Hello, everyone. I'm Takashi from Entity. Today, I will talk about a black box approach to post-contempt their knowledge in constant rounds. This is a joint work with Ai Hui-cha and Kai Min-chan. Their knowledge proves and arguments are fundamental primitives in cryptography. In those primitives, a prover tried to convince the verifier of truth of some statement without revealing anything beyond the truth of the statement itself. Formally, we require the following three properties. The first is completeness, which means that if the statement is true and everything is done correctly, then verifier accepts with overwhelming probability. Second is the soundness, which means that the statement is false, then the verifier accepts with negligible probability. And especially, when we consider unbounded time cheating prover, then we call the protocol proofs. And if we consider a polynomial time at the bottom, then that is called arguments. And the third property is their knowledge property, which means that verifier learns nothing beyond the fact that the statement is the truth statement. And next, I will explain a more formal definition of their knowledge property. So, their knowledge property is defined like this. For any verifier, there exists a simulator. They exist for any distinguisher such that distinguisher doesn't distinguish these two worlds. In the real world, verifier interacts with the honest prover. And in the ideal world, simulator simulates the verifier's view. And especially when we consider classical their knowledge, everything VSD and OGS is classical. And when we consider quantum their knowledge, everything is quantum. And especially, we consider the subgraph of their knowledge called black book their knowledge. The difference from the normal their knowledge is that the simulator here uses the verifier only in a black book manner. And here are several reasons why we study black book their knowledge. First, most non-protocols satisfy black book their knowledge. Second, there are very few non-black book simulation techniques. And third, protocols with non-black book their knowledge are usually far from practical. So, for those reasons, it is very important to study the power and the limitations of black book their knowledge. And especially, what we consider in this work is post-quantum their knowledge. Post-quantum their knowledge protocol is a classical protocol with quantum their knowledge. And especially, we focus on those for NP languages. And because we already know a lot of contractions of classical their knowledge protocols for NP. So, one may think that we can obtain post-quantum their knowledge by just replacing the assumption with post-quantum assumptions in those classical construction. However, in general, this doesn't work because of the usage of a revinding technique that is often used in the classical security proofs. And I would like to review non-constructions of classical and post-quantum their knowledge protocols. And I remarked that this is not exhaustive list of the non-constructions. And this is just most related work for our work. The first, sorry, first their knowledge proof for NP languages was proposed by Goh-Rai-Himika Rih-Dazen. And this is based on one way function. However, the round complexity of this protocol is polynomial. So, after that, it is one of the most important research topics in their knowledge to reduce the number of rounds. And the other constant rounds, there are protocols by Goh-Rai-Himika-Han and Belare Jakobsen-Yen. And this is five round based on collision relations hash. And this is the four round based on one function, and this is only argument. So, this is the state of art in the classical setting. However, it is not immediately clear if these constructions also satisfy quantum their knowledge, even if we use post-quantum assumptions. For that direction, the first progress was made by Watras in 2005. So, he proved that a many non-constructions of classical their knowledge protocol actually also satisfy quantum their knowledge if we use quantum assumptions, post-quantum assumptions. And as a result, he obtained their knowledge, quantum, post-quantum their knowledge proof for based on post-quantum assumptions. However, his technique is only applicable to protocol with polynomial number of rounds. So, after that, it has been a long standing open problem to construct constant round post-quantum their knowledge proofs or even arguments. This open problem was recently solved by Vitansky and Schimeli. They constructed constant round post-quantum their knowledge argument. However, there are several caveats in their construction. First, their construction is argument, and so it only satisfy computation of soundness. Second, they rely on some non-blackbook simulation technique, which means that their protocol is not blackbook their knowledge. Third, their assumption is rather strong. They are the quantum hardness of LWE and the existence of quantum fully homophic encryption. Therefore, we ask the following question in this work. They are constant round post-quantum blackbook their knowledge protocols, hopefully with statistical soundness from weak assumptions. This is our results. We construct post-quantum blackbook their knowledge proofs and arguments from weaker assumptions at the cost of weakening their knowledge to what is called epsilon their knowledge, which I will explain later. Especially, we construct two protocols. The first is proofs from collapsing hash function, which is the quantum counterpart of collision resistance hash function introduced by UNRU. And the second is argument from one way function. And here I would like to remark that our follow up work showed the impossibility of constant round post-quantum blackbook their knowledge for NP and the reasonable assumption. Therefore, weakening their knowledge property is unavoidable for obtaining blackbook their knowledge in constant round. So this follow up work justifies the weakening of their knowledge to their knowledge. So this is the comparison table among non-constructions and our constructions. So as I said, the collapsing hash function is the quantum counterpart of collision resistance hash function. So given the similarity, our first construction is very similar to what is achieved by goal right-hand protocol. And actually our first construction is almost the same construction as the goal right-hand construction except that we use post-quantum building blocks. So now I would like to explain why it's in their knowledge. But before that, let's recall the definition of the standard their knowledge property. So the blackbook their knowledge property says that the difference between these two probabilities is upper bounded by negligible function. By the definition of negligible function, this is equivalent to this. For any inverse polynomial epsilon, this is upper bounded by epsilon. And the epsilon their knowledge is obtained by slightly changing the order of quantifiers. That is, epsilon comes before S. This means that the simulator can depend on their epsilon and so this weakens their requirement. However, we like to claim that epsilon their knowledge is just below the standard their knowledge in the hierarchy of variance of their knowledge properties for the following reasons. First, it's in their knowledge implies weaker notions of their knowledge, such as witness indistinguishability, witness hiding and so on. And the second, it's in their knowledge is sufficient for many game-based security applications. And third, achieving it's in their knowledge is usually as hard as achieving their knowledge in the classical setting. And for those reasons, we believe that it's in their knowledge is very mild relaxation of their knowledge property. So from now I would like to move on to the technical part. And though we propose two constructions, but in this talk I focus on the first construction. And our first construction is almost the same as the Goal-Reichigahem construction as I mentioned. And that construction is based on the Sigma protocol. So let's start from Sigma protocol. So Sigma protocol is a three-round interactive protocol that satisfies the following three properties. The first two are just standard completeness and solidness. And the third property is called spatial honest verifier their knowledge. So this means that for any fixed E, the transcript can be simulated by simulator given E. So remark that this is different from the general standard of knowledge, because when we consider a general malicious verifier, the verifier can choose E depending on A, so we cannot fix E at first. So this means that if we know verifier sends some particular E in advance, then we can simulate the transcript. And the Goal-Reichigahem protocol is based on the Sigma protocol, and they added some additional commitment by verifier to make the protocol their knowledge against general verifier. So the idea is to let the verifier commit to the E at the beginning. Then a simulator can first rewind verifier to extract E, and after that E is already committed, so simulator can use that extracted E to simulate the transcript of the Sigma protocol part, and then it can accomplish the task of simulation. However, the problem is that if verifier is content, then this rewinding doesn't work, because when the simulator rewinds the verifier, verifier's internal state may collapse, and so verifier may not go back to the original state. So this is the problem in the content setting. And in spite of this difficulty, we managed to prove that this protocol is quantum epsilon zero knowledge by using a novel proof technique. Towards quantum simulation, we first make the following observation. Suppose that the following two assumptions hold. First, E R is information theoretically determined from the commitment, and second, V never aborts. Then we can rewind V without collapsing its internal state. The reason is that if these assumptions hold, then E R sent in this round is already determined in advance, and such a deterministic quantum computation can be done without collapsing the state in January. And so, in this case, we can rewind the verifier without collapsing its internal state. And this was already observed in Bitansky and Schimeli work. And for the item 1, this can be achieved by just requiring commitment to be strict binding. Through the definition is exactly the item 1. And this requirement can be relaxed to what is called strong collapse binding, which can be seen as a computational version of strict binding. And we know that such a commitment can be constructed based on collapsing hash function. And this is the only assumption we use. And collapse, so the details about the definition of collapse binding is not very important for the rest of this talk, so I will omit this. And for the second item 2, this is a significant restriction of V because for proving the knowledge property, we have to consider a malicious verifier that sometimes abodes. And so, the main technical difficulty is to deal with such a verifier that sometimes abodes. To deal with such a malicious verifier that sometimes abodes, we