How's it going forex traders? Welcome back to yet another fantastic segment of trader talk. Now for those of you guys who've been following my channel for the longest, give me a sec, my camera needs to get adjusted properly. There we go. So for those of you who've been following my channel for the longest, you know this segment is exactly where I go into my computer and I break down the charts. Yes, I go into my computer and I look at the most realistic trading opportunities that you guys can trade alongside me. Now over the last three weeks, we've been able to make all our predictions. I think all our predictions since the beginning of the year, this is May now. Since January, we have been correct spot on. We haven't really had any losses. All our predictions have come to play. If you're doubting me, you can check our previous videos, rather my previous videos on YouTube. But over the last three weeks, myself and the forex mastery students, the ones that took the trades that I told them to take, obviously announced them on my YouTube channel, have gone on to make a significant amount of money. As it stands right now, I don't really need to trade for the rest of the year because I've made a lot of money shorting GBPUSD and BTC as well. And obviously, oil loan trades have been fantastic as well. So the question today is, now that our trades have hit target, are there not any trading opportunities? What do we do at this point? Do we not trade? Do we trade and stuff like that? That's exactly what I want to discuss. And then obviously I'm going to be breaking down the charts and I have one very nice trade set up for you guys, which is gold. I feel like it's going to drop and I want to discuss the setup with you guys. But before I jump into the chat, as always, first things first, if you haven't already subscribed, go ahead and smash the subscribe button down there. If you found this video helpful, drop me a comment. But even before I jump into the chat, I always want to say a special shout out to the forex mastery students because the community is growing. Everybody on YouTube now, it's like if you're not a forex mastery students, if you don't have the course, it's like you're missing out as we speak.  I respect you guys very much. And for those of you who have already started making a lot of money, there you go. I know a lot of people, I know people who joined maybe a month ago, took the course, took the trades that I told them to take and have already recovered the money and more, 10 times more than what they actually invested in their education. So for those of you who haven't already grabbed the program, the link is going to be down here as always but enough about all of that. Let's jump into the charts. Let's look at what we can trade for the weeks ahead. Let us go. How's it going people?   Yes, GBPUSD as you can see in front of you. Right here, I'm just simply highlighting my entries, rather highlighted my entries and stuff like that. I'm just going to delete this. So what had happened? Let me quickly give you guys a quick recap on GBPUSD and how we were able to make, I mean, I caught GBPUSD shots from this level about here. My entries were somewhere about here, 1.317 and the market, obviously my overall targets were all the way down at 1.219. So that's roughly about a thousand paper drop. So this is exactly what I mean when I say that the top down analysis, obviously what I teach on the Forex Mastery program is full proof, meaning that this will actually show you guys what exactly is about to happen in the future. I keep preaching that what happens on the higher timeframe is what's going to play out on the lower timeframe. Whatever it is you see happening on the lower timeframe is exactly what is happening on the higher timeframe, meaning that whatever is going to happen on lower timeframe, the higher timeframe will tell you first. And as you can see from our previous analysis, I projected GBPUSD to drop to 1.2200. However, I did have some intermediary targets somewhere about here. My initial target for this was actually around here because of the touch of this trend line. And as you can see, we came smashed it. Now, this is a huge drop. I actually have been predicting GBPUSD from the top, but I wasn't able to find a decent entry around here.  Now, why and how did I know GBPUSD was going to come all the way down here? Now, you have to understand that we have attempted to break this level. As you can see, it's a triple bottom and this is a double top. Now, Forex Mastery students, you and the guys know what happens at a double top, especially at a key level. Now, if you go on module six, which is trend reversals of the Forex Mastery program, you hear me talk about trend reversals at key levels. So what that simply means is if I see a chat pattern from at a major level on a high timeframe, chances are that that market is most likely going to reverse. As you can tell, this market was in an uptrend from 2000 and this is 2020, 11th of May, all the way up until June the following year. So for about 13 months, we went in an uptrend. Now, how did I know that this uptrend was going to come to an end and reverse all the way to the downside? Once again, my YouTube videos are here to educate, to teach. I will try and share as much as possible. Anything I can't share, you're going to have to get it on the Forex Mastery program, but I will share as much as I can here. Now, why did this market collapse? For two reasons, the double top. Secondly, we had a head and shoulder pattern form at these key levels. All right, cool. What do you do? You draw your trend line. We broke the trend line and we all know, I mean, not like we all know, but price action states that once the neckline of a key, or once the neckline of a chart pattern is broken, breached. So this is a neckline. This is left shoulder, right shoulder head. Once it is breached like this and we come back in to test it and we start heading lower, what that simply means that that trend has been violated and we have started heading downwards. Now, like I said, I couldn't really get a decent entry around here. It wasn't until the market actually came down here and had actually started showing me from some significant lower lows and lower highs. And then obviously I use one of our entry strategies that I teach on the Forex Mastery program to jump onto the trade. Now, I'm just quickly recapping this. I'm not here to brag about how much money I made, but as you can tell, a thousand pips. Even if I was trading $10 a lot, which is quite small, that's to $10,000, I did make a significant. Actually, this single trade has pretty much wrapped up my hair for me. This is May. With the amount of money we've made from the market from GBP-USD shots, gold long and Bitcoin short, I don't really think I'll be trading for the rest of the year because we've actually hit our target for the year, but I will be coming on here to analyze and maybe trade here and there. But this just goes to show you the power of the top-down analysis. Once I placed my trade, I mean, it took one, two, three, four, five, six weeks for the market to hit our target.  That's too long. Think about it this way. I clicked the market once and throughout that six-week period, I didn't need to trade because the market was just making money for me every single day. He just kept on falling in my favor of fall. Every time I opened my chart, Michael was just dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping. So this is exactly what I always try and teach the students on the Forex Mastery program. Like, hey, listen, less is more in this game.  All you need to do is analyze from a higher timeframe to the top-down analysis, project 1,000 pips into the future, scale down to the lower timeframe, use the strategies that I teach you guys on the program and then enter the trade in that direction and you can pretty much benefit from all of these pips. Now that being said, what is the next for GBP-USD? Now, usually what happens is, and I'm gonna be honest with you guys, what happens or rather what I like to do is whenever it is I've been able to extract, because this is over 1,000 pips. Yeah, 1,000 pips I've gotten from GBP-USD. If you're doubting me, check my previous videos. Anyways, back to what I was saying. So 1,000 pips we've been able to extract as it stands right now, I'm quite content with the amount of money I've made from GBP-USD. Will I be looking for more trading opportunities right now? Not really, not any time soon, but I'm just gonna have a look at the chart to see what could potentially happen. Now, what could potentially happen? It's quite early to say what could potentially happen, but I'll be looking for pullbacks and I'll be monitoring this market to see what exactly happens around this region. As you can see, I'm keeping my charts on a four hour timeframe, just because although I can see some form of a supply zone right about here, I feel that GBP-USD might just maybe fire one more leg down to back to the downside. It's too early for me to say just yet, I'll be monitoring this, but I'm not gonna get greedy and obviously start looking for trading opportunities on GBP-USD as we speak. I will just be monitoring this market and I'll also keep a very close eye out for this head and show that that might potentially form about here. So like I say, this