for jobs that don't necessarily require a four-year degree. Franken says that he is ready to work with the new Trump administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos whom he was highly critical of during the nomination hearing process on moving these programs forward nationwide. I I said to her after she had brought up this she had brought up workforce training and I said look I may not vote for you but I think you're probably going to get confirmed and if you are confirmed I want to work with you exactly on this and she said yes so I'm I'm I look forward to working with her on it. The stop at Avantech in Baxter was part of Senator Franken's advancing career pathways tour where he's focusing on learning new ways to close the nationwide skills gap. In Brainerd Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. The senator Franken's team visited Brainerd last year also to discuss health care though the senator was not there himself. Franken says he will take what he learned today in Brainerd and use it toward future legislation on these issues. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Hello, everyone. So I'm going to talk about IO from PRG and at C0, at the end, and by linear maps. And in particular, I want to focus on this facet of our work, which is a really intriguing insight about power of lattice-free cryptography. This is joint work with Rachel Lin and Amit Sahai. As you all know, lattices have really revolutionized the whole space of cryptography with such amazing applications and over the past 15 years. So we have managed to find this really appealing problem of learning the data. And the reason LWD has been immensely useful is simply because it has very nice worst case and rich case connections. And this problem has the promise of being as secure as several worst case lattice problems. And not only that, turns out it's our frontier problem to build post-quantum crypto. And that's because as far as we know, as of today, we do not know of any quantum advantage for solving learning with error. And it has just really been nothing short of a great success story, starting from conventions such as homomorphic encryption. As you know, homomorphic encryption is people are trying to deploy industry today. It's currently facing industrial push. And at the same time, recently, actually, the works on homomorphic encryption have also won go to price, which is a great thing for the entire field. But not only that, it's been useful in so many different things. And on this slide, I just listed just some of those applications, like a really sub-sample for those applications, attributes, waste encryption, multi-key FHE, functional encryption, and so many different things. So the real question that we want to ask is that the hardness assumption that goes in lattice-based cryptography, are they really essential in building primitives such as homomorphic encryption? Can we build it based on assumptions which have no known connections to lattices, no known reductions to and from lattices, assumptions that still may plausibly be conjectured to be secured in an unlikely, unfortunate event that the lattice-based hardness assumptions end a big broken. And what we show is a really interesting result. We show that you can build not only FHE, but most of the applications on the previous slide, but host of other applications relying on an interesting mix of three assumptions. I'm going to refer it as trio of assumptions. The first assumption is the decision-linear assumption over symmetric bilinear maps, which is a really popular bilinear map assumption. Another is the learning parity with noise over fields with an error probability of L to the minus delta, where delta could be arbitrarily small constant greater than 0, so just barely sub-constant amount of noise in the LPN, and you're using the field version. Third is existence of Boolean PRGs, which are implementable in constant depth, and they expand, say, kappa bits to barely polynomial. So kappa 1 to the epsilon for epsilon greater than 0, arbitrary constant greater than 0. So these three assumptions, we actually need sub-exponential security, meaning for every polynomial time attacker, that one dish or the distinguishing probability in these assumptions is just bounded by some sub-exponential. So we show these three assumptions. If all of them are hard, then you can build FHE, but post of other parameters. So now, before I proceed, I want to address a couple of questions, but first I need to answer. If I'm basing FHE on these kind of three assumptions, are these really incompatible to lattices? I really need to at least justify you that they are actually incompatible to lattices. The second is, how do we even approach such a question? So let's look at the first question. And of course, I can't conclusively answer this question, unless we resolve some longstanding, deep complexity questions. But you can also always reason these things based on our current understanding. So it turns out, from our current understanding, when you at least look at the LPN and the PRGs and HZ0 assumptions, they aren't even known to imply something as basic as public encryption. Whereas on the other hand, if you look at lattice-based hard assumptions such as GAP, SVP, and LWE, they readily imply public encryption. So this kind of indicates that either we currently do not know how to build public encryption or maybe these assumptions are not strong enough to give rise to public encryption. And even complexity theoretically, we know that LWE sits in a structured complexity class of co-AM. Whereas this is simply not known for the LPN and PRG and HZ0, our current understanding is that really they are a mini-crypt style of assumptions. OK. Now, when it comes to the other assumption that we are making, the decision assumption, it's a number theoretic assumption. And as of today, we do not know any deductions, either do or from LSS. It's really an interesting open question if you could show an algorithm such as LLL being applicable to solve for dealing. It'll be really giving new insights about this problem. And it'll also open up doors for solving or coming up with new algorithms for not only dealing but other kind of assumptions out there. OK. So these are really exciting questions in themselves. And I hope that community starts focusing on these problems a little more aggressively and hopefully will be able to see answers to such questions over the next few years or so. OK. So this reasonably answers the first question. How about the second one? How do I even show such a result? Well, one way could be that I go after every single primitive and construct them separately. That'll, of course, be counterproductive. What we do in this work is essentially we build something which not only implies these, but a host of other primitives. And that primitive is, of course, distinguishable with the obfuscation. OK. So our main result is that we can build IO based on these three non-latest problems. And I want to stress that this actually improves our previous result, which appeared last year, where we show that you can construct IO from these three assumptions, additionally relying on