first rely on the simple finite trick introduced by Bitansky and Schimeli. The idea is to guess whether we abode or not. So, suppose that we have two Schimelators that work conditioned on V abode and doesn't abode, respectively. And then by randomly running either of these two Schimelators, we get a Schimulator that works with probability one-half because the probability that the guess is correct is one-half. And by the water-resigning lemma, such a Schimulator that works with probability one-half can be converted into a full-fledged Schimulator that always succeeds. By using this trick, our task is reduced to contracting two Schimulators for aboding and non-aboding cases separately. First, let's consider the aboding case. So, in the aboding case, actually the Schimulation is very easy because when verifier abodes, the prover doesn't need to send the final message Z. In that case, the Schimulator only has to simulate A, which is the first message of the sigma protocol. And the first message of the sigma protocol can be simulated without using witness. And so, this case is very easy. So, far as the non-trivial is the non-aboding case. So, in the non-aboding case, the verifier doesn't abode, so prover has to send Z, which means the Schimulator also has to simulate Z. And for simulating Z, the simulator has to somehow extract E. But in the extraction, it should not collapse the verifier state too much. So, this is the difficulty and we will explain, I will explain how to resolve this difficulty. So, for explaining our idea, let's first consider the following toy example. So, suppose that verifier, the internal state after sending a commitment is psi, which is the sum of two orthogonal states, psi A and psi NA. And suppose that verifier performs some projection, performs projection to psi A and if the projection succeeds, it abodes and otherwise doesn't abode. And let's think about what happens if we try to extract E from this verifier. So, the simulator first runs the verifier until it sends ER, assuming that it doesn't abode. Then, the verifier's internal state collapses to psi NA. And at this point, this state is different from the original state psi and we don't know how to go back to the original state. So, one may think that the simulation gets stuck at this point. However, our key observation is that such a collapsing also happens in the real execution in the non-aborting case. Therefore, this collapsing doesn't matter for simulation of non-aborting case because recall that we are now constructing a simulator that is only required to work in the non-aborting case. So, this collapsing is actually fine for that simulator. So, this is our very key observation. So, for generalizing the idea to the general case, we rely on Jordan lemma, which is a commonly used lemma in quantum information theory. So, this lemma gives us a decomposition of verifier's internal space into two orthogonal subspaces that satisfy the following. Let's denote the first subspace component by psi smaller than epsilon and the second subspace component by psi larger than or equal to epsilon. And the meaning of this notation is the following. If verifier only has the first subspace component, then it doesn't abort with probability smaller than epsilon. And if it only has the second subspace component, then it doesn't abort with probability larger than or equal to epsilon. And moreover, these states in the different subspaces do not interfere with each other. And the lemma especially ensures that if verifier internal state only has the second subspace component, then that remains in the subspace even if we apply arbitrary number of rewinding of the verifier. Based on this observation, we can extract E with overring probability by order of epsilon inverse times rewinding if verifier's internal state only has the second subspace component. And moreover, such almost deterministic quantum computation can be done almost without collapsing the internal state in general. Therefore, if verifier only has the second subspace component, then we can extract E almost without collapsing the state. However, in general, verifier also has the first subspace component and this state may collapse in an unexpected way. However, our observation is that this doesn't matter because this state almost vanishes in the real execution condition or not aborting similarly to our previous toy example. And if we can set epsilon to be negligible, then we would be able to prove the standard of knowledge. However, because our rewinding procedure needs order of epsilon inverse times rewinding, so we can only set epsilon to be inverse polynomial, though we can set that to be arbitrary with more inverse polynomial. And this is why we can only achieve epsilon to be a knowledge rather than the standard of knowledge. So this is the summary of how to construct our simulator. So first we construct two simulators that work in the aborting case and the non-aborting case respectively. And the aborting case simulator is trivial and the non-aborting case simulator is constructed by the combination of Jordan's lemur and cryptographic techniques, such as collapse binding commitments. And based on the Bitansky and Schimary trick, we combine these two simulators to obtain a simulator with success probability, one half. And finally we rely on water rewinding lemur to convert this into full-fledged simulator. And as I mentioned, the non-aborting case simulator has epsilon simulation error, and this is inherited to this and also this. And this is why our final simulator only achieves epsilon zero knowledge simulation. This is the summary of this work. We gave two constructions of black box epsilon zero knowledge protocols. And the first contraction is proofs based on collapsing hash functions. And the second contraction is arguments based on one function. This is the end of my talk. Thank you for your attention.


Let's me take your health back. We are coming to you live from my on-the-road office in Waikoloa on the big island of Hawaii and from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii, which is located in downtown Honolulu. Jay Fidel and Carol Mun Lee, my bosses of Think Tech Hawaii, wants to bring you content of interest from over 40 different show hosts. Today, I'm so honored to introduce to you a young genius of a man who's able to find his passion in life and turn it into his career. Today's show is titled, Haleika Aihui, Japan Joyward Rides, Jammin, TV, Travel and Toons. Yes, he does it all and he calls it work. Really, that's not fair. But today we shall be bringing you greetings and aloha and Pali's travel and journeys of random adventures. What Pali would like you to take away from today's show would be that you always must have appreciation and thankfulness while pursuing your passion. I just can't wait to get started and to let Pali share with you. But first, let's watch this short clip of getting to know Pali. Aloha, my name is Pali Ka'ihoi and I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Growing up in Kamikide during the 70s and 80s from as early as I can remember, there were two constants that you could always hear and see in my parents' house, music and the original KIKU Japan television. I never thought that these influences would evolve into hobbies that would one day turn into a career. Like 90% of my graduating marital high school class, I thought my path would entail enrolling at UH Manoa, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree and hopefully finding a full-time job. However, for the last 20 years, I've been lucky enough to be able to share my love of music, travel to Japan monthly, and promote cross-culture experiences via television. My journey into music started in high school. The guitar was my main instrument that helped me transform ideas I had into actual songs. Years later as a composer and performer, I released several CDs here and in Japan and was fortunate enough to win a number of Na Hoku Hano Hano Awards. In wanting to serve and help promote fellow Hawaii artists and our music industry, I became a volunteer board member of HARA, the Hawaii Academy of Recording Arts. I co-produced the annual Na Hoku Hano Hano Award show for 10 years, was co-creator of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, HTA-supported month-long celebration of Hawaii's music, Mele May, and served as president of HARA from 2011 through 2019. During my time as president, I was able to establish licensing and co-production opportunities with a variety of broadcast, media and production companies in Japan, resulting in the creation of Na Hoku Hano Hano-related concert series and festivals. While volunteering on the HARA Board of Directors, I was contacted by the Grammys National Academy of Recording Arts and Science. In addition to becoming a board member for their Pacific Northwest chapter, I've worked with the Grammy Awards Association for the last 10 years. This past October, the Hawaii Academy of Recording Arts contracted me to be the television director and producer of the 43rd annual Hoku Award show and web broadcast, with the challenges and changes of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 further emphasized with the cancellation of all major cultural events and festivals. The HARA Board believed it was important that the Hoku still occur this year, and even though it would not be possible to have a live audience, we would still be able to celebrate our recording and performing artists as well as provide viewers and music fans with amazing performances from Maui, Kauai, Hawaii Island and Oahu. Wow, it seems like Polly, I gather you have a passion for music. Is that a passion of yours, Polly? Yeah, it's definitely a passion. Sometimes it's a curse because these things don't work like they used to. I don't know if they ever actually used to work the way they're supposed to, but yeah, it is a passion. It's definitely a passion. Wow, that's amazing. You've accomplished so much. And in all those videos, where were you performing there then? A couple of them were in Tokyo. Over at Tokyo Dome City, there's a hall there that some of the performance clips are taken from. And then a few of those are at different Hoku Hanahana Awards or from some of my live venues that I played in across Japan, like some in Sapporo or some in Yokohama. It's a mix of places. Yeah, you know, when I first saw you on TV, I actually thought you was a Japanese. You know, probably right there. And then I said, wait, wait, how come you get that name? I was like, wow, right? So then I looked you up and I thought, oh, brother, this is no go. In fact, you went to the same high school as us. Me, so shout out to Marino. The Spartans. Spartans. The house. Okay, so that's really cool. I tell you, and this world is so small as we talk story, we find out that we know almost everybody intertwined and some very close relations within your, your network of friends. So that's, that's amazing. So I know on the next slide that we're going to be showing this, it's quite a set up what you have on this slide. I was like, whoa, what is this? Is this Hollywood? So