Welcome to Building Tomorrow, a show about the way tech and innovations are making us all better off. I'm your host, Paul Matzko, and we're talking today with Rosalind Layton about new 5G cellular technology and how it might change our lives over the next couple of years. Now, Rosalind's a visiting scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a visiting researcher at Alberg University, and a vice president with Strand Consult in Denmark. It's quite a list! Thanks for coming on today, Rosalind. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. You know, I just want to say I love the work you do at Cato, and you know, I appreciate all your listeners. I'm a techno-optimist, and I see, you know, our media gives us so much negative discussion about technology, and I see all the benefits, so I look forward to our conversation today. It's true. We're kind of the inverse of black mirror, right, rather than the worst case scenario. We try to imagine the optimistic use cases for this new technology here on Building Tomorrow. Why don't we start with the basics, Rosalind? Now I know my phone company keeps bragging about, you know, the how-there 4G service is better than the other guys' 3G service, and I get that larger numbers are bigger and better than smaller numbers, so 5 is bigger than 4, so 5G must be better than 4G. What is 5G? How does it work, and how is it better than what we currently have on our cell phones? 5G is the next iteration of the mobile standards. It talks a lot about speed, so, you know, between 10 to 100 times the speed of 4G today, so, you know, that's a lot about capacity. The other important thing is about the lack of latency, so, you know, even though you probably enjoy 4G, there's a lot of, some things maybe, you know, necessarily streaming a movie, you know, you don't even, you will get seamless capability. When you look at 5G, you have the ability to do remote surgery, so the quality, the speed, the lack of latency and the data coming through, that's really what 5G is about, and it's also about the use cases. I mean, we think a lot about our mobile phones and using the internet. 5G is really about the internet of things. It's about machines using the internet.  So different sort of, it's not just about individual users. It's about connecting machines. It's about bringing intelligence to the different activities that we do. And so that's, you know, that's why it's, maybe for some of us, might be hard to understand. We haven't experienced those things. It's not just about having a smartphone anymore. Yeah, it's more than just, okay, we're going to get incremental speed improvements to our cell phones. I mean, that's true, but in the way I've put it mentally with that combination of low latency and high bandwidth is to think of, is to think of how like the stream of information being both something that flows faster and the channel is deeper, right? Like latency and bandwidth, both of which improve the kind of information data sharing flow between servers and your phones or other connected devices, which is, you know, leads to, does lead to faster cell phone use. But I do like how you mentioned, it's about more than that, right? It's not just upgrading from the, you know, oh, my Apple 7 is a little bit faster, my Apple 6, my iPhone 6 and so on. Can I say one other thing too, it's also about more efficiency with the power consumption as well as the spectrum. One of the wonderful things that we have found with 5G was we've been able to recover parts of the radio spectrum. We never thought that could be used for mobile service. So for example, your listeners might have heard of the incentive auction. We took this low band spectrum that was used for television and recovered that and using previously parts of the radio spectrum, nobody thought could be useful for these things. And 5G is intelligent, so it can switch its capabilities depending upon the spectrum it's using, the service that's at hand. It's flexible and adjustable and smart. So if you have an application that can be done on a, it will adjust to be more efficient given the task at hand. Well that kind of flexibility seems very valuable, especially with I think some of the use cases you already teased in your response with like the Internet of Things or with driverless vehicles where you have the potential for, let's say you're on the highway and you're driving your smart car and you want it to communicate with every single car it passes. They're sharing data seamlessly in real time and they're uploading data to servers back at corporate headquarters for however the manufacturers are. You need that kind of flexibility because any gap in coverage has implications for how this technology functions for the reliability of it and etc. So I think that flexibility is quite fascinating especially given that it was, this is spectrum that if you'd had an auction for it years ago would have been relatively valueless. We're only now seeing the potential value in what was considered junk spectrum which is fascinating as well. That's actually quite interesting too. Maybe I should give our listeners a grounded example when we talk about speed gains. So again this isn't just about speed and we'll talk about some more applications here but as I was trying to think of it in illustration we're talking about exponential gains in capacity and bandwidth. So one illustration was a thousand time, potentially a thousand time faster download speed so an entire 4k high def film you could download on your phone in 10 seconds or the entire transformers franchise in under a minute though why you voluntarily subject yourself to cinematic torture I don't know but we're talking about not again not just incremental increases but exponential increases in the kind of capacity of a 5G wireless up. Rosalind can you walk us through so you mentioned a bunch of examples of where 5G, what kind of technologies 5G could make plausible or kind of useful for mass adoption could you maybe explore some of those a little more for our listeners. So one of the things I think we talked about was well what would retail be like let's say you know okay a consumer application you want to shop online and so let's say when you want to buy luxury goods you know cars or art so on frequently we want to feel the product in real life or test drive it or so on you know 5G would allow you to have kind of virtual reality augmented reality which are things where you'd have a kind of a what would look like a hologram of a person a real person inside of the screen you would you could hold up your device or your tablet or your smartphone to your living room which would be automatically repainted or reshuffled with the let's say the the kind of art you wanted to buy or furniture that you'd want to buy the ability of having that augmented with a with a with an avatar walking you through so that you know you need to have a lot of throughput and data to have that work and it needs to be seamless you know if there were so many gaps in the conversation it wouldn't work so that's one thing I like the example of the autonomous vehicles and by the way you don't need to drive I mean our leading cause of death in the US as drunk driving or car accidents it's terrible you know I mean people do like to drive but it's quite a dangerous endeavor all things you know if you look at the numbers but there's so many there's so much information around and being able to harness it put it together and also fuel efficiency other things that if you can imagine entire driving experience so that as as let's say the street lights you know that they automatically turn they turn off and on if the you know if something is there you know conserving energy you have energy embedded within you know using the different kinds of sensors within all sorts of surfaces the you know the ability for the you know the car to take into account the weather conditions safety conditions or the you know the traffic conditions and so on all of those things that you know when we of course our human brains are very smart but we can't you know what what you can't see that's around the corner that could be able to be incorporated into the you know into the experience to have a safer experience more efficient more speedy you know so the other thing to say is it's 5g won't be a sort of push button switch we're gonna evolve a lot of the 5g things will be start to be realized on 4g so a lot of these things we're starting to see parts of today we're enjoying especially in health care we're having a number of innovations there some of these some but where we'll see these shifts will be on the industrial scale so for example smart signaling for trains you know the ability to be able to you know over agriculture right you want to you want to be able to look if you had to survey you wanted to plant a field right and if you take a microscope on the soil there's all these nooks and crannies inside the soil and then immediately you could have precision agriculture which will adjust the planting or the irrigation or the fertilizing or everything to the sort of micro level down to the centimeter of what the conditions are at that particular place so that sort of ability to incorporate the information and deliver a service for what's exactly needed across huge miles and acres right that's the kind of thing you have to have a wireless network for that has long capability have to have the spectrum the intelligence the ability to process all of that in real time automatically connected with devices so that's a sort of higher order kind of processing that is just not about our telephone in our home computer I mean so we're really talking about the ability for industry to operate at a totally new level and that's a that's where it's not just about us and what we can do every day it's making our all of our interest industries more intelligent more efficient that is important when we talk about how what can be the jobs of the future because we'll be all these marginal efficiencies we'll squeeze out where today that you know just the same way micro transactions in the long tail and how we've been able to tell all of our systems have been able to find new sources of revenue or value because we now have the ability to measure at small places or in small increments micro finance that's kind of thing think about 5G doing that in our industry you know we can all always think about how do we improve American industry right that you know always say we ran out of oil we found new ways to find oil I mean keeping going all the time always finding more efficiency and so the spectrum example is great because we thought that the low band spectrum that was junk and nobody could use it well turns out over long distances that's super because you have a agricultural area or farm or what have oil field what whatnot that you can actually turn that into something value I am struck by a couple of things here first of all a lot some of the use cases that that I proposed like the you know Thomas vehicles and the like they're within our imagination it's technology that is being developed on a relatively small scale but that for mass adoption will require you know truly more capacity than we currently have but again it's within our imagination it's something that we can currently see prototypes of we can currently see you can drive your your Tesla on driver assist even right now but I like your industrial examples I was actually reminded I was at TechCrunch disrupt out in San Francisco a couple weeks ago and they had a startup on on the exhibition alley for livestock live stock tracking so every individual animal would be