some exponential hardness of learning with that. OK. In the rest of this talk, we're going to see how this result actually works. So for the rest of this talk, let's say the circuit that we want to obfuscate is C. It takes a little n number of bits as input and outputs one bit. And throughout this talk, I'm going to denote capital N as the quantity 2 to the power. OK. So it turns out if you want to obfuscate a circuit C like this, there's actually a very intuitive obfuscation scheme, which is simply the truth table. You write down inputs from 1 to capital N, and then the output C of 1 to C of capital N. And this is not going to reveal anything about the circuit that we're obfuscating, right? Other than then, we're going to be able to do it. OK. However, of course, there's a very fundamental flaw with this scheme. The flaw is that the time it takes to obfuscate this is proportional to capital N. So basically, I'm going to have the circuit C capital N times. This doesn't qualify for being a legitimate obfuscation scheme. So on one hand, you have this trivial construction. On the other hand, you'd like to construct an obfuscation scheme where the time it takes should be polynomial in the side of the circuit C. And there's a huge gap right now between the two. So an actual question which has also been asked in the cryptographic community is that can I improve upon the truth table construction a little bit? So can I construct an obfuscation scheme where the time it takes to obfuscate grows like N to the 0.99 and to the 0.01 factor loss? Turns out that in beautiful prior work, it was shown that such an improvement is enough to take us all the way to IO. That if I can construct such a non-privileged scheme, then relying on any assumption that gives rise to public encryption in particular dealing, you can build IO. So for the rest of the stuff, our goal is to actually construct such a non-privileged scheme. At this point, I'd like to remark that our previous work actually doesn't manage to construct this. We construct an obfuscation scheme where the time it takes can grow in N. However, the size is small. And for such non-privileged obfuscation scheme, the only way we know how to go to IO is by additionally relying on IW and that's another source of place where we need to use IW in up to this point. However, in this talk, we only focus on the running time of the obfuscator to be small. So now let's go over our approach. So what is our approach? Well, intuitively, if you think about a non-privileged IO, it's just some sort of an encryption of a special input seed for that. What is C tilde? It just consists of maybe some circuit, some randomness, and something like that. But it's not, and by the way, we want to ensure that the size of C tilde is small, like N to the 0.99. And the running time of this encryption is also small. But it's not just any encryption. It's an encryption which hides everything about the circuit C, except magically, let's see learn functions of the form ux of C tilde equals to C of x for every input x in capital N. OK, so it lets you learn the truth table, but nothing else. In other words, if you could construct such an encryption scheme where you can learn the truth table and nothing else, the size of this encryption or the running time is small, then you would be done. Unfortunately, we are not quite there yet. And the reason is that we haven't really simplified anything. As such, this circuit ux of C tilde equals to C of x is quite complex in that it runs the circuit C itself on x. So we haven't really achieved anything. And current techniques don't let us construct such encryption schemes. So reasonable question to ask here. Can I replace these ux of C tilde with something relatively much more simpler? The answer to that question is yes. Classical works have shown that if you use PRGs and C0 assumption that they are using, then you can effectively replace this with much simpler functions. How simple? So let's say the locality of the PRG that we use is t. So what is locality? Locality is the number. So in PRGs and C0, every output bit actually can depend only on a constant number of inputs. And that number, that constant is local. So what we're shown is that if PRGs with locality exists, then you can replace ux of C tilde with specifically chosen 3D plus 1 local functions. So every output bit just depends on 3D plus 1 bits. Therefore, it's a 3D plus 1 degree polynomial. The minimum value of D that you could choose in literature for such PRGs is 5. Therefore, it turns out that the minimum degree that you can use is 16. So as a consequence of all this, you can come up with an encryption scheme which hides everything about the circuit, except magically lets you learn specifically chosen, specifically designed degree 16 functions once that are given to you by this theorem. The point of these functions is that these functions hide everything about the circuit, except they only let you learn the truth table and nothing else. That's the security property. So now if I can construct such an encryption scheme which allows me to compute where I encrypt C tilde and lets you learn degree 16 functions like this, I'll be done. So the question is, what is known for such an encryption scheme? So it turns out we're not quite there yet. In that, hypothetically speaking, if these were not degree 16, these were degree 2 polynomials. They're not degree 2, but assume that they were the degree 2 polynomials over some prime field. Then actually there is quadratic functional encryption which have been studied for quite some time, which you can base on DLM, and you'd be done. However, the problem is that these functions they are not degree 2, they are actually degree 16 as they are saying. So what do we do in this work? We come up with a way to pre-process C tilde, such that pre-processing is efficient to do. And at the same time, the degree reduces to 2. Ux of C tilde can be computed by degree 2 polynomial over C tilde. So that's what I'm going to talk about. But note that they should already ring a bell. You shouldn't really expect that take arbitrary computation of degree 16. And you shouldn't really expect that you should be able to pre-process such that the pre-processing is simultaneously short and then at the same time, the degree reduces to 2. You shouldn't really expect that. In fact, that's not what we exactly do. We work different kind of pre-processing models. So we allow for a public input. So we're going to take C tilde, pre-processing into two components, a public component, which of course, public component is going to hide C tilde. It has to, because it's public. Then you're going to also have a secret component. We're going to only encrypt the secret component. And now this polynomial is allowed to be constant degree polynomial over the public component, but only degree 2 in the product component. Luckily for us, using Pilinger Maps, you can also build in friction schemes supporting these computations which have a public component and then you evaluate constant degree on the public and degree 2 in the secret. And these schemes go by the name of partially hiding potential encryption, which is actually