Yeah, we're here to listen again One of the big problems of today is how to communicate where I'd All of those gumshoe people sniffing up behind you including picking up your meter data from the commercial side of Whatever the system is and This is another try far right if I rightly informed this is Problem is with most of the stuff you still You're either have to be linked to some GSM number or you have to have a wifey around you need some IP connection Obviously people have been thinking about that and This is Thorsten this full name is Thorsten Grote Excuse me. I'm pronouncing it the German way and He's part of the Briar team since two years He's originally from Germany. He's a free software activist and Programmer and he's lives in Brazil Envy Where's your tan by the way Okay, so let's have a big hand for Thorsten Gote who's gonna present briar to you Thank you very much all for coming here today for taking time out of your busy Congress schedule. I hope you had a great Congress so far and Thanks for coming to hear about briar. So let's get right into it What is briar? Essentially briar is a communication tool you could say it is been developed being developed since 2012 so quite some time and Some of you might be thinking now Yet another messenger like don't we have too many of those already and I totally agree like Like who of you have at least five messengers on your phone that you use to connect to people Yeah, it's crazy like yeah, I think it's a third of the audience who has that so I Can only recommend everybody don't build yet another secure messenger unless it's substantially different from all the others that we have so far and To motivate a little bit why we need yet another one Let's look at some of the threats that people who use messengers are facing Yes before we got into this sorry, I forgot this slide Briar is focused on security and Resilience and I think especially this resilience part is something new and we hear in the resilience track of the chaos communications Congress So this will be important as well So now back to the threats we are facing when we use communication over the internet the classical one is eavesdropping like they read our messages, but we want confidentiality and if dropping has been largely solved by end-to-end encryption Essentially means at the source of the communication the messages encrypted and at the destination it is decrypted and nobody in between Not even any servers on the way can read the content. That's great. And there have been some awesome advances in the last year May that made end-to-end encryption usable for everybody So you don't see any keys anymore. You don't need to sign anything. It just works It gets out of your way and this is the way it should be the only problem of end-to-end encryption is that it still needs more adoption and I'm especially looking at you. Hello Facebook messenger and telegram Where end-to-end encryption is available, but not activated by default And that's something that I hope will change in the future as well Next problem metadata You're here at the Congress. You probably know all about it. So I will be brief Metadata is data that is not the content itself But everything else like at the time of your communication who you are communicating with and how much and that is Almost all that your adversaries need to know about you because it tells a lot and you can deduce a lot of information from it and This problem has been largely ignored unfortunately There is just a few projects to try to address that but it's a very important one And if you don't believe me that it's important, maybe you will believe this guy We have no audio Go back We kill people based on metadata But that's not what we do with this metadata thankfully Wow, I was working up a sweat there for a second So for those who might not have understood it He said we kill people based on metadata alone and he was talking about these two kinds of metadata He was talking about phone records mostly and domestic ones and foreign ones So he's basically promising. Oh, we don't kill the Americans based on the meta just everybody else So these phone records especially when it comes to messengers are a nice selector and They are all centrally stored and your entire address book is uploaded to two people servers And then the servers know all of the metadata that's going on and it's a juicy target for an attack Like if you compromise this kind of infrastructure, you know, you have all the metadata of all the people communicating for the service But also timing attacks are quite easy So using phone numbers is maybe not the best idea But apart from eavesdropping and metadata There is also censorship and service blocking So basically they block our stuff and we want to have it accessible This is just one example here from China Where it happens from time to time and of course I know we can usually circumvent stuff like there are tools But this is for a technical elite and this is not for the big masses that can just easily circumvent these blockings and censorship And it happens all over the world. I don't know how much you're following this This happens in Turkey in Brazil the courts are very happy to block what's that once in a while even though it's used by almost everybody for for lots of important things and That sucks like it shouldn't be possible right This is even worse Like even in industrial countries like Germany or the United States politicians are seriously discussing to Turn off the internet completely And this is really bad like they They turn off they pull the plug and we lose all access and that can happen, but Thankfully, I think politicians understood that we rely economically a lot on the internet So turning it off is is also a bad idea for other reasons But in many countries like Cameroon for example where they have this bring back our internet campaign It's still a suppression instrument by the governments because the reliance on internet is still relatively small So so people don't start the revolution then the internet goes down In India they have been 69 total shutdowns since 2010 in various provinces mostly in the north and There's many other examples, but I won't show you all of them So this is when the government is pulling the plug and disconnecting us all But it could also happen that there is a natural catastrophe Infrastructure breaks down. Maybe there's not even electricity The uplinks don't work anymore and we are in a big mess and still need to coordinate help You still need to communicate. You still need to find people another likely scenario that could happen where Internet won't be available is The zombie a couple of us So if your tool doesn't work while there's a zombie a couple of us happening then maybe your tool is not as good after all So now let's look a little bit more detailed into briar and how briar is Attempting to address these issues. It's just It's still work in progress. It's it's you could see it as a research approach of addressing these problems and The the main difference is That briar is not using a server To relay all People's communication And this is how all of these messages you have on your phone work There is a central server infrastructure whenever you send a message it goes through there and they know Who you are and who you talk to and If you cannot reach the server you're out of luck you cannot send anything so that's why briar removes the server out of the equation and Connects people directly peer to peer So the great thing about this is when you don't need to reach a server anymore Then you can use what you already have in your pocket anyway to make connections to people and in our case with our smartphones today This is the Bluetooth radio and the Wi-Fi antenna you have in your phone so people Can find each other through Bluetooth people can find each other in local lands in white and Wi-Fi networks and then they can directly make connections and This is only good for short range unfortunately because our phones are designed like that But it still is good if you live in a densely populated area where a lot of people and the social network is strong So there the short range doesn't matter so much But briar has been made in a way that the way that data can be transported Through whatever means like as long as you have like a simplex or a duplex Data stream you can send you're fine At the moment we don't have these but you could easily imagine to write just a plug-in to put it into briar and then you can enhance your phone with one of these like you can have a satellite uplink or If somebody knows hem radio you can use this with your phone as well over other devices and Extend the range and then communicate over longer distances and Yes You can even use carrier pigeons. It's only partly a joke So sneaker networks just put your data on on the flash drive Detach it to a carrier pigeon put it in the mail send it to your friends They put it in and they receive the messages and to end encrypted of course so Like I said we use end-to-end encryption with this authenticated stream cipher there with 256 bit keys We support forward secrecy as well of course, but there's a catch Since data can be transported also through carrier pigeons or whatever means you come up with There can be long delays for messages to arrive. So you cannot roll keys forward so so frequently So each transport has a key rotation period that it uses to establish forward secrecy and When we have transports that have like a very low latency, we can also use ratcheting But this is still something we need to implement unfortunately So but but when you use this kind of encryption use somehow need to Exchange a shared secret that you used to encrypt your messages and Briar does this By forcing you to actually meet with the person you want to talk to and We do this because this is the only way we know of That you can use to prevent men in the middle attacks like enter any crypt is great But if you have a man in the middle and you don't know it like enter and encryption doesn't help you That's why the the other existing messages like signal or WhatsApp allow you to verify the safety numbers after adding people like Briar puts this first There's there is one thing though because people don't like to meet up or cannot meet up So we introduce the possibility to allow a trusted peer to introduce two of their Contacts to each other and then they make a direct connection So there they run a different helmet key exchange through the person and only when both accepted the invitation and acknowledge that they deleted the keys To establish forward secrecy then they start making direct connections to each other and connect are connected in this peer-to-peer network So Briar only connects to your direct peers. It does not use a distributed hash table or something like this this is because we want to be able to run this on our mobile phones and everybody's concerned about battery usage and Distributed hash table is basically like a big chatter going on everybody's talking all the time of everybody and this is burning your battery because you're Sending data even when you're not using it. So that's why we connect only to direct peers Let me advance to the next slide because then you have something to read These are the cryptographic algorithms we use And you see there's one on the left side and arrow to the right side This is what we are migrating to at the moment So we are migrating from Blake to as as a hash and Mac function to Blake to be and Similarly from this brain pool curves. We are migrating to the Edwards curve down there So what can I has internet as well because I was talking only about this Bluetooth and Wi-Fi stuff But you're not always in close range and you don't always have your hemorrhage. You're connected, right? So We here at least we have internet most of the time and we want to be able to use it and so yes You can has internet and How we do this is we use tour So tour is integrated into briar when you install it on your phone. You don't need another app you Just start the app and tour is booting up without you knowing about it And it starts a hidden service on your phone Like I assume that