tracked and you could basically do fascinating things with herd management you can tell which areas of the paddock they're specifically in down to the inch so that you can maximize you can prevent over grazing more effectively you can do a better job of exercising them or not exercising them or where you put the feed to feed the whole herd all kinds of cool stuff that's capable but again that requires for large-scale adoption it just requires more bandwidth than we currently have another example that came to mind was I saw a patent filing by Walmart to create little fleets of thousands of robotic bees that would do micro targeted pollination you know we're having a crisis with with bee die-off which leads the problems with pollinating crops and rather than just spraying fields which is kind of the default right now and hoping some of that pollen drifts to where it needs to go you can be a lot more efficient and more cost-effective increased you know production per acre by in theory sending these fleets of bees but again that requires the kind of bandwidth that comes with 5g and that's not something that's currently currently possible for g technology let me say right and what's so exciting about that is that our major let's say that there will be like step function and improvements it could happen in a rural area so it's not like oh and select on valley we'll see this great 5g adoption in fact that may be the last place because in fact cities are some of the most difficult places to get this deployed you know you can go to a rural area where the you know the particular residents or that municipality says hey bring it on we want to you know you could find an across one railroad or one oil field or one farm they will quickly make an application and have a proof point so we could find you know Mississippi will be the leader or Indian app Indiana or whatever and so that's exciting democratization there that is that could I believe to bring some equalization between rural and urban areas at least in terms of new economic development so so that's what's also exciting we don't know exactly today you know where all the business models will be you know which industries will be first I mean we can talk about this industrial Internet of Things and see that the efficiencies are there definitely there are industries who want to get this deployed you know they're working with policymakers or they're you know trying to do you know drones and so on administration trying to work them but what's also exciting is that the established players we know today may not be the winners of the future I mean in fact you will have a kind of a shake up and what may emerge our companies we haven't heard of because doing it's not clear exactly who will build the better better mousetrap at today so but we're all watching these things as you talk about the livestock example or you know what we can see when you go to disrupt and these other conferences yeah little by little it's happening and it's incremental it's not as I said it's not a push button and overnight everything will be the world of 5g it will evolve it'll be like a flywheel right little but you'll be a snowball effect little by little we are doing pre 5g at least 25% of Americans have some kind of Alexa or Google home device that they use so that so already Americans have adopted extremely fast I mean even faster than they were adopting smartphones so people have really quickly integrated these they're experimenting and working with these things already Verizon actually sponsored a panel at TechCrunch trying basically promoting what they're we're trying to do with 5g in contrast AT&T and they made a quite a large claim and I'm actually a historian by training and so it was a historical claim and so I was intrigued by it but they said they think of 5g as the I think it was the fourth Industrial Revolution which seemed a bit grandiose to me but at the same time there is there are some interesting corollaries right where it like if you think of the combustion engine well when it's first developed there's not a lot of immediate use cases its first application is industrial applications doing stuff that formerly required water power but eventually it transformed it worked its way down to yeah okay we get the combustion engine as a driver of industrialization so I thought that was a it was an interesting claim I'm still somewhat skeptical but what do you think brazil do you see 5g is that having that kind of possibility well what I like I really like that those two companies have a bit of rivalry because they're such that in world of the telecom and tech policy people want to paint them out as a duopoly and they're actually extremely different companies they are as per night as night and day and they're pursuing very different strategies and I think for consumers and competition that's fantastic it's a great thing they have well now of course both of them have 5g strategies but they're they're playing in very different parts of the ecosystem the bets in different ways so for example you know Verizon it really wants to be first in the home broadband market you know they are they want to displace cable they want you to stop they want you to give up your cable company instead by the 5g home broadband product so that you'll get all your movies and broadband and everything through the air and they're using particular set of spectrum to do that AT&T has a different strategy you know where they're working with in many respects becoming content media company you know that they have purchased a number of well-known brands to deliver content so they are there they're in it they have a different view that way they also have the biggest public safety network so they're looking at this industrial application around public safety that's extremely interesting because if you think about the way that we fight fires today or the way that we address disasters we're so much more efficient today than we were five or ten years ago the ability so for example when I was in we had a hurricane in Florida where my family lives and I was in Denmark last year through the entire hurricane I kept in touch with my family through over through the internet and we had we were in touch on you know SMS and Facebook and phone and so on so that the ability now that we can when we have disasters that we can locate people we can rescue them the way that first responders can coordinate to address when when there's a there's an emergency we have just overnight have improved that and it's getting better all the time so there's a lot of enterprise uses that you might not really hear about every day in the press but they're going on and those a both AT&T and Verizon they are working in different ways it's very exciting to see and that's great because it's competition they are they're also you know have a lot of intellectual property they're supporting different kinds of patents different kinds of activities so you know they are a real driver in our economy just given the level that they invest and and then of course Brent and T mobile as well as well as Comcast I mean just for your listeners to understand one quarter of all the world's investment in broadband networks is going on in the United States today and we're just 4% of the world's population and all of this money or is into our economy by private companies trying to figure out you know how do we you know how do we deliver the internet to people what do we do what are the services so that is an important fertilizer for all the devices and services and applications all that other stuff that goes on because fundamentally we have companies who willing to make an investment in networks so 5G we're looking at $275 billion over the next four to five years that's a staggering amount of money is more than any other industries putting into American economy and and so and in many cases it's not even clear whether you know how quickly whether they will recoup all of that because as I said that money will that investment may turn into ways of revenue for other parties you know all the others so for example the Google's and Facebook's of the world or the device makers or the other services and yet companies we've never heard of today so that's an important part of the dynamism that that we that 5G will create we and that story is being written right now this actually I think leads us to something I was interested in asking you about which was so you have the two big dogs in rolling out 5G tech are AT&T and Verizon the third and fourth largest basically phone carriers right now are Sprint and T-Mobile but my understanding is they're relatively distant third and fourth there has been some brew ha ha over a proposed merger between Sprint and T-Mobile an attempt to kind of catch up with AT&T and Verizon how does that play into this 5G story right so and by the way you know there's also cable companies you know so Comcast Charter these companies have very large footprints across the United States they've already have wires in the ground and Wi-Fi networks so they're interested to play in this place too so it's it's not exactly correct to talk about the traditional mobile wireless carriers you have also fixed wireless solutions that are you know companies that are not household names they want to play in there so we actually have a couple of dozen of editors in fact but the instance for Sprint and T-Mobile this is really a question of synergies and a level of investment so you know Sprint and Sprint has a lot of spectrum T-Mobile has a lot of customers they have a prowess in marketing you know they're really good at in marketing and winning customers and they want to be able to combine their assets together and you know basically when market share take away market share from AT&T and mobile Comcast they want to play in the home broadband market as well they've been very successful to do that T-Mobile at least so the process of consolidation is a is a natural process it's always going has been going on and will continue you know that the AT&T today is is not the or the Verizon of today is not the companies that they were 10 years ago they all formed out of the breakup of AT&T and all these sort of like new companies spawned out of it the baby yeah so the baby bells broken up and reformed in new ways and so on grow and different things different you know so it's a constantly evolving and changing but in the case of the Sprint and T-Mobile this is if you just look at the mobile wireless market is that the you know the capability we have with just consumer mobile service you know we have increased by I don't know thousands of percent of improvement in the quality of mobile phones and we brought down the price like 99 percent so there's been tremendous efficiency in getting more capacity and low and you know meanwhile all the time that we're increasing the capacity on the mobile phone the price has fallen so all of these companies have in fact declining ARPU which is average revenue per user so you get you get all over time increasing value at a lower unit cost and you know so now the opportunity is what's the next stepwise function can I get more ever more data into my package can I do ever more things so you know the other so Sprint and T-Mobile just want to you know go up the value chain if you will they want to be able to you know take market share away from other players I mean that's a you know that's something that we should encourage so that's what's going on I do get the impression that in a sense what's happening is that the provision of raw internet of you know access the internet is being commoditized and so the margins you