market isn't ripe yet. It doesn't know if he wants to go test here or if he wants to come down. Regardless of whatever happens, I'll be monitoring it. I'll be keeping a close eye on the GBP-USD so I can come on here and update you guys. Sorry guys, I'm speaking a bit fast. To be honest, when I, my comments are going crazy. Everyone's like, you haven't dropped a video in a while. You haven't dropped a video in a while. I'm like, okay, let me drop a video. I've actually been really exhausted. A lot of things going on in my life, business-wise, we're trying to grow, we're trying to expand, we're trying to invest into other business ventures. So sometimes doing videos can be quite stressful, but as always, I'm dedicated to you guys. Thank you guys for always watching the videos and I appreciate you guys. So enough about GBP-USD. The same thing happened with Bitcoin. We're able to forecast Bitcoin. So my short levels for Bitcoin were about here at 343K. My overall target was worth 30K. So all of this, fantastic. I've been able to eat all of our pips. Now, Timmy, once again, check my previous videos. I called it live here. Now, in regards to Bitcoin, what's gonna happen next for Bitcoin? At the moment, Bitcoin is looking really dangerous. I don't like to you guys. The next level that could hold for Bitcoin is 19K. If that happens, a lot of people are gonna get wiped out. Now, I know a lot of people who are holding Bitcoin. The only thing that is holding Bitcoin right now is this trend line.  So let's just watch Bitcoin and see if this trend line should hold. Ideally, I'll be looking for a bullish engulfing weekly candle. If we can jump back into here, I've seen the reason why Bitcoin shouldn't shoot up to 44K. However, if we break this trend line clearly, I'm not 19K, is it will? 19K, man. So this is exactly what's holding Bitcoin. And regardless of whichever way we go, once I can, guys, this is how I trade and this is how I teach on the Forex Mastery Program by the way, for those of you who haven't grabbed the program, the link is always around here somewhere. I'll check the link in the description. If you're Nigerian, we always drop a pay stack link on the payment page to help you guys out because I know you guys are having difficulties paying from your country. But if you're from anywhere else around the world, just click the link. You see it, grab the Forex Mastery Program there, just go on there and then put in your card details and check on and the course gets delivered to your inbox. Anyways, back to what I was saying. So for me, it's very simple and straightforward. All I need is a clear direction, okay? At the moment, I've been able to make all these pips all the way down here. We've gotten to this point. This is a decision point. I'm out of the market. I like to trade from zone to zone. We've gotten to a key zone. The market is struggling. I'm out. I'll be waiting for this market to tell me what he wants to do next. Do we want to give a bullish engulfing candle here? If that's the case, then I know that we want to point higher and we want to head higher, okay? So, guys, keep me safe. Sorry about that, guys. I had to click it. Something was a little distraction going on. Anyways, back to what I was saying. So for me, once I'm able to see a clear direction on BTC, then I will then be able to reanalyze and see what exactly is happening. Now, why I'm actually here today is actually gold, right? Gold is the guy of the day. Gold is what I want to trade at the moment. Gold, I keep saying I'm not trading for the year, but the guys, the trading opportunities just seem to be presenting themselves and they look quite juicy. Now, why am I interested in gold? I'll tell you why I'm interested in gold. I'll tell you why I'm interested in gold at the moment. Give me a sec. Let's see, this is a trade line for gold. Anyways, back to what I was saying in regards to gold. Now, I have a trade setup that looks nice, but the problem with the trade setup is that now, guys, as you know, I would always come on here and tell you exactly how it is, okay? No need to sugarcoat anything. If I have a problem, if I have a concern with a particular setup, I will let you know. If I feel the setup is fantastic, good to go, I'll also let you know. Now, I saw a nice setup on gold, but I'm a bit wary of the setup because this trade line is holding the market at the moment, but I'll just quickly explain to you as what exactly is happening. There's a clear double top on gold as we speak. Now, usually once it's a double top, the market would obviously come on here. It needs to come and test the base of this market. So what this simply means is that we've kicked off from this zone, so $20,000, not $20,000, $2,030 per ounce. The market has been making potential lower lows and lower highs. We're coming here almost definitely, one, seven, four, five, so 80% sure we're gonna come down here. Now, we've come shy of this level. I like, these are one of my favorite ways to trade. I like a situation whereby I've been able to anticipate the zone-to-zone movement and then the market stops midway. I call it, it's stopped at the bus station to pick up passengers. So from what I can see here, we've stopped midway to pick up passengers and then this is my opportunity to jump in. Then I then scale to a lower timeframe, like a four hour timeframe, and look for potential entries. And as you can see, I can see obviously the market pulling back into this green bar, which also coincides with some minor levels as well. So if I just adjust this properly, like so, I'm just gonna put this bar here, okay? So, and this is also a supply level as well. So I just put this around here. So as you can see what pulling into here for a potential drop down here. So I would simply come on a four hour timeframe and then I would look for trading opportunities. And as you can see, this market seems to be flagging pretty nicely. So even if I came on a one hour timeframe, you can see that this market seems to be flagging pretty nicely, okay? So what I'm then going to do is I'll come to the four hour timeframe and then I'm going to map it out properly because I don't like the way it looks. So I'm just gonna do this. I'm just gonna do it. So it's simple guys. For gold, I'm anticipating some downside movement for gold. My entries will be based on a break of this counter trend line. As you can see, I'm not drawing my counter trend line too close to the market. I'm obviously drawing, you can execute your trade on a one hour timeframe. And this is when people ask me, oh DAPS, can I use your strategy on lower timeframe? Of course, but we need to first of all establish some very key factors on a higher timeframe first, okay? Which is the direction of the market. So at the moment I'm expecting gold to pull back into this yellow bar. Don't sell at the yellow bar, wait for a bounce. I would need to see a four hour bounce, a four hour bearish engulfing candle off of this level. Obviously a break of this, but the bearish engulfing candle needs to be strong breakdown here. And you guys always know my first level targets will be at 100% retracement. And then obviously see some bleeding to the downside. So I'm favoring gold to reach here and break down here. My probabilities of that happening is about 80%. There are many 20% as I always like to leave room for anything if we happen. We can break to the upside, okay? But 80% to the downside. But my criteria is very simple. Bearish engulfing candle off of this major level, break this counter trend line. My first level targets will be here and overall targets will be here. So if we do this correctly, 1863. So just looking at about maybe another 900 pips. You see, easy. Like in three, this is the power of forex mastery program and top down analysis, ladies and gentlemen. In three minutes, there you go. You break down the charts, quick time in three minutes, okay? So there you have it, guys. I think that's all I have to share for gold. Yeah, that's all I have to share for gold. I wanted to keep this as brief as possible so that you guys don't get bored. Once again, thank you for staying to the very end of this very lengthy video. I'll catch you guys in my other screen. I have more videos coming up for you guys. I just wanted to do a quick technical breakdown. We're working on a lot for the YouTube channel and updates to the forex mastery program as well. I know I've been saying that for a bit, but now I actually have the time to do so. Once again, I'll see you guys on my other screen. Let's go. And there you have it, guys. Thank you for staying to the very end of this very lengthy. It wasn't that long, actually. Thank you for staying to the very end. I hope I've been able to shed light on the trades that I took before and obviously the gold trade that I feel is lining up and could be quite juicy and profitable for you guys. Do I have anything else to share with you guys? I think that's about it, guys. I'm gonna be leaving you guys very soon. What else do I wanna share with you guys? I think that's about it. Shout out to the forest mastery students once again. I love you guys very much. And if you haven't already subscribed, just subscribe down below. If you haven't grabbed the program, click the link down below. And that's it, guys. That's my time. That whole world is once again. Take it easy and peace.