most of you know what a hidden service is but for those who don't let me give just a brief introduction so this this purple cloud is just an abstract way of viewing the tour network and There are Alice and Bob and they both have a hidden service on their phone So they have a connection into the tour network and each of them are basically picking three tour relays and Then they find a rendezvous point in the middle and they establish the connection through this so they never make a Direct TCP IP connection because this would leak metadata directly to any network observers So you would like if you if you look at Alice traffic You would see there was a TCP connection going to Bob But in this case you just see there's a TCP connection going into the tour network and you have a hard time following where it comes out I have to admit though the tour is not perfect like if you have seen yesterday's talk They say tour is good, but it's not alone. There's other solutions, but they also not perfect and there is no anonymity system at the moment that can resist a global passive network observer Which probably the five eyes can do so if they can look see all network traffic They might be able to de-anonymize some of the connections unfortunately, but We can work on this like I said briar is agnostic to the way data is transported So you can just write a data transport plug-in Put it in when the next best thing comes and just all migrate to that Without losing your contacts or any or any of your data. It's just another way to transport data You can also use all at the same time if you want So we don't have too much time to go into into detail, but let me explain how briar works at a little lower level So essentially it's simple You have groups or channels like we're a pipe like we know in internet. It's just a series of pipes and You have messages And these can be can be any anything you want you can put your own data in there in our case we have like some binary data format that we use and we We open for any purpose we need we open the dedicated channel So if you have private messaging you just open a group between two people that only these people exchange messages through But you can expand on that and you can also create groups that where people like in this case They share messages with with other people and then you can also share this group with all your other friends And this is what we call forums In the forum everybody can read and write messages and everybody can share this forum with other people in The private message context you cannot share that you cannot share your private conversation with anybody else It's just between you and your peer and now let's look at this sharing graph. So imagine you have this this forum group with which are essentially the pipes and Then you share it with your friends then every edge on these graph is a sharing relationship and The notes are the the peers and the green ones are the ones that are online at the moment So so these people write messages in the forum They can have conversations and they only exist on people's phones. There is no servers where they can get uploaded to So there's also no single truth of what is the current state of the discussion Because the people that are offline They only get messages when they're online, but they only get them when they have a connection to people who have the messages So if these people have messages, they flow through here arrive on the other side and they get them right away But this unfortunate fellow here in the bottom He's out of luck because he won't get the messages that that are being sent here Unless these people or some people along the sharing graph come online So similarly like when the the connecting point here in the top goes offline and these people keep chatting These people won't read the messages and this is a tricky opens also tricky new problems like What happens when you suddenly get lots of messages how the traditional messaging service do that? They have a linear history and suddenly if you get two day old messages in the top like you are very confused So that's why we we use a threaded Conversation structure where people can can reply to each other in branches and later you can merge these branches back together to have a Continuous and consistent message history where you can also find stuff again So this is a very simplified view of the architecture of briar You see in the bottom the blue box is called what called bramble and this is released as a separate library It gives you the the peers The cryptography the database to store stuff and the messaging colonization through these various data transports the gray boxes We have not yet implemented but plan to do so So here land Bluetooth tour maybe later I to P and Wi-Fi direct and Then on top of this bramble library We have the briar core library which gives you all the features that are just built on top Like the message we have messaging forums blocks groups and an RSS import into the blocks This is like also for for censorship circumvention when you have friends on briar that Share block share RSS feed content with you where because you cannot access it wherever you live Maybe like BBC news in China or something and then on the top we have the actual applications that make use of the libraries So at the moment we have an Android app and we plan to have a desktop program and We structure this this way in libraries So you can build your own peer-to-peer things with this technology without starting from scratch so please go and Decentralize all the things and I'm really serious here When when I started out Like advocating for decentralization. I was always thinking federation is the way to go like we are nerd Let's all build our own servers. Let's put our servers in our houses and and federate with each other and But now I think it's The perspective is a little screwed because we are nerds yes We can do this but we cannot expect other people to do it and federation is great It's an improvement over the status quo, but if we could Migrate the existing services that we use on the internet into a truly peer-to-peer infrastructure, and this is even better Because then we don't need any servers to run We don't need any service to maintain and we even more resistant to censorship and we can just rule it around it And I don't know if you have seen it just before my talk in the salda extra There was a talk about claim chains which enable you to To to also put trust relationships into peer-to-peer networks in a privacy-friendly way So so these kind of new technologies would be great to to enable all sorts of new peer-to-peer application Even if you need trust like in the sharing economy like if you want to do some sort of a peer-to-peer uber or peer-to-peer Airbnb like let's do it, please And I hope briars technology can help you may be doing it so we have at the moment an Android app application that you can get on Google Play or a better asteroid right away and Test it out play with it here on Congress And if you want to meet me mate later here next to the stage and then we go somewhere We can add each other and try how good it works and To anticipate already a question that we get a lot But I have iOS like where's your iOS application And we would like to have some iOS applications because one of our target audience are journalists who need to communicate securely with their sources And these people have iPhones all the time so We looked into it and so for it doesn't look good because iPhone closes all applications quite soon after you put them in the Background and you are not allowed to keep TCP connections open and we need to do this so you can get messages So if you're in an iOS developer and you have some ideas how we can get around this, please get in touch and the source code is of course free software available for everybody to use and we also Working on making it build reproducibly Which is very important because you need to be able to verify that the source code actually matches the binary that we ship And you need to be able everybody need to be able to verify that so nobody can build any backdoors inside So we have always a source binary correspondence and the latest versions Mostly build reproducibly, but there's still some Kingsman you work out unfortunately So I'm at the end of my presentation. Thank you very much for your attention and I hope you have some questions That was awesome.  Yep signal angel has a message from the question from the internet. Yeah, go ahead Yeah, the internet wants to know how it's different from Retro share and does it have additional features or some advantage in the protocol? Well, I'm not a retro share expert. So I can tell Like to take this with a grain of salt, but as far as I know retro share uses and DHT infrastructure So it is relaying messages between peers all the time which would burn the battery if used on mobile quite a lot And it basically does does everything, but it doesn't care as far as I know so much about the metadata being leaked and Also as far as I know you cannot use retro share with other kinds of data transports easily like like we do Thank you One sentence with a question mark at the end of it Yeah, I would like to see To know what are actually the difference with the ring project I've heard about the ring projects, which is also a kind of decentralized messaging services Actually, I had a I follow a couple of conference from this project And I saw that a lot of feature were missing because of the structure of it decentralized you don't have the history you cannot have several device that are synchronized together for your own Accounts and these kind of things. So what is your point of view on those kind of feature? Well, I also don't know the rim project But it's great to know that there is more of these things happening and I don't say like use Brian That's the only truth like let's build whatever works, right and Your point about a multiple devices is indeed something also We have not solved because if you are in the peer-to-peer network and you have two devices You need to consider the case where you go online with one device You make one action in the in the application and then you go online in the other device before it is able to Sync this this information and you make a conflicting action like leaving a group and posting a message So it looks like you left, but you're still posting something and how how to resolve this like we haven't solved it yet Okay, thank you We have four more minutes question one sentence question mark you mentioned iOS. What are other ways that people can help briar? Well, there is lots of ways that people can help briar because there's lots of work to be done One thing that would be nice would be to have a desktop client It's essentially we just need the UI on top of the libraries that we already have So this is something where people can get started easily But we also have of course a bug tracker and a feature tracker where people can just say hey I want to implement this and then we help you Signal angel no Yes. Yes. Yes. Go ahead. Okay. The internet wants to know what happens if an attacker gets hold of the device Is there some some card like deniability or something well deniability isn't it's not one of our design goals. However It's an Android application and most people on Android. They don't have a full disk encryption or anything like that so what we do to improve the situation is to encrypt all data that briar stores in its own database With Password key duration function based on the password So whenever you go online you need first to enter your password to to a decrypt database and then there's also a panic button feature like when you have a panic button app you can and you're like I don't know the police is coming to arrest you and you press the panic button Then you can have briar deleting the database or just locking out so that the data address is at least secure Thank you Two more questions one left one right right one starts one. Yeah. Thanks for your talk How do two peers find each other into the in the tour network This is where hidden services help us because the tour hidden service has Has a unique address which is essentially it's public key and there is directory service in the tour network When you come online you get listed there and this is how they find you so you don't need to use any any firewall punching any Netreversal stuff you you just go into tour network and you say I want to connect to this hidden service And if they're online they will respond and if not not Thank you last question from my left here So do you use bluetooth currently to connect but recently there was discovered some important vulnerabilities regarding bluetooth Which makes not advisable to use bluetooth at all in androids. So how do you handle that? Yeah, that's unfortunate and bluetooth is not only has lots of security problems But it's also very flaky and difficult to work with so our response to that was to be more conservative on How long bluetooth needs to be enabled so we try to reduce the time? And it's also possible that you don't need to use it at all There's still some improvements that we do and also we one of our latest contributors He implemented prototype of a Wi-Fi direct plug-in where two phones can connect to each other directly with Wi-Fi without Being in any sort of access point And so maybe when we're lucky in the future.  I have to cut out. I'm sorry. The next talk is going to be Mark James It's going to be packed like hell and we got to get the people in and out first. So I have to cut off here I'm awfully sorry