know margins on commodities are much tighter than margins on you know other kinds of consumer services and goods so as you say when you're trying to go up the value chain it's well you can get a healthier margin when you're selling you know streaming services like Netflix or you know some other kind of company but in a sense in the 5g world in the competitive 5g world there's not nearly as much relative value in providing that service I'm sure there will be for the the first one to get there yes absolutely so the value of your consumer broadband if you're any one of those companies will be maybe become smaller so you really want to figure out what kind of enterprise or industrial use can I do and that's why all these companies are making different bits in different enterprise sectors so and they're buying content because they you know they don't want to be in the world of you know for a long time our regular regulation has tried to make them into dump pipes you know just these kind of giant pipes delivering indiscriminately kind of data but the services that we want to use actually need very sophisticated they have sophisticated needs they you know have a certain kind of treatment if you will they need to have in order to work some has to be prioritized in a certain way so and again you don't want to wait 10 years to do that you want to be able to use start delivering today in an intelligent way ever better service so we have software defined networking we have a number of ways to make the existing network to have more efficient through software improvements through better management and so on and then also so part of that idea of selling the content or adding value added services helps the companies get revenue in the short run to define those long-term improvements now I think you've led us in a in a useful direction and it raises questions when we talk about the internet as a series of you know dumb pipes of internet service providers as providing pipes like a utility company would your water pipes or sewer pipes this leads us to a conversation over net neutrality which is still very much a live matter with the FCC you know changing its approach basically repealing some title to net neutrality rules recently to the anger of a lot of activists in the open internet activists how does the 5g conversation affect that net neutrality debate right I mean what does that look like a couple years in the future well so I mean I can tell you today I mean by definition 5g is intelligent network it is the antithesis of what net neutrality means if all data being treated the same I mean that is a totally um from an engineering perspective a dumb concept it's a stupid concept I mean I like to bring it to the point of view of you know personal freedom and personal choice you know in a net neutrality world I have to provision I'm required by the FCC to buy an internet connection which is enabled for content for which I don't support I don't agree with either politically or for my moral reasons I have to you know it might not even purchase it but I have to have you know I'm essentially paying for a capacity that I don't need and in a in a non-neutral world in a world of internet freedom I'm actually going to support the sort of content and services and data I personally believe in that I think are socially valuable not what's privately valuable I know that you know many people enjoy the films of Netflix that's fine but it doesn't mean I have to provision them you know I may enjoy other kinds of content but you know in a free world we should we shouldn't have to be coerced to support information that we don't personally agree with we should be able to support information that we that we agree that we find socially valuable so you know one of the things I've always advocated for is you know a set of the internet which is essentially socially valuable services which are provided for free and you don't need a lot of data to do things like bus schedules or education basic education materials some kinds of you know health care videos and things like that and those kind of things have are not allowed in the net neutral world we can and these models are used in developing countries so things like you want to check that your AIDS medication is not counterfeit or that you want to you know you have a woman suffering from some from a terrible disease wants to watch a video on some kind of information to to recover or how to take care of a child or whatever those kind of things are socially valuable which should be provisioned for free either by the provider itself philanthropy the government what have you and they don't take up that much data so I actually in a in a kind of world where there's flexible pricing for data we can allow for some things that everybody could access for free and then the part of the internet that's privately valuable the entertainment that part can be priced and that is up to the supply and demand and the free market and what have you so this notion that all data is the same is fundamentally against the idea of a world where we have free thinking people because we don't value all things the same and there are other cases where we can make to say well you know it's it's socially valuable that certain kind of information you could be able at any time to go on the internet and access it just fine fair enough whatever the case may be but you know what you want to see whatever someone's favorite video game or movie you know and you want in a certain quality you know then that will have a slightly higher price or whatever so we'd actually have a lot more internet for everyone if we allowed flexible pricing and and so this to me is this is one of the areas where this particular policy is so fundamentally unfair and cruel to the poor people to being a socially minded policy where everybody would benefit you would actually allow flexible pricing just to give you another example you know I live most of the year in Denmark and sometimes I have to testify in a regulatory hearing in another country I can go on Skype or whatever and do my testimony rather than getting on a plane I'm willing to pay a little bit more for that you know experience because I don't have to go on the plane I'd like to guarantee the quality and so on today I'm not you know I'm in a net neutrality world I'm not allowed to do that there's a lot of yeah so as we were saying right we wanted to have this you know we would like to have for just this conversation a quality guarantee that our connection would work and we can't buy that today that's right yeah and it reminds me of I was just reading article by Tim Wu who's the uh I think he's at Columbia if I remember correctly Columbia law professor who coined the term net neutrality and is one is a open internet activist um he called for a nationalized 5g network and so it's clearly a very different vision of what this future internet looks like um I mean I think the both parties over this debate want the same thing which is a competitive internet marketplace where you know internet providers compete with each other they have very different visions of how to arrive there um so no thanks for digging into that I I would like to move now I think to talking about a recent FCC decision uh that might not be immediately obvious to our listeners what it means for 5g and that was the FCC deciding to cap uh poll costs for putting up these 5g antennas and they capped the the dollar at the cost of that to 270 dollars that's all municipalities are allowed to charge for them what is the significance of that ruling what's going on there I I don't know if our listeners are going to naturally understand what that ruling means well I'm glad you brought that up and I just want to say that this this effort it was a an order voted on by the FCC on the 26th of September around streamlining and fast-tracking the roll out roll out of 5g it is a it's in the in the idea of telecommunications policy it's something we've been doing for 100 years so we have always had a a notion that there's value to communications there's a value to having all americans having access to communications and that it's part of the reason that the FCC was set up I mean not that it's perfect today was to ensure an agency that could make that could enforce the national policy so you know of course I don't you know I imagine our listeners would be bristling with the notion of a price control but there are demonstrated problems I can tell you for example you know in Denmark we had a case where 19 cities created a price cartel so that the rental price was four times the market rate so unfortunately a lot of local actors they can band together and create these cartels that will restrict or inhibit the ability to to deploy networks and the laws that the FCC has invoked are extremely clear because we have laws in the books for more than 20 years that localities municipalities they're not allowed to create undue burdens to companies who want to establish communications networks and so you know whether it's undue delays to get the permits to build or it's an ex exorbitant price and so on that's something that the FCC can what we call preempt to to put a perspective already at least 20 states have agreed in their red and blue states they've said look we want networks we want to streamline we don't want to reinvent the wheel we know that there's a lot of best practices that you know we can create a model code so most of the states have already gone ahead and have agreed to you know streamline this so that and the idea of course is we want the maximum number of providers to deploy right so for example there's a policy called one touch make city that if you're going to have a street pole that when you get that ready that it it you can get five five providers on that street pole it's not just the one it's the same idea as a dig once policy if you're going to dig a trench and put down a conduit you know like ollie make sure that everybody can use that trench you know don't you don't want to come back in a year and then say dig it up again because that's really costly so these are a lot of common sense ideas this is unfortunately to you know we had at the beginning like 2025 states already went ahead and said we're adopting the model code we want to be fit we want to get moving you know china is moving 12 times as fast as we are to get network deployed we got to step up the pace and what we have now is a lot of cases where we have holdouts where you have cities that have chronically mismanaged the resources they're in deep debt and they look at this opportunity as a way to earn revenue so they'll say hey five thousand dollars for every street pole i mean it just doesn't scale if you want to have these networks and rural areas you want them across the u.s you have to be able to have a a reasonable rational approach to the pricing and the other point is these are not natural markets in the sense that you know there's not a natural market for the street pole it's a monopoly it's owned by the city they you know and there's they're essentially the owner they don't have there's not competing providers of street poles so this is this is again and i'm a free market person this is the case where regulation is is is necessary because you have to and put the you have to provide the information and you also have to protect from abuse i mean i suppose i should say i have a certain degree of built in caution or skepticism some of that's the you know the concern i it makes perfect sense that national regulations are cleaner and neater and more convenient of for infrastructure development at least with a relatively light