In case you just joined, I'll just start by introducing myself and why we're here today. My name is Emma and I'm a software engineer at Spotify. I've been working on backstage for the last five years on many different parts. And yeah, as we have heard in some of the talks today, there are a lot of backstage plugins and backstage is very flexible so you can extend it based on your needs. But where do you actually start? So yeah, today I have this amazing group of panelists with me and that will give you a little bit of a deep dive into those topics. So with that, I will sit down and let you introduce yourself. So why don't you start with, yeah, just your name, your role, the company you work for and maybe why you started use backstage. Yeah, absolutely. I'm from Zalando. I'm head of developer experience of Builder Productivity. Zalando is the biggest fashion e-commerce in Europe with more than 50 million active customers. We have more than 2,000 engineers and six engineering hubs across Europe and more than 4.5,000 applications of microservices across the company. And that's one of the reasons why we started going for backstage and using the platform. My name is Dan Laird. I'm an engineering manager with OVO Energy. So in the UK we supply about 5 billion people with electricity. We don't have anywhere near the scale that Levy just explained. We're about 400 tech people, 10,000 employees in the company. We started using backstage when I joined the company a couple of years ago and primarily to try and give information to the engineering community because in a remote first company you can't rely on the coffee conversations in person anymore.  Hi, my name is Bogdan. I'm working on the company Ball. It's the biggest e-commerce company in the Netherlands and Belgium. We have about maybe like 10 or 12 million customers. We're using also like more than 1,000 microservices in the company in such kind of the scale. I'm like lead engineer in my team. And also I'm recently from the end of the last year, became maintainer of the SkaFolder. And I was also really enjoyed to see one of the topics which was today in the morning presented by Helen regarding the SkaFolder retrying stuff. So that's what I'm like really actively working on. On the backstage we started working on that like four years ago and I was even like checked on adopters when we were there and we were like second company we should start it like adopting the backstage. Our primary goal was to have the backstage for the engineers so they like when they start in the morning like they're drinking the coffee and they're looking at monitor. They can see what they should do today. That's our primary goal what we're still going on forward to date. We are still like on our journey but it's like primary goal to make engineers happy so they know what they have to achieve. So far we see like the most of the traffic comes very instantly from the search. You're like building one thing but you see like when customers how they're using that stuff engineers they're using completely different. So we're investing much more time how we can make our customers more interested in other areas like for example we invested a lot in the scaffolder but it's not the thing what you use every day so we understand but it's really minimized the how many load for the engineers you have how many checkpoints engineers have to deal with and it's like a big investment which you can see like in the long term. Hi everybody my name is Alex and I work as the head of platform engineering at a fashion brand called H&M and the reason why we started using Backstage is because we needed a front end for our platform engineering ecosystem. Thank you so much and earlier today Helen did a little survey in here in person where she asked like okay which stage are you in your adoption journey and we definitely have people here just started to check out Backstage or doing proof of concept and or have fully adopted it. So I'm interested to know and maybe Levy if you can start like I know you were using two different strategies to actually go from having a proof of concept of Backstage to roll it out and get more users to use it can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah absolutely so the way that we look at it is that we try to tackle to customers basically one being the users of our instance of Backstage which is called Sunrise internally and the second one is actually basically the people that would contribute to the platform because we knew back then around three or four years ago it was just two three people in the team that was working on this and we knew that we wouldn't be able to achieve everything by ourselves so we really tried to do it in a way that would be very easy for people to actually contribute and start contributing to the platform so taking away things like for example authentication or taking away things like for example the local development environment or the CI CD pipeline how do you actually deploy and update the changes or receive the changes and so on and we started on the first customer meaning the people that would use Sunrise or Backstage back then by looking into what were the things that actually people needed and what would be the value that we could bring to them and that was back then a big problem around like how do we discover information how do we get access to every resource that we have and we look also at how fragmented the whole user journey for software engineers were and we really tried to step by step increase the coverage of the tools that we had in the company to actually have it integrated in our platform so when we started our first MVP was very simple with search, with catalog, with tech documentation around from the 2000 engineers that we had back then and we still have around 400 of them started already using it daily when we release and today we have around 60% of the whole software engineering family actually using our platform every day and more than 85% using it weekly it goes beyond the software engineering job families for a monthly basis where more than 2.5 thousand is using it actively in a month 2.5 thousand engineers so we focus quite a lot on our homepage and how we actually presented the actual information as my friend here said and we invested quite a lot on that as well so on the integration side of things we actually got 36 plugins that were contributed internally created either by the core team or by contribution for more than 120 individuals across the company got it, cool and Bogdan, you had a little bit of a different strategy and I won't spoil too much, I'll let you talk about it more but can you tell me a little bit more about how you were rolling backstage out to your users? Yeah, our strategy was a little bit different before we have kind of like a different internal portal it was kind of like a catalog but with only the data what you have kind of like microservices and who owns those microservices what we did we replaced it completely with the backstage it took some of the time for us to have all the features there and we also like adding more features more sources from different things there like for example you can think about like LDAP or you have like something of HRR you have SRE and other things which are contributed together so you have your catalog which is way more there plus you can also now to search really quickly there that's why like our customers like our engineers really like our search because you can search documentation you can search confluence you can search catalog from different sources and that's the biggest power going there because whenever the more sources you supply to your system the more people like it because they can find what they're exactly looking for and that was a really nice experience from the user point of view we had some kind of experience okay now if I didn't find anything in the backstage then it really doesn't exist and they also had some of the experience like adoption for example we have kind of like user interviews we have in our company UX designers they are coming to the users to use it can we for example go with you and have some feature and test it with you our advantage is like yet another system maybe like not with me maybe someone else but after they're looking at it how that works they really love it and afterwards they like said to us yeah it was really so great I would like to tell about that system to my team as well because when you're telling something to the people okay we have another platform and they think oh yet another one come on guys yeah okay Alex from a platform engineering concept lens I guess what was your strategies yeah so essentially what we do is that we again really try to use backstage as a front and for platform engineering so when we're rolling out backstage actually what we're doing is rolling out the platform engineering concept right to different teams and as a natural part of that backstage is part of that package essentially so we look at the platform engineering end-to-end journey and then we see what we can actually surface in backstage so we focused a lot on scaffolding and then surfacing engineering metrics and then compliance to guard rails has been our strategy and that's really what we're trying to do we're not trying to push backstage we're pushing platform engineering and backstage is just the front end of that ecosystem got it we'll go more into details of plugins soon but I'm curious so these platform teams also like these teams own the plugins then that you bring into backstage as well is that how you're organized yeah so what we essentially do is we in platform engineering dictate the end-to-end experience that we want to see and then we have different teams collaborating with us to essentially contribute with what they want to surface from their standpoint cool and Dan do you want to add anything around from all the energy around your strategies for rolling out backstage well I think being honest our strategy is a tale of two halves really the first part was you want to get excitement about using backstage and so you're sort of trying to promote it internally but we fell into a trap being honest with all of you guys which was sort of a bit of a sugar hit we kept adding new plugins wow look at this this is brilliant and some people ago that's good but you can only add so many plugins and keep the sugar going before you hit the sugar crash which is and so what like what are you building so we're now sort of on the bottom of the crash if you like where we've introduced these plugins got everyone really excited and the so what bit we're sort of heading much more in the direction Alex has talked about which is we've got tools out there that we want people to use in a certain way and now we're starting to build a sort of more coherent user story rather than just a sort of fireworks display of new plugins every couple of weeks which builds and promotes internally in the company which is a key part of any journey but now there's a so what question and now we're answering that one cool okay perfect you've already started to talk about plugins so let's dive a little bit deeper into it so there's a lot of great open source plugins out there and I feel like most of us starts with okay we have this set of problems within our organizations and how do we actually go to find the plugin plugins that can help us solve these so can you talk a little bit more about which how you were like identifying these plugins that can help you or solve your problems that of energy yeah so they're again going back to sort of the sugar crash and the sugar sort of hit analogy we went for some plugins and there were there were two parts the plugins that looked impressive not necessarily the most useful for the engineers but they sort of created excitement around what we were trying to do so we just essentially go to the backstage portal and go oh yeah that looks quite good let's try out the Kubernetes plugin because we have some users with Kubernetes but in reality the plugins that were actually proving more useful were where they were more focused on specific issues and we were trying to sort of answer a question within our company around ownership but not necessarily just ownership of microservices but also ownership of knowledge and that led us very early into an early conversation with Spotify themselves around skills exchange because when you've got a distributed workforce trying to identify who's got what skills and how to sort of find that knowledge is really hard now again as with all adoption journeys like the idea is sound the tool is perfect the plugin is definitely got promise but we're still at that stage where we're trying to get enough critical mass you know push that snowball down the hill because until you've got 20% of your team declaring their skills essentially no one's declaring their skills but as we add more people into skills exchange that sort of creates that excitement factor because it's something that isn't answered in any of the other tools that are at the company but yeah in the whole there's a plugin for everything in Backstage and the best thing is just try them and see if they work but just beware the sugar crash if you get people excited and then you have to maintain it afterwards love it and Alex you were talking to me before about like that you at H&M at define what's good in text before in terms of software of course what are you doing now instead yeah so what we try to do at the beginning at H&M is essentially try to explain to our engineers what good looks like essentially and the way that we did that was basically in text right and we realized quite quickly that you know everybody has different understandings