what do you enjoy the most about television and production? You know, like when we first started doing Doppelgaard TV, it was because I was a fan of all the stuff like the old Kiku television, you know, so I grew up on that. And then I got into, wow, we should do something that's kind of more updated, you know, and kind of showcase so much of Japan's great culture and food and people now. So that's how Doppelgaard started. But here what happened was I started getting into the actual production side of stuff. So filming, editing, directing. And this shot that the slide is on is Melissa Chang, myself and Amy Hill, which, you know, for 51st dates at Magnum PI, we did a restaurant called Istanbul. And this is kind of our production setup for that filming. All the gear is mined, which is why I'm broke all the time. But, you know, it's also really good so we can learn how to use it properly and, you know, film and do that kind of stuff on top of being in front of the camera. Wow. So wait now, let me, can you repeat that? What is the location of that set that you set that up there? So that's Istanbul, Hawaii. They're right across the street from Whole Foods. It's Mediterranean type of Greek type of, you know, that type of cuisine and something that I'm not familiar with at all. So thankfully Amy was there who was a guest of ours and Melissa Chang was there. So, you know, Melissa really helped explain what it is that we're eating. Everything just tasted good. Oh my gosh. And Polly, you know, that's the direction that we all really, you know, like with my show being taking your health back. That Mediterranean food diet, it's yummy. It's flavorful. It has all the different herbs that you never knew about. But it just makes even the hummus.  And so, yes, we got to go there more often and change our palates to receive that because the food there is very helpful. And I just, I appreciate it so, so very much. So let's continue on our show journey. So besides being a composer and performer, the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards is something you've been involved with for some time, man. I understand. And that last year, there were wrench in the whole mix. I understand that last year's Hokus was quite a challenge while being a milestone for Hara, which stands for the Hawaii Academy of Recording Arts and the recording community. Can you share a bit about the 2020 Hokus? Yeah, that was, it was definitely something that I was so proud to be a part of. I've been with Hara for probably a little over 10 years and I termed out as president in 2019. So it's in 2020, it was obviously everyone had the most difficult 2020 and not being able to do events, not being able to do, celebrate like, like Mary Monarch with Honolulu Festival, with Pampasipic Festival. The Academy really wants to still be able to do something for our artists because, you know, a lot of them did record, a lot of them do celebrate their music once a year. And this was the 43rd, that was the 43rd year that, you know, it would have been, that would have been celebrated. So there are some years early on and maybe a couple in between that weren't televised, but it's always happened. Like there was, it never, 43 years straight, the very first one was the Alamona Hotel. So last year decided, okay, we'll do it. Not so much virtually, but we'll film it as a regular award show. Hawaii Theater came on board, which that's why it looks amazing. You know, we have the incredible, yeah, it just, it's so picturesque and beautiful. And McKenna Maduli from Talk Story, the honor of filming and working with. And of course, so Hawaii News now, Hawaii, you know, Hanna was so great. And then we filmed it. We filmed everything out of order. We filmed everything so that the one good thing was that we could actually really showcase the performances, which I was really happy. We could spend time with their edits and to make sure everything looked good and lit properly. And we had the highest amount of viewership. On the awards. And the one big thing was usually the nine of the awards are held at the convention center live. And you would find out who won. And the winners had run off stage. Well, this time everyone had to watch because we didn't tell who the winners were. So we, the people announcing it and the winner is and we cut. And then only myself, like two other people knew who the actual winners were. So I added it in the winning portion. And we told all of our members, anyone that's going to win, send in a thank you speech. Because no one knew who was going to win. So then we would add it in the one that actually won. And then played it out. Yeah.  You didn't know. They didn't know. They didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. It was quite a bear. But my DP, Michael Keeney, who I worked with for a year with Oh, God, you know, he was instrumental in this all coming together. Of course, Janet Medulli and the horror board, Amy Hanayali. So, and the other thing we wanted to do is the first time that would showcase performance is from neighbor Island. So over at the math, we had Amy and we had a few artists there. And then from Hawaii Island, we had Mark Yamanaka. We had a couple of performances from there. And then from Kauai, we had Kupaua. So I was working with their editors and people filming simultaneously. And they would send them their stuff.  So yeah, that made it really cool. And, you know, to celebrate four to third annual and to really showcase, you know, the music and the artists, especially in a very challenging time. That I'm glad you answered that for all of us because that would have put the winner in a very odd predicament because they would know when they wouldn't be, you know, like how they have these shows and you have to keep quiet because you can't tell them because it's going to air later. So you took that element out of a lot of the performers. And I'm sure they all appreciated that because otherwise, that would be very difficult for the winner to have to zip it.  That's amazing. I love all of them. I love all of them, but I know none of them would have been able to actually keep it under wraps. Of course not. So again, like I said, a genius of a young man, you are positive. I'm not a genius nor young, but thank you. Yes. Receive it. Receive it. All right. So, you know, I just wanted to ask you, so how do you think we can help the musicians of Hawaii as they try to recover from 2020 and the effects from COVID? I think on for businesses, you know, and of course this would have to play together with the safety guidelines of, you know, we're in tier three right now. Thankfully, hopefully more people are still continuing to be diligent and wear masks. And as the vaccine continues to work, it's way through our community, you know, we'll be able to, they'll be able to have more opportunities to gather, you know, and to, for businesses to actually have live music. You know, Blue Note, you know, it has been starting up again. They have plexiglass in front of their stage. So Martha and the folks over there, I commend them for that. I think supporting artists definitely to watch them live when the opportunity is, is available. And a lot of them do online performances now.  We just kind of had the, you know, the doom of when is this going to be over? So I think that's really, exactly, exactly. So now we actually have the ability to, to, you know, kind of look at, wow, this is really, it's over the horizon. We can see it now, you know, so for our artists, definitely support by buying their music, watch them online when they perform.  Yes, go and grab a bite, go to one of the restaurants, support our restaurant tours, and then we'll have a night out and listen and be entertained and let your heart just soak it all up and just escape, you know, into their, into the world of great entertainment. I just love it. I just truly, truly love it. So I'm going to ask you a question, Pali. I said, I just want to know what, I'm sure a lot of people want to know. Can you share with us any special projects that you are currently working on? Um, one of the things that was started in 2020, it was a series called Ola Hawaii, which, um, takes place at the Monalua Gardens. And it's funny because, you know, I remember going to high school or whatever, I remember it as beautiful, but having not gone back in so many years and actually going there and scouting the area, it's so beautiful. And there's so many spots within the gardens that look, you know, that are independent of the other spots in the garden. So we started that series in 2020. Um, and that's been one of the, like, the things I've been proud of to be associated with, um, with that show. We're continuing filming this year as well. Um, there's a couple of other, a couple of other projects, uh, involving, um, Kyushu, Southern Japan Tourism and Government, and they're, um, you know, they really want to reach out to Hawaii folks.  So we want to kind of do that for Kyushu, the Southern Japan side too. That's also in the works and, um, yeah, a couple of, uh, a couple of more music projects. I'll be behind the camera again. That's coming up and unfortunately I can't say what it is yet because I signed an NDA, but, uh, you'll know it when you see it. All right. I knew, I knew you put in, but I thought if I did ask you maybe give us a cheater. So we're going to just keep looking for you and the productions that's yet to come. And I know there must be many in the pipeline. Because you can't just be from all that great Hawaii music. So that's the first part of, you know, what I really wanted to talk to you about, uh, how you support the local entertainers and entertainments here in Hawaii. But there's also another side of you. And I have another video that we collected from your, uh, resources that will show another side of what you do, Pali. So let's watch this video. Follow. Music helped my second passion. A love and fascination with all things Japan turned into an actual occupation that fostered and fueled my love of video production and television. Winning my first Hoku Award brought me back to Japan as a performer. And this reignited an idea I had about trying to create a modern day version of the beloved Kiku television show, Sokoga Shiritai. This concept funded by my day job and lots of sweat equity resulted in the creation of the weekly television show, Tokugawa TV, Japan Mania. And later a joint production with Hokkaido television broadcast and Hokkaido. Tokugawa TV and Love Hokkaido both showcased must-see attractions, culture, history, cuisine and touring of Japan and Asia airing on Hawaii News Now's KHNL and K-5. In parallel to my work in Japan I wanted to channel my efforts in videography to help promote Hawaii's music and performers. Music-centric TV shows K-5 Melee, the Music and Manao series and K-5 Mule Gardens Ho'ola Hawaii were launched. These programs celebrate long-standing traditions, Hawaiian music artists and celebrated entertainers to local, national and international audiences. As viewership for Tokugawa TV and Love Hokkaido started to grow several opportunities had arisen. In 