touch FCC that we currently have but it does raise concerns to me about overriding localism i mean there's like a federalist kind of question here yeah so let me say this i mean this is a case where you have to be careful because one area as a nation where we have looked at federal the need for federalism is communication policy these are laws that are very clear from our telecommunications act in 1996 and um you know if you don't like those laws well we can update that i would offer updating that act but that has not been something that um you know republicans have been trying to do that now for five years and have not had any cooperation but we really need to update that communications act but for the moment that's what we have that's what the american people we agreed to in congress it's been extremely successful to give us the other generations of mobile wireless that we enjoy and and so the FCC is just applying that to this next generation and you know they have been extremely careful to stay within the boundaries i mean that was the big critique about the prior FCC they kept pushing and exceeding the boundaries of their authority and this FCC is very clear to be within the boundaries to interpret the statute as it's written you know don't overinterpret it um so but what i'd say is communications policy is one area where as a nation over the last century we said there's a value to having everybody having a telephone or everybody having access to the internet or what have you so so this is just that in that vein and especially when everybody says they want more competition you're not going to get more competition unless you allow the provider to come into your community whether it's by wire or wireless or satellite or whatever you you have to let the network be built otherwise you're not going to get more competition it reminds me that we're not operating from a uh a state of nature here that we have this whole set of of institutions and and systems that uh that constrain the kind of ideal telecommunications system that we want so you know for example well we have this network of municipal utility monopolies right there's phone polls all over the country now in an ideal world that wouldn't have been we might not have constructed our energy and water and sewer grids in that way but that's what we did and so yeah we're confronted with that we're not dealing with a with kind of a free market for our energy grid and whatnot right so we have to deal with this already kind of distorted system the best we can so you know we can't let the best be the enemy of the better i suppose here right now i think and by the way the spectrum as well i mean as i said we have more that we're one of the most important things has been try to recover more spectrum and getting other kinds of providers to buy spectrum that's also really important that you know it's the supply that we get more supply in the marketplace and we can argue that the history the the history around spectrum was constrained that limited the number of players the same way with franchises i mean if you were a table company in order to get permission you had you made a deal with the local provider you had to provide coverage to everyone and now people forget that those deals were made and that was what the community agreed and now they don't like that anymore because then they'll say oh well we'll take public money and compete we're always you know there's always been past decisions that have consequences for the future and that's um you know that's one of the that's one of the challenges that we work with but technology is amazing because now we're finding out hey we can overcome the past monopoly or legacy with the new technology we just override it we find out a new way to do it that's a that's a good lesson i think for us to end on thank you rosalyn so much for coming on i appreciate your time and for our listeners until next week be well building tomorrow is produced by test terrible if you enjoy our show please rate review and subscribe to us on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts to learn about building tomorrow or to discover other great podcasts visit us on the web at libertarianism.org


Hey guys, it's Tilly, and today I am here with a YA Chronicles unboxing. This is the December box, and I'm very excited to rip into this. So the YA Chronicles is a YA Australian Book subscription box done by two lovely ladies called Beck and Allison. They are fantastic, and I absolutely adore every single box that they do. And yeah, check them out, I'll have their links below, but for now, let's get started. Ever since I started getting the YA Chronicles, I've literally become a hoarder of tissue paper. I don't know why, but I always keep it. It's just, we're so colorful, and it's an issue. So first of all, we've got some tape.  And I really wish that I'd opened this box sooner, because I could have used this for Christmas presents, but oh well, I get to use it for myself now. You know, one thing I really want to do in 2017 is start sticking and like, marking my books more so that I can find like quotes and everything that I love about books. And now that I've got these little sticky bookmarks, I know that I can, because these will come in perfectly handy. And for those of you who do tag their books, like, these are freaking adorable. We've got a little bookish magna, magna. We've got a little bookish magnet that says I fell into a book, and that is true, I have fallen into many books, and I just can't get out. Yes! I love bookish merch, jewelry, and I have this snitch to go on as a necklace. And I am so excited. I love this little thing. Oh, it's a bracelet! The Why Chronicles bookmark and the Why Chronicles info card. So the theme of this box, because I forgot to mention that, is simply wonderful, and so far it is pretty damn wonderful. This stunning hardcover book, it is Finding Wonders Three Girls Who Change Science by Janine Atkins. She heard amazing things about this book so far. I haven't had the chance to actually see it anyway yet, but I am actually very excited. I've heard very many good things about this. So there's a book of poems that follows Three Young Girls as they find wonders in the world around them, and yes, I'm so excited to read this, and I think I might actually read it like very soon, because it's going to be like a quick read as well as a good read. There you guys have the December Why Chronicles box. I really enjoyed it, and I cannot wait to read that book, and I know that I want to use a lot of the stuff that came inside that box as well, so it's like the perfect thing ever. Like I said, I will leave all the links to their website and everything below. Definitely check them out if you guys are looking for a really good YA subscription box, and yes, I hope you guys have a lovely bookish day, and that great things happen to you. I, Tilly, from Tilly and Her Books, will not be buying a single book in the year of 2017.


Well, I think theoretically, there's two schools of thought. One is that nothing that the brain has ever carved into its patterns ever goes away, right? And that's a necessity because the patterns you learn, of course, are networked with other patterns. And so, you know, if when somebody promises you they can eliminate the pattern, let's say they can eliminate your fear of a flying pattern. Well, that fear of flying pattern is networked with a whole bunch of other stuff. If that would really disappear, then all other kind of stuff would disappear. And so, you know, suddenly you find yourself, you can no longer drive while you're driving, right? Or something like that. So the brain makes it so that everything that has ever been learned is there forever. However, how active a neural pathway is a completely different story. So you can create an alternate pathway, so to speak, so that the information and the electrical impulse goes down a different road. And this road becomes, so to speak, overgrown and no longer used. So that's very possible. But of course, one of those things with those overgrown, no longer used roads is that they were the earliest roads. So they're the best networked. So it's highly unlikely that you're never going to end up on that road, right? So because you would have to rewire everything. But technically speaking, it is possible to block access to a road, so to speak, and create a much stronger road somewhere else. And like for instance, one classic example for that is language, right? So I grew up speaking Austrian. And so everything up to when I left Europe, because I lived in Austria and I lived in Germany. So I spoke German till I was 26, right? And then I spoke only English, other than once a week with my parents or so. So my English is now my primary language. I dream in English. I even count in English, which was the longest. I used to count in German long after everything else had gone to math, right? But now everything's English. And I can write a lot better in English than I can in German, believe it or not. Because I haven't written in German in 20 something years. So my Austrian patterns are not really that accessed. But the moment I speak Austrian, everything that comes with that, including the cultural behaviors, the mannerisms, the way my body holds itself comes back. And it's hilarious because I go home and I spend a week with my parents and I can tell my body shifts, right? And it's not entirely pleasant at times, right? Because that part of me hasn't been used and isn't really... The Manchurian candidate. Yes, yeah, a little bit like that. Hello, talk. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, something like that. So that gives you... Not really, but no. But yes, so meaning that's a classic example of can you get rid of those attachment points and stuff like that? Yes, you can. But when they come back, they'll come back online really quickly, right? So for instance, sometimes people go on ayahuasca journeys and stuff like that, and they report that when they have done that, there's other ways to do it too, in somatic release, for instance, that stuff is just gone. Like smoking, for instance. Like smoking, right? Or certain painful physical conditions or memories or stuff like that. Capacity to turn a living. The sudden urge to disclose one steepest psyche on Facebook right after an ayahuasca trip, all of those things. But I mean, you can somatically release things and they're gone. And I certainly can say that that's true, even within my own body, that I've just released certain things. But the pattern of the ayahuasca trip but the patterning in the mind, it might not be stored in my body anymore, but I can still access it. And so it's both arduous repetition and building new patterns and finding the right access to release. There's all kinds of modalities amongst them, cognitive behavioral therapy, right? There's all, and can work on triggers. You can, I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do to give yourself enough space that when the trigger hits, you're not just running down that road. But of course, as long as you're, and this is the problem with cognitive therapies, and I'm saying this, having been a counselor for many years and having done extensive academic work around this as well, there's only so much talking and knowing can do for you. Because the body pattern is so strong that it overrides for the most part your knowledge. The best you can hope for is that you get enough space that you can put your body in a different position, so to speak, right?  But if you actually work on releasing things from your body, that's a much, I don't know, much more effective route.