Hey, man, keep your place there in Luke chapter 10. So the title this morning's sermon is Neighbors. The title this morning's sermon is Neighbors. We're going to talk about this term, Neighbors, and what that means this morning. Keep your place in Luke chapter 10. We're going to come back to a story in Luke chapter 10 in a few minutes. But before we begin and start talking about the story in Luke chapter 10, let's first categorize the whole world. Let's categorize the whole world as far as how Jesus did it. So the first question we need to ask, and the same question that was asked in Luke chapter 10, is who is your neighbor? We're going to talk about neighbors this morning. We first need to identify who these people are. There's some very specific commandments in the Bible about your neighbor. So we first need to identify who's our neighbor and who is not our neighbor. Turn to Leviticus chapter 19. Leviticus chapter 19. And I'm going to read for you Matthew chapter 22 while you're turning to Leviticus chapter 19 where the Bible says in Matthew 22, 36, Master, which is the greatest great commandment in the law?  This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. So Jesus is saying that loving your neighbor as yourself is the second greatest commandment. And it's saying that he says two things there. He says, first of all, that's the second most important thing. The first most important thing is loving God. And the second most important thing is loving your neighbor. So then he says kind of a big statement. He says, look, all the laws hang on these two rules. So basically, if you want to look at the hierarchy of it between loving God and loving your neighbor, every single other commandment underneath those falls under one of those two main categories, either loving God or loving your neighbor. Look at Leviticus chapter 19. So you say, oh, did Jesus just make something up new here? No, Jesus was teaching the same thing that the Old Testament teaches. Of course, same God, same word, same law. Look at verse 18 of Leviticus 19. The Bible says, Thou shalt not avenge or bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I am the Lord. So here we see that the neighbor here, if we look at the categories of people, it says thy people. So it's talking about the children of Israel. And then it kind of equates them to thy neighbor. The Bible says in Leviticus chapter 19, love thy neighbor as thyself. Now turn to Exodus chapter 20. Exodus chapter 20. So we see your neighbor can be those that are saved, your church members, your brothers and sisters in Christ. That can definitely be your neighbor. Look at Exodus chapter 20. Let's look at this idea of loving God and loving your neighbor and all the commandments being under those two categories. Look at Exodus chapter 20. And I guess we'll start in verse number 12, but before verse number 12, we see the first four commandments of the 10 commandments have no other gods before me, don't have idols, you know, don't use the Lord's name in vain and then keep the Sabbath day. Then the following six, those Olas are all under that first commandment of loving God, okay? Now in the last six commandments, all have to do with loving your neighbor. Look at the Bible in verse number 12. Honor thy father and mother. Look at verse number 13. Thou shalt not kill. Look at verse 14.  Verse 15. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Verse 17. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife or his manservant, maidservant. Basically don't steal or want things that aren't yours that belong to your neighbor.  Don't commit adultery against your neighbor. Do not steal from your neighbor. But the one thing that I wanna point out here is that when it talks about the last six commandments, the spiritual state of your neighbor is not mentioned. Look at verse, look at Galatians chapter five. The definition of your neighbor does not depend on his spiritual, his or her spiritual state. Look at Galatians chapter five. Again we see in Galatians chapter five and verse 14. The Bible says for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. So this is a super important commandment that encompasses a lot of different commandments. And we see that your neighbor here could be either somebody who is your brother and sister or just somebody who has a house, somebody you shouldn't kill, somebody who shouldn't have adultery committed against them. Now go back to Luke chapter 10 and let's look at this story in Luke chapter 10. A very famous story, definitely an overused story in Sunday school, which is one of the reasons we don't have Sunday school here because the Bible just loses its meaning when you just dumb it down into cartoon stories like that. But let's look at Luke chapter 10 and look at the origin of this story. This is a very similar story to the rich young ruler by the way. If you're familiar with the rich young ruler, the young man that came up to Jesus and Matthew 19 and he's like, what must I do? And he's like, I've kept all the commandments since my youth and basically you have somebody that's coming up to Jesus saying, I'm perfect. I've never broken any laws and then Jesus of course proves him wrong in that story. This is a very similar, at least introduction. You have a lawyer coming up saying, what must I do? Jesus basically says, keep the whole law. Because remember, there's two ways to be saved. There's two ways to be saved. First of all, you can be perfect and never break the law not even one time.  You're not guilty, but we know that no man will ever be able to meet that standard for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Look at Luke chapter 10 and verse 25, let's start there. The Bible says, and behold, a certain lawyer. It's always the lawyers. A certain lawyer stood up and tempted him saying, master, what shall I do to inherit an eternal life? He said unto him, what is written in the law? How read is thou?  There they are. There's the whole law right there. Look at verse 29. But he willing to justify himself. See, that's really the key to this whole thing. You know, Jesus wasn't teaching works-based salvation. He was just proving to this man that this man was trying to justify himself. And this lawyer was willing to justify himself. So he's saying, okay, who is my neighbor? Which is exactly what we're talking about this morning. Then look at verse number 30. And Jesus answered and said, a certain man went down to Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now underline this three words. A certain man. This is the neighbor that needs help in this story which is interesting that Jesus never really answers, who is my neighbor? But yet he asked a different question at the end. We'll get to that at the end of the sermon. But my point is that the neighbor here, we have no idea the spiritual state. It just says a certain man. A certain man. This man was beaten up and you know, there came by a certain priest that way. Now the person that was supposed to help him, you know, we have an idea that, okay, he's a spiritual man. I don't know if he's saved or not. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite. There's somebody else who should be spiritual. When he was at the place, came and looked on him and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan. Meaning somebody that does not hold to the religion of the Jews at the time had compassion on him and he went to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pants and gave them to the host and said on him, take care of him. And whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee. Which now of these three thinkest thou? Now, he doesn't say which one was the neighbor. He says, which one was a neighbor unto him?  He says, which one was a neighbor? So first of all, we have two men that did the right. We have two men here. We have a Samaritan, an unspiritual person. And then we have a certain man. A certain man. We don't know. We don't know what the spiritual state of that is. See, look, here's what I'm trying to get at. By default, by default, everyone is your neighbor. And you are to be their neighbor is what Jesus is saying here. Unless, as a matter of fact, I didn't even pick this up but I just picked it up when, this is why we read the chapter. Because every single time you hear the Bible, more things come to your mind. It's the only book that's ever like that. Look at verse five. Look at verse five of Luke chapter 10. By default, everyone is your neighbor. And it's the same when Jesus sent out the disciples and look what he told them. I'm not saying everyone is your neighbor. I'm saying by default, you start out there. By default, you start out there. Look at verse number five. And into whatsoever house you enter, first say. Look what he says. First say, peace be to this house. Whatever house we go to, out soul winning, we will first say, peace be, that's our default position. Our default position is peace. You know, in control systems design, we call that a normally open or normally closed switch. It's always closed and command tells it to open. That's where we are. By default, everyone's our neighbor until we find out otherwise. We'll talk about the people that are not our neighbors next week. But by default, if they're an enemy, that's different. We'll talk about that next week. We'll talk about personal enemies, God's enemies. The difference, should there be a difference? But the thing is, we typically think of people, and I'm not saying that this is wrong, but what I'm saying is we kind of need to reset our mentality every now and then, because we typically think of people as saved or unsaved. Do we not? That is not how Jesus looked at people. Jesus looked at people, and he taught people that you should assume everyone is your neighbor and love your neighbor. Turn to Galatians chapter six. Galatians chapter six. So Leviticus 19 implies that your neighbors can be saved people. Look at Galatians chapter six and verse number 10. Galatians chapter six and verse number 10. Just proof that once again, your neighbor does not mean that this person is saved. That is not the definition of saved is not mutually exclusive with your neighbor. Not even close. Look at Galatians six, 10. As we have therefore opportunity, this is the quintessential verse right here of what I'm talking about. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men. Unto all men. And then look what he says, especially unto them who are of the household of faith. So look, your brother and sister in Christ are your neighbor. They're especially your neighbor. They're your special neighbor is what the Bible is saying. But you are to do good and to love all men. The Bible says. So basically anyone who's not an enemy is by default your neighbor. That's how Jesus categorized people. We'll focus on that, the enemy's part next week. But look, and even since the saved, the saved when you look at the pie of your neighbor, the saved are actually a very small portion of that population group of your neighbor. So it makes sense to categorize people as Jesus did as your neighbor. And not just categorizing them along the spiritual lines of saved versus unsaved. So let's talk about how we should deal and how we should look at our unsaved neighbor. Which is most of our neighbors by the way. Most of your neighbors as Jesus would categorize that term are not saved in this world. Okay, turn to Zechariah chapter eight. Zechariah chapter eight. So how should we relate? What does the Bible say about relating to our neighbor? It says we should love our neighbor. That means that we're to love unsaved people. That's what the Bible says. Look at verse 16 of Zechariah chapter eight. Zechariah chapter eight. And look at verse number 16. The Bible says this. The Bible says these are the things that ye shall do. Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor. Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates. Now you see how we're supposed to speak the truth to our neighbor. Now go to Ephesians chapter one. Go to Ephesians chapter one. What exactly does that mean? You know am I supposed to go up to my neighbor and say hey two plus two equals four. Cause that's the truth. What am I supposed to do with my neighbor? Well look what the Bible says in Ephesians chapter one and look at verse number 13. Look at verse number 13. This is a great verse for soul winning. So is Zechariah 816. We're supposed to speak the truth to our neighbor. What is the truth? Look at verse 13 of Ephesians chapter one. The Bible says in whom ye also trusted after that ye heard the what? The word of truth. So here we see two synonyms defined. First of all we see that belief means to trust. When we say when we're giving, look when we're giving the gospel, we're giving the gospel like when we say you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That means you must trust him. That means you must totally trust Jesus Christ to be saved. That's what that means. But here we see that the word of truth is what? It's the gospel. The word of truth is used interchangeably with this word the gospel of your salvation in whom also that ye have believed. So that's just a great verse right there. There's a lot of truth in that verse. So Zechariah 8 is saying that we should be telling the truth to our neighbor. The Bible here is telling us we should be preaching the gospel to our neighbor. That's what the Bible is telling us. And look, that's what we do. We go out soul winning. We go out knocking doors. However, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter five in verse number 10. And I alluded to this last week and yes in Sunday morning's sermon, but we go out and we knock doors and we find out what? We find out that 98, because we're like we're in saved versus unsaved mode when we're out soul winning, right? We go out and we find out that 99% of the world is unsaved. That's what we find out. If you don't believe me, come soul winning with us and you'll find out the same thing. And then you will find out then you will find out that 99% of those people, maybe that's not, maybe that's too high, but 90% of those people have no interest in being saved. So you'll see that there's this vast majority of people out there that are unsaved and they don't really care to get saved. That is the reality that we're in. So what do we do? So what do we do in these situations? So we go out soul winning. So we can find that 1%. So we can give that 1% a chance, that 2% a chance. But Luke 631, I'll just read for you says, And as you would also that men should do unto you, do ye also to them likewise? This is what we do. No matter whether people wanna hear the word of truth or not, I mean this is the golden rule right here. You ever heard of the golden rule? They stole that from the Bible. Jesus invented that. And frankly, as far as doing unto others as in loving your neighbor, there's just too much Bible on it to even go into it. There's so much Bible on how we should treat our neighbor. But this is what we're gonna explore this morning. All this was purpose of introduction. Who your neighbor is, it's everybody. That's not defined as an enemy. And we'll talk about that definition next week. 1 Corinthians chapter five, look down at verse number 10. First ground, look, I started verse number nine. The Bible says this. The Bible says this, I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators. Yet, not altogether with the fornicators of this world or with the covetous or the extortioners or with idolaters, for then must ye needs go out of the world. The Bible here is saying is that, you know, look, there's certain things in verse number 11 that comes along. We'll talk about that this evening. There's certain things in verse number 11 that just can't be allowed in the church. And that's gonna be a difference that you're gonna see in this church. Is that, you know, and you've all seen it for the last two years. But I mean the point is we, there's just certain things that the Bible says are to be allowed and not allowed in the church. It's very simple. But that's in the church. That's why it says in verse 11, if any man be called a brother and do these things. But the Bible here is saying that if we had to make this rule for everybody, meaning all of our neighbors, we couldn't even go outside. We couldn't even go out in the world. The point the Bible is trying to make here is it's saying we are going to deal and work and interact with unsaved people that are still your neighbor on a regular basis. And that is the focus. And look, it's gonna be heavily focused on the men this morning. I'm sorry, ladies, you get sort of a pass here. But it's gonna be heavily focused on the men this morning. As a matter of fact, next week we'll be heavily focused on the ladies. You say why? Because we're gonna talk about enemies.  And guess what? When somebody comes and they want to attack your family, they don't go for the strong one, they go for the weaker vessel. Nine times out of 10, that's what's gonna happen. So we're gonna focus especially on the men. How do we deal with our unsaved neighbor? The Bible says we're to be around them, we're to be there. I mean, look, we believe in separation.    How do we act? How do we act? First of all, in general, you need to kind of learn to get along. And until you have a feel for what I'm saying here, you know, I would default to this. First of all, look, you need to get along but be loving to your neighbor. That doesn't mean join him in sin, anything like that. But look, here's a rule for you guys at work. Here's a rule. I would just make this a rule for you guys at work. I would not go to work and talk politics, religion, or anything like that. This is a sermon, by the way, that I didn't, I've had for a long time and I wouldn't preach this until I was a pastor. But I would not go to work and I would not talk politics, I would not talk religion at work. Why? Well, first of all, at work, you should be working. You should be working at work because if you're at work and you're getting paid $17 an hour and you're being an evangelist at work, you know what you're doing?  Unless they hired you to be an evangelist. Caveat there.  I don't know anybody in this church that's hired to be an evangelist. And here's another thing, here's another thing. Just use your head. You're all soul owners here.  The majority of people are not gonna like it.  Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter nine. You say, can't I get people at work saved? What are you trying to say to me? All I'm trying to do is get people saved. Just listen. Look what Paul said. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter nine and look at verse 19. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter nine and verse 19. I have a feeling that this is a huge problem here. What I'm bringing up to you this morning. And I'll get more in depth in it in a few minutes. But look at 1 Corinthians chapter nine and verse number 19. Look what the Bible says. For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant to all? That I might gain the more. This is Christianity 300 level stuff, folks. Just pay attention to what Paul is saying. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews. To them that are under the law as under the law that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without the law as without the law. He's talking about the Jews and the Gentiles here, okay? He's talking about the Jews and the Gentiles. Being not without the law to God but under the law to Christ that I might gain them that are without the law. So the week I became as weak that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all men that I might be, by all means, save some." This is Christianity 300 plus right here, what Paul is doing. And I don't know if I'll be able to get it across to everybody this morning, but basically what Paul is saying here, you ever heard the saying, went in Rome, do as the Romans?  What Paul is saying is that, when I went to the Gentiles, I became as the Gentiles. That doesn't mean that he entered into all their sins. This is why Paul rebuked Peter, and Peter was told to slay and eat. So look, what it's saying is Paul didn't walk into the Gentiles, and when they had the potluck with the dead raccoons, remember that sermon? When they had the dead raccoon potluck, he didn't say, that's disgusting. I'm a religious Pharisee, and I could not touch such unclean things, and then everyone would what? Everyone would just hate him. He went there, and he just, he fit in with their culture to the point where it wasn't sin. Does that make sense? Now look, the reason I said this is Christianity 300 level stuff is because this is an art, mastering this. This is an art. Look, Paul was not partaking in sin, but he was becoming non-offensive to these people. Why? So that he could gain them, so he could win them to Christ. He was not just going in there, you heathens, look what the Bible says.  He would get nowhere. Paul is telling you here that when he went to the Gentiles, he ate what they ate. It's like, oh, it's roadkill raccoon Wednesday? Okay. That he might gain the more. That's just one example. I don't typically eat lunch, and I typically keep a separation to a degree at work, but if I'm invited to lunch, I will go at times because I'm trying to be loving to the people that I work with and trying to be interested in what they're interested in, and I'm trying to, look, imagine him going to the Gentiles to have a message to say, yet he wouldn't even sit down with them because he was too good, or he was rebuking them for their idolatry constantly, treating them just like pagans right off the beginning, arguing with them every single day and just telling them how wrong they were on everything. He wasn't partaking in sin, but he went where they went, and here's the thing. If you care about the people that you work with, here's what you do. Be a good example. Be a good example. Care for them. Be a person that is likable. You should not be confrontational soul-winning at work. Are you saying that you can't get your co-workers saved? That's not what I'm saying. It's a different method, is what I'm saying. Go to Colossians chapter 3. Here's the method. Here's the method on getting your co-workers saved. First of all, you're not being paid to preach the gospel at work. You're stealing if that's what you're getting paid to do, if your boss is paying. Your boss is right. If he walks up and sees you on the company dime preaching to people that your boss is right to be mad at you, because that is not what he hired you to do. Go to Colossians chapter 3 and look at verse 23. Here's what you should do. Here's the method. And whatsoever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men. Saying that of the Lord, you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for ye serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Look, that's why it doesn't matter who you work for. That's why you can go to work and you can have a great attitude when nobody else can. That's what you should do. You should have a great attitude when nobody else does. You should be respectful when nobody else is, because your boss is Jesus Christ, is what Colossians chapter 3 is saying. People that go and argue religion at work will not only get nowhere, I mean, you say, look, you're not going to get anybody saved that way anyway. You're just going to make people mad.  