also built specifically for the context of IO in the line of perfect dimension in this slide. For the rest of this talk, we'll ignore the public component and just focus on degree reduction, like kind of intuitively suggesting how you can reduce the degree to 2. The public component will implicitly come. So how do we do it? This is where we're going to use our key assumption, which is the learning paradigm noise. And remember, the goal is to replace this computation ux of C tilde by quadratic functions. We do it in two steps, roughly. In the first step, we solve this problem approximately. So we almost solve this problem. So how do we do that? We will take this C tilde, pre-process it into another short input s such that for most input x, it will now happen that fx of s is equal to ux of C tilde. Already. It's kind of already solved the problem almost. Now, once we have that, what we do, and this is where, by the way, we can use our theme. But once we have that, we can come up with another polynomial in another short input m. And this polynomial is also degree 2. Such that when I add it to what I already computed, it somehow starts giving correct output on every. And this is where we're going to use a surprisingly simple idea of matrix vectorization. So you see the first part first. The goal is to come up with a degree 2 polynomial, which approximately solves the problem. And this is where, actually, we're going to use the most intuitive idea that you can think of, which is to use Lpn to encrypt C tilde. So remember, we wanted to compute degree 16 polynomial sum C tilde. What we do is simply encrypt it using Lpn. So recall what Lpn says. As plus e, where e is a sparse error of your pseudo-random. So what we're going to do, we're going to sample our coefficient matrix A, multiply it with a short dimension secret S. Then we're going to add sparse noise chosen over Zp. And then we're going to add C tilde. We're going to write it as a vector and then add C tilde. And this way, we have formed a vector B, which is by adding all of them, mod B. Now what's the point of all doing all this? The point is, now A and B actually together, they encrypt C tilde, the hide C tilde. And that is because of the Lpn assumption, because A s plus e is pseudo-random. The point is, it's actually encoded with a secret, which is a very small dimension S compared to the length of C tilde. And this is what makes it helpful for the degree compression step. So let's see how. So we have this equation on the right. Remember, our goal is to find a degree 2 function in another short input S such that for most input X, fx of S is equal to ux of S. So I'm going to just give you the candidate and then I'm going to argue both properties. The candidate is simply ux of B minus A s, which is a degree 16 polynomial in the secret and B and A. So let's observe the second property first. The point is B minus A s is nothing but C tilde. And now remember, ux was a 16 local function only depended on 16 bits of C tilde. And error was actually sparse. It's very sparse. So for most of the inputs X, ux of C tilde plus error is exactly going to be ux of C tilde, just because the error is very sparse. So this answers the same question. Now you want to understand why is it okay to do? Why is it degree 2 in S and constant degree in the public comfort in B and A? Well, the idea behind this is that it's a degree 16 polynomial, so it's degrees in B is 16. It's degree in A is also 16 and it's degree in S is also 16. We don't care about its degree in P and A because constant degrees are fine. In S, it's degree 16. However, note that S is very small in dimension. Therefore, I can trivially quadratize it. So when I interpret it in another variable, capital S, which consists of all monomials in small s of degree at most 8. In that variable, it's actually degree 2. And as a consequence of this, they're good because if S is very small, capital S is going to be small. Just to give you a sense, dimension of S is like n to the point 1. Capital S is going to be at most n to the point 8. And this kind of complete start, given why we managed to find a polynomial which approximately computes it on every input text. So now how do we fix the problem? How do we do the second step? That's really intuitive as well. So remember what you want to do. We want to compute this function, right? And what we have managed to do, we have managed to do this function. And if I can come up with a polynomial which computes the difference of these two, then I'll be good, okay? So observe that this is going to be like a sparse vector because it affects already approximate on most of inputs. And the point is that if I look at this function, it's very sparse. So it can effectively arrange it as a matrix and then kind of factorize that matrix. So matrix is going to be sparse. It's going to be like low rank and low rank matrices can be factor, okay? And you will get a compressed M, okay? So as a consequence of this, you can come up with a degree two function which computes the difference. And then you can add it and that way you will get the correct term. Okay, so this really completes more like roughly, and of course I'm hiding a lot of details from other ones. Just wanted to give you the key intuition. So however there's a problem with it in the argument that I showed, the time it takes to pre-process this public and secret part is actually going to be capital N because remember, we are computing the difference and then compressing it, the time it takes to do that is going over every input capital N, right? So the time it's going to take is capital N. So this doesn't solve the problem. And this additionally requires LWE if you want to make this idea work. The key inside of this paper is that if I wanted to do this computation for many, many circuits, let's say K circuits, it turns out that we can actually amortize in K. So we can come up with the way to pre-process such that the time it takes is like N times K to the one minus epsilon for some epsilon plus polynomial in K. Okay, and turns out that this saving in K is enough to get us all the way to I1. That's one of the main contributions for this paper. Now, of course I'm not going to, in a lot of details for this, the key argument is really combinatorial and it realizes on exact circuit implementation for specific RAM programs such as lookups and sorting networks and so on and so forth. I'm not going to go over that in the stock. Okay, and with that, I'd like to thank you for listening in. And I'd like to leave you at some open questions, interesting open questions. So one of the most interesting open questions can I construct FHE from these assumptions like non lattice assumptions, but in a direct manner. Right now I'm going through IO and it's really just a feasibility result. And the question is, can violiner maps and like these assumptions somehow be leveraged to give rise to FHE directly? And then the second question in which I also kind of throughout the talk I mentioned is just beautiful complexity theoretic questions that came along connecting lattice-based problems and other kinds of problems that exist up there. With that, I'd like to thank you.