2016 I was appointed as Hokkaido Smile Ambassador a Goodwill Ambassador program established by the Hokkaido government. Interest in Japan tours of the cities and locales I had filmed also grew and partnering with non-stop travel JTB and Hawaiian Airlines resulted in Tokugawa TV themed tours in Japan and Asia. Hey, so this is the other genius part of this genius of a young man. So, your show Tokugawa TV is filmed in Japan or was or is, okay? But this looks like you're enjoying sushi with Chef D.K. Kodama. Are you featuring Hawaii segments now as well? Yeah, you know usually prior to 2020 I was in Japan once a month I did a film or for meetings or for tours and of course not being able to fly and go back one of the things that I had started on the show years ago was a segment called Oishi Itoi which was to feature good restaurants here and when it started it was actually a way to kind of help my friend's restaurant either plate lunch places or actually good Japanese food and so we resurrected Oishi Itoi and we did that and also wanted to feature restaurants like there with D.K. over at Vino's there are a number of restaurants Roy's, Chines, D.K. and Miley's that are doing they represent great food but they're doing this kind of very challenging time special like family meals where you can get Roy's had a separate tour for four for like 70 bucks for filet mignon and lobster and you can't get that for like one person if you go to a restaurant let alone four so a lot of these restaurant tours and these owners are doing stuff to really help be able to provide a level of food and great dining experience at home so enjoy it from the safety of your own home and not dress up put on makeup and not have to you can dress up and put makeup in when you eat Chines you can it's optional I'll admit I don't I skip makeup for that one so it's really that wasn't a way that we also wanted to help local restaurants that were really doing things on the community and then also too for like small businesses that I've been able to kind of go over the years cloud nine in market city was another one we did to have the best boba drinks and souffle pancakes that are Japanese inspired so that's what we're filming here in the islands too so that's yeah that's how they kind of reincorporated into the show into the series Wow and thanks to you Pali for continuing to promote the local not just entertainers but also the local restaurant tours which are using locally grown foods you know and sourcing the local talent to continue to survive a lot of different businesses which is most important and that's what this show is all about and I know that's where your heart is as well Pali is to continue just to encourage and enhance where we're at right now in this point and just keep promoting and going forward so mahalo to you for that in advance if no one's mahalo to you thank you you're welcome so I know that local has a new co-host what you was lonely always I know it's a celebrated and award-winning journalist and she's one of our performers which I've been working with for the last five years so I really have been excited that TV personality I know her as Elena Rubin that's right and so how did you two meet and what's in store for local TV viewers we actually met because Hokkaido we did a familiarity trip to Hokkaido so which is for those that don't know it's kind of like for media to help promote destinations in that area so it was myself it was Melissa Chang, Yumi Ozaki and Elena jumped on so we were there she had a commitment she could only be there for like two full days and she just had sharp throat so she didn't have a voice but it was still fun to work with her and she was a champ she really did make it very entertaining and a lot of fun so we had an opportunity I partnered with I've been very thankful to be partnered with Nonstop Travel and Hawaiian Airlines for the show and Nonstop Travel had an Alaska tour on the Norwegian cruise line to Bliss and I was like hey that would be kind of fun to have Elena on there she's like yeah I'm game so we did the show and like a video diary series of our experience that's Alaska on the ship and it was probably one of our most highly viewed you know episodes that series that we did and we had such great chemistry and it's so much fun and she's also into like extra sauce on her stuff which I'm into big time extra sauce yeah right gotta have extra sauce yeah I don't care yeah and she's also a vodka fan so we had a lot of fun on the tour and yeah I'm so happy that she's co-host of the show I also have a variety of guests co-host Melissa Chang being one of them our mutual friend and it's been a lot of fun you know it's been great to have them on the show well Elena too really we just met the other day in fact talking about the travel the end of the year and other local things that we're going to film together as well as of course hopping around the globe in 2022 so well you're on track again there because you got two very beautiful and outstanding co-host Elena they're way smarter than I am so that works you got the beautiful sandwich going right there you go there you go see how pretty you are I told you I'm glad that you're featuring Alaska because people just know Hawaii is loving Vegas but of course white people love Japan and they love love Alaska and once you go there oh it's amazing the fishing and all the fresh catches that you can bring in just I love it and I can't wait to go back as well we had great times there speaking about traveling with the challenges of travel last year when was the last time you went to Japan Fully I went in December actually so I got to celebrate Christmas there New Year's I had to get a visa for it and then there's the big Gundam statue that I have a huge fan of I had to get a visa and do a lot of paperwork before I went but I also wanted to kind of document what the process is like to travel during COVID thankfully things will be not as I guess as crazy as they were going in but even with that said I flew Hawaiian Airlines over there I got my test before I left when you land at the Rita airport they give you another test and then you wait for the results and then you're allowed to leave but they have private ones you can arrange and stuff too and then you have to quarantine for two weeks so that's something that I kind of wanted to see what the process was like and also a lot of meetings too with clients for businesses that are going forward and for our tours and filming going forward for this year and next year and that was the first time to be honest usually during Christmas January they work in Japan but you don't do meetings you don't do planning stuff because they're all celebrating and closing out the year which is like the after-drinking party and all that kind of stuff but this is the first time that everyone's been affected by that we were meeting up Christmas Eve Christmas Day January 1st was off-limits exactly they're like yeah we'll meet yeah that was really telling to show that everyone is very passionate and hungry to kickstart business again back to normal wow I want to just sneak this one how has COVID impacted your work both locally and in Japan well in Japan it's kept me away from Japan up until December actually I was supposed to be back there right now to cover the 10-year anniversary for the tsunami the tohoku tsunami and earthquake but they're still under lockdown right now for foreigners so it's really effective business in a sense not being able to do tours with nonstop travel and not being able to film there we had some pretty big things that we were worked out for filming for our next focus for the show as well as obviously Olympics which was supposed to be last year so that's been a huge thing but locally it was one of the things that to be honest with you I was really worried about because without that business going on locally here of course everyone is suffering here but I was very thankful to have opportunities like hola hova ii with monologue guarded and to be able to be hired as director producer for the holk this year for television that's a great feather in your cap I mean I'm so thankful to be able to have those opportunities and other little production jobs that have come up so it's kept me pretty busy and my very busy and our crew so for that eternally thankful well we run out of time right now we're eternally grateful to you and your staff and your team that was able to pull that off in a most professional and profound way to kind of make things normal for us at home with all that great entertainment and talent so we've got to say goodbye to you right now but I know there's more great works coming down the pipeline with you and all the talents that you can gather so keep up the great work congratulations to you and we look forward to seeing more of your great works so mahalo mahalo to you aloha aloha


For many of us, it's been a while since we have been on our campuses. Things will look a bit different when we do return, and there are also things to consider in advance. Here's what to expect and how to prepare. The health and wellbeing of our staff and students remains our top priority, and we can all play a part in keeping our campuses COVID safe. Please follow the one-way systems we've introduced across all three campuses. Social distancing means there will be reduced capacities, restricted access, and different layouts in many of our rooms. Teaching staff will wear face shields and stand at least two metres back from the class. You will see hand sanitiser stations at the entrance to all buildings and protective screens in reception areas. And there will be increased levels of cleaning with a focus on key touchpoints such as door handles, handrails and communal areas. Our shared kitchens can be used, but you should follow a one-in-one-out approach. Current government advice is to bring your own food if you can, but our cafes will be open and offering a reduced food service. Social distancing will operate on our buses, so we will be increasing the frequency of our services. We're introducing an online booking system for the Medway service, which will also have new perspex screens between seats. The government encourages using alternatives to public transport where possible. If you do travel, think carefully about the time and route you take so that we all have more space to stay safe. Everyone is asked to help by washing their hands frequently and for 20 seconds, particularly after touching surfaces, eating, drinking or smoking. We must all observe social distancing and the use of face coverings is expected inside our buildings and vehicles. If you cannot wear a face covering or are exempt, please consider using the government's optional exemption badge. While we have increased our cleaning, you can also help. We are asking students and staff to wipe down shared desk spaces before and after use. Wipes and sanitizer will be provided. If you become ill, you must follow government advice. The latest information, including where government decisions might impact on our plans, will be on the Portal homepage. Thank you.