You went to, you were a leader at Verity Baptist Church for a couple of years. You were an usher there and then you were a satellite leader here and now you're the pastor here. You say, but how many religious arguments do you get in every week? Here's the answer. I don't get in religious arguments. Like ever. Yeah, I might toy with somebody outsolding every now and then. Every now and then it's rare, though.  But look, I don't argue religion with people as a rule. Look, you have to come to, folks, you have to come to the terms with the fact. You have to come to terms with the fact that most people aren't saved. Please listen very closely here. Most people aren't saved and most people are not going to get saved. Look, that doesn't make me happy to say that. But that's the case. You have to come to reality and look, the best chance that you have to get those people saved is to just be a good testimony to them. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter 3. Work hard. Be nice. Be appropriate. And here's the thing, if you do those things, people are just going to like you.  You know how people can tell you're appropriate, by the way? The first thing that people can tell is by what you say and by what you don't say. You can set yourself apart from other people the first half an hour of your job. Look, it's a hard thing to walk back though.  So you start out that way. You'll be appropriate. Because you know what? You know what? All the stuff going on in the workplaces today and all that, you know people actually like being treated with respect. They're going to like that about you.   Look at 1 Timothy chapter 3. Look at 1 Timothy chapter 3. Look at verse number 7. Now, this is qualifications for a pastor. But look, qualifications for a pastor, all these qualifications are saying is that if I don't have these things, I'm not qualified to be a pastor. But it doesn't say that you shouldn't be like these things. These are all things that you should be too. It just means that for me, look, if you just stop doing one of these things, it's like, okay, you're just going to be under God's chastisement, you're going to have some consequences. Look, I could, I lose my job or I'm not qualified to get the job. That's what the Bible is saying. But look, it applies to you too. So don't just, you know, blank out 1 Timothy chapter 3 when you read through this. It applies to you as well. Look at verse number 7. It says, moreover, he wants to have a good report of them that are of them which are without. Once they fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. And look, like I said, your language is your strongest weapon here. Just how, you must, look, you must sound different. You must sound different, especially today. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. This will distinguish you right away. And guess what? I don't care what everybody else sounds like, people will like it. People will like it because it's a relief to people.   Let me show you the Bible. Give me a break. Give me a break. Look, here's a problem that I see. Here's a problem that I see and I hate to narrow it down to younger people. But I see this with under 30 people, under 30 year old people. Look, here's the thing. Sometimes people get this attitude, especially younger people that because people aren't saved, they are your enemy. And that is not, look, this attitude will cause you to miss so much in your life. If you just look at people and you're just like, he's not saved.    Look, people in this world, they have a lot to contribute. I don't know how many times I've said to you guys, but I appreciate experts.  I appreciate those people.  A great example of this actually is the Founding Fathers. A great example of this is the Founding Fathers. People are like, they weren't all saved. Yeah, they weren't all saved. Some of them were. A lot of them weren't. But look, that doesn't mean they didn't do great things. That didn't mean that they didn't write great things. I mean, people will dismiss them. They'll watch YouTube videos of the conspiracies and all this, and they'll dismiss them, and they'll never read anything that they wrote. Well, that's a lot. You're missing a lot there. You're missing a lot there. And the irony of that one is that you're sitting here and you're enjoying this country. And the freedoms that we have left. And you're just like, look, it's just lazy. It's lazy. Hey, go read about the things that they did. Go read about the words that they wrote. Maybe men throughout history have not written so much as these men. Look, they wrote a lot. You want to know what they thought. And they wrote a lot. They contributed much to this world, these men. And look, and it's sad that they're not in heaven. That's how I look at it. I'm like, OK, you know, they didn't believe in the deity of Christ. And they didn't believe in this. And this guy didn't believe in this. And it's like, that's sad. That's sad. You know, I wish they were. But that's another topic altogether. But the point is we should not ostracize the unsaved. Whether it be historically or in your life in general, because you're going to miss out on a lot.  You can't keep a job for more than two months. And you're going to come start showing the expert at work who's paid his dues and put his time in. I don't know what is the disease and why we can't stay at a job for more than a couple of months. It's a weird disease. It's a bad one, though. I bet this has something to do with it what I'm talking about this morning. Look, if he has no respect for you, because he's the expert and you know nothing, that's in his mind, that's what he's seeing. I'm an expert at this, you know nothing. You just started here. He's like, what are you contributing? That's what he's thinking about you. Look, so the people you work with, Jesus is just saying, he's like, hey, he's like, be a blessing, be a blessing. They're still your neighbor. Look, there's a guy that I worked with a year ago. He came and he worked for me, he's from Afghanistan. He came here, he helped the United States while we were over there. He's a civil engineer, he helped the Army Corps of Engineers. And the Corps of Engineers brought him and his family over here and he came and he worked for me for almost a year. And he's a Muslim. He's a Muslim and I worked with him every single day. And great guy, super friendly guy. We talked about different things and then he saw that I had some things about my life that, this is really ironic too, by the way. He saw that I had a lot of things about my life that he had in common with his life.  And I am like, I don't drink. And I'm like, I don't drink either. And so we're not doing the same things for different reasons, obviously. But that gave me kind of an end to when we're going out and visiting job sites and we're in the car for a long time. It's like, yeah, you don't do this and I don't do this, but he was really interested, he started to become really interested in my life. So I just start kind of talking to him. My last day of work, I came, brought him by the church and I gave him the gospel. He understood everything, he didn't get saved. But he's thinking about it, doesn't mean he's not a nice guy, doesn't mean he's not my neighbor. I was like, oh, he didn't get saved, rapper of eight. No, I texted him three weeks ago when everything started going crazy in Afghanistan, I just said, hey, I'll just call him Joe for a purpose of the sermon.  And then I hope that everyone that you know in Afghanistan is also safe. It looks like a terrible situation. I also learned a lot from him, by the way. He would tell me about what, look, you don't know anything about what's going on in Afghanistan until you talk to somebody who's from there. CNN doesn't know anything. Fox News doesn't know anything. They don't know anything about what's actually happening. The president sure doesn't know anything. But I would ask him all the time, what was life like over there when he worked for me? What was life? I would just listen to him for just, when we're working, he would just tell me about, what about this? What about this? What about this? I learned so much from him. Cause he lived there his whole life. But I just, you know what? And he wrote back to me and he said, and I told him, I was like, come to the church anytime. And I meant that from the bottom of my heart. I hope he does come to the church. Like you and your family are welcome here anytime. If I can do anything for you, let me know. And I meant every single word of that. And he just, he wrote back and he just said, you know what, thank you for being my friend. I sure am glad that I know you. Look, that's a testimony that he's my neighbor. And guess what? I'm his neighbor. Because it worked both ways in Luke chapter 10. If you, look, all you have to do is go to work, guys. Show people that you care about them. Help them at work. Show them that you wanna be part of the team. Part of the solution. You say, and then how do I get that expert saved? You know, how do I get that expert saved? Look, I've gotten people that I work with saved. Turn to 1 Peter chapter three. Because as you, look, as you build a testimony of your life, as you build a testimony of your life, people will start to be interested in that. This is where that lifestyle evangelism comes in. And this, look, it actually works. Look at 1 Peter chapter three. Look at verse number 15. Look what the Bible says here. It says, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Look, get your heart right. Get your actions right. Get your words right. Show people that, that that can last for you for a year or two years and not six weeks.  An answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Look, if you do this thing right, if you do this thing right, maybe someday somebody will ask you. About why is it that you do the things that you do? Why is that you live the life that you live? Because what they will see is they will see your witness. They will see your testimony. They will see that maybe you're not struggling with the same things that their children are struggling with. You know, the homeschool group is a good example of that. If you do that right, you're just gonna have a lot less problems than people that don't get that right. And if you work with people for one year, two years, five years, 10 years, well, guess what? You're gonna watch each other's kids grow up together. And you're gonna see the consequences of decisions that people make. And, you know, at some point people will ask you.  They're gonna go crazy, it just never happened. It doesn't have to happen that way. But show yourself an example, be a good testimony, and then you have a possibility of having somebody ask you about the hope that's in you. And guess what? We'll talk about this more tonight, but you represent this church as well. Right, and then, all right.   Here's an invite. Just put the invite in your pocket. If that's what you're gonna do, that's why we push the culture that we push here soul winning. We're uninvited guests at somebody's door. They don't wanna hear it. We don't fight with people. We don't argue with people. You know, turn back to 1 Timothy chapter three. Because guess what? That expert, look, that expert at work, that expert at work, this applies to you too. This part of 1 Timothy chapter three. Look at verse number four. This is another qualification for a pastor. One that ruleeth well his own house. Having his children in subjection with all gravity. For a man not know how to rule his house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Look, I'm not perfect. My marriage isn't perfect. My kids aren't perfect.   I don't know. What do they do now? I'm sorry. But I mean, you would look at me and you'd be like, what's the point of listening to a sermon from this guy? I don't want this result. You know? I don't want that. You know? Sorry. But look, it's the same thing with you at work. If people see you can't hold a job, you're lazy, you can't show up.   It's like, they don't want it. They don't want to be like that. They wouldn't want to hear anything from you about anything. But look, Jesus is saying you can't, and Jesus equates that to taking care of his own house. It's like, you can't take care of your house. You're not taking care of mine, buddy. That's exactly how people look at you. That's why your testimony is so important. They need to be able to look at you over a long period of time. Not a month, two months, three months, four months. They need to be able to look at you over a year. Over two years, that's the goal. That's the goal I'd like to see somebody hit here. Work somewhere for two years. Make me proud. Work somewhere for two years. Look, it's possible, I've seen it happen. It can be done. They need to be able to look at you over two years and say, I would like to be like that. I would like my teenager to be like you. And then they'll ask you. They need to say, that's appealing to me. Instead of people looking at the Christian and saying, this person's terrible. He knows how to do nothing. He's late all the time. Different job every two months and then he's like, let me show you why you're wrong from the Bible. People are crazy. Ladies, ladies soul winning is your main application here. To treat people with respect, to show people that you care for them. Look, people can tell if you're just going through the motions out soul winning. You know, other areas for ladies. Here's the thing, ladies are gonna deal with this, not in the workforce so much in our groups that we run into. They're gonna deal with this with family and friends. Is what they're gonna deal with this. And so, turn to 1 Peter chapter three. 1 Peter chapter three. So ladies, I'm gonna give you just two simple rules here on how you can handle family and friends in your life. Here's the rule. By default, you treat all family and friends as your neighbor unless these two criteria are met. And men, if you look at 1 Peter chapter three in verse number seven, you need to protect here. You need to protect. Look at verse number seven. Likewise, he husbands dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife. Notice how this is talking to the husbands about the wives as unto the weaker vessel. Now look, you know I don't believe that women are weak or should be weak. It's saying that the women as compared to the man, they're the weaker vessel. They're the weaker vessel. And it's warning the husbands this.  Be knowledgeable about that. As being heirs together of grace of life that your prayers be not hindered. Talking to the husbands. So, with two exceptions, be friendly and loving to your family, your friends, people that you've come across with. And look, we believe in separation here. And the separation should be along these lines, these two rules. Avoid any influence from people that would push you towards the way of the unsaved. Paul did not go into the sin with the Gentiles. Separate to the degree that people can't influence your wife and children. And ladies, you need to watch out for this with your children, because guess what? They will try. They will try. That's rule number one. Avoid influence. Many times those will be in social situations. We have to draw lines. And then number two, and we'll talk about this one specifically next week, is that anyone actively attacking needs to be separated from. So look, be nice. Treat your friends and family as your neighbor, be loving. This is why we were big advocates of people coming to our house. That was one way we controlled things. When people come to our house, my rules, it's my standards. I can control the situation in my own house. I can't control the situation in other people's house. They're gonna have alcohol or standards that we don't agree with. We avoid those situations. If people won't accept your standards, by the way, even at your home, they're not really in the neighbor category. Again, next week. In short, folks, the normal everyday unsaved person is someone you don't wanna be socializing with because that influence will be there, but there will be cases, especially for men in the workforce, and you need to have people not hate you.  That's the ideal situation. That means you're nice, you're loving to your neighbor. You're helpful, respectful, hardworking, professional, appropriate. People will appreciate that about you. I guarantee it, just try it. It's becoming rare that people are appropriate. I hate to say that. Because look, if you just go to work and you just start shoving the Bible in people's face, here's the bottom line, you're gonna get fired. I've seen it several times. And then you can claim, I was persecuted. No, you're wrong is what's going on. And look, if you find a problem with every person you work with and every boss that you've ever had and you're just making an enemy out of all unsaved people, you are not following what Jesus said to do. You're getting in the flesh and you're doing what you want to do.  We're right. When it comes to the Bible, when it comes to the gospel, look, we're correct. We have the right gospel. 99% of the other churches out there are teaching workspace salvation. They're wrong. They're wrong. It's why, you know, it's just, we gotta control it and still do what Jesus told us to do and just love our neighbor, even though they're not right. Just don't be arrogant about it. You know, do the best that you can and look, if you have an overall disdain for the unsaved, that's something that you need to fix. You know, whenever you veer from the Bible, things are gonna go wrong. And we're gonna talk about that a lot tonight. It's just, whenever, it's just the Bible way. You're like, ah, but I wanna do it like this and I really wanna, the guy just keeps talking about how kind of costals are better in the lunch room and I just wanna go in there and just argue with him and all this kind of stuff and, you know, but here's the thing, that's not what the Bible said to do.  And whenever we veer from the Bible in whatever area it is, things are gonna go bad quickly. So even, I mean, there's a lot of things in my life that I can think about where I'm just like, yeah, I just, I didn't really wanna do it that way, but that's what the Bible said to do. And, you know, maybe I didn't do it the way the Bible said for a long time or for a little bit or whatever. It's like, you gotta do it the Bible way or it's not gonna work out. You know, we're to love our neighbor. And John, in Luke chapter 10, Jesus said, He answers the question this way. The guy says, Who is my neighbor? And we know that it's everybody. But then he says, at the end about the Samaritan, he says, Who was the neighbor? So the question is, the question to you to close this morning is who is your neighbor, everybody? But the question really is, are you a neighbor? As Jesus said, Are you a neighbor? Think about it. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


Yo, what's up? YouTube Realistic Gaming here, and today we are back with some more Peppa Pig games. BOOM!  So I said, why not? Let's play it, right? This can either be horribly bad or horribly good. There we go.  Oh my god. Hi, I am Peppa Pig. I am amazing.  Is that what you think? Oh my god. Yes! Wow. Oh, did she die?  Now just don't press any more buttons so I won't die. Okay, so it seems like our objective is to kill Peppa Pig herself. And we did happen to find an Easter egg, which we killed her already once. As we can see, the death toll count is at one so far. So let's go explore and see how many more times we can kill Peppa in various ways. Okay, so let's click this circle. Oh! That's not like she crapped herself, but we just bombed her. Let's do it again. Go boom, Peppa. All right, let's try this purple circle. Oh, we created like a warp hole under her. That's like so cartoonish. Oh man, all right. Oh my god, just look at Peppa's face, bro. It looks like she's been through it. She looks like she lives in the hood or something. All right, let's click the red circle. It's another grenade! Dude, what's up with the grenades? We ever made this game really must not like Peppa, man. I don't know. Okay, let's click the green one. Oh, it's a chair. Dude, that thing totally knocked her out. All right, we've been having too much fun killing Peppa in the bedroom. Let's go over here. Let's go outside. Let's go check out outside. Let's see what we can do out here. Oh, yes, we are outdoors now. Let's click the purple one. Oh, it's a log! No freaking way. How do we even carry a log to hit her, bro? Okay, this is a red circle with the cyan square. Oh, that is definitely says red and cyan at the same time. I don't know, man. Pretty sus if you ask me. Yum, yum, yum. Oh, dude! So tasty. She just, she just got attacked by a bear. What the heck? All right, let's click this bullseye-looking one.  Oh! Oh!  Dude, a plane crashed into her mouth. That was so weird. Let's click this one. It looks like a freaking eyeball. Oh! It was just a cloud. You win. Please like, star, and follow for more. Wait, what? I didn't even finish the other side of the map. Okay, so it says we win, but we still have more to the game. So let's go check that out. All right, so last time I put yes. Let's put no this time. Let's see what happens. Then don't click any of the buttons and let me live. Okay, nothing happened. Alrighty, whatever, man. Okay, let's go to the kitchen since we didn't go outside last time. Let's go ahead and start with this X triangle circle square. Looks like a G code. Oh! She went in the trash compartment. Is that trash compartment or the dishwasher? I don't know. Okay, let's click this one. Oh, now she's going in the oven. Oh, it would have been so funny if they show a picture of bacon there or something. All right, let's try this circle square. Oh, dude, she caught on fire. What the heck, man? And last but not least, the yellow circle. Okay, that's more like a classic cartoon knockout. Get knocked out, Peppa Pig. All right, well, it seems like we have successfully killed Peppa Pig. And all the ways imaginable in this game. But I do have another game. Let's go check that out. All right, so now we're on Peppa Pig. It's grounded. There's like a lot of versions of this game, but this is a school version. Let's check it out. Oh! Oh my God, Peppa Pig. Okay, we have begun. Oh! Okay, we're defeating frogs? Oh, there's two frogs. What the? Oh!  Oh, no! Oh my God, okay. Take that! Oh! This is a little hard.  Oh my God, take that! Oh, it's way too close. Will not get me, man. How can we still see ourselves down there? All right, let's go. We have defeated Mr. Gazelle. We have defeated... I don't know if that was Madam Gazelle or Mr. Deer, man. Just a booleg. All right, let's go level two. I wonder who we're gonna have to fight this time. That was a little close. Again? Oh my God. Okay, man. Defeated this guy twice. Now let's check out level three. Oh my God. Wait, what happens if I jump down? Okay, he's at the menu. What the heck? Okay, so level six, it seems like we just battle him right away. Okay, there you go. And dude, these battles have been so annoying because it's literally the same thing over and over. Okay, get it!  I can do it one more time. There you go. Honestly, I thought it was never ending. You all are in big trouble. Dude, they're all scared. Okay, that is the end. All right, well, we managed to defeat all six levels. All right, you guys. Well, those were some Peppa Pig games. They were pretty horrible, but I mean, at least they were playable because I played some EXE games or like some fan made games and they're just like totally trash. But these were like in between. They were like mid-trash, you know? It was like that good trash you find.  I was happy about it. All right, you guys, thank you all for watching. Thank you all for the main support and I will see you all in the next one.