of what's actually written in text so what we actually did was starting to work with Soundcheck to actually start being much more concrete about what we mean with for example you know have performance tests being ran before launching something to production are you running vulnerability scans those kinds of things that really allows us to both be clear to our users it's a better user experience and also track it at the organizational level and actually help out teams when we identify that they're lagging behind in some areas we can actually talk to them and actually show them the metrics of this is where you could be better it's also being great being able to service these metrics to engineering leads and management saying that we are making a difference in terms of being better at building software in terms of how you are identifying plugins you have touched both on like discoverability, homepage anything to add there yeah I think like with the identifying plugins it is about also like I think it's more than that right it's like identifying problems that are worth solving and where actually in the user journey people are losing time where they're actually having some optimal experiences or you know struggling with feedback loops so I try to look more from that perspective of where actually people having some optimal experiences what kind of problems are they having and then working backwards from that and then identifying which kind of plugins maybe on the plugins on the plugins page or even general github search on what kind of solutions are there to actually help people in the end and I think that has proven quite valuable for our engineers because then there is a if people know that the product is going to solve a problem they're going to come back to it and you won't struggle as much with adoption if they really see the value on this from our experience usually like what we did like initially we went through all the plugins and we immediately like eliminated what kind of plugins we are interested in and then in that set of the plugins we started like evaluate of them like how much effort would require from us to start using them if that effort is too high maybe it's not the place to start working and using those plugins maybe we can build our own because in our team we have not only engineers we have only X designers we have also data analyst so we are looking at all perspectives how the plugin will work if everyone is happy about that and we can find the ground it will be like holistic approach because of the most like appliance they don't look holistic and then for us it's like a biggest problem at least in our company and we need to invest time to make it holistic and if you see that solution not really for us maybe it's better to build it's our own and it's not only about us we all the time going to the users we are asking users how do we find it is it like easy to use is it not what was for you the biggest struggle and only after that when we have all the discovery with X designers with all the like with some set of the users with some set of engineers and when we have some data that it really will solve the problem then only we start building it start like including the plugin not right away okay it's nice it looks cool it's so much she grabs there let's like enable it and see how it goes now we are going a little bit differently thank you so much okay we'll open up for some questions from the audience anyone have any questions I'll run around with the microphone let's start it hey thanks for your insight I had a question so you mentioned infrastructure I was wondering why there isn't more let's say data infrastructure plugins or things like that that are available with backstage do any of you see your teams managing their data infrastructure through backstage or is that just not a great use case thanks I think I can take that one yes we do have seen users wanting to have data integrations we do in Zalando have the whole machine learning platform or an orchestration running the visualization part of it also in in our backstage instance yes it is a problem that we are also tackling and solving with backstage as well if I may we're the same as well actually we've just because we're trying to use backstage as a portal that declares ownership so although the data teams have got their own specific tools like data hub which is around Acryl and there's some other tools out there and we've got Kafka infrastructure and all these things what we've done is just use things like Google API to give us a list of all the big query data sets we have and we just attribute those as being owned by teams and even at the simplest level that gives you something valuable for those guys there's loads more that could be done if you're employed at the company so then you feel like you're moving deck chairs whereas the ownership piece was something that wasn't necessarily solved so we added that an account company we're also doing the same but now we're doing only the first day of the experience whenever you create the whole infrastructure the application and deployment part to the user so you just need to only supply what kind of the name of the application would be and we will completely spin up for you everything what is required there for example you want to add database or you would like to add something else but it's a little bit on the future because we're building some infrastructure heavy things and only after that we'll start building backstation top so it's also like in our plans awesome thank you how are we doing with time okay cool thanks thank you very much for the very insightful panel discussion so I wanted to talk a little bit more from all of you on the day zero before you started using backstage I guess you all had your own IDP where you had your users already using some platform more or less abstracted or more or less exposed I think on infrastructure level so I wanted to know how you went through your initial IDP and then how do we want to use backstage why do we want to use backstage so it would integrate with sometimes the in-house abstractions that you beat for your own developer platform so could you explain more on how you went through that stage to ending up with having backstage for your users I can start before we were using backstage essentially the entire developer experience was CLI based and then we noticed we were not really happy with it and we also spent a lot of time on making it compatible with different operating systems and that kind of stuff and then we had this brilliant idea let's just build a frontend and then as we started to build it we were like okay I think someone has saw this problem before so then we actually started looking at the market we did a bunch of POCs with vendors and looking at different open source solutions and that's how we basically ended up with and the user need was in our particular case the instantiation of new software services was just too clunky essentially in our experience it was started like four years ago before I joined but what I heard there there was like kind of like you can imagine we have like 50 different systems and you even don't know where you need to go to and there was like very enthusiastic idea to managers and they were so happy about it really like a dream yes let's do it and that was just kind of like a beginning to do some kind of a little bit playing around with that and yeah that was our journey so for us it was not really like one IDP itself it was a combination of different things from application registry to documentation sites publishing mechanisms or things like that and the way that we did it was basically when we were looking to solving the problem of like how do we reduce that fragmentation that I was talking about we had more than a hundred and something different kinds of portals or places where people could find information how can we create one unified thing and how can we actually do it in a way that others can contribute because with a small team we were not going to be able to do everything by ourselves and then we started looking at this and this was about the same time where backstage was released on the open source as a beta software and that's where we actually you know look at it okay we are trying to achieve the same thing let's try it out let's do a hack week two weeks see what we can do and you know in two weeks we basically got like five different things integrated and we were like okay you know I think this is the right things for us to try out and even though it's early stages it might take some time to get on stability level or maturity level that we want to have but let's contribute to that as well and I think that was our journey Yay to hack weeks Hi I wanted to follow up on this questions of how to treat your fellow platform teams also as a user and for example Levy you mentioned that you had 39 plugins being contributed from like other platform teams what were like your learnings in terms of what worked really well and what didn't work in terms of enabling contributions from other teams to the backstage portal yeah so what what didn't work well I think it's like trying to just have it organically or just pointing people to documentation we had like very good documentation onboarding material for people to start and that doesn't doesn't necessarily work well I think what works well it's really about saying you know what let me spend some time with you let me show you how it works let me show you our vision let me show you what we want to achieve and see what parts of the product as well make sense to have it in the portal which part does not make sense it's better off you know the source of the truth and not in the visualization layer so having those kind of like really hands-on discussions with like engineers talking with engineers and really showing showing how it works how to create a new plugin having those demo sessions I think that's what really worked for us especially when it comes to people that are not so experienced with JavaScript with TypeScript or from technologies in general I think that was our journey do you want to add something to that then I'm just going to say from our point of view we actually haven't made it work yet and just again, the point of these panels is to be honest about the story we haven't managed backstage was deployed by us as a developer experience team and therefore the other parts that might contribute plugins were always another part of the organization which means that there's always sort of communication structures that make it very hard to make these things work I'm hoping that's going to change now for the future engineering team and the production engineering teams all with developer experience so now we're going to essentially take the same approach that Levy talks about sit with people and say how can we help you solve a problem recognizing that there's a steep learning curve if you look at a backstage plugin and say why don't you have a go it's a bit harder than people would like to start with so we're going to have to hand hold through that journey there's also the fear there's this immediate fear of this unknown thing called backstage I'm going to start with you Alex awesome, thank you so much so before we wrap up today I know there are people here or I think there are people here who will be like I'm going to start to use backstage tomorrow so if you have the chance to give them one advice in their adoption journey what would that be and maybe start with you Alex my biggest tip is focus on the user and the product that you're developing if it brings value to the users then people will onboard to it use it I think the same how much value backstage will add to your company but also from our point of view we really would like to have contributors and what we see in our company that whenever you don't have type script based company it's really hard to find people who will contribute whenever people stop it's type script, I don't know it's like a big ecosystem so you need to invest your time and they need to be enthusiastic some people even like whenever they hear it's type script, no I'm not going to do that you need also to consider it I'm going to be a bit cheeky I'm going to add two things the first is it doesn't have to be type script so for our engineers we've written plugins in Go and it just outputs JSON files and then backstage JSON is really easy but it opens up a whole other part of your organization to contribute rather than going I don't know type script and the second quick point is don't start with a catalogue we tried to start with the catalogue and it involves so many stakeholders from the wider business that it feels like you're wading through organizational and people problems rather than solving engineering challenges whereas if you take the approach like Alex has talked about you can't find that amount of time so start there I think it's very similar to TRs I would say like pick one use case there's the most impactful one for your organization and tackle that an example there was an incident a few months ago somebody said it took me like two hours to find what was the change that happened in production so we say okay why was that then we create a plugin for saying okay the latest deployment so that this doesn't happen again so it's just one example it's really about not trying to solve all the problems at once but really picking one the most impactful problem and say okay how can I solve this problem how does backstage contribute to solving the problem and then from there really it will open up the doors because then you have impact you have trust also from the you have trust from your team as well that they created value and then move from there did you want to add something yeah just something that sprung to my mind I think yeah solving problems but just a caveat on that also not solving like individual problems in isolation I really like to think of it as like let's look at the end-to-end experience right because if you just solve particular problems but then distributed problems then there's no real there's small added value you don't get the wow effect to come back to backstage all the time awesome thank you so much for participating in this panel today and thank you for listening and having great questions and yeah I have a really important thing as part of my speaking notes and that's to show the QR code that you can use to give feedback on this panel so scan this one and thank you so much and yeah give them a round of applause everyone