I'm Salvatore Bobonis and today's lecture is the United Nations and Refugees. There are now more refugees in the world than at any time in history, more even than at the end of World War II. Before World War II, many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were turned away from safe havens like the United Kingdom, the United States, and Latin America, with the result that many of them died in the Nazi genocide of the Holocaust. Many other refugees from Soviet occupation in Eastern Europe were also turned away from the West after World War II. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was created in the wake of the Holocaust and of these events of World War II to help prevent future genocides and improve life for refugees. We should keep in mind that today's 21st century refugee and asylum system was a historical response to the harsh treatment of refugees in World War II and a response to the Holocaust. This photo shows Jewish refugees from Western Europe being relocated from the United Kingdom to the United States in 1944. They were making open-boat voyages across the Atlantic in much the same way as today's refugees are fleeing from North Africa and Turkey to Europe or from Indonesia and Sri Lanka to Australia. Now, they had more secure boats, these refugees are actually on the deck of a US Army transport ship, but nonetheless they made these howling sea voyages across North Atlantic to reach safety in North America. What we're seeing now, people on boats seeking refuge from war, is not a new thing. It's something that first happened in a large-scale way in World War II and is now happening again. Though the US and UK do take credit for admitting many refugees from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe during World War II, their record is not always positive, leaving refugee decisions to an ad hoc political basis caused many problems. The most famous of these is the ship the SS St. Louis which sailed from Hamburg to Havana in 1939 with 937 Jewish refugees on board. At the time they left in 1939, Germany had not yet invaded Poland. World War II had not broken out in Europe in full, but there was already serious anti-Semitic action in Germany. The crystal-knocked burning of Jewish businesses had already occurred and Jews were being harassed and hunted down all across Germany. So people were very aware in 1939 that there was already a serious problem with anti-Semitism in Germany. In fact, anyone who read Mein Kampf would know that Germany's ruler, Adolf Hitler, fully intended to exterminate the Jews of Germany and indeed of the whole world. Nonetheless, when the ship the St. Louis arrived in Havana, only a small number between 20 and 30 refugees were allowed to disembark in Cuba. These were people who had Latin American or Cuban or Spanish passports. Then the ship sailed all up the US coast, the east coast of the US, but was denied the ability to dock and unload its passengers. In fact, the ship had to return back to Europe. Of the 937 passengers on the St. Louis, 254 more than a quarter were later murdered in the Holocaust. Some of those passengers were actually accepted into the UK as refugees. Of the 288 who were accepted into the UK, 287 survived the war. One was sadly killed in an air raid. So here we see in just the history of this one ship the huge difference that acceptance of refugees makes. Those who achieved asylum in the UK largely survived out the war. Those who did not did not either spent their entire war on the run in hiding or ended up being killed in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Again, after World War II, between 1945 and 1949, there was a second wave of refugees from Eastern Europe, this time fleeing Soviet occupation. And again, many of them were turned away. The Soviet Union, or USSR, was an ally of the United States United Kingdom during World War II. And so for political reasons, people who were store owners or political activists or anti-communists, or who were simply patriotic nationalists in places like Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, many of them were trying to escape to come to Western Europe. People at particular risk were people who were officers in the pre-war armies of these countries. The Soviet Union was particularly afraid that resistance groups might form around trained military officers. Many of those military officers were slaughtered by the Soviet Union or sent for decades to the gulags of Siberia by the Soviet Union. These people clearly had a need of refuge, but for political reasons were turned away by the Western powers. In 1950, as a result of these kinds of politicized atrocities, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UNHCR, was created, quote, to provide international protection from refugees. And the ellipses that I've included there to allow this to fit in the title says to include to provide free of political interference international protection for refugees. Right from the beginning, it was recognized by the UNHCR and the United Nations that part of the problem with giving safe haven to refugees was that it became politicized. It became politicized then in the 1940s, just like it's becoming politicized now in the 2010s. The UNHCR has grown from a small organization providing relief packets and trying to establish international law into a major part of the United Nations system. In fact, its budget of $7.5 billion a year is larger than that of the United Nations itself. It's kind of like the tail wagging the dog of the United Nations. Though it does accept private donations, and many of you will have seen UNHCR solicitors on the sidewalk asking for help, 86% of the budget comes from country contributions, from countries that donate to the budget. The biggest donor by far is the United States. The United States last year gave $1.5 billion to the UNHCR, or about 20% of the total budget. The EU and large European countries also gave substantial amounts as did Canada, the UK, and the Scandinavian countries. But much of the rest of the world gives very little to the UNHCR. The UNHCR is a medium-sized organization taking on a global-scale problem. It has around 11,000 staff members and to put that in context, that's about the same number of people who work for a large university like the University of Sydney. Nonetheless, it must operate in 128 countries. More than half the countries of the world have some kind of UNHCR operation to be staffed. So you can imagine that they're spread pretty thin. Refugees are only one of the major population groups served by the UNHCR, and they're not even the largest. Out of the 65.3 million forcibly displaced people in the world, only 21.3 million are actually refugees. That means that one third, less than one third of refugees, more than two thirds of the forcibly displaced people in the world are still in their own countries. They are what are called internally displaced persons, or IDPs. Even in the Syrian conflict, there are many internally displaced persons, people who found themselves on the wrong side of the battle lines, and as a result had to move to somewhere where they would be safer inside Syria. It's the same story in Iraq, and really the same story in any conflict situation. There are also some 10 million stateless people in the world. Now, these are not forcibly displaced people, these are simply people who no country is willing to recognize as being a citizen. And as we studied a few weeks ago, that is really a serious problem for people who are unable to acquire citizenship or passports, or be recognized as a citizen of any country in the world. Those 10 million people face severe discrimination, and they also come under the broad supervision of the UNHCR. Now, the interesting number, maybe the most interesting number in this infographic, is the number of refugees resettled per year. In 2015, that was just over 100,000 people. Now, if you put that in context, 21 million refugees, all right, 5 million of those 21 million are Palestinians who are long-term refugees, people who are refugees from the 1949 and later wars between Israel and the Arab countries. But even leaving aside the long-term Palestinian refugees, there are another 16 million refugees waiting to be resettled. Only 107,000 being resettled in any particular year. At that rate, it would take 200 years to resettle all of the refugees in the world today. Most people will remain in refugee camps until the end of their lives at this rate. And that's exactly what's happened in the large Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. It's worth noting that most of the world's displaced people, and this is out of that big figure of 65.3 million forcibly displaced people, most of them are in the developing world, they're being hosted in the developing world. Only about 20% of the world's refugees and other displaced persons are being hosted in the developed countries of the Americas, Europe, and Australia, New Zealand. Most of the world's displaced people are in poor countries and being hosted by poor countries. Over half of the world's refugees today come from just three countries, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria. And it should be no surprise, these are three countries that have all experienced civil war. Afghanistan, of course, has been in a civil war long before 2001 and the US invasion. In fact, the Afghan civil war started in the late 1970s when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980. That was as an intervention in the Afghan civil war. So you can imagine Afghanistan, which has been in the middle of a civil war for 40 years now, has been the source of an enormous number of refugees. The Syrian civil war, of course, only started in 2011, but has already generated around 5 million refugees. Somalia in East Africa also has been in a civil war for about as, well, almost as long as Afghanistan, for about 30 years. Somalia has been involved in a civil war and, again, it has become a huge source of refugees, mostly to neighboring countries like Ethiopia. If you look at the hosting countries, the top hosting countries in the world are mostly next door to the top civil war refugee-creating countries. Turkey, the country with the most refugees in the world, is right next door to Syria. Pakistan is right next door to Afghanistan. Lebanon next door to Syria. Iran next door to Afghanistan. Ethiopia next door to Somalia. Jordan next door to Syria. So you can see most refugees end up in neighboring countries. They don't end up making huge journeys to Europe or Australia or the United States. They end up making short journeys just fleeing for their lives. Refugee issues in international law are covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Refugee Protocol. Almost every country in the world has signed on to the Refugee Protocol, and almost every country except the United States has signed on to the Refugee Convention. In effect, by signing on to the later protocol, the United States, in effect, endorses the convention as well. The 1951 Convention was specifically addressing the refugee problems resulting from World War II. The 1967 Protocol extended those procedures put in place in 1951 to cover refugees from all other future conflicts. Without the 1967 Refugee Protocol, no one could legally be a refugee after 1951. And of course, the world needed a continuing legal framework for refugees even after World