So this talk is not really about any particular technology in Debian. It's actually a talk about how Debian changed my life, which seems like something that people here might be interested in. So I'm here to tell my story. Thanks for coming. So I'm going to start from the beginning. I was born here in Scarborough, Ontario. On a street that looked like this. Yay, Canada. It was kind of like the suburbs of Toronto. You could walk down my street and you'd look out over the Scarborough Bluffs. And it looked like this. You know, snow for about eight months of the year, but otherwise incredibly beautiful. But I didn't actually stay in Canada that long. So when I was about three and a half years old, my family moved to upstate New York because my dad, he got a better job. And I think he was kind of like always interested and like excited about the American dream, basically. He wanted to move to the U.S. to, you know, be an American. So, you know, when I was three and a half, we moved to this house in Camillus, New York, which is a suburb of Syracuse, New York. And it's generally an incredibly boring little suburban town.  And I also spent a lot of time at this place I'd like to call the farm, which was actually in Canada. My grandma lived here.  And I was also a huge nerd, so I like read a ton of books. A voracious reader when I was really young. And this is the middle school that I went to. It was in a corn field. Extremely, extremely interesting. But I was also actually pretty active little kid. I like to run a lot. I actually ran cross country, which is like trail running in middle school. And also I ran track and field. This must not have been a good day. This is the high school I went to. And in high school I also, I was also like a music geek. And I played the French horn for 10 years. So growing up, like this was a huge creative outlet for me. I was like in the band. And I also played trumpet in the jazz band. And then in high school I actually gave up cross country in order to do this. So my high school, I had a pretty well known high school marching band. So if you're not familiar with marching bands, this is a particular kind of marching band. It's not like parade band. We didn't march in parades. But what we did do was we had this like eight minute choreographed show that we would do on football fields. So we would play it like the halftime game football games. And then there was also like this competition circuit. And this is actually kind of like the state finals at the Syracuse Dome. And the show this year was based on this prog rock band called Yes.  And it was really fun. But during this whole time, while I was like growing up in a cornfield and playing music and reading books, eventually I discovered computers. And I guess this was about mostly around middle school, I would say. So I got into computers through games. And I have like really vivid. And one of the things that I found in games was escape. So the town that I grew up in was super boring. And I kind of like looked to computers for adventure. So I really liked games that gave me the ability to kind of like explore new worlds and didn't necessarily have like linear storylines. But like this is a Wing Commander Privateer which I loved. And one of the things I really liked about it was that you didn't have to follow the storyline if you didn't want to. You could just like go around and like run missions and make a lot of money and like upgrade your ship. And you could do the story if you wanted, but you didn't have to. So my game experience was really driven by this desire to like explore new worlds and control my own experience. And this is my room in probably about seventh grade. I had this like compact desktop machine that I think we got at some like PC. What was it like big box store that was popular in the early 2000s? Circuit City? Yeah, I think it was from Circuit City. And you can actually see that I'm running Windows XP on this. So this is before the W&Ds. And I was also like a huge soccer player. You can see my like soccer team photos. And I hate to admit this, but I also had this obsession with horses. Which you might notice from the decor. So back to gaming. My gaming experience, which I said was driven by this like desire for exploration eventually led me to get involved in these online text-based games called Mud's. And in particular, I was like, it was one day in like ninth or tenth grade after Marching Man had ended. And Marching Man takes up a lot of time. So I had practices basically like three days a week for like three hours at a time, plus weekend competitions. So when Marching Man let out, like my life was empty. And like I had nothing to do except for school and surf the internet. So he was like, he was like, so you actually just like fare a bit terminal and log into the mud server via telnet. And so this is like the login screen for Shadows of Isseldure, which was this mud that I got into. And it was a particular kind of mud in that it was what's called like a role-playing intensive mud. So like people would form these characters and put a lot of story into them. This is a character that I played in this mud for like three years. And people would put a lot of effort into like painting the stories behind their characters. So I had like text files and text files that are like my character's life story and like a description of her. Like important events in her life, people she knew that I could like reference that when I was playing in the game and make sure that I was staying in character. And I think this character was very much a representation of like my like want for adventure and like kind of like being the good kid at school and not wanting to be the good kid online. So like I played this character at this like kind of sorted past and kind of got up to no good and got into some trouble. But I got so into this game that I actually started helping run it and then this was my administrator kind of like persona on the game. She was a Norse god. My family is Norwegian by the way. This was also a major part of my upbringing. So I had this like alter ego kind of at school where people would call me Viking. And like I would use this as an excuse to like do silly things where people would think I was tough. But how this came out online was my administrator persona. And one of the things that administrators could do in the game was like you could build your own like personal room. So like when I logged into the game I would spawn in this room, the great Hall of Ahala. And like you would build these rooms and like you could make objects. So like there were facilities in the game for you just to like, you know, write the descriptions for all these objects and then like the purpose of the administrators on the game was actually to like run plots and kind of like keep the story going because this particular game was incredibly story driven and you know it was a text based game. So that's kind of all that you had. And actually like on this game if you died, if your character died, your character was dead. So this gave an incredible amount of weight to kind of actions and lines that were going on in the story. But this was kind of like the first, the first time I actually like found people that I really connected with and I made like really good friends with some of the other people that ran this game.  There was this one guy who lived in Missouri that I really took to you and like he was about the same age as me and like most of the other administrators were older. So like, you know, we talked about life and like I got into like punk rock and got to like talk to this guy and I think that having this outlet for like weirdos and nerds was a really huge part in me like feeling uncomfortable enough in my own skin to like make friends in real life, such as these. So I went on this program when I was 15 where I went to the Bay Area for like a week and was doing like science nerd things and I actually was like so into this game that I met up with the person who wrote it while I was on this trip. I didn't tell my parents by the way. Meeting people from the internet. I'm 15 years old. But he's actually like totally cool, nice guy and like probably thought I was totally crazy little fan kid. But he was going to like the University of Santa Clara at the time, was sitting to be a lawyer and I actually think that meeting this guy in real life kind of like shattered my like mythos of the creator of this game a little bit. But he lives in Seattle now and I have like an open invitation to like grab beers with him so it's cool. And I also made friends in real life and I kind of found all the weirdos at my school. After having been able to like figure out how to express myself via meeting people online and the friends that I made at school we did crazy things like dressed up as the Spanish Inquisition for Halloween and we would like go to all the different classrooms at my high school and like burst into the classroom. I was really into running this game but it turns out if you... The game was... I wanted to like be my involvement in my brother to help me install Debian on that compact machine that I saw you saw in the previous slide. And at the time, installed Debian Sarge was testing at the time I think. There's just 2000... 2004 probably. And that was kind of a pivotal moment for me. I started just like running Debian all the time. I've never run any Linux distro other than Debian. And it turns out that I'm like incredibly enthusiastic about things and curious and I couldn't really keep my hands off of Debian in that like I was curious about how it worked. Like it's a pretty strange thing. Like there's a thousand people all around the world that like somehow managed to create this like software that will run my computer. That's pretty amazing. And so I was curious as like 15 years old and you know I wanted to learn more. And so like I started kind of like lurking around like subscribed to probably DebianDeVal and started reading Planet Debian and one day I was reading Planet Debian and this blog post was on Planet Debian.  And right around this time was a time when Debian was really interested in increasing its diversity and this organization had popped up called Debian Women which was founded by Hannah and Erin Clark and a few other people. And so Hannah wrote this blog post talking about Debian Women on Planet Debian.  So that pretty much changed my life. Like I started getting on IRC and I met a bunch of these people on IRC and kind of started like funneling my energy away from the game and into Debian. So this is like two days after I read that blog post I wrote my own. Like I had this blog that I was running on a subdomain of MiddleEarth.us which was the game site because you know I was 15 years old and didn't have a server. So that was like the way I had a publishing platform on the web and I had this WordPress blog. And I was like really excited. So I wrote this response blog post which describes in my own words at the time like how I felt. So I like started learning to package and I started learning Python and Christian Perrier who's another Debian developer kind of like took me under his wing and like I helped out with the shadow team which you know packages some kind of important utilities and that made me feel really important. And everyone was just like super friendly and encouraging and I wanted to stay. So I did. So this is me wearing a Debian women t-shirt that I had to like awkwardly ask my mother for money to buy because like I think it was like Steve McIntyre that had been the person who instigated Debian women t-shirts and he lived in the UK and like I was in upstate New York and like had to like pay him dollars so he could send me a t-shirt and my mother was just like I don't know whatever sure you can have some money. What are you doing? But I was hooked and I was 16 years old. So this is actually a quote from my college applications which describes what happened after that. In my college applications I pretty much I talked about two things. One was marching band and two was Debian. So I didn't really before that I hadn't really decided on like what I wanted to do going forward. I kind of always had this sense growing up that I was going to be an engineer. I came from a family of engineers but like that's a very broad thing like engineering like I could have decided to be a mechanical engineer or a chemical engineer but I'm like damn no this software stuff stuff is changing