Welcome to CN Live, season 5, episode 11, Assange in the DC-6. Six members of the Australian Parliament have just completed two days in Washington DC, armed with a bipartisan agenda and the backing of an entire nation, as they tried to convince congressmen and state and justice department officials that the American pursuit of the Australian publisher, Julian Assange, is wrong and must be stopped. The cross-party delegation lobbied for Assange's release ahead of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's state visit to the White House at the end of October, where it is expected that Assange will be raised. The MPs who traveled to Washington were former National Party Leader Barnaby Joyce, Liberal Senator Alex Antik, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Independent MP Dr. Monique Ryan, and Greens Senators Peter Wish-Wilson and David Shubridge. We spoke with Senator Shubridge earlier today from Washington. David, thanks for joining us. I live in the Washing Area, but I happen to be in Sydney right now, so sorry we couldn't be with you at the Capitol or at the DOJ. I know you can't speak specifically about who you met and what you actually discussed, but in general, were there any members of Congress or in the administration, whether that be the State or Justice Department or at the White House, that showed you some openness, some understanding of the case? We saw Thomas Mess, you talked on camera, so he seemed to show some sympathy, but your general reception, was it merely just polite that they had to see you, but they weren't really all that interested, or did you see some people in the administration or in Congress who understood this case and who were open to what you had to say in your argument? Well, look, we actually had a really open meetings, a series of open meetings, very positive responses from across Congress. The meetings that we had with the State Department and the Department of Justice were more on your traditional meetings. I thought they were very productive meetings. We made it very clear the broad political consensus in the Australian Parliament and the Australian people to bring Julian Assange home, made it clear that the ongoing efforts to extradite him and charge him effectively to the crime of being a journalist was damaging to our bilateral relationships, and I think they were productive meetings. But when we met with members of Congress, whether they were in the Senate or senators or Congress people, I've got to say we had a very, very positive reception. There were members of Congress from both the left and the right who were engaged in the issue, understood the very fundamental principles, the First Amendment principles, the concept of comedy between our two countries, the threat to journalism more broadly. And that was both from the left and the right. And I've got to say we've had meeting after meeting after meeting, our delegation of six MPs and senators from the Australian Parliament. And without exception, we had strong engagement on the issue and multiple commitments to take the cause on in Congress and the Senate. Did you go to the White House today? No. The things yesterday were with the State Department and with the Department of Justice. We met as well with the Australian Embassy and I think we got an indication of strong support from the Ambassador, a former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. I was personally impressed by his commitment to take on the project, obviously, with the direction of Prime Minister Albanese, who has said very clearly that this has gone on too long and Julian should be brought home. So I've got to say, each of the meetings we had, there was a strength, a sense of a very strong commitment and a commitment to take the matter further. Cathy. Hi, David. You have a variety of opinions, Senator Wishwilson said it's because you're a delegation that you have different views. And that seems to be the case with Labour's Tony Zapier very clearly asking for the pursuit of Assange's detention and the charges to be dropped by the US. Another Labour MP, Julian Hill, had previously suggested a plea deal would be Assange's best option for not spending the rest of his life in jail. And then there was mention at the end of your press conference outside the DOJ by Senator Wishwilson that the UK could make it easier for everyone by just saying no to his extradition. From your experience, it's clear you all want him to be brought home, but from your experience and in your view, which is the best way to achieve that outcome? And do you have any hint at what might be the best option? Was there any suggestion that as Caroline Kennedy seemed to hint that a plea deal might be a possibility or are they thinking otherwise? Well, it wasn't our job to determine the mechanism to get Julian home with his two kids and his family by Christmas. But all six of us were united in that as the actual goal of our representations and the outcome that needs to happen, whether it's from the US or the UK or a combination of the both.  One of the other options and it's a matter that we've discussed amongst ourselves in the delegation and we've raised it in our engagement with the administration would be for the UK to not permit the extradition. Ultimately, whatever the courts decide, there's a political decision that needs to be made at a senior ministerial level in the UK about whether or not the extradition can occur. And in many ways, that would solve a problem for everybody. It would definitely solve a problem for Julian if the extradition was denied. And it would remove this quite thorny political issue for some in the democratic camp about Julian Assange, take it out of their hands and resolve the bilateral issue between Australia and the United States. Obviously, it's not our job to determine the mechanism, but it's our job to very clearly state on behalf of 90% of the Australian people what the outcome needs to be and that's Julian at home free to have Christmas with his kids and still. Did you find that the people that you met were well informed or correctly informed about the case? That was one of the complaints that the defence had that the UK courts had been misled. And Barnaby Joyce said that informing yourselves about the case was the first step. So what was your impression of how well informed the US politicians were about the case? Well, there was a spectrum in terms of the amount of knowledge that the politicians had. All of them understood the basic concepts that Julian Assange is being charged for the sharing of information and his work essentially as a journalist and that's the core of the charges against him. They all understood that Chelsea Manning was the official who had actually leaked the information. They understood the history of Chelsea Manning's case and how she's now free to walk the streets of the United States, as she should be, after the commutation of her sentence. They all understood those basic facts, but I think it was important that the delegation also debunked some of the whispering campaign that's been led against Julian Assange, the now very debunked allegations involving Sweden and the alleged rape in Sweden that's been thoroughly debunked and, in fact, just telling people there was no prosecution ever. It was an investigation that was highly politicised. I think getting that information out clearly, reminding them that the US legal system has looked at whether or not any harm accrued from the leaking of information and has comprehensively found that no harm could be identified to any US military or government official, apart from the harm of being embarrassed about the truth. I think getting that information out, but I think one of the most critical pieces of fresh information was just how United Australia is on this and the diversity in our delegation was, I think, really critical to getting that message across. Senator, thank you again for being with us. Was there any discussion, an idea of a plea come up anywhere in your discussions? And secondly, did you think you have prepared the groundwork for the prime minister when he goes next month? And how far should he go in terms of using the leverage that Australia has, in particular in the security arrangements that have big news here and there's a lot of opposition inside Australia to it. So he has to understand that how much, how far could he and should he go in terms of using the leverage Australia has? I think it was important that we came at this moment in time, not only as a critical in terms of the UK extradition proceedings that literally could wind up within days or weeks and we could see Julian potentially coming to the United States, but it's very much in the shadow of the upcoming state visit by Prime Minister Albanese on the 26th of October. And I can tell you now that multiple members of Congress, when they heard that and they heard about the likely impact that ongoing questioning about the Assange matter will have to that state visit, there is picked up, they realized that there's a moment in history here. And I think that that has really forged a commitment, I hope, for broad action across the aisle here in Washington to support the broad action across the aisle in Canberra and get Julian home to his kids and his wife by Christmas. And how much leverage should the Prime Minister use, you think, in his meeting with the president? Well, we're talking about the freedom of an Australian citizen, Australian citizen who's been persecuted for the crime of being a journalist. Of course, it should be front and center of the meeting. It should be an issue. It's a major bilateral irritant and it needs to be resolved. Well, the last, quickly last one, but Biden would not want this during a presidential campaign, this trial. Do you think that they could stretch this out for 14 more months for a decision in Britain? So it won't happen during a presidential campaign? Well, well, this could happen in days. Julian could be in the United States in days or weeks. This could be a first amendment trial with most of the media stacked up against the Biden administration in the shadow of the US election campaign. That would be a disastrous outcome for the Biden administration. I can tell you it's part of the representations we made. I am sorry, I have to go. But thank you very, very much, Senator Shubridge, for joining us. Bye bye. Thank you, David. Thank you. Bye. Well, Kathy, that was Senator David Shubridge, who kindly gave us a few minutes. What did you make of his remarks to us? Very concise and very appropriate answers. And what I'm clinging to in the end was the last thing he said that you get the impression it would be better for the Biden administration to clean this up quickly, get it out of the way, get a good outcome. And that's going to get him off to a fantastic start in his campaign. Well, I don't know how fantastic it would be because a lot of Democrats really hate Julian Assange. They blame him for Donald Trump. We've discussed that ad nauseam on this channel and on our news pages. And we've kind of debunked that to use a Biden administration favorite word. So I think that's why I've argued in a piece recently why I asked Shubridge whether he thought they could just delay this. And the US has, I would think, a lot of control about what's going on in Britain in terms of whether they want this case to be decided after the campaign is over. And that would just mean another 12 months. But Shubridge, like many other people are saying, Gabriel Shipton and Stella Assange, that this could happen within days or weeks. He could be on a plane to the US if the European Court of Human Rights can intervene instead. Of course, there's a three. There's a two panel judge, I believe, coming of hearing. It's a 30 minute hearing to decide whether they will actually hear an appeal from Jonas Assange across appeal of the lower court's decision. The first judge said no. So this is an appeal of that decision not to hear the appeal. If it happens, I wonder and I'm going to ask you, Cathy, what do you thought about his answers in regard to the reception that he had? It seems like some members of Congress were informed. Some of them weren't not correctly informed, as you asked him. And really, the Congress members are important, but not that important. The real importance here is what's going on in the Department of Justice. And it would get a great extent also the State Department. You'll know that you'll notice that Australian politicians and American politicians and British politicians that we can intervene in this case. This is a legal matter, only not political, not diplomatic. Well, of course, Anthony Blinken, the top US diplomat, when he was in Australia at the end of July, actually intervened in this and said, there's no way we're going to drop this case. It upset a lot of people in Australia. There was a furious backlash against