War II ended. So the 1967 Protocol simply made the 1951 Refugee Convention permanent. The Refugee Convention and Protocol define refugees and guarantee them a range of basic rights in signatory countries, which is most of the countries of the world. And those are very basic rights, like the right to live unmolested, the right to receive money from overseas, the right to have their children educated in schools, the right to access social services. Importantly, the right to work is not a right granted to refugees, and that's something that's very contentious. It also defines a refugee. A refugee is a person who, quote, owing to well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or owing to such fear unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. Now notice that even though this passage uses the word he and the words he and his to refer to refugees, that's a very old fashioned usage and in law that applies to all people, regardless of gender. A country that receives a request for refuge shall not impose penalties on account of their illegal entry or presence on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened, enter or present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. That means that you can't jail a refugee for entering illegally. Refugees are often unable to cross at official order crossings, which is why they seek to enter countries illegally. And it's very explicit. The refugee convention, which has been signed by every country, nearly every country in the world, is very explicit that refugees cannot be discriminated against, that refugees cannot be penalized for entering illegally. They can, any way they can get into the country, they should claim refugee status the moment they arrive and they still receive the full protection of the law. These definitions have caused all sorts of controversies over the ensuing half century. The definition of a refugee has caused controversy because it specifically enumerates a list of reasons why a person can be legally terminated. So if you look carefully at that definition of a refugee, it's a person who meets one of five categories. The person must have a well founded fear of being persecuted by a four, one of only five categories, being persecuted for their race, being persecuted for their religion, being persecuted for their nationality, for being persecuted as a member of a particular social group, or for being persecuted as a political opinion. Notice what's missing here. Simply being caught in the crossfire of a vicious civil war is not technically a grounds on which to claim refugee status. So it's not enough for someone to appear at a post-country tribunal and say, my life was in danger in my home country. They have to be able to specifically establish that their life was in danger for one of these reasons. And here you can see the echoes of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was very different from, say, all of the death in World War I. In World War I, many millions of people were killed, but they weren't singled out to be killed because of their religion, or because of their race, or because of their membership in a specific group like the Roma minority, which was also put in concentration camps and subject to genocide during the Holocaust. The Refugee Convention does not protect people who simply are casualties of a civil war. Now, that's a serious, huge gaping hole in our international infrastructure of protective law, but that hole is there. And it creates all sorts of problems when people then apply for refugee status. Many of them end up having to apply under the very vague title, membership of a particular social group. But that's very ill-defined, and it's difficult to make that case. Note also that gender is not listed as one of these five categories. Unless the case is made that gender is a particular social group, it's not covered. It's difficult to imagine that the people who framed the Refugee Convention were unaware that they could list gender as one of the possible categories. They chose not to. And again, this has resulted in violence against women not being in automatic grounds for acceptance for refugee status. Now that said, most courts in most civilized countries will grant people asylum if they face violence against women, if they face a death threat, an undeserved death threat in their home country. But putting it under one of these specific legal criteria can be difficult and can cause problems. Another problem is the fact that a person only has a legal right to claim refugee status in the first safe country entered. That's very specific in the responsibilities placed on countries. A country that receives a request for refuge shall not impose penalties, etc., etc., on someone coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened. This has caused all sorts of problems. For example, in the European refugee crisis, should Syrians who enter Europe via Turkey, can they be put in jail? Can they be subject to immigration detention? Can they be deported back to Turkey? Well, if they were safe in Turkey, then Turkey was the first safe country they entered, and they can be accused of violating the law by moving forward to Greece or Italy. And similarly, if when they enter Greece, they can be accused of violating the law when they move forward from Greece into Macedonia or onward in the chain. So this has caused a lot of problems because even though a refugee from Syria may be physically safe from harm in Turkey, Turkey already has 2.5 million refugees from Syria. Conditions may be very difficult. There may be no food for the person in Turkey. Nonetheless, this clause makes life very difficult, makes the legal status of refugees very problematic. This is why, for example, when Australia deals with boat refugees, they can more reasonably argue that Australia has the right to turn back the boats to Indonesia than they can to turn back boats coming from Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, members of the Tamil minority are fleeing persecution in Sri Lanka. When they take a boat directly from Sri Lanka to Australia, they can't be returned to Sri Lanka because that's the country in which they have a fear of persecution. And so Australia, probably unreasonably, keeps them on Christmas Island, prevents them from coming to Australia proper, but cannot repatriate them to Sri Lanka. On the other hand, when people come from Indonesia, the same Tamil who has transited via Indonesia can legally be returned to Indonesia as long as Tamils don't face persecution. Specifically as Tamils, because remember, people only have a right to refugee status if they are a member of a group. No person has a right as a refugee, only as a member of a persecuted group do they have a right. So unless, for some reason, Tamils come under threat in Indonesia, Australia can always force back boats coming from Indonesia and refuse them entry into Australia. Now, these are difficult legal arguments. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know Australian law on this matter. I'm merely talking about the broad guidance of the 1951 Convention on Refugees. On that broad guidance, these become very problematic situations. The strict definition of refugee status and the first safe country rule are two reasons why many refugees choose to travel without proper identification, without documents. By treaty, that is, by the 1951 Convention on Refugees, a refugee cannot be penalized for lacking documentation. A refugee can wash up on your shore with nothing to her or his name and that refugee must be accorded the same respect as someone flying in at an airport with a proper passport. And that's something that almost every country in the world has agreed to. But why don't people have documentation? Well, many people don't have documentation for lots of good reasons. They never had documents in the first place. They have been denied documents by their country, which maybe doesn't want them to leave. They've lost their documents at sea or in a difficult journey. Documents have been stolen by smugglers or other criminals. But there's also the problem that people might choose to give up their documents in order to claim to be somebody else. So, for example, with the current wave of refugees going to Germany, it's well known, well it's reported in the press, that Syrians have a much higher probability of being granted refugee status in Germany than Afghans do. As far as Germany is concerned, Afghanistan is no longer a country in which people are considered automatically in danger. And thus, most requests from Afghans are denied, whereas most refugee asylum requests from Syrians are accepted. So what's an Afghan to do? Lose his or her documents and claim to be Syrian. Now, nobody knows the scale of this problem. What we do know is that both in Germany and in Australia, misprint in the lecture, both in Germany and in Australia, it's estimated that just over 80% of refugees arrive without any documentation of who they are. They simply have to be taken on their word. And like I said, there are many reasons for people to lie. In Germany it's become very contentious about children, people claiming to be under the age of 18 because children are much less likely to be sent home than adults. Some of those children look quite old indeed, but there's no way to tell someone's exact age without a birth document. A final note, technically there is a difference between refugees and asylum seekers. People use the words in many different ways. Lawyers and the legal system use strict definitions by which a refugee is an asylum seeker who has successfully claimed asylum. So if someone arrives on the shores of a country asking for asylum, that's an asylum seeker, and that person becomes a refugee when a court declares the asylum application successful. But that's a legal definition and the rest of us are not all lawyers. The legal definition is not the only appropriate definition. For example, sociologists, journalists, and many ordinary people appropriately use these terms in their plain English language senses. So for me, if someone wants refuge, that person is a refugee. For me, an asylum seeker is someone who legally has applied for asylum. A person can be a refugee without necessarily ever becoming an asylum seeker. And I think that usage is in line with what news organizations do. So for example, news organizations routinely report on the Syrian refugee crisis, not the Syrian asylum seeking crisis. The Syrian refugee crisis is a crisis of people who are without a home fleeing a conflict and looking for refuge. Thus, refugees. Some key takeaways. First, the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, was created in 1950 in the wake of the Holocaust and the other refugee failures of World War II. Second, more than half of all forcibly displaced people are not refugees. In fact, about two thirds are so-called internally displaced persons, IDPs, so-called because they may have been forced out of their homes, but they're still physically inside their countries of citizenship. And finally, the First Safe Country Rule is responsible for many of the problems and iniquities and debates about the fairness of the international refugee system. Thank you for listening. I'm Salvatore Babonis. You can find more about me at my website, SalvatoreBabonis.com, where you can also sign up for my monthly Global Asia newsletter.