politics and land in Hawaii with Dennis Isaki on Think Tech Hawaii. Today we'll be speaking with Ricky Cassidy, Hawaii Real Estate Specialist among other things. He's often called upon by the press and government officials and developers with respect to housing developments. He's a part native Hawaiian and attended Puneho White Prep Academy and other major colleges, although I didn't see any documentation. Ricky, welcome to politics and land in Hawaii on Think Tech. Please tell us a little more about yourself and your involvement with land and housing. Thank you Dennis. You and I have been friends for a while. You're always controversial and you always ask probing questions, so it's a pleasure to try and think on my feet. But as you look back over our relationship, it was based on land because as a surveyor you took good care of the land that my great-grandmother has up here on Kauai. Going back from that, which started in 2007, 30 years ago I started doing housing research for major developers, Castle Cook and Gentry and then went out on my own afterwards, hung up my shingle and 30 years of working for most landowners, most big developers, builders, public agencies and that includes the feds, HUD, that sort of thing. And then, yes, I've been a trustee for 35 years first for my stepfather, Henry Luce III, whose father started Time Magazine and then for Mary Lucas, who my dad formed this trust over 100 years ago. When I look back at what drives me, it is the case growing up here, I was a surfer and I just loved what was. Dad made sure that I left the islands one way or the other, actually it was my own choice, but it was a hard one because he said you couldn't understand Hawaii until you leave it. And so that's when I went to Washington DC, went to university, lived in London for three years, came back to DC, lived in San Francisco and then finally came back to Hawaii, where I scrambled to get a job, Gentry Holmes hiring me. That was right at the start of the affordable housing policy, which was, well I look back, I'd say it starts about 1980, which HHFDC, which in part was land reform, which as you remember had to do with land monopolies. My great grandmother did have a small land monopoly up in New, Leesold, Fee Simple. It wasn't Fee Simple, it started at Leesold and then dad converted it to Fee Simple in order to pay debt duties. So when my grandmother, great grandmother died, so I have some experience with Leesold, I have some experience with development. As I come to you today, what you really wanted to do is say, you know, hey Ricky, what is going on with politicians and housing through in land? Land you have to have because that's the basis of wealth. That's the start of any project because that's supposed to have value now in affordable housing. Land cannot have value if you want to build affordable housing. Ricky, let me ask the question. What is affordable housing the number one issue today? Politicians, they all talk about that. Is it business or policy or the market? Politicians want to get elected. They want to mirror what the concerns of their constituents are and over the 30, 40 years that it's been in place, they haven't solved it to the satisfaction of their constituents. They may never do that because land in Hawaii is limited. This is an election year, so they talk about it and they come up with solutions and you have a wide range of different types of solutions based on whether the person seeing it comes from a policy or political background in which they see things just as, oh, let's regulate it. Let's set up a set of rules and make them go. The other point of view is a profit. You can't make anything without profit. The government does take some of its revenues and cross subsidizes housing with our taxes. The way I look at it is it's a market. It has to function free market. Now housing is not free. It's the most over-regulated industry that I can think of. In regulation and in politics, you're always trying to balance getting the biggest bang for the buck as well as getting elected. You mentioned HFDC. It was on one of the original boards when they started Kapolei, probably the history of that. But I remember the market started at that time. They showed only several thousand demand, much lower than the actual demand. Kapolei is booming now. Were you involved with Kapolei development? Kapolei was a giveaway by dads. Dad was a trustee at the Campbell estate and gave it away in order to get the rest of the regulations for the city of Kapolei, the commercial and industrial stuff. It was a smart move for a landowner because they developed their property and upvalued it by dint of all of that. It was early days and some of the regulations on it were inexact. The one thing I want to mention to people is that when affordable housing started, and I wasn't at Campbell, I was at Castle and Cook, there used to be fights breaking out for people who got in line to buy a house because you could only have so many houses. You put out 60 houses and if you number 61 in line, your interest, which was a monetary benefit of $100,000, would be to cut in line and take 59 and make them 60, that sort of thing. That's the basic reality of affordable housing. There is a benefit. What is it? How do you generate it and how do you share it? Because housing in Hawaii is such a profitable, put it another way. Because there's such a big demand for land in Hawaii on which you can enjoy one of the highest quality of lives in the world, you got just tons of people crowding in here to buy. At the same time, you have locals feeling crowded out by all these other people buying, including themselves because lots of locals are investors as well as homeowners because it makes them money. Still sticking with that time with original HFDC, the legislature mandated the land use commission. 60% affordable for the developers getting land use change approval. They went in for Act 15, which is a fast track for affordable. But that thing included the low income, but it had market homes too. So I think that they now expedited some of the market homes, which we don't have today. Do you see anything like that, profitable? No, there's a couple parallels. One would be why did you choose 60% because other times it's been 70%. It was like the way they chose which of the vacation rentals, how many there should be. It wasn't based on data and that's often the case. It was guys getting in a room and saying, we've got to pass something out. So that's number one. Policy at the start was not data driven and it's not that much anymore, although there's a lot more to it. The other thing is that 60-40 split would mean is that the 60% sold at market would have to subsidize the 40%. And usually you lose money on your 30%. You break even on your 60% and you kind of make a little money, but not a market return on your 80%. Now, these are all the different flavors of affordable housing, which makes it a hard thing to talk about. But if you just follow the money and say, how much money do you need to produce the most affordable housing? Then that's a good basis for setting policy because the private sector is going to say, this is how much it costs and we're not going to lose money. And the public sector is going to say, well, this is how much we have and it can't solve the whole problem. So let's negotiate over a term sheet that includes shared appreciation buyback and that sort of thing. Now, all the early stuff in the early days has been evolving as anybody of regulations does in a political context, so that the next year you tweak it this way, tweak it that way. Up until a couple years ago, it had gotten tweaked so bad by just an onerous level of regulations and regulators that it was very hard for affordable housing really wasn't doing very well. And then I think EGAY came in and part of the problem was that recession we had the Lehman thing where the legislature rated all the money in the housing fund to pay for other social services. Never really recovered that until just, you know, last five, 10 years. And then now it's flipped around so that now we have a ton of money and what do we do with it? So my fear is we're not going to be judicious and not get the best bang for a buck, meaning the most amount of affordable housing for the most amount of people. The income class that's really hurting is the workforce guys because they don't get any subsidies.  We had like with that split that and one quote, like you say, subsidizing the other. I think that worked a little bit.  We had what, the 180 page report in the summit on top of everything else, you know, it takes a lot of time to the developers, you know, for housing. Time is money and, you know, during that time people are out of houses. And the cost goes up and up, like Oakland, it takes four months to go through the process in San Francisco, 23 months and Hawaii is one of the most regulated. And the problem there is there's so many layers and it's hard to get down to the actual part of that organization that's doing it and get them to change because most organizations like to regulate, it gives them something to do, their reason for being. And the other problem is that whoever's doing it is being seen to take away something that was supposed to be good. It's pretty easy to show it's bad to increase the cost of housing. But a lot of times what happens is that the idea that has a negative impact, impact is the new word that I'd like everybody to use because every time you propose or look at a regulation or propose it, you ought to ask what the impact is. And for instance, there's a piece of law passed this session saying that all affordable housing parking should be fully wired for electric cars. And the parking, as you well know, is a huge cost of affordable housing and prevents a ton of more affordable housing. And if you give up a little parking, you get a lot more units at a lot different price points. So for the benefit of forcing you to wire the whole parking line for what, 2%, 3% of the cars may be electric.  