So, have you ever called IT only to be told have you tried turning it off and on again? Today we'll be talking about pilots. Usually pilots are called pilot in command. And we expect a pilot to be just that, in command. But today's pilots are turning more and more into computer operators and have less and less actual hands-on flying ability. So now imagine you're the pilot flying a gigantic computer in 30,000 feet height with 200 souls behind you, only to be told by IT have you tried turning it off and on again? So I would like to welcome Bernd Zeke, who is a systems engineer and an aviation accident analyst. He's specialized in reverse engineering and he's developing formal methods for development of safety critical systems. And he will enlighten us about problems in aviation automation, because apparently every pilot has uttered the words, what's it doing now? Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, the first I'd like to learn a bit about the audience. So how many of you here in the hall today are pilots? Oh, quite a few. So commercial pilots? Far fewer. ATP anyone? Yeah, there's one. I heard one. So I can't see. Okay. So some of you will know about some of the stuff. I hope there's a bit new stuff for everyone. Let's get right into it. What the announcer said was a bit of nice folklore. It's not completely true, but there's a little bit truth to it. What I'm going to talk about is automation in aircraft. And the idea is often, as he said, that it's just a computer and the pilot doesn't have to do anything. And there's one saying that in modern airplanes there will only be one pilot and a dog. And the pilot is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches anything. So that's not quite yet how it is. I talk very little bit about the analysis method that we use to analyze accidents not only in aviation but mostly. And then I'll tell you a short tale of two throttles or two thrust levers, as they are sometimes called, and also talk about human pilots, how they cope with failures or don't as the case may be. And I haven't seen a lot of other talks here about self-driving cars, although they are now becoming a very big thing. So I'll touch that briefly and have a tentative conclusion. I can't see very fine to the future, so I'm not sure if I'm right about that. So what is automation in airplanes? The most obvious thing is that automated flight controls on every airliner and on many small airplanes these days, there used to be a requirement for a simple autopilot, even on small private single-engine airplanes if you want to fly under instrument flight rules. That has been relaxed somewhat now, but many small planes still have them. So there are three levels of flight controls. The first one is manual flight, where the pilot moves the flight controls, and the airplane does what it's told. Then there's the simple autopilot, where the pilot just sets airspeed, altitude, climb rate, stuff like that, and there are managed modes, where there's a more sophisticated computer, which has knowledge about the whole flight with waypoints and altitudes. And there are other automated systems, not only the flight controls. Spoilers on the ground have to extend to help slowing down the aircraft. The high-lift devices are automated. Radius may be auto-tuning. There's the computer that controls the engines, full-authority digital engine control. There are things like cabin pressurization, and many other small subsystems are automated, as they are in cars these days. So what is automation not? It's not yet, except for a very few specialized drones, a self-flying aircraft. The pilot in command still is in command at all times. You can turn off the automation. You can hand-fly the aircraft at any time, if you want to. And barring any serious errors, which are extremely rare in commercial aircraft. The airplane does what it's told. The autopilot really doesn't have any decision capabilities, except at the very lowest level, deciding on a bank angle to make the right turn and things like that. It is also not a panacea for any errors that the pilot can make. You can still fly a highly computerized modern aircraft into the side of a mountain, if you want to. So some military aircraft actually have systems that will prevent you from flying into a mountain, if they're active, or if you've passed out, but airliners don't at the time. And of course, the pilot in command still bears the ultimate responsibility for the safe conduct of the flight. So as I said briefly, manual flying is just stick and rudder. You move the stick and you move your rudder pedals, and the airplane moves the control surfaces mechanically on small airplanes, hydraulically assisted, or even computer-assisted on some airliners, on most modern airliners, called fly-by-wire. You may have heard about that. Then the simple autopilot modes, where you directly select the heading and the airplane flies in that heading. And managed modes, as I said before, where you have a sophisticated flight management system, which then in turn sets headings and climb rates and things like that on the autopilot proper. They're not super reliable. They can be thrown off by many things. And mostly they turn off when there's any small error in any of the small subsystems, any of the various input values that you get, airspeed, altitude, engine power, anything. If any of those have invalid readings, it'll turn off. And the pilots have to assume command in their case. They cannot handle basically anything unexpected. Most air sensors are there in three-fold. So if only one of them disagrees, the other two are usually taken as valid. But if they all three disagree, then the system just says, I don't know what's true anymore, what speed is, and all the automatics drop out. And most of the computer-assisted manual flying also is turned off in that case. So this is very briefly the method that we have developed at the University of Bielefeld under Professor Letkin for analyzing accidents. It's called YB-COS analysis. It uses a formal notion of causality, called the counterfactual test. And then you can make a very nice graph for accidents. They're usually bigger than that. But it's more or less objective criterion for causality. And when different people with some experience in the domain make YB-COS graphs of an accident, they usually are very similar to each other. So there's a lot of automation on modern airplanes. And it's quite hard to get it right. And one of the reasons is that unlike for many situations in cars or in rail vehicles, there is no default safe state. You can't just turn everything off and stop by the roadside. So you always have to decide. The engineers always have to plan for many eventualities, what can happen in the air, and decide what, given a certain set of circumstances, is the safest state for the airplane to be in. And that is not always unambiguous. And it's a very hard decision to make. And sometimes they get it wrong. And sometimes you just get into that situation where in most cases, the set of values, the set of measured values that the system gets, when most circumstances one set of decisions is the correct one, and you get into that situation where the computers get the same inputs and that decision is the wrong one, and that may still lead to an accident. Those are very few and very rare, but these things can happen. So a few of the decisions that the engineers have to take when designing the automation in airplanes is what to do if things fail, if certain individual things fail, if a combination of things fail, little motors, little engines, sensors fail, some actuators fail, a hard-dry look system fails, anything like that. What to do in that case with the remaining systems? And what to tell the pilots? Well, naively, you might assume the pilot wants to know about everything that is broken, every little valve, every little system that is broken on the airplane, but if a lot goes wrong at the same time, then the decision has to be taken. Which of these things that have gone wrong are the most important for the flight crew to know, and that's not trivial at all, and it can very easily lead to sensory saturation of the pilots. So they don't know what is what anymore because from all sides, alarms are blaring and there are lots and lots of displays that they have to watch. And so certain error messages are suppressed in certain states of flight, certain stages of the flight, so as not to overwhelm the pilot. And some things that may be essential to have on the ground, some functions, for example the wing spoilers, those are the big flaps on the top of the wings that come up after touchdown are important to have on landing to dump the lift so the airplane doesn't jump up again. Because it is a touchdown, still at a speed at which it could fly, at least for airliners, for small airplanes it's a bit different, but airliners are safely above the very low speed they can go when they're touched down, so they need to have some means to make sure they don't jump up again. They still do sometimes, but not very often. But the spoilers destroy most of the lift, so deploying them in the air close to the ground is extremely dangerous. So the computer has to be absolutely certain, so to speak, to know that the aircraft is on the ground when it gives the command to deploy the ground spoilers. If it does that a few seconds too early when the airplane is still 100 meters above the ground, that will likely be a fatal accident. So at least in most jet airliners, not in all propeller driven, but in almost all jet airliners, there's an automatic thrust management. So the computer does not only control where the nose of the airplane points, but also how much power the engines produce. And there are two different, one might call them, philosophies between the two major airframers, and Boeing and most others too use back-driven throttles. So the computer sets the thrust and moves the thrust levers to match the commanded thrust position. And Airbus has a different system where the thrust levers remain in one position throughout the entire flight. Basically after takeoff when thrust is reduced for the main climb and cruise and descent and everything, they remain in one position and the computer tells the engines directly which thrust to produce. And there's an argument which one of the systems is better, but I'll show you three accidents in which the thrust system, the throttle system, played a role. So the first one has a little video. You will see, I think there are two different camera perspectives. You will see two airplanes landing of the same class. They are small airliners, 200 people, something like that, 150 to 200 landing. And the first one is a normal landing. So it's already pretty slow, takes its time. And the next one is the accident flight. It's on the same day. It's only minutes apart. It's on the same airport. And you can see that one has slowed down and the other one is still going very fast. So there's the first one and there's the second one. And as you can imagine, that didn't end well.  