that, including from some senators in the pro-Essange camp and MPs in the Australian Parliament. And after that, Caroline Kennedy came out and said, oh, we're open to a plea deal. But as we know from Craig Murray, there was no, there's been no discussion of a plea deal right now. So I was wondering what was your impression of what we heard from Shrewbridge about the level of understanding and the openness to hear the arguments that the MPs brought to these people in Washington. Well, of course, Secretary Blinken issued one of the points that David mentioned is having them having debunked about enormous harm being done as a result of WikiLeaks revelations. And of course, we know that Robert Carr had actually led an investigation at the time of the Manning Court Marshal to try and find anybody who had been harmed by WikiLeaks or killed by WikiLeaks revelations. And he couldn't find anyone at all. In fact, in Chelsea Manning's book, Readme.txt, she mentions that they were trying to show as well that what she had revealed harmed national security. And they found two publications, but they they didn't really they didn't really make that point at all. And they had nobody had read it. And the other thing was that, well, it seems that Carr tried to mislead the court by saying the citing a name of somebody who had been killed. Now, this name had been given by the Taliban. But as it turns out, Manning makes it clear that that that name wasn't mentioned at all in the revelation. So that attempted deception had to be withdrawn and we're left with no harm being done whatsoever. So I think that, you know, he did make that point. David Shubridge, that they had spent a lot of time I assume they spent a lot of time informing themselves correctly, which has been a real problem, given all of the misinformation over the last decade and that they also spent time dispelling some of these whispers, these rumors, these lies, essentially, that the revelations and Julian Assange caused harm. Now, just getting back to the first point that you made, I think that it's a bit of a gamble to wait so long until after the 24 elections, 2024 elections. It's a gamble that Julian Assange will last that long. And that he, yeah, because we are told by Stella that his health is continually declining. He had a stroke and doctors for Assange, particularly Doctor Arthur Chesterfield Evans, an Australian doctor but also Dr. Jill Stein, an American doctor has told us that these mini strokes are more often than not a sign that a major one is on the way. I had the impression that the UK was trying to push this through quickly. And I guess that's backed up by appeals being refused to get him off their turf before he has another stroke. So there's that kind of pressure. There's the other pressure that that Stella and the world are not going to shut up about this and the number of people, the 88 percent of Australian citizens, their representatives are not going to shut up about this over the next year and a half. So I just still think that the wisest move would be to to bring this matter to a close, a joyous close with the family being reunited as quickly as possible. And then Biden appears as a good guy and the guy who has admitted that, you know, he said over a decade ago that Julian Assange was a high tech terrorist. Well, you know, that was one of the lines that was being pumped out by so many people, but there were lots of other lines that essentially things that weren't true. It has been shown in the Manning Court Marshal that Assange WikiLeaks had the information dropped on their lap that Manning had already uploaded everything before any alleged chat between her and Assange had taken place. So, yes, Kathy, Biden did say in 2010 on that interview, I meet the press that he's closer to Assange, to a high tech terrorist than to the Pentagon papers, but he also did was part of the administration that decided not to indict Julian Assange. That's very significant. The same principles that he expressed on interview exist now. Nothing has happened in the case. He's charged only with the 2010 leaks, which is what they were talking about back in December 2010. There's been nothing new with you. Now, there have been leaks about the DNC that exposed corruption in the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign. And there was the CIA leaks. And I've argued now for some time that the CIA and the Democratic Party are still really pissed off at Julian Assange and would give Joe Biden a lot of hurt for he decided that he wanted this case to be dropped. He's dealing with the party. He's the head of the party and the CIA. And speaking of the CIA, if they really wanted to make some headway, this group of Australian senators, that's where they needed to go. Down to Langley, because these are the people who are controlling this case. I don't think there's any doubt about that. They seem to control, as we heard Jeffrey Sachse the other day on an interview, that who runs the United States? Well, it's the intelligence services and they want a president who is going to be pliable, hopefully one who completely agrees and is an activist president for intelligence interests, which they sometimes get. But if they get a president who is doesn't know what's going on, like looks like Joe Biden, that's pretty good too. But that's where the essence of this case is in Langley. And of course, they would never get an audience in Langley. I find it interesting. They went to the State Department at all because of this fiction, as I mentioned, that this is not a diplomatic or political case, it's only a legal case. And I did find it interesting, Cathy, that he said that gave the impression that some members of Congress, maybe in the administration, were knowledgeable of the case, although they had a lot of things wrong and they were able to try to argue with them or explain to them what the facts were. But when you heard, I think it was Peter Willson outside of the Department of Justice talk about the Statute of Liberty, or may have been another one, but they did talk about the cap. He mentioned the capital of democracy of the world, democracy. So I think these guys and one woman we haven't heard from, Monique Ryan, have appealed, tried to appeal to this American mythology that they are the democratic center of the world, that they are the beacon of hope, blah, blah, blah. The Statute of Liberty is about liberty for all and freedom and free press. First Amendment doesn't exist. Are there anywhere else? Anything like that enshrined in the Constitution. And I wonder if that's. We didn't ask her about that. But if that would have a better chance of just sticking to that kind of cartoon level explanation, how could you present yourself to the world as being the defenders of all these rights and freedoms when you have a publisher in jail for publishing true information? And this is the basic case. They probably made that to them. And I don't know how receptive American politicians would be, which is why I argue that they may delay this for 14 months, because if they have that trial, that's going to be much harder to to play down the fact that they are a country that's actually acting in a totalitarian way, as Peter W. Wilson said, in putting a publisher in jail, an Australian publisher who worked in London at the time on this case. And he's going to he's going to be in jail in the U.S. on trial. I don't see it happening. So as far as what you said about that, Cathy, there are people who in the Assange camp, including his father, John Shipton, who has said that it's a slow murder, slow motion murder. They're murdering. They're killing my son. There are many people in the Assange camp who believe that they wouldn't mind a British or the Americans if he did die in prison. So I would eliminate that. I don't know if that's true, but it would solve a lot of problems for them. So I don't know whether whether that would be an issue for them in trying to stretch yourself for 14 months. Well, I think another pressure and argument against going that way is that rivals of Joe Biden have already pledged to free Julian Assange. And probably the most important one is Robert Kennedy, Jr. In his currently in his own party. This is really rising to world prominence with world leaders talking about it. Lula from Brazil talked about it in the United Nations General Assembly. And so the noise is getting the volume is getting too loud.  And just because Julian Assange is in a British prison and not in an American prison, I don't think that's going to make any difference. There's also Marianne Williamson as well. And Rama Ramaswami, I think his name is, is the Republican candidate. Another rival of Biden who has the other thing is that, as you said before, Biden was vice president at a time when the Obama administration did not want to prosecute Julian Assange because of the New York Times problem. That is not going to go away. And you've still got this problem that more and more legacy journalists are becoming and mainstream journalists are becoming aware of that they are next. And then there's other issues about censorship as well. I mean, the First Amendment is really under debate at the moment. It seems to be in crisis with this prosecution of Julian Assange and also about the the this rigid, tight control of of free speech in terms of reporting. Missouri versus Biden case as well, where we see that a court, Fifth Circuit Court actually has upheld an injunction against members of the administration named members, not to communicate with social media companies to tell them to shut down people's accounts. You're absolutely right. That's front and center. There could be impeachment next early next year. Trump will be on trial to do. Will they be able to fit in Julian Assange on trial in the eastern district of Virginia and Alexandria? That's why I think this thing is going to be stretched out.  But anyway, that's my guess. But others, everybody else is saying it's going to happen imminently. I just don't see unless they want to hear now, but this trial wouldn't begin until next year. That's the thing. He'll show up in court. He'll be arraigned the next day or if it's the weekend the next Monday. And then we won't hear about it for months because they will then enter a process of writing briefs back and forth. Assange's lawyers will put a brief to dismiss this case based on probably First Amendment principles and all the other issues that came up in that cross appeal that the British High Court probably won't let them appeal. Those will could become issues again in the lawyers briefs if Julian winds up in a courtroom in Australia, sorry, in Alexandria, that they will say, look, this is a First Amendment issue. There's a Fifth Amendment issue here as our writer Bruce Affron pointed out that it was not clear it was written in the law that if he published this that he could be prosecuted for this. So that will go back and forth. And that would be happening if he's extradited. Now the trial could begin in the summer of next year, right in the thick of this campaign. Don't see it happening. Kathy, I'm just going to ask you if you have any final words, because then we'll leave it here. Yeah, so maybe it could go that way. The decision might be made to try and stretch it out. It's going to be difficult. Or Biden could decide to run on a campaign of. It's more humane that I mean, I've just watched the. The program with Stella Sange and Chris Hedges about. Belmarsh prison. She's talking about Belmarsh prison and he's talking about the horrendous conditions in U.S. prisons. And one, one thing that Biden as Hedges says, says is that. Judge Baraita, who refused to extradite as such in the first place, recognise the savagery of U.S. prisons. I think that's a whole other issue that needs to be dealt with. You know, you have to ask why prisoners are so tortured. In the United States and why even in Belmarsh, there is, you know, this solitary confinement and the extensive use of solitary confinement. So there's that there's that side of things. And of course, there's also Biden. Also convincing the American people on these principles, on these, they're better half their super ego, if you like, compared to the CIA and in the basement that, you know, this is the image America has of itself. And now it's got to live up to it. And that means protecting the First Amendment. Very good, Kathy, in terms and also in a world that's changing so rapidly, where the rest of the world's finally saying they don't really believe the United States anymore. We saw that when the General Assembly Hall was half empty for President Zelensky's speech. That was a real statement that America's war in Ukraine, in particular, is not believed. And at stake is the US story around the world. That's been believed since the end of Second World War. That's really on trial here as well, even before Julian Assange ever gets here. So I thank you, Kathy Wogan, and we thank again, Senator David Shubrit for joining us from Washington for a few minutes to talk about the delegation of the Australian Parliament that has gone to Washington to lobby for the release of WikiLeaks publisher, Julian Assange, who remains in prison in Belmarsh for the past four years. For CN Live, this is Joe Laurier. Goodbye. If you are a consumer of independent news in the first place you should be going to is Consortium News and please do try to support them when you can. It doesn't have its articles behind a paywall. It's free for everyone. It's one of the best news sites out there. And it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades. I hope that with the public's continuing support of Consortium News, it will continue for a very long time to come. Thank you so much.