Don't do that. Rather, you put it next to public transportation on the premise that people making $50,000, $60,000 a year and sending their kids to school for $10,000 or whatever. They just don't have that kind of money. And if they were to take that, what they earn and buy a car, then they can't afford regular housing, which actually is a better deal for them because then they could build equity. And so certain regulations are bad, but so a lot of the politicians this time around are just running on the campaign of cut red tape, cut red tape, blah, blah, blah. I'm happy to do that. But I would be, I would counsel them, you know, hey, what makes a democracy great is when people have a goal. And if your goal is affordable housing, you ought to figure out how to increase the supply. Yes, regulation will help it.  So are you saying that you're in favor of more housing in Kakaako, you know, the dense element there as opposed to a new Kapolei? Yeah, good question. Here's my spin on that. I want as much affordable housing next to the rail stations along the whole rail line that then gives the people living there a cheap, easy transportation all over the place, and it cross-subsidizes rail because you're going to get ridership.  The rail needs to go to Koalina because a ton of people working in Koalina needs to go a little bit further, blah, blah, blah. Kakaako is set up to do that, but Kakaako is in the area where it costs a ton of money just to put a shovel in the ground, and therefore any little inch is look at the impact. You know, my cost-effective solution is run the rail to Koalina where everybody goes to work. They can go from Kalihi or Kakaako rather than take it, you know, at 10 times the price to Alamoana and beyond. So that's one. So the people working at Koalina going to be living downtown and catching the train out there? Well, if you put in the two more hotels and then another 4,000 homes on the resort itself, and then on top of that, Kalailoa has all that land that's empty. Okay, that's low-cost land, and that equates to affordable housing, whether it's regulated affordable or just affordable market housing. But that's what I'm saying, you know, you can build something, you can put a shovel in Kakaako if and when the rail gets built. It's much easier to make a case for the rail to be built going past these Kapolei when you have, you know, jobs and people living there. You want them to go both ways. So yeah, you asked a good question. Is it Kakaako or Kalailoa Kapolei? I'd say both. Yeah, okay. That's a good answer, I think. We got, you know, now in Kauai, we see a lot of billionaires put it bluntly buying large parts of the land here. Some of them buy whole subdivisions and unsubdivided, getting less for the locals. Do you see Kupnup, I think it was in the 80s, at Kinshore, Kawamoto came here and bought a whole property.   The truth of the matter is, again, going back to the desirability, Hawaii is a magnet for wealthy people, the crowd locals out. And the mechanism by which you take the benefits or the reality of that, but also the benefits of tourism because it's the same thing. How do you judiciously give a great visitor experience in the hotels as well as support the second home owners and get the biggest bang out of them to give to locals for affordable housing school, all the good things. Rich people usually are pretty generous, but their problem is they set themselves apart from everybody else. And that isn't the local experience. I mean, the more the merrier. We have a group Thursday-Thursday where we all sit and talk and yell at each other. And what you want going forward is venues like that where rich people at Kikuyu will look and share with local halos or whatever. And it's not going to happen if locals are suffering poor quality of life and feel it. So the market reigns in free land. Politics can take political land, government land, like under the schools. I mean, like Kalee has three schools on mayor right. And nobody's living there. There's a bunch of agencies, counties, that just hold on to their land and don't share it. No, you can't use it. It's just sitting fallow and it looks like, looks like, looks like, and it doesn't serve anybody. So going forward, yeah, I need a mechanism to take the benefits. Do an impact analysis. Where's the biggest benefit? The biggest benefit comes out of tourism and second home owners. That's our industry.  But whatever the benefits you can get, you can see tax propositions on this island and saying let's let's up the tax on these guys, which is a good idea. But then at the same time, if you then run around and say cut the number of vacation rentals like they're doing on a while, you lose that tax income. And you don't have the gasoline to run a good policy. Do you see any downturn in the future? Yeah, I see inflation interest rates jacking on up. Russia and China are showing, you know, they can be crazy.  We printed money to get out of the COVID. And now that we're on the other side of it, we have all these asset bubbles and housing is one of them. So housing is the topic of, you know, the day because of interest rates going up and the prices going up. Now, if I wanted, if I could play God, I'd say let's do a sustainable housing policy. Let's look at what you where you can have an effect. One of the effects is they gave all the money to DHHL. And my hope is that that is used in a way that you look out through three or four generations and you say what we do now will benefit those people. You deal with the declining blood quantum of the constituency. So you're going to have to lower that. You have to deal with taking the money and putting it in DHH land that will earn a return like they have out in Kampalei with the Bartolo shopping center. It's the only one they have. They're starting someone something in town as well. My fear is that all that money is under the guise of we're doing something will not be vetted for its cost effectiveness. Now, having said that, if you want to get elected, my premise is that people will support a positive goal like putting a man on the moon, America got behind and the same can be done here. But we have a skeptical public. We look at politicians. We look at landowners. We look at tourists and we go out. I just look at the history. I don't feel like things have gotten better, which is why usually big changes happen when things get worse and then radical things happen. You mentioned China and Russia. Recently, there's a Chinese developer. They're selling their property. Is it Makar? Yeah, they sold it to Stanford or they sold it. Stanford car was developing it now. Now that they have a replacement developer. Makar is a good place to live. I think that's it. I like that place. Okay. And you're saying because of inflation and all that, but then what about the other hand, the stock market goes down? So won't they be investing in real estate instead? Well, yeah, when all the asset classes from stocks bonds go up, usually real estate gets put into it now. When stocks and bonds go up, what you usually see is the real estate that appeals to the emotions for rich people getting snapped up. When the market goes down, they go to real estate for income. So industrial properties in a good industry. So that's what makes real estate just interesting because it lasts forever and it can generate a different income stream depending on the use and depending on the age. But yeah, people are trying to buy industrial land like crazy for the income. Yeah. It's keeping you busy on your marketing side. Yeah, we are running out of time. We got about a minute left. You got any famous last words? Well, I want people to be thoughtful, not just the politicians, but people voting for them. I'll look at the character of the politicians, their orientation, their effectiveness. They ought to think in the long run because clearly the tide goes in and out, but those of us who are in Hawaii want to be here forever. I want our kids to be here forever, and we want a quality of life to last forever. If we don't take care of that, then yeah. So if I was a politician, I'd shoot for the moon, but I'd make it cost-effective, check the impacts. So you're running for office end of time soon? If I did, I would support the middle class and I would say these are the guys that need help, and then I'd rationalize a bunch of government land ownerships and policies, including the one you mentioned about regulation. I have made a lot of people laugh when I told them I was going to run for OHA, and that my intent was to run, but not get elected because I'd probably be a bad administrator, but the attractiveness of talking policy, which you've seen me do now for 70% of this program, is great, and I do it because I think about this on one other people to think. Okay, thanks for your insight there. Mahalo to our wonderful guests, Ricky Cassidy, and Mahalo to the viewers on Think Tech Hawaii. If you like the Think Tech pre-media shows, please help support this nonprofit platform with a donation. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.