And as you can see, this is a transcript of the flight data recorder, the digital flight data recorder. And the first two lines are the interesting ones. It says TLA, which is thrust lever angle. And normally what happens on landing, just before touchdown, the pilot pulls both thrust levers to idle. The engine thrust goes down to idle and then it touches down, engages reverse thrust, spoilers, brakes, everything to slow down. And what happened in this case is that the pilot only moved one of the thrust levers to idle and left the other there, put the one thrust lever and reverse, but not the other. And that led to the computer getting conflicting information about whether the pilots actually wanted to land or not. So it didn't deploy the automatic wheel brakes. It didn't deploy the spoilers and reverse thrust only on one engine. So that went pretty badly. And some people said, well, with tactile feedback from the thrust levers, if the pilots had been used to that, they would have noticed earlier. And we can't really be sure because the pilots also died in the accident. But there were some people who made a case that moving thrust levers would have been a lot better in this case. So is that always better? Is another throttle-related accident? And this time it was a Boeing 737 at Amsterdam Skripal Airport. There was a small technical malfunction which caused the computers to think the airplane was actually eight feet underground. That was the reading that it gave due to the way it works. And so I said, oh, I'm below 30 feet. I have to reduce the thrust to idle. And that's what it did, although it was still a couple hundred feet high. And the pilots didn't notice early enough and let the speed decay. And the wing stalled and crashed. The airplane crashed and nine people died. It was a moderately, only a moderately hard crash. So most people survived, actually. But there was still a problem. And the way the auto thrust and auto throttle system works in this case, if the thrust levers had been static, this wouldn't have happened because the pilots would have pushed the thrust levers above a certain detent. And it wouldn't have reduced the thrust automatically again. So it's very hard to say which system in total is better. You can count the accidents, maybe, in which it played a role. But there are so few. They're just really less than a handful in each case. So they're not statistically significant. So you can't really say by statistics alone which system is better than the other. They both have their own problems. And this is one of the decisions, as engineers, that you really can't make a decisive argument for. So one manufacturer chooses one and the other chooses the other. And there's another one, Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco. Many of you may remember that. Only three people were killed in this one because it really burned out only after the crash, after everyone had evacuated. So the auto throttles didn't work as expected in this case. The pilots thought, oh, the auto throttles will hold the speed. We don't have to worry about that. As far as I remember, there were five pilots in the cockpit. And when finally someone noticed and pushed the throttles forward, it was already too late. The engines take their time to spool up. The legal requirement is that they may take up to eight seconds to spool up from idle to the necessary power to go around. And there wasn't enough time for that. Because after the engines have spooled up, the airplane also still has to accelerate to get back to flying speed again. So in this case, again, the wing stall, the airplane crashed just short of a runway and three people died. And the third case was even one when nothing was wrong with the airplane, except you could argue it was a design flaw. But it was working as designed. People who were going to fly the aircraft learned how the system worked, learned everything about it, hopefully. And some more training may perhaps be the answer. That is one thing. System knowledge to crew resource management has been a big thing in previous decades that the pilot in command is not a dictator on the airplane. He has to listen to the others, to the other pilot, even though he has ultimate authority in decision. So do pilots always screw up if the automation fails? No, luckily not. Or if other systems fail? In this case, not the automation, really. But there are two cases which I will briefly mention. Jesse Sullenberger, everybody knows about him. The movie has just been out. The ditching in the Hudson, a superb pilot, great decision making to find the biggest flat surface in the area to put it down. And Peter Burkill, many other. So who knew about Peter Burkill? Right, a few. He was the one saved about as many people as Sullenberger when on approach to London Heathrow, both engines lost thrust, most of the thrust anyway. And he managed to put it down within the airport but short of the runway, it was a crash landing, the airplane was destroyed, but nobody died. So that was a pretty good outcome. So airplanes are one thing, another thing are cars. And anyone here has a self-driving car or at least a lane assist or something? Many, so many people don't trust these new fangled systems, I guess. One of the big differences is that pilots who are going to fly a highly automated aircraft have to take a long training course beyond their pilot's license to learn the specifics of operating this specific aircraft. And maintenance is very highly controlled and regulated. So that's another thing. And the thing is for cars in general, if something's wrong with the engine, you can just pull over to the right and stop, in most cases. And cars cannot just take off and take evasive action in the third dimension. And there are lots and lots of obstacles on the ground. There are trees, cars, people, houses, everything. Whereas the air is mostly empty, not entirely, air-to-air collisions happen. Media collisions do happen, but they are very, very few. And the automatic systems in the self-driving cars or the autonomous cars that we have today require constant monitoring. And if the systems work too well, then drivers may actually forget about it and think they are perfect and let their attention wander. Pilots sometimes are prone to do that as well. But the thing is that in cruise, in cruise flight, if the automatics drop out, the pilots have on the order of minutes to react, really, at least several seconds. Whereas on a road car, if the automatics drop out and you're in a curve, you have fractions of a second to save the car with the current state of the technology. Some of you probably have heard about the trolley problem or trolliology, as it's sometimes called. It basically boils down to that a fully autonomous car, a highly automated car, may eventually have to make the decision between killing the occupants and killing people on the road. And I think that is fundamentally an unsolvable ethical problem that we cannot just leave to the engineers or the car manufacturers to decide that maybe the occupants are always more important than people on the road. What if there's only one person in the car and there's a crowd on the road?  These are situations that may actually happen. So I really can't see what the V-Rite answer is to that if there is one, and maybe there isn't one. Some engineers have actually suggested that making a random decision in that case is the answer. I'm not too sure about that either. But whichever the decision the software takes at that moment, then people will die and they will take the blame either way. And we don't know yet how that's going to turn out in front of the courts. So automation is hard to get right. And in some cases, self-driving cars, it may be impossible to get it absolutely right. Which state is the safest for the systems to be in? And at what time? Who knows? It's very, very hard to get it right, even in limited systems such as airplanes. And what to display to the operators and when? In many cases, it would help the pilots a lot when the automation drops out to know intimate details of how the system works internally. Airbus has some logic diagrams in their pilot's handbook, but they are labeled for info, which means they're not required for any exams. It's just interesting to know. But in case of the logic for extension of the ground spoilers, it's quite helpful to know which conditions exactly have to be satisfied for the ground spoilers to deploy. But some of these problems, I think, cannot be left to engineers and scientists alone. And we need psychologists and maybe sociologists, other people who know about the psyche of people, who know about how people think, how people react, how people process information to make good engineering design decisions to build safer systems. And as I said, some of the fundamental ethical problems may turn out to remain unsolvable. Thank you. I think we have a little bit of time for questions. Yes, we actually do. We have some time for questions and we're gonna start with the internet if there are any questions. No, they are not. Then it's microphone number three. Yes, you mentioned the ethical problem of the decision-making, the trolley problem. So whenever this comes up regarding automated driving systems, whether it be flight control or car driving, I always get a little bit mad when philosophers come up with that. There is one decisive decision you can make and that is the whole thing should act predictably, especially in road traffic. The uttermost importance is that all participants behave predictably, swerving out of lane is the most dangerous thing you can do. And if you have to make this decision, people say you have to make a decision, then I say, no, there is a definitive safe state.  Don't tailgate.  Hello, please ask your question. OK, so the question is, why are people always saying it's ethically not decisive? It isn't because if just keeping enough distance to solve our problems, that would be fine. But cars are not the only participants in traffic. There are people, right?  That is not predictable. Yeah, you can require people to behave predictably. Good luck with that. I would like to counter that. OK, unfortunately, there's not much room for discussion right now. But microphone number two, please ask a concise question. OK, let me try. So you said about automation in airplanes that whenever there is a small malfunction, the autopilot will disconnect and expect the pilot to fix the situation, right? So it is my understanding. Not the smallest problem, but some, yeah. OK, so but it is my understanding that the pilots are still expected to follow procedures and not make any random gut decisions in most cases. So my question is, do you have statistics when the standard procedures were actually not applicable in how many cases and in how many of these cases did the pilots actually manage to save the flight? No, I'm not aware of any statistics. And one of the problems with that is that in general, the data recorder is only read when there was an accident and it is strictly off limits in all other circumstances. Some airplanes have a quick access data recorder which they can routinely read, but only anonymized. So and I don't think the airplanes publish statistics about that. OK, last question, microphone number four, please. Yeah, I just want to bring this back to this sort of the IT security part where what I find very good about the way accidents are handled in aviation is that the report is completely public. So if you want to read the Challenger Catastrophe, you can actually read all the technical details and all the stuff that happened and all that information is there and the way it's adjusted. Now the question is why is this not happening in the IT sector where clearly millions of people are being affected and somehow we haven't reached a stage where the data and the analysis of the data is public so we can all learn from it and get better as it has been the way. I think the short answer is, excuse me. I think the short answer is because there is no legal requirement and if there weren't for accident reports to be distributed then many airlines wouldn't do it. But why? It's because it's embarrassing if you have an accident. That's basically the thing I think. OK, very last question, microphone number one, please. Hi. So one of the reasons we have automation in aircraft in the first place is to reduce pilot workload where too high pilot workload is a major cause of accidents. It seems like one of the issues we're talking about here is that in a situation where something's gone wrong the presence of that automation and needing to understand it means you've got a higher pilot workload in that situation. The question, what is it doing now? What's the industry's sort of approach to that effect and what do you think about that? I think the traditional approach is to just pile on more automation so that if that fails the pilot has an even higher workload. But the current thing is that manufacturers and airlines go back very, very slowly to letting the pilot hand fly more often. For a long time the mantra was use automation whenever possible, the highest level of automation that is appropriate for the situation. So only the takeoff and touchdown were flown by hand. And now it is very often used the appropriate level of automation. And that means if there's not very high workload and not a lot of traffic then hand fly the approach, for example. So to keep in good practice and to maintain proficiency for all situations, hopefully. Thank you. Please give a warm hand of applause for Ben Zika.


Hi, welcome to super user TV here at the OpenStack Summit in Boston. Can you please introduce yourselves? I'll go first. All right. I am Heather Kirksey. I head up the OPNFE project within the Linux Foundation. I'm Phil Robb. I actually have two titles. I'm the executive director of the Open Daylight Project as well as the VP of Operations for all of the networking and orchestration projects at the Linux Foundation. Wow, that's a mouthful. So today we're here to talk about the cross Linux Foundation end-to-end full networking stack. So Heather, can you talk about OPNFE's role in bringing those projects together? Yeah, so when OPNFE got started, one of the ideas was a lot of the pieces were out there already, but getting them to work together and tested in an end-to-end fashion was not something that was happening. So we really focus on systems integration building up the full stack from kind of hardware all the way up into connecting them with analytics and network automation. So that involves groups like OpenStack, obviously, but FDIO, OVS, DBDK. I'm probably forgetting some, but what we do is we sort of connect them with the CI CD systems. We build them, we deploy on different architecture, and then we do automated testing and send the results back to those groups. Awesome. And Phil, can you address how other Linux Foundation projects fit into that? Sure. When OPNFE first started, there were serious gaps that existed within the Etsy NFV architecture to actually fulfill the the goals of NFV, and since then several projects have been started to actually address those issues. And as those have occurred, many of them have come to the Linux Foundation, and so we continue to build out this stack into logical components. And of course, when an open-source project begins at the start, they're kind of focused on their own thing, just bringing the technology together. But now that everything is a little bit more mature, all of these projects are starting to find their interconnection and where they actually want to fit together. So we've spent significant time over the last year actually working to help these projects find where they're working together from the top-level projects like own app that has just been launched to do full orchestration end-to-end, all the way down to DPDK to accelerate the data plane, open daylight to be an SDN controller to weave the traffic together, an entire testing infrastructure, an integration infrastructure inside of OPNFE. So we're just finding more and more synergies across these projects that fill out a lot more of a solution stack than just component technologies. Wow. So there's a lot of work being done. So where can people go to learn more about this collaboration and work that's being done to address these issues? Well, see, there are a lot of places kind of depending, you know, if you're interested in any particular piece of the stack, let's say the data plane acceleration, that's DPDK, DPDK.org. For OPNFE, you can go to wiki.opnfe.org. You can go to open daylight if you're interested in the SDN piece. You can go to own app if you're interested in the back-end orchestration piece. So it kind of depends, you know, where you sort of want to focus your time. But you've got a lot of projects doing a lot of really, really cool work. But that's actually a good point, because obviously going to all of those places is more difficult. So one of the things we're working on at the Linux Foundation is actually combining some of those assets, making it easier to traverse that stack, even down to the point of how we actually organize our events in the future, trying to bring more projects together so that we have a more critical mass across these projects because there are so many developers that are working on more than one project. Certainly OPNFE has, you know, a lot of good workers, but they mostly also work upstream to the projects that then tie into OPNFE as an example. Also, let's travel. Also, we hope. Awesome. Well, thank you for taking the time to chat with us today, and I look forward to learning more about this. All right, cool. Thank you.


So many times when I sit down to do these videos, I want to say it's that time of the month again, but then I realize that sounds like I'm talking about my period. No, we're talking about empties and everything that I've stored up to show you guys for the month that I have used up and feeling of satisfaction in a box, you guys. We get to go through these, see what I liked, what I would repurchase, what I wouldn't, and then we're going to go ahead and chuck it in the trash and that is the most satisfying part for me is that I got to use it completely up and I have a definite opinion on it, whether or not I'm going to go ahead and repurchase it. So we're going to get into product empties right now. Okay, because there's so much here, you know this feel, we're going to go through it fairly quickly, broken bottle, but this is the falling in love conditioner from Philosophy Beauty. Amazing fragrance, you guys. Of all their fragrances, this fragrance to me is the one that I love the most. If you've ever tried Trish McAvoy number nine perfume, this is it in a conditioner or a fragrance. Now I will say that Philosophy's fragrance doesn't last anything like Trish McAvoy's, but if you put it in your hair's conditioner, you can have it there for a long time. And I really like getting like their body butters and their creams, not their lotions necessarily because those have a tendency to go away in fragrance. But I do like those as well because they stay a long time. Gorgeous fragrance, if I get the chance. Yes, I will repurchase the following falling in love scent, but I don't feel like the conditioner was anything outstanding. So I probably won't do the conditioner. Used up some hairsprays this month, the Bodifying Bamboo Fiber Full Big Hair Spray from OGX. I love this stuff. It's so good in humidity. I actually have been kind of replacing this over my one that I absolutely have loved for like 20 years, which is the Kinra Volume Spray Superhold Finishing Spray number 25. This stuff makes it so you're not going to budge. But this one kind of does the same thing. And yet you don't have to worry about your hair being too crunchy. So I do love both of these still. Yes, I will repurchase both of them still and I repurchase them over and over again. But this one's a really good one that has come into my life within the past year. This one has been in my life for 20 years. So yeah, I got a new love there. Yeah. So that's the ones that I'm going to be repurchasing. And then another hair product. This is my Big Sexy Hair Extra Volumizing Shampoo from Big Sexy Hair. And you can see that it has a little bit of purple in the top right there. I pour a purple shampoo in this. And I reuse this particular jug over and over again because I do like to have a purple shampoo in here. I like to have a fortifying shampoo and I like to have volumizing. I'm not asking a lot, but that's what I do is when I use this up a little bit, I will start to put other shampoos in here to mix it with the volumizing one. So I can get the shampoo that I really want instead of having to have three or four bottles that, you know, I'm trying to juggle in the shower and slip and fall and crack my neck or crack my head open or whatever. You know how that goes. Okay. This one right here, this is from Sol De Janeiro. This is the Brazilian Crush Body Fragrance Mist. I had this for such a long time and I'll tell you why. First of all, love the fragrance. Just like, it's just like the Bumbum Cream. It has that same exact tropical beach fragrance, which I love, but this isn't last. So I'm not going to repurchase it. I took such a long time to go through it because I was just feeling like, why even spray it? Because it just would dissipate within less than a half an hour to an hour. And so I wasn't really using it for a long time. Then I decided that I was going to start spraying it in my hair, lasts a lot longer in your hair because your hair holds onto a lot of fragrances like clothing does, but I won't be repurchasing this. I wish that there was a stronger one that lasts longer, but I have heard that the one that they did develop for the fragrance doesn't last that long either. So I'm just kind of waiting to see what happens with that one, but I won't be repurchasing that one. Sorry about the noise. This is from Centro Pay. This is a Gradual Tan Plus Sculpt in Glow and this says, everyday multi-active tanning lotion. It's not sculpting. Don't feel like that, but it is a really good tanner for being a gradual tanner and it's a really great one for being even. And it does come out in just white. There isn't any color in there. So you're not going to really be able to, you know, make sure that you're getting the most even tan. But I found that if I put this on with a mitt, it is so moisturizing and hydrating that it spreads across your skin.  And I do really like this one. I am going to be using a ton of other ones up, but I definitely would think about repurchasing this one. I know that this is the plus one. So it had a little bit more tanning property in it or quicker tanning property in it than just using a regular gradual tanner. So if you're medium on up to deep, you might really, really like that one. This is a mini of the Sol de Janeiro Bumbum Brazilian Bumbum Cream. I do love this. This is one that, yes, I will repurchase it. I do have a big one that I'm working on right now, but it's so hydrating and so nice. And so, yes, that is one that I will be repurchasing. And then I have, let's see, do I have any more hair products in here? This one is from Christophe Robin. This is a volumizing spray. I don't really like this. I feel like it weighed my hair down much too much. So I was just using it up to get rid of it. And actually when it got down to about here, because I got so tired of my hair feeling like it was weighed down, I actually poured the rest out. So I almost used that up, but I went in here so that I could tell you guys about it. If you have medium texture hair or curly texture hair, you might really like this. But because my hair is so fine and limp and straight, it was one that just felt like weighed it down too much. So kind of passed on that one. And then, of course, my X Lash, you guys, this is Holy Grail status again. I go through these tubes. I've big tube like this. This is a double size tube, and it's what I get to get my extra long lashes. And I've had a couple of people ask me if I could do a whole entire video on this. I don't know if you guys want to see that or not. This isn't exactly inexpensive, but it works out to be about $10 a month. And for me, lashes like this are worth $10 a month because I don't wear extensions. They don't stay on me. I don't have enough lashes. When I do that, I feel like it damages my lashes anyway. And I can't wear falsies because my hands shake so bad. I have that disability. And so wearing falsies is just out of the question for me. But if I can use this every night, I'm going to find that my lashes are just gorgeous. And this is going on the third year that I've used this. They originally sent it to me in PR, purchased it countless times after that. But again, this big one will last me about six months, and it is $60. So you're looking at $10 a month for beautiful lashes. And to me, that is completely worth it. So let me know if you guys want to see a video on that one. Another loud sound again. Excuse me. All right. Whole lot of skincare in here. This is from Vichy or Vinci