Okay, cool. So, everybody, I'm happy to be talking about my work today called Journal of Non-Pyrametric Tests of Differential Genomex, sorry, Genexpression for a single cell and bulk genomics. So, I want to start by motivating this piece of work. So, as we all know, differential analysis is a key component of single cell and bulk genomics, and there is more of a need for general methods that can encode flexible alternatives when running the analysis. So, for example, in a recent work by Shyam et al., it's shown that changes in gene regulation that are owing to aging or senescence, they're actually more likely to be picked up by variability indices rather than mean or median indices. And, moreover, in the bulk RNA-seq setting, it's also recently shown that a lot of current approaches actually have met the false discovery rate. And so, there are, of course, some approaches that can detect alternatives that are characterized by multimodality, but these methods rely on parametric models, typically. So, given these issues, now I would like to present this general two-sample test to you. So, the way I'm going to do it is to first explain how we construct our test statistic. So, essentially, this general test is really a test on a simplex. So, I'm going to walk you through step-by-step how this works. So, suppose we're given two samples, and these samples are labeled by, say, some condition of interest, then what we do to the two samples is we take the smaller sample, so for instance, x, and we're going to rank the values of x and set the points of them as bars, and then we're going to slot the second sample's points in between the consecutive bars, so kind of looking like this. And so, from this procedure, we actually get a count vector where we have s1 to sk plus 1 counting number of yj's that are contained between two bars. And then, so this count vector actually sums to n, and so we then have to actually divide throughout by n so that we can get a vector that actually lies in the simplex. So, after division, we get some vector lies in the simplex, and then finally we construct a test statistic by taking some linear combination of the p-power of the entries of this vector. So, now we've seen a test statistic, what is this null distribution? So, the null distribution is exactly when the two samples come from the same underlying distribution. And when this happens, the distribution of the normalized count vector that I described in the previous slide is actually uniform over the simplex. And so this allows us to compete the p-value under this uniform null hypothesis. So, the key insight, however, is that the choice of the test statistic will actually help to boost the power of the test against alternatives of interest to the user. So, remember that the test statistic actually depends on two user defined parameters, the weights and the exponents p. And so the generality of these choices actually will help increase the power against alternatives that the user has in mind. So, as two examples, we know the standard Wilcoxon test, where the alternative that we have in minus-locastic dominance, we actually can use the following parameterization. However, if let's say we're interested in an alternative that is characterized by more of a skill shift rather than a stochastic dominance. So, the mean or the median could be the same, but then the variance could be shifted, for example, right? Then we would use another parameterization as shown in this slide. So, as to reiterate this point, in general, we would have some kind of alternative distribution shift of interest. This could be, for example, changes in the zero-inflated negative binomial dispersion parameter or some other alternative of interest. From there, we can actually work out the optimal weights and exponent of interest. And then we can then use the test using these weights. So, before I talk about some of the applications to single cell genomics, I would just want to point out that because this test is non-parametric, so, first of all, it does control the type 1 error. And more over, we did the kind of semi-synthetic, we ran an experiment on some semi-synthetic data. We showed that it actually also controls the false discovery rate. And, of course, finally, for the choice of weights and exponent that was shown in the previous slide, we do show that the test actually is strictly more powerful than men with me. So, now I'm going to talk about some applications to genomics, and I'm going to keep it short so that we have some time for questions. So, we actually ran this test on both bulk RNA-seq as well as single cell RNA-seq. So, I'll be talking about the single cell RNA-seq application today, and we ran it on the tabular mirror center data where the condition of interest is the age group. So, first specifically, we performed the analysis with respect to three different age groups that were available in the spleen, the kidney, and the lung tissues. And we, first of all, optimized the parameters for detecting a scale shift. And this is really because, as was mentioned in the first, in the very beginning, there are these papers that report signatures of aging or senescence to be governed by shifts in spread rather than centrality measures like the mean or the median. And on top of that, we also consider multiple data normalizations. So, we consider the raw counts, we consider the log counts, and then we consider also what is called SE-transform, the variance stabilizing transform that uses the Pearson residuals. So, just to show you one, you know, example of finding that we have, if you look at this plot over here, you can see that this is a plot of some differentially expressed genes that were called by either running the Wilcoxon test or our test, which we call Mochis. And on the X and the Y axis, I'm actually plotting the full changes as well as the spread changes. So, if you look at the red points, which are the points that are called DE genes by running the Mochis test. Mochis is the name of our software. We see that a lot of these genes actually are lying in parts of this graph where spread changes are more extreme than the full changes. Now, if you look at the blue points, however, which are the DE genes that are called, where we run the Wilcoxon test, you'll see that, you know, they're sort of, it's less clear. The pattern is, you know, less clear. You see that there are some genes that are characterized by a more extreme change in spread than fold. You also see some other genes that are characterized by more extreme changes in the fold than the spread. So, I actually do have some more plots, but feel free to ask me questions during Q&A, and I'm happy to share more plots. But I would like to end the presentation here by acknowledging the following individuals for helpful discussions leading up to this work. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Alan. Just remind everybody online if you have any questions to please put them in the chat, and we will get them up there, and I can read them. And at the end, we'll also walk around with microphones for people who have questions in the room. Please make sure that you also say who the question is for. I see Ryan has a question about the availability of the code. So, that's a great question. So, actually, it's over here in this slide. Here, can everyone see this? So, we basically have the package on GitHub. So, right now, it's still work in progress, but we have the function that actually can run the p-value computation, and it's already packaged up in the tar ball. So, you can just download it and install it as an R package as you would a typical R package in a tar ball. And just to show you an example of how we can run the main function. So, over here, we actually have it documented already. So, it looks kind of like this.  Okay. All right. Well, we're going to move on to the next speaker, and then we'll take all more questions at the end. Okay. Thank you, Alan.