Hello friends, I am Sanjay Gupta. In this video, I am going to demonstrate you how you can compare two numbers to find out which one is maximum before starting. You can note my information. You can connect with me by following these details. You can subscribe my YouTube channel by clicking on the icon which is available on my videos. You can download my app Techimage that is available on Google Play. Now coming on to the topic. Here I will be demonstrating how you can compare two numbers. For that purpose, I am declaring two variables. First variable is n1. Then input function, it will ask value for first number. Then for reading second number, I am using again input function. It will ask second number from user. So input function is responsible for displaying a message for user and it can read the entered value and that values will be stored inside the variable. Here I have used two variables n1 and n2. n1 will receive first number and n2 will receive second number. Now you have to focus that the entered value in python will be received as string input. Now I have to convert the input into integer. For that purpose I have used this statement which is written at line number three. Here I have converted n1 into integer and the result is again stored inside n1. Same for n2. n2 equals to int of n2. Now both the values are converted into integers. Now I can use if statement for comparison. This is first message. If this condition is true, n1 is greater than n2, then print function will display first number is greater than second. Otherwise else it will display second number is greater than first. Friends this way you can implement if else statements to compare two numbers which are entered by the user. This is the complete python script which is comparing values of two variables. Now I am saving this file. This is saved inside test script.py which is saved in d drive. Inside d drive I have folder practice and in practice folder this script is saved with test script.py. Py is the extension of python file. Now I have to open command prompt. Here I am shifting into d drive. Then in practice folder which is available in d drive. Now I am typing python test script.py and I am pressing enter key. It is asking for two numbers. I am entering first number 10 and second number 20. You can see the output. It is showing second number is greater than first. I am again executing this script. This time I am entering 20 as first number and 10 as second number. You can see the output. This time it is showing first number is greater than second. Friends this way you can compare input of two values which are available inside two variables with the help of if else statement. This is the simple demonstration for comparison of two numbers. You can implement this python script in your system so that you can understand how you can compare two numbers using if else. If you want to watch more programming related videos you can subscribe my youtube channel by clicking on the link which is available on the video. You can download my app Takimace that is available on google play. You can connect with me by following these details. Thank you for watching this video.


My fellow Americans, I want to begin tonight by telling a story, a true story of courage and hope. It concerns a small nation to our south, El Salvador, and the struggle of its people to throw off years of violence and oppression and live in freedom. Nearly four years ago, I addressed you as I do tonight and asked for your help in our efforts to support those brave people against a communist insurgency. That was one of the hardest fought political battles of this administration. The people of El Salvador we heard weren't ready for democracy. The only choice was between the left-wing guerrillas and the violent right. And many insisted that it was the guerrillas that truly had the backing of the people. But with your support, we were able to send help in time. Our package of military aid for El Salvador passed Congress by only four votes, but it passed. Some of you may remember those stirring scenes as the people of El Salvador braved communist gunfire to turn out in record numbers at the polls and vote emphatically for democracy.  Well that's the voice of a people determined to be free. That is the voice of the people of Central America. In these last several years there have been many such times when your support for assistance saved the day for democracy. The story of what has happened in that region is one of the most inspiring in the history of freedom. Today, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, as well as Costa Rica, choose their governments in free and open democratic elections. The United Courts protect their human rights and their people can hope for a better life for themselves and their children. It is a record of success that should make us proud, but the record is as yet incomplete. This is a map of Central America. As I said, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica are all friendly and democratic. In their midst, however, lies a threat that could reverse the democratic tide and plunge the region into a cycle of chaos and subversion.  But their most important ally is the Soviet Union. With Cuban and Soviet blockade, Nicaragua is being transformed into a beachhead for aggression against the United States. It is the first step in a strategy to dominate the entire region of Central America and threaten Mexico and the Panama Canal. That's why the cause of freedom in Central America is united with our national security. That is why the safety of democracy to our South so directly affects the safety of our own nation. But the people of Nicaragua love freedom just as much as those in El Salvador. You see, when it became clear the direction the Sandinistas were taking, many who had fought against the old dictatorship literally took to the hills, and like the French resistance that fought the Nazis in World War II, they have been fighting the communist Sandinistas ever since. These are the forces of the democratic resistance. The communist government named them Contras, but the truth is, they're freedom fighters. Their tenacious struggle has helped by the surrounding democracy's precious time, and with their heroic efforts, they are helping give freedom a chance in Nicaragua. A year and a half ago, Congress first approved significant military aid for the freedom fighters. Since then, they've been winning major victories in the field and doing what many at first thought impossible, bringing the communist Sandinistas to the negotiating table and forcing them to negotiate seriously. In the beginning, the United States has made every effort to negotiate a peace settlement bilaterally, multilaterally, in other diplomatic settings. My envoys have traveled to the region on at least 40 different occasions, but until this last year, these negotiations dragged on fruitlessly because the Sandinistas had no incentive to change. Last August, however, with mounting pressure from the freedom fighters, the Sandinistas signed the Guatemala peace plan. This time, the leaders of the four Central American democracies refused to let the peace negotiations become an empty exercise. When Nicaragua missed the second deadline for compliance, the democratic leaders courageously stood as one to insist that the Sandinistas live up to their signed commitments to democratic reform. Their failure to do so, said the democratic leaders, was the biggest obstacle to peace in the region. The Sandinistas are clearly feeling the pressure and are beginning to take limited steps.  