Labs. I don't, it's not gotten in it. So it's Vichy Labs. And this is their thermal mineral water. And I really like this. I love the delivery of it. I love how even it is and how light it is when it sprays and that it's a mineral water. But I got me a spray bottle that has a continuous mist and I pour mineral water in there. And that's what I use instead of this. And I feel like it is not only much more cost effective, but it's great for the environment because we're not wasting a bunch of cans like that. So yeah, I liked it, but I won't be repurchasing it. And then we have a ton of serums. You guys, I tried from the good molecules. You guys, I love their line, but there are a couple things in there that I probably wouldn't repurchase not necessarily because they aren't bad, but because within their line, I found some other stuff or in other lines, I found other things. The hyaluronic acid, it was okay. It wasn't the greatest hyaluronic acid I've ever used. It wasn't the worst, but I didn't feel like it gave me super hydrated skin. So even though I love good molecules, I probably would pass with that one. And then their niacinamide serum, I probably wouldn't use, even though I loved this, again, the niacinamide was great in it. I did love it, but this is another empty that I have. And this is their niacinamide brightening toner. And this has licorice root alpha arbutin. And what is, what else does it have in it? I think it has, besides the niacinamide, I think it has vitamin C, all brightening, all of the things that help with your skin's tone, but the niacinamide and it clears out your pores so well and just refined my pores like nothing I have seen in a long time. So instead of purchasing the serum, I'm going to continue to repurchase these bottles of the good molecules brightening toner. I love that stuff, you guys. It's so good. And then this one is a daily brightening serum. Again, it says it's formulated with arbutin and hyaluronic acid to gently brighten skin's tone. And don't feel like it's as good as this one either. So again, this is a winter, winter chicken dinner. These are just kind of nice to have, but not necessary in my routine since I have this. And, but what is necessary in my routine and what I do love over and over again is the buffet from The Ordinary. I think that the peptide serum in here is so good. And if you are on a budget and you're wanting something that is just full of really good peptides that are so good for anti-aging and do so many great things about keeping wrinkles at bay, doing all of the different things that peptides do as far as penetrating the skin and making it look brighter and more refined and all that, this is a great serum. However, I have been listening to Penny from Pensmith Skincare. She does like the copper one better, the copper peptides better. So I've been trying a different one. If you saw my video on essences, you'll know that I've been using Cos de Baja peptide serum. I think I like it a little bit better than this one even. So I'm going to wait and see over the long haul how Cos de Baja does, but so far it's doing fantastic on my skin. So those are some serums I used up. I also have another serum that I used up and I couldn't tell you where this one is from. This one is from Ella Frida and I liked it. It was great for a Vitamin C serum. It has Vitamin C serum with hyaluronic acid, loved the delivery system on it. It was really good, but I didn't notice a tremendous brightening effect any different than any other serum that are, you know, Vitamin C that I've ever used before. And I'm into another one. Again, if you saw that Essence video, I better throw that Essence video up here in a card so you guys can see if you saw the Essence video, you know what I'm using for Vitamin C. So even though I liked it, I appreciated it. It just, it wasn't for me. So I do have two SPFs in here and both of them, I think I got the recommendation from Dr. Dre. This one is from Altruist or Dermatologist. I don't remember, I don't know what the actual name of it is, but it's an SPF of 50. And this one was supposed to be really good for dry skin and I actually ordered this from the UK. It came with four tubes. And you guys, the minute I put this on, I knew it was bad. It was not going to be for me at all. And I tried so hard to make this work. This ball's up so bad on my skin. I use quite a bit of SPF when I'm using it. I don't just use a little tiny dollop and, you know, work it in, but even if I did, this would still ball up. This is so bad. You guys stay clear of it. I couldn't even use it on my body. That's how bad it was because it would just get thick and then it would ball up and I'd be like, okay, now I got to go take a bath. And so no, that's just no good. But the Skin Aqua, this one is so good. This one is an SPF of 50. And it says plus, plus, plus, plus on there. I don't know exactly how many pluses you need for it to be really good, but I love this. And this was one that I've already repurchased. And it is just beautiful under makeup, super hydrating. I love that. I have dry skin, so it is really good. I was using the Misha, I think it, theirs was their Sun Milk or something like that. If you have oily skin, that one is really good, but it had a little bit too much alcohol in it for me. But this one, definitely for dry skin, has played so beautiful under makeup. And I love it. And then I used up a couple of finishing sprays, Skin Denevia, the makeup finishing mist, sorry. And then this one is from Wet and Wild. This is their Natural Setting Spray. Okay, Natural Finish Setting Spray, excuse me. Okay, so I do like both of these. I love Skin Denevia because you get so much in here. And it does exactly just with Urban Decay All Nighter does. I've heard over and over again that they're made in the same factory, pretty much made the same way, same formula. But this is so much cheaper when you go ounce for ounce. So I do love this. You do have to buy this usually off of their website. This is actually where I got this one from. But this lasted forever. This is a huge bottle. And it lasted a really long time and definitely will repurchase it. Now the Wet and Wild Natural Finish one, I'm kind of on the fence about this one. It's one that, first of all, it's a teeny tiny bottle. And even though it was only $5, if you look at it compared to this, it's like 1.67 ounces. You look at it compared to this. And I think this was 28. This is still a better value than getting it this way. So I think that for the value, it's not really for me. And it really didn't work out that great. So just one of those things, another FYI. I have two products that were sent to me by Dr. Lily Fan. And these are eye products. And they're probiotic formulas of some sort. The Eye Serum comes out in a very thin formula. And then the cream is a little bit thicker, but not by much. And I did use these completely up. Didn't see any change in my eyes at all, you guys.  Both of them did. And I she actually sent me a couple other products. They all stung really bad. I don't know why I don't normally have that issue with my eyes unless the Retin-A has really gotten to my eyes over a certain amount of time. But it didn't matter whether I used Retin-A or not.  So they're not ones that I'll be repurchasing. But I've heard other people say that they are like their holy grail, gotten rid of crow's feet, all that kind of thing. I didn't see it. So just my, just my viewpoint on it. I missed a hair product. This is my Minoxidil that I get. I get it in a set of three off of Amazon and this is from Kirkland. And this is a hair regrowth treatment that I've been using for probably about two and a half years now. It's the same as Nioxin, but at a fraction of the cost. And there is a dropper that comes with it. It's in the new bottle. But you just use a dropper of it on your scalp. You're supposed to use it morning and night, but I only use it once at night. And I actually only use this one every other day because I need to wash my hair the next day usually because it's a little bit for my hair. It's going to weigh my hair down a little bit. But yeah, this is something that I repurchase oodles and oodles of time. This is a Buxom lip gloss I used up. And this one is in Lavender Cosmo beautiful color, loved it. It was just the, just a kind of a milky pinky lavender color. I just thought it was so pretty. I love Buxom glosses. This is a number seven full 360 mascara that I loved. It's a tubing mascara and I really did like this very much. My only thing, I loved the wand on it, loved the curve of it, loved the lasting power on it, loved how easily it came off, loved how it built my eyelashes up and how it looked on my eyelashes. Couldn't wear it on the underneath part because it didn't stay very well. But it dried out really quickly, like within six weeks.  Now I am going to try this again though, because I loved how it did. And I'm wondering if I just got a tube that maybe was older. And so I just need to try another tube. I am going to try this again and I will make sure I update you. And then this one came to me in a boxy charm such a long time ago. This is from the Brow Gal. And this is the Instant Brow Hair Tinted Brow Gel with Microfibers. I loved this specifically because of that teeny tiny little wand right there. It was so great. And I would just brush this through after I had, you know, kind of framed my eyebrows out with a pencil or whatever. And it did give it a little bit more volume because it did have the little fibers in it. So I do like that one a lot and will repurchase it if I, you know, not trying other things all the time. Another lip product that I went through is from Tarte. And I don't know the name of this. This is a berry color. I didn't like this at all you guys. I, this was one of the thinnest products that I've ever used. It doesn't stay on your lips. I ended up just using it as a balm at night before I went to bed. And it would be gone by the time I got up to go potty in the middle of the night. So this is not one that I would recommend to you guys. And then I tried this mask, this super hydrating mask from Elf. Love this one. It's really, really good. Now what they said was to put it on and wash it off. I didn't wash it off. I know that's probably bad, but it was so nice and hydrating that I didn't feel like it clogged my pores or anything like that. And what I really loved it for because I love having urea products on my face. I feel like they're so hydrating. I don't know if this has urea in it or not. I'm not saying that. But on the back of my hands at night, I would wake up and my hands would still be so moisturized and my fingers would still be so moisturized. Does the same thing on your face that holds everything in, but it's really, really good. So definitely can recommend that one. And I think that is it, you guys. That is it. I was doing a marathon talking as fast as I could to get through that fast. But I don't think I got through it fast enough. But so you guys kind of get a review on all of those products that I went through for the month. Thank you so much for being with me. I know that these are trying times and I know that everybody's having a hard time. But maybe to see some stuff that people are using up kind of helps you to decide how the best way to save your money is and be able to invest in something that you know you're going to enjoy. So I hope that you're all having a good day. Please take care of yourself. Stay safe. Stay sanitized. I love you very much. And I will see you all in my very next video. Bye you guys.