YouTube what's up, man? We're back and this is regs action. I know you guys don't see a lot of it I don't even know if there's a lot of it on YouTube the world of Madden is absolutely engulfed in mutt and ultimate team Cards packs pulls everything like that rather than regs race has been overlooked But me being 33 years old and playing Madden for 15 years plus regs is always the Backbone of Madden and it's the end of the year We have about a month left until man 21 comes up So we're trying to keep the game new and fresh so I played a couple regs money games last night You can play those on players not job. I believe that link is below also If you want to watch me play live that link to my twitch is below and we got the new merch out We've been down before Let you know that no matter what you're doing even if it's a video game whether sports man Sometimes you've been losing but you got to keep that it's remember that you have been in this spot before and you have One games when it hasn't looked good for you But this is regs now you guys let me know who do you think the best regs teams are now players lounge They actually have a rule that you can select it if you want to play a game where a team cannot use the chiefs The Ravens or the 49ers you can select that, you know, so you don't always have to play those teams So after those three teams, which are the three best teams right now I believe the Texans are the best But this game I'm gonna use Russell Wilson in Seattle Seahawks. I'm very good Bobby Wagner obviously a beast and Russell Wilson his best ability is threat detect or something. We haven't used a lot on Mutt or talked about a lot of Madden But what this does is on third and fourth down each player that's blitzing That's not on the down line in any extra blitzers and you will be able to see it Kind of like the film study we talked about that they were they were gonna put in man 21 But did not but I literally see when somebody's blitzing and we're gonna realize how I use that to my ability to play in This game and be able to be effective on offense with Russell Wilson who Kind of might be the best quarterback in the game because of that. I know Mahomes is great We know Russell or Lamar Jackson is 97 speed or whatever he is But this ability to see who's blitzing and who's not is a huge thing man If you guys like the rex action you want to see some more rex action, please hit that like button as we get into this game play Now like I said, this was a money game I believe this was for $20 you can get on players lounge and play for $4 $5 you can enter tournaments for you know $5 to win $200. There's a bunch of different options on that site. So check it out man And you're not gonna play players like me right away. There's a ranking system. So I mean you could start at five I'm a level five.  I really haven't at all except the beginning of the year I really don't know what's hip. What's good. How it works I'm used to having 99 zones and everything like that everywhere as I get to a fourth down dump it off right there to DK Metcalf and I'm used to all my receivers being able to run routes being able to beat separate have separation Make big plays as Russell Wilson breaks the sack and gets about her pocket for a nice little game I want to even say Russell has that agile extender where he will break the first sack of a DB every single time now That's something I'm not used to having not used to playing with so it's not going to affect me that much I'm not gonna be used to it's gonna surprise me every time it does happen I'm playing against the Texans the Texans are probably the most popular team outside of those top three because of the Sean Watson JJ Watt and DeAndre Hopkins and right there. We get sacked. I felt like my running back just helped me there Probably should have punted this ball, but it is a July. I'm gonna let it fly and get sacked by JJ Watt So we turn the ball over on the first down now as you see these games fly by with a 42nd play clock four minute quarters We are already in the second quarter that drive. I barely passed half court Half court midfield and we're still into the second quarter and as he hits the wheel right there That's an example of something that doesn't work on what the wheel route and verticals as I get a sack on first down here The wheel route on verticals and mutt tough to throw that with the 99 zone safeties and regs He was wide open. That's adjustment I have to make as we get a big sack right here on second and goal have it third and field goal right here Just can't give up a post route or anything We get another sack hold him to three points before half I'm gonna call my timeouts try to go down the field with Russell Wilson Get some points before half because I kick him the ball to start the second half So I said the zones are a lot worse. I have 87 speed safeties I don't even know if there's no player on my entire defense that has 87 speed on mud So that's something I got to get used to as this game goes on And if you guys want me to play more regs is something to get used to for the rest of the rest of man 20s I go up top think I have a step right there Russell Wilson overthrows it. That's another thing Vic puts that ball on the money third and 15 right here.  How many times have you seen me throw that pass to Randy Moss or to or somebody? Josh Gordon is not to that's what I learned right there throwing the interception So it's just a little it's a little adjusting period right now mid game And he throws right at my user and Bobby Wagner is too slow to cover the Andre Hopkins another thing got to get used To you know, I mean normally I have Sean Taylor there I'm able to cover every single white receiver in the game right there and nope not able to so Definitely, I don't want to say it's more is it is it more balanced guys Do you think it's more you regs is more balanced as I give up this post route right here to Deandre Hopkins? I wouldn't say it's more bad. I think the balance I don't know maybe it comes in with the fact that I could cover that white receiver with the linebacker But you guys like realism. Maybe Bobby Wagner can't run with Deandre Hopkins and that was a dot So we're down 10. We've been down before that's why we had the t-shirt. That's why we say that we've been we've been you know Down in the score before if you keep did you keep a mindset? Like you're gonna win as I hit this crossing round great Though by Russell Wilson under pressure people hanging on them and we spike the ball You got to utilize the spike a lot because the runoff is mean as you see I lost about 20 seconds right there go to flat route get out of bounds stop the clock 16 seconds left I have to get out of bounds here. We get him on the detackle We're just gonna step up Throw this in route and run directly out of bounds to stop the clock and get my three before half another thing It's about us all the time one The kick meter is insane I've been playing mutt with that focus kicker or yeah focus kicker and on all pros So the all-man in kick meter is pretty vicious for me right now because this is my first game on On the on the shoot on all man in a long time Goes to a point. I wish we had every game on all man every mutt game on all man So half time we kicked the ball off or down by seven We've been down before and we can we can certainly fight back in this game Russell Wilson is the perfect quarterback to have if you want to fight back now Honestly another question I have for you chat. Where is Russell Wilson in the best quarterback to the NFL? I think you got I mean You got to go right below Patrick my homes for Russell Wilson as we get a sack right there get him to a third and 15 He's gonna dump the ball off right here to Kenny stills get him to a fourth down Hope he goes for this right here so I can get the ball back in field low range He does cover up everything absolutely nowhere for him to throw the ball has to roll out We send the spy sack to shine watts and turnover on downs. So I said this guy Russell I as we see that adjoining standard that time JJ Watts cleans up the mess from the adjoining standard But I would say that You got to put Russell Wilson as the second best quarterback in NFL right now behind Patrick my homes And honestly if I was going into Super Bowl the Mercer Wilson might be the number one quarterback I want and I've always said about Russell as I'm gonna first down with him right here I don't know if he's like one of the best quarterbacks, but damn he certainly touched down DK Medcaf He's certainly one of the best football players in the fell like he's just a football player like it's not pretty He's not Dan Marino as I almost missed the extra point because of that commuter He's not gonna put the most ridiculous passes out there and just be an absolute Bobby Wagner the lurk of the game right there first play after tying it Bobby Wagner Picks off the vertical route boom just like that and we're inside the 15-yard line But like I said Russell's not the prettiest pass or anything. He just goes out there and makes plays gets things done Just right here. He's gonna get this done get a couple yards pick up a cool four yards on the scramble Put your fours up going in the fourth quarter and this is that threat detector I mean I see every single person has blitz in I know it's all out blitz I know this person will be wide open boom first down inside the two-yard line and unlike Pete Carroll I'm gonna give the ball to Marshawn Lynch right here.  I feel great having a seven-point lead in regs Even though my defense is not playing like I want to the zones aren't covering what I want them to I feel great Just having this lead as he goes the ball way here three minutes left. I'm up by seven No big plays that's pretty much where I'm at as he hits this comeback route right there He gets tackled you see it's at three minutes right now. He doesn't get the next playoff till 233 So we're doing really good. Once again, we're going to let the shine watch and scramble right here pick up Just six yards, but he gets hit out of bounds second in 27 He goes right here with a little slant route boom gets down 50 our line That's going to take us to two minute warning two minute warning Once again hits this post route the answer Hopkins has that post flag elite literally is a cheat code on Regs because of it and you now you see him blinking as we get a sack He has double me have to put two people on him I don't want to lose on a double me one minute left second and 14 great coverage again.  You're not doing that in my but here we go third and 14 He's just gonna chuck a post route again to the Andre Hopkins first down 17 yard line Next plays want to go with the vertical wheel route and again, it beats me boom Sick thing I give up that touchdown to tie the game, but Here we are in this situation. We've got 25 seconds three timeouts Plenty enough. I have done more with less with Russell Wilson first play Agile extender breaks the first play get out playmaker up Just get a couple yards get a cool 11 with Russell Daines Russ Wilson Here we go, man 18 seconds left 36 yard line. We step up in the pocket We get shedded and actually get sacked have to call my timeout 13 seconds left I'm on my own 31 gotta make a place step up in the pocket right here and there he goes Just doing what Russell does nice good game timeout six seconds left now right here I need to get get out of bounds or I need to get positive yard as fast no dancing no spinning something quick now ideally I'd like a streak.  I want to fly I could put a flat route on why out there I could throw that maybe get to the 45, but I'm just gonna snap hit lock it Boom possession catch timeout three seconds left and here comes the fun part like I said I have been Playing all-pro with the focus kicker But now there is no getting rid of ice and rays. This is real man football. We're gonna face the ice all madden 58 yarder In the ice on the road and you know, listen, they don't give out belts for nothing There's a reason I'm a madden champion gg's in the comments Ice in my veins 58 yard iced field goal for the win Well, that's rex action Like I said hit the like button if you like the rex action if you want to see more of that on his page at least For last month of Madden 20