Tomorrow the House of Representatives will be voting on a $36 million bill, a support package to the freedom fighters. 90 percent is for non-lethal support, such as food, clothing, medicine, and the means to deliver it. 10 percent is for ammunition. That amount will be suspended until March 31st to determine whether the Sandinistas are taking irreversible steps toward democracy. I'm hopeful this will occur. However, if there is no progress toward a negotiated ceasefire, I will make a decision to release these additional supplies, but only after weighing carefully and thoroughly the advice from Congress and the democratic presidents of Central America. Now, over the past several days, I've met with many members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, concerning my proposal. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I will tomorrow send a letter to the Congressional leadership taking a further step. At the appropriate time, I will invite Congress to act by what is called a sense of Congress resolution on the question of whether the government of Nicaragua is in compliance with the San Jose Declaration. If Congress adopts such a resolution within 10 days containing this finding, then I will honor this action and withhold deliveries of ammunition in this package. One thing is clear. Those brave freedom fighters cannot be left unarmed against communist tyranny. Now, some say that military supplies aren't necessary, that humanitarian aid is enough, but there's nothing humanitarian about asking people to go up against Soviet helicopter gunships with nothing more than boots and bandages. There's no vote scheduled tomorrow in the Soviet Union on continued assistance to the Sandinistas. That assistance will continue, and it won't be just humanitarian. Our policy of negotiations backed by the freedom fighters is working. Like the brave freedom fighters in Afghanistan who have faced down the Soviet Army and convinced the Soviet Union that it must negotiate its withdrawal from their country, the freedom fighters in Nicaragua can win the day for democracy in Central America. But our support is needed now. Tomorrow will be too late. If we cut them off, the freedom fighters will soon begin to wither as an effective force. Then with the pressure lifted, the Sandinistas will be free to continue the consolidation of their totalitarian regime. The military buildup inside Nicaragua and communist subversion of their neighbors. Even today, with the spotlight of world opinion focused on the peace process, the Sandinistas openly boast that they are arming and training Salvadoran guerrillas. We know that the Sandinistas who talk of a revolution without borders reaching to Mexico have already infiltrated guerrillas into neighboring countries. Then what they'll do if the pressure is lifted? What will be our response as the ranks of the guerrillas in El Salvador, Guatemala, even Honduras and unarmed Costa Rica begin to swell and those fragile democracies are ripped apart by the strain? By then the freedom fighters will be disbanded, refugees or worse. They won't be able to come back. Let me explain why this should be and would be such a tragedy. It's a danger to our national security. If we return to the map for a moment, we can see the strategic location of Nicaragua. Close to our southern border, within striking distance of the Panama Canal, domination of Central America would be an unprecedented strategic victory for the Soviet Union and its allies and they're willing to pay for it. Cubans are now in Nicaragua constructing military facilities, flying combat missions and helping run the secret police. The Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc countries have sent over $4 billion in arms and military aid and economic aid, 20 times the amount that the United States has provided the democratic freedom fighters. If Congress votes tomorrow against aid, our assistance will very quickly come to an end. But Soviet deliveries won't. We must ask ourselves why the Soviet Union, beset by an economic crisis at home, is spending billions of dollars to subsidize the military buildup in Nicaragua, backed by some 2,000 Cuban and Soviet Bloc advisors. The Sandinista military is the largest Central America has ever seen. Warsaw Pact engineers are completing a deep water port on the Caribbean coast, similar to the naval base in Cuba for Soviet submarines. And the recently expanded airfields outside Managua can handle any aircraft in the Soviet arsenal, including the Bear Bomber, whose 5,200-mile range covers most of the continental United States. But this is only the beginning. Last October, a high-ranking Sandinista officer, Roger Miranda, defected to this country, bringing with him a series of five-year plans drawn up among the Sandinistas, Soviets and Cubans for a massive military buildup in Nicaragua extending through 1995. These plans, which Major Miranda makes clear are to be put into effect whether the freedom fighters receive aid or not, call for quadrupling the Sandinista armed forces to 600,000 or one out of every five men, women and children in the country. As I speak to you tonight, several thousand Nicaraguans are taking courses in the Soviet Union and Cuba to learn to operate new high-tech missiles, artillery and other advanced weapons systems. Of grave concern is the fact that the Soviets have scheduled delivery of Soviet MiG aircraft to Nicaragua. Now if these were just the claims of one defector, no matter how highly placed and credible, some might still find reason to doubt. But even before Major Miranda's revolutions were made public, his old boss, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, confirmed them in a public speech, adding that if Nicaragua chose to acquire MiGs, it was none of our business. The introduction of MiGs into Nicaragua would be so serious an escalation that members of both parties in the Congress have said the United States simply cannot tolerate it. The Miranda revolutions can't help but make a skeptical of the recent Sandinista promises to abide by the Guatemala Peace Accord. The argument is made that the freedom fighters are unnecessary, that we can trust the Sandinistas to keep their word. Can we? It's important to remember that we already have a negotiated settlement with the Sandinistas. The settlement of 1979 that helped bring them to power, in which they promised in writing democracy, human rights, and a non-aligned foreign policy. Of course they haven't kept a single one of those promises, and we now know that they never intended to. Barely two months after assuming power, the Sandinista leadership drafted a secret report called the 72-hour document. Without landing their plans to establish a communist dictatorship in Nicaragua and spread subversion throughout Central America. This is the document in which they detailed their deception. It is now part of the public record available for all to see. One day after that 72-hour meeting, President Carter, unaware of their secret plans, received Daniel Ortega here in the White House and offered his new government our friendship and help, sending over a hundred million dollars in aid more than any other country at the time and arranging for millions more in loans. The Sandinistas say it was U.S. belligerents that drove them into the hands of the Soviets. Some belligerents. A short while later the Sandinista commandanties made their first official trip to Moscow and signed a communique expressing support for the foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union. But that, one might say, was only the paperwork. Already Soviet military planners were in Nicaragua and the Sandinista subversion of El Salvador had begun, all while our hand was extended in friendship. This is not a record that gives one much faith in Sandinista promises. Recently Daniel Ortega was up in Washington again, this time talking to members of Congress, giving them assurances of his commitment to the Guatemala peace process. But we now know that at the same time, back in Managua, the Sandinistas were drawing up plans for a massive military escalation in Nicaragua and aggression against their neighbors. Now as the Sandinistas see the vote on aid to the freedom fighters nearing, they are making more promises. Well, forgive my skepticism, but I kind of feel that every time they start making promises, like that fellow in the Isuzu commercial, there should be subtitles under them telling the real story. One may hope they're sincere this time, but it hardly seems wise to stake the future of Central America and the national security of the United States on it. The freedom fighters are our insurance policy, in case the Sandinistas once again go back on their word. The Sandinistas themselves admit that the limited steps they've taken to comply with the peace accords here promised in order to influence the vote in Congress. Was there ever a better argument for aid? Even now, with the entire world watching, the Sandinistas have harassed and beaten human rights activists and arrested several leaders of the peaceful democratic opposition, including the editor of La Prensa. Before being interrogated, some were sealed for over an hour in metal lockers, three feet square on the floor and seven feet high. Said one commandant of the opposition, they are, quote, scorpions. They should return to their holes, or we will crush them. Well, just a short while ago, the Sandinistas made their true intentions clear. Even if they were forced to hold elections and lost, they said they would never give up power. Responding to the estimate that the Sandinistas have no more than 15 percent popular support, another commandant he responded by saying that's all right. We can hold on to power with only 5 percent. Now, these are not the words. These are not the actions of democratic reformers. Those who want to cut off the freedom fighters must explain why we should believe the promises the Sandinista communists make trying to influence Congress, but not the threats they make at home. They must explain why we should listen to them when they promise peace and not when they talk of turning all Central America into one, quote, revolutionary fire and boast of carrying their fight to Latin America and Mexico. If we cut off aid to the freedom fighters, then the Sandinistas could go back to their old ways. Then the negotiations can become once again what they were before. High blown words and promises and convenient cover while the Sandinista communists continue the consolidation of their dictatorial regime and the subversion of Central America. During the last vote in Congress, many who voted for aid to the freedom fighters set conditions on further assistance. They said the freedom fighters must broaden their leadership. They have. They said the freedom fighters must show that they are a viable fighting force and win support from the people. But the latest victory in the Las Menas area proved that for several weeks, nearly 7,000 freedom fighters maneuvered in secret throughout the country, something they could only have done with support of the population. In one of the largest military operations in Nicaraguan history, they overran enemy headquarters, routed army barracks, blew up ammunition dumps, petroleum tanks, and other military targets. At one point, they captured a warehouse where grain was being hoarded for the army. The freedom fighters opened the doors and invited the hungry people of the area to take what they needed. The freedom fighters are inside Nicaragua today because we made a commitment to them. They have done what Congress asked. They have proven their effectiveness. Can we as a moral people, a moral nation, withdraw that commitment now and leave them at the mercy of the Sandinista regime or turn them forever into refugees? Refugees from the country for which they are making such a heroic sacrifice? What message will that send to the world, to our allies and friends in freedom? What message will it send to our adversaries? That America is a fair-weather friend, an unreliable ally? Don't count on us because we may not be there to back you up when the going gets a little rough. By fighting to win back their country, the freedom fighters are preventing the permanent consolidation of a Soviet military presence on the American mainland. By fighting for their freedom, they're helping to protect our national security. We owe them our thanks, not abandonment. Some talk of containment, but we must not repeat the mistake we made in Cuba. If containment didn't work for that island nation, how much less effective will it be for an expansionist Soviet ally on the American mainland? I will tell you truthfully tonight. There will be no second chances tomorrow. If Congress votes downade, the freedom fighters may soon be gone and with them all effective pressure on the Sandinistas. Our goal in Nicaragua is simple. Peace and democracy. Our policy has consistently supported the efforts of those who seek democracy throughout Central America and who recognize that the freedom fighters are essential to that process. So, my fellow Americans, there can be no mistake about this vote. It is up or down for Central America. It is win or lose for peace and freedom. It is yes or no to America's national security. My friends, I have often expressed my belief that the Almighty had a reason for placing this great and good land, the New World, here between two vast oceans. Protected by the seas, we have enjoyed the blessings of peace free for almost two centuries now from the tragedy of foreign aggression on our mainland. Help us to keep that precious gift secure. Help us to win support for those who struggle for the same freedoms we hold dear. In doing so, we will not just be helping them, we will be helping ourselves, our children, and all the peoples of the world. We'll be demonstrating that America is still a beacon of hope, still a light under the nations. Yes, a great opportunity awaits us. An opportunity to show that hope still burns bright in this land and over our continent, casting a glow across the centuries, still guiding millions to a future of peace and freedom. Thank you. God bless you.