the world. This is cool. It's fun. So that really changed the way I was thinking about where I was going. And this is Hannah Wallach and at the time I was applying for colleges I had like via like my involvement in free software and Debian I kind of developed this like college crush on MIT but I was like too shy to like I was like too unconfident I guess to like apply there until like this one day I was talking to Hannah Wallach on IRC and we were like you know private messaging each other and I was talking about college applications and I was like I really kind of want to apply to MIT but I don't know and she was just like super enthusiastic and I was like you should totally apply to MIT and so I did but I didn't tell anyone. I really didn't tell anyone. I told my parents but I didn't tell anyone at school because this other like smart kid at my school had applied to Harvard and like every day all the other kids would see him and be like did you get into Harvard yet? Did you get into Harvard yet? And like I just didn't want to get harassed about it so I didn't tell anybody. But I got in. It was like I never expected that to happen and it was incredibly exciting like from the minute I got my acceptance letter which actually had like a handwritten note on it from the admissions officer talking about I had basically waxed about like free software and having hacking in my essays and like the admissions person like wrote on my acceptance letter that he thought that I would really fit in at MIT because of like my interest in like free software and open source and I kind of like agriculture. So I was sold. And so I visited MIT in April of 2006. They have this like preview weekend where you know prospective students come and check out the campus and they like put you up with a current student and so I did that and I was staying on in this dorm called East Campus and it looks like this. There's actually a photo from my visit and visiting MIT kind of blew my mind.  I don't know. It kind of blew my mind and I was totally sold. I was like these are my people I'm coming here. And during this trip I also like I had come a day early because I was taking the train from upstate New York to Boston and that meant that like I got there like the day before I actually had a host on campus. So of course I emailed Debbie and Boston Social and I was like I need a place to stay on like Wednesday night and Benjamin Macohill responded to that email and offered me to crash on his couch and his house is called the Ascitarium. So I stayed at the Ascitarium and this is my stuff on the floor the Ascitarium version 1.0 and they like threw a party for me. It was amazing. At least I assumed the party was for me. It might have just been a party. And yeah so like I had started just like meeting people from the internet in real life which I didn't tell my parents about but on this trip another amazing thing happened which was because I was staying with Macohill he gave me the tour of the MIT Media Lab which was where he worked at the time and on that tour I met this guy who was like working in a lab and that guy just happened to be looking for like a source to like employ for the summer and so like I go home and get an email from this guy who's like do you want a job? Because like Macohill had introduced me as like this like Debian hacker and so he's like wow awesome like high schooler who is probably unemployed and I need some help. So despite the fact that they weren't going to pay me very much and I was going to be like living alone in an inexpensive city and I said yes because I really wanted to get out of my town. So I pretty much went from this which was a Saturday in June of 2006 and on Monday it was this. On Sunday the day after I graduated my dad drove me to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the family minivan and all of my stuff in my new Cambridge apartment and drove off. He left me there that same day. So luckily I knew some people in Cambridge already and Macohill and his partner Mika basically adopted me for that summer. So because I didn't really know anyone I didn't know any students like all the other students my year weren't there yet and I pretty much spent my entire time hanging out with Debian people that summer and Maco and Mika fed me lots of delicious vegetarian food because I had never cooked before in my life and that was my social group.  They're some in the middle of this picture. And the summer went on. At the end of the summer I actually moved into MIT. This is East Campus which is the place where I lived my first year.  So I was pretty sold on this as a place to live. Safety first, right? And eventually I ended up moving into this kind of crazy co-op campus and broadening my skill set in hacking such as in building bicycles, building crazy contraptions in the basement.  Actually, my involvement in this project was this. I was honestly quite terrified that we were going to like blow up the entire house. Also got some crazy shenanigans with fire. Might have been involved in putting some things on rooftops, different kind of MIT hacking and you know like hacking on computers and generally my experience at MIT can be summed up in this picture. It's a very kind of like love hate place. It's super intense and I would definitely do it again but like I'm glad there's been four years. It might have taken me two years to say that I would do it again and this is another picture of how I experienced MIT. No, this is a room but it's just like a sad selfie. Might have been during some period of crushing depression, impending exams or something. But while this stuff was happening at MIT I was also still involved in Debian. I actually spent two summers like traveling around Europe and I went to DevConf 7 with my own money that I had earned with jobs that I had gotten via Debian actually. Like I worked at the on-campus like help desk so like answering like Unix help questions like helping people with computers and I also got this job at this company called Best Practical which makes this thing called RT. And the way I got this job was like the owner of this company had like heard of me and like my like Debian cred and like tracked me down and was like, do you want a job? And of course I said yes and he was so awesome to let me like run around and go to Europe during the summers while I was working for him. And this is more Debian 7. Scotland is full of castles and David Nuceno is apparently eyeing the camera. I kept going to Debian 9. And this is the t-shirt that Best Practical gave me. A very apt t-shirt. And this is me at Guarek in 2008 in Gran Canaria. And MIT, I also got involved in the student group that was called the Student Information Processing Board which is basically the computer club at MIT except for it's so old that they didn't call computing computing when it was started. It was actually like started to like manage the time sharing on like this Multic server. And this organization is full of tons of hackers so obviously like I was drawn to it because of my experience in Debian and this student group did a lot of really cool things like they revamped the entire kind of like campus Linux distro while I was there to be based on Debian actually and it still is to this day. And my favorite class that I took at MIT was the Operating Systems class which kind of changed my life in that I decided that I wanted to like do operating systems research and I was like very close to going to grad school at MIT and doing a masters with a parallel and distributed operating systems group except for my spring of senior year I had been sponsoring packages for this guy, Tim Abbott who's a friend of mine from SIPI he was like doing a whole bunch of work on some like math software for that he was trying to upload to Debian I was sponsoring his stuff and he just started this company called Case Place and so like this one time he emailed me asking for a sponsorship to upload a package and was also like hey we're looking for interns for IAP which is like this January term at MIT like do you want a job? So I started working for Case Place before I finished at MIT still intending to go to grad school but it turned out that at the end of my senior year they just gave me a full-time offer and I was like I don't really want to go to grad school I'd rather get a job where they pay me so I started working for this company called Case Place which developed this technology that was basically a kernel module for Linux that would allow you to like take a patch to the Linux kernel and you do this like binary differencing so that you could then like load the change card into memory and change your running kernel without having to restart it which was pretty novel at the time and I never interviewed for this job it was just like I sponsored my friends Debian packages and like they knew me from SIPI and I demonstrated via my internship there that I was like a good person to work with I ended up working there for like three years the company was eventually sold to Oracle and that was a learning experience so at the end of like a year and a half at Oracle I had kind of decided that I was going to leave eventually and it was trying to figure out what I wanted to do afterwards and decided that I was also going to leave Boston and this was like a big thing for me at the time because I had been living in Boston for seven years and it had been like the only place that I'd ever really lived as like an adult I was like I moved from up to New York to Boston and I stayed there so like as a part of my process for like leaving Boston I had this whiteboard wall in my room and I like went through and just like listed all the things that I was going to miss including like incredibly things that only you miss kind of like in a nostalgic way like the potholes and like the snow and terrible weather and you know how sweaty it gets in the summer there but you know I look back on all those things right now and I'm like damn I kind of miss it so I think writing everything down was you know it was a good way to kind of let go and move on but I ended up moving to the Bay Area to Oakland and the reason I moved to the Bay Area was to start this company with a friend of mine I've been talking to this friend for a long time I actually met him a sophomore here at MIT he was like a year behind me and he had been like trying to build stuff on top of email for his like undergraduate thesis so like you know we often like take email and try to do things on top of it like you know run a bug tracking system not that I know anyone here that has done that and kind of found that he spent like all of his time just like trying to work with email and so he decided that like someone had to like make the kind of like bottom level tools better before we could like write anything interesting that actually uses email so I was pretty sold on the idea and I excited about working with him so I moved to the Bay Area and this is us back at MIT in last fall I guess pulling an extremely ill advised all nighter before he was giving a talk this was actually in one of the Athena clusters at MIT and like we had gone to like the campus convenience store and bought a bunch of snacks and like I'm never doing this ever again but it was a thing at the time and the talk was fine except probably would have been better if we had slept and this is like a little bit of an excerpt from our website and this is an example of things that you can do with Inbox which is this company that I started we actually the way that we've been going about the company has also been really influenced by my experience in Debian like for example we released our code as AGPL which I wouldn't I would never even known that existed without my experience in Debian and free software so yeah this is an example of like using our API we kind of like provide this like higher level API for interacting with email that like gives you threads across all providers not just Gmail like allows you to easily mark things as red and archive and this is like tag spaced API and we do that across all providers like you know even your Dovcott installation so we're kind of trying to evolve email from the inside out by like making something that's compatible with what we already have and I'm pretty excited about where that's going but the main reason I wanted to give this talk was to say thank you because I wouldn't be who I am without the amazing community that is Debian so thanks for doing what you do