I think we'll start this out with an example of a Hilbert chain as you're going to have eight passes. One hundred and five of it loud! You grab by the function. We might be wrong. We might be wrong. We're funny. I struggle with figuring out how to greet you all, because sometimes these videos are recorded back-to-back, sometimes they're not, sometimes they're recorded over a very long period of time. All I have to say is that I don't know how to greet you. Anyway, I need some stimulus training, some stimulus control. That's what I need. I need you all to reinforce me and maybe give me prompts and tell me which is the best way to do it, which leads me to another topic on stimulus control, which is about stimulus generalization. Sorry. Hey, see what I'm seeing? Do you see what I see? I see a tree. I see a tree, and that there might be a tree, and well, that kind of was a tree. Listen, look at those trees. There might even be a tree or two, nope, it's part of a tree. I suppose if I looked hard enough, I'd find a tree down there too, but I don't see any at the moment. All right, so what the heck am I talking about? I'm talking about stimulus generalization, right? So when we think of stimulus control, you think of a particular stimulus that a pattern of responding is developed in the presence of that stimulus and not in the presence, and not otherwise when the stimulus is not present. So what we also want to think about is the fact that organisms tend to have sort of a generalization gradient, if you will. So if the training stimulus is right here, right in the middle, I will also respond to a bunch of stimuli that are similar to it, kind of on a normal curve, right? So the closer the other stimuli are to the training sample, the more likely I am to say the right thing or to identify the right thing, okay? So in other words, trees, right? So I was raised near here, so these types of trees are definitely what I learned as trees. They're not the same as an elm tree, or an oak tree, or a maple tree, or a ginkgo tree, or a hawthorn tree, or any other types of trees for that matter, okay? But they're similar. They're close enough to evoke the response of tree when you see them, okay? So for example, the tree that has no leaves on it or needles for that matter is still a tree, right? So it's close to my training stimulus, which is a pine tree, but this one is drastically different, okay? It's still enough to elicit the response, however, what's right next to it is not a tree, okay? And this, in a kid, in a young child, might evoke a response of tree, right? But it's not a tree. It's a bush. Actually, I ended up, nope, that's the, I don't know, anyway, it's a bush. You get the idea, right? Hard to discriminate between the two. So stimulus generalization is about how, when you learn one training sample, that your responses will still be similar to other responses that are similar, but it only goes so far, whatever the so far is. You can think of it in terms of color. There's lots of different kinds of blue, and you'll still say blue in the presence of it, all sorts of different shades of blue that you still say blue for. So that stimulus generalization, now, since we were talking about, oh, I suppose I could give you an example of an overgeneralization here, hold on. Oh, look at this. I found another tree, all right, right there, there's a tree. So that's another type of tree. So again, we're farther out on that discrimination, right, from the original, or farther out on the generalization gradient than the original, but it still looks similar, even though it's on this thing called a phone, which is probably a generalization failure, which we might come back to. So here's a generalization failure, tree, no, those aren't trees, okay, they may look similar. It's got a stick, it kind of has leaves on it, maybe-ish, but it's not a tree, all right. So that would be a generalization failure. When you see red and you say blue, generalization failure, okay, or just a discrimination issue. So say purple and say blue, you see purple and you say blue. That's a better example of a generalization failure. Let's see what else. Oh, which leads us to the idea of concept formation. So when we think of concept, they're just driving me nuts, I'm from here. So when we think of concepts, we tend to get a little bit here about them. So if you break it down into what behaviors are involved in concept formation, it makes a lot more sense. The first thing is that you have to discriminate between classes, okay, so you have to tell the difference between things, and you have to be able to generalize within a class. There's lots of different kinds of dogs, folks.  So you need to generalize between all those stimuli and still say dog when you see one, but then when you see a cat, you should be able to not say dog, you should say cat. So you have to discriminate between these classes. Now there's all sorts of different types of criteria, feature stimulus class, arbitrary stimulus class. Come back to that at another time if you will, but the point being that when we are developing a concept to say that we are demonstrating a concept or demonstrating conceptual behavior or demonstrating concept formation, and I choose those words carefully because it's a behavioral thing, we have to be able to know all of the things that are in a class, but also know the things that aren't in one of those classes. So again, as I've gotten older and more experienced with life, I've learned that that's a tree, that is a tree, the big ones, there may even be some baby trees in here, but this is not, even though it looks very, very similar, right. So we have to, that's how we get to the idea of concepts. It's really fun to watch in kids because they make these over generalizations and a kid will be like dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, then they see a horse and they say dog. You're like, no, that's a horse and they go, really why? Congratulations, you're in the process of concept formation as you answer that particular question. So I think that's enough for now. We might come back and later, if I can just take a look at the videos on the arbitrary stimulus class and the feature stimulus class, not too complex of an issue there. It just tells you where you're going to draw those lines, so to speak, for what forms a particular class of stimuli. So, all right, see you when I see you, or maybe you won't see me. I don't know, maybe you will. Hell, if I know. I get confused.


Okay, hi everybody, sorry about the little difficulties that are getting started. So my name is John Griffith, I work for SolidFire, and I also work on the OpenStack Cinder project. This is Rodney Peck, I'll let him interview himself. Hi, I'm from eBay, I work with the PayPal team and the eBay team and I'm a storage architect. So today in this session we just wanted to kind of go through and talk a little bit about some initial use cases for OpenStack and block storage in your cloud deployment. A little bit about some real world examples, what people are doing, particular what eBay's doing and stuff like that. So my favorite slide in case you haven't heard yet today, the data center is changing. Used to be when you needed a resource, particularly as a dev or somebody else, you submit a ticket to the IT department and request some resources, whether it be storage, compute, whatever it might be. We're going to focus mostly on storage today. So anyway, that's kind of the old way of doing it. So the way it worked was a dev would usually plan out their project, estimate kind of what resources they needed, take kind of a swag at what they needed in terms of servers, storage, and networking. And of course we always pad, because chances are we're not going to get what we asked for, so we always ask for more. So then we submit our ticket and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait. And finally IT comes back and maybe they'll actually give us what we asked for or maybe they'll say, you're not going to get all of that but here's what I can give you. So that's tough. I mean that's a tough way to work. It makes people unhappy. You don't get the resources you need to do your job, you're not effective, and it's extremely inefficient. So a slightly better model that we started to see a few years ago was devs are actually given a pool of resources of their own. So maybe they're running ESX server or maybe they have a storage array or something like that and they get to go ahead and carve that up and administer it and use it on their own. That's slightly better. Still not great though. So if we go to the next slide. The problem with both of these approaches is no matter what, it's slow. There's a lot of lag time when you're talking about dealing with tickets and submitting requests and things like that, that's always a problem. It also relies on this thing called accurate prediction and I don't know how many of you in the room are developers but typically we're not the best at predicting exactly what things are going to look like. We're good at planning things out and stuff like that and starting to work and hack on things. But things tend to look significantly different by the time you're done. At least they do for me. The other thing is that's a very inflexible way to do work. It's not agile. It's not flexible. It's very rigid and introduces a lot of constraints. The other big problem is it's not good for reproducibility. One of the big problems that people run into on the development side is as they're going through and they're iterating through their development and stuff like that, they discover something or they find a new thing or they find a problem or something like that and they have trouble reproducing it because they've done all these manual steps to build all this stuff and put all this stuff together. So unless you take really, really good notes, which I for one don't, it's really hard to reproduce those things. So the whole idea is that way of doing things in my opinion is absolutely ridiculous. It's a silly way to do it, especially given what we have today. So with OpenStack and with Cinder, the idea now is we go from this chain of events that we have on the left where you submit a ticket, goes to the IT rep, who calls the server admin, who calls the storage admin, who put together some resources and respond back with your request, to we have a user or a dev, just uses the OpenStack API, goes to the resource pool, gets what they want, done, boom. So now it's self-serve, it's immediate response, it's dynamic, it's on the fly. So you cut out all the middleman. The key values here, what we talk about is agility, scalability, automation and predictability. So those are the key things about OpenStack in using this model. The idea is I may go and I may say, hey, I need a compute instance with four VCPUs, eight gig of RAM and 100 gig of storage. I may start working on something and realize, hey, you know what? Actually, I don't need all the storage. So I'm going to change it and only use 50 gig. Or I may decide I need more CPU. I have the ability to go ahead and return all that stuff to the pool and just check out what I need. And I can do that dynamically on the fly in a matter of seconds as opposed to days or weeks. So that's a big deal. The other thing is, is I can use the OpenStack APIs to actually automate all this, so then I can reproduce everything that I've done really easily and really succinctly. So the end result, when you go into using OpenStack and you use Cinder and things like that and use this model, is you actually fully utilize your resources. So now you're not over provisioning or patting your requests. You're not waiting. You don't have things sitting idle. Because now you have a dynamic pool that people can continue to take things in and out of. So you actually get significantly higher resource utilization. The best part, in my opinion, is the self-service aspect. So now, instead of submitting requests and asking for things and people have to go off and do it, I just go ahead and get it myself. So I know what I need, I know what I want, I go and I get it. And again, you turn it to the pool. So go back to the utilization thing. And then automation is king, right? Automation is the key to everything. It took me a while to actually finally get to the point where I realized I would build these things and I'd be working on stuff and something would break and I would spend all this time trying to fix it. And I'd go back and I'd be like, what's wrong with this server? What's wrong with this? And trying to fix things and stuff like that. And I finally realized that when I automate things and I get everything running using OpenStack and using the APIs and stuff like that, it is way more efficient and way easier for me to just go ahead and just throw it away and rebuild it. So things like debugging a server or some code that I have that I broke and I destroyed my setup. Instead of spending a day going through and trying to unwind it and fix everything, I just go ahead and I just build it again in a matter of five minutes and I'm done. So it's a significantly better way to work. A lot of the things that I'm kind of touching on are more test dev. And the things that we're going to talk about are a test dev environment. But the thing that I want to point out is test dev is not the only thing to use OpenStack for. It's a great on-ramp. I think it's a great platform for test dev. It's one of the best use cases that I can think of. But the thing that's cool about it is if you get your devs using OpenStack and using the cloud and stuff like that. They're going to start playing. They're going to start experimenting. And they're going to start exposing new things that you can do in your business for your standard data center use that you can pull into the cloud and use OpenStack for as well. So it's a great gateway. It's a great on-ramp. It gets you some internal OpenStack experience. Helps you grow your deployment. And the key about OpenStack to remember is you can start small and scale out and you can seamlessly scale out. So start off with a 10 node deployment for your devs to use.  Just add more nodes. Just scale it out. Add a new tenant. So, well, there you go. With that, I'm going to let Rodney talk a little bit about some specific use cases that he's doing at eBay. Thanks. Again, I'm Rodney Peck. I'm from eBay. And we're going to talk today about a system we call the stage system, which is our dev QA teams use stage hosts to develop and test all the new code. They're pretty big. They have 400 gigabytes of storage, 8 CPUs, and 100 and something gigabytes of memory. So it takes up a lot of the hypervisor. Building them in the past, you can go into the slide. Oh, sorry. There's a whole lot of numbers about eBay. Great place to work. So back to my piece. We've improved the development time significantly by using Cinder. In the past, it took more than three hours to build a PayPal stage. So we added OpenStack. We moved all our stuff in OpenStack in the next slide. Not much faster. The problem is that it's all this data, 20, 30 gigabytes of data, moving from glance through the system onto the local disk. So by taking the local disk and moving most of the data off to Cinder, we only have to move a couple gigabytes onto the local disk to boot. And then we clone the Cinder volume. So you can show that. That's what I was just telling you. And it only takes 14 minutes instead of three hours. So our developers, they think we're heroes to help them so much. And it turns all of the developers into big OpenStack proponents. So you can see the slash x volume attached in only 14 minutes. Not a lot to talk about. But the details, it's all just normal OpenStack sort of stuff. We didn't do anything fancy. We just moved our data and clone it instead of copying it all over the 10 gigabit network. Next slide. So how's that possible? We've minimized all the transfer. We're using fast volume cloning. And there's almost no network I owe now. One of the interesting things that we could do in the future is totally boot from volume instead of cloning anything out of Glance. The services aren't quite as reliable because you have to have a very high quality network attachment. But doing that, you can boot a new machine in under a minute. But we want to have the reliability. So these are the steps that it goes through. Just sort of walk it through. So in the three hour time, you'd have to schedule a hypervisor. You have to download all that data from Glance, which has the image, into the Glance cache on the hypervisor, and then copy it from the Glance cache onto the local disk. And we're talking about 50 to 100 gigabytes of data. So that takes forever. Then the VM launches, it boots. And then you do a code push and all of this stuff. That's where the three hours comes from. In the new version, the code push has already been done. The data's already in slash x, so all we have to do is copy it and then use Puppet to set the host name in various small configuration changes. And that's really all there is to it. It's pretty straightforward. And in summary, it used to take three hours. You have a sleepy kitty. Now it's done super fast. I don't know, do we have questions and answers? And do we have time? Have any questions you want to know more about how this is implemented and how it works? So the key here is some back ends in the Cinder project are going to give you things like fast cloning and stuff like that. And that's definitely something that we're relying on here using SolidFire. So there's some other products that may give you that as well. But even so, just not transferring the data. The cloning is really great. It makes it super fast. But not moving the data out of glance makes a huge difference. And if you could imagine booting, say, 50 machines at once, glance would fall over trying to download all that data at the same time. So those are the sort of things we've run into in real-world applications. Real-world question. Why are you bothering moving the data? I'm sorry? Why are you bothering moving the data at all? Well, oh, so it's a blank image. And a PayPal stage has a whole lot of hundreds of gigabytes of data that the applications are expecting will be on the machine. So when we boot a new machine to run our regression tests of all of the code, it has to have that data audit. So we'd have to fetch the data from somewhere. And that's why it takes three hours to fetch all that data and move it. But if you can fetch it from somewhere, presumably you can connect it. If we fetch it, we're connected. If you can fetch the data, then presumably you can connect to the data and see if having to move it in the first place. I'm not understanding why you're still moving data. This is a PayPal in a box sort of thing. So it's a database. And then the application talks to the database in the box itself. So we need to make a copy of the original database. That's what these are. They're fully self-contained DevQA boxes. So yeah, you could architect it differently. You could have the test DevBoxes. I'll just talk to some servers over there. But then if those servers aren't available, none of the developers can do any work. eBay is all around the world. So we're very distributed. But yes, it's true. You don't want a DevBox that has 400 gigabytes on it in general. But if you do, then you need to make many copies of them, because this is what we've done to do it. So another example of that, too, is in our lab we have setups where our development environment takes quite a bit of package installation and things like that, right? And you have over probably about 75 gig worth of stuff that you have to go out and fetch, and ad get, and install, and configure, and stuff like that. So instead of actually going out and doing that every time, or building a mirror, or anything like that, we just have a template. So anytime we have a new developer come online, or he needs to spin up, or do some work for the day, or whatever in a fresh, clean environment, he just goes ahead and uses that volume template and clones it, boots it up, uses it. And then when he's done, he can throw it away. So that's kind of the idea. I mean, the idea is to eliminate going out and fetching data, right? I mean, that's the whole efficiency that you're getting. Any other questions? Also, attentive. We still have a little time. It supports all of our developers. We really can't talk too much about the detailed numbers, but it supports all of our developers. Hundreds to thousands of VMs. It's very big. Like a D-Dirt in the headlights. Well, thank you, everybody, I guess.


Venom 2 is shattering records right now at the box office in this post-apocalyptic hellscape we call life. 90 plus million dollars in a three-day weekend. It used to not be like a huge deal. Well, actually, you know what? It kind of was a huge deal always, but now we're living through COVID. So that that number is incredibly dramatic. I don't know why this upsets me. There's nine fast nefarious movies. There's been a bundle of Transformers films. People like garbage! Before I get too unhinged, I'd like to inform you you should subscribe and hit the notification bell.  Strap in. I made my way around the internet and looked at what some people were saying, the congratulatory, celebratory people were saying, hey, this is what you get when a movie's not woke, Hollywood. You get big numbers.  Movie's not woke? Of course it's not! It doesn't have a goddamn brain cell in its body. It has nothing to say. There's not a message in this film. There's not even an inkling of wokeness because there's not even an inkling of anything.  There's barely a plot. There's barely a point.    There's a variety of races in this film. Woke! There's a poor person in the film that feels like he didn't have a fair shake in life. Woke! There's a woman that's being harassed. Woke! I don't even know what to say anymore. There's always been messages in movies. Sometimes they're a little bit on the nose and eye-rolly, but that doesn't mean we discredit the entire film outright and say people didn't see it because of wokeness. Let's move on.  The other apologetic argument I heard is Adam, the movie's just fun. Didn't you have fun watching the movie? No, I didn't have fun watching the movie. That's a subjective statement. Some people think collecting stamps is fun. Some people think shooting a deer and mounting its dead carcass on the wall is fun. I don't! If you like the movie and had a good time, great. That's that's just great. But don't come at me and say that the movie's fun. That's your opinion. Okay, I found the movie to be the opposite. Actually, I was numb while watching and my ears were bloodshot by the end because of all the sounds, the music, the loud noises, and just the sheer chaos of trying to decipher the garbage that was being thrown up on the screen because the camera was too zoomed in and because the CG was bouncing off of everything so fast. I couldn't even process what was happening. Spoiler, nothing was happening. Venom 2, let there be carnage. Okay? Bring me the carnage. Where was the carnage? And then we have all these articles coming out about how one of the characters is a mutant and how important that is to the future of the franchise. Mutants are back. The X-Men could be involved.   I could write a script right now and put, there's a character that has glowing red eyes and it has robotic sounds when it moves.  God!  Like, what if he can fly now? Then we can have a BuzzFeed article about why that's low-key brilliant. I don't actually know if BuzzFeed's still a thing, assume it is. I'm gonna share a little secret with you. I haven't told many people before, but did you know? You can actually have fun watching a film and not have to power down the old brain cell. You can keep that battery up. For instance, my family just rewatched The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, the live-action ones, not those abortions that are animated. And those movies are freaking great. Creative, witty as all hell, but they don't take themselves seriously at the same time. Yet I can look at those movies and say, there's a lot of craft on display here. There's some top-tier writing going on. Look at the acting chops on these people. Then I compare that to Venom, Let There Be Garbage, and I just go, what the fuck? There is nothing in this movie that's remotely well done. It looks ugly, it looks atrocious. The acting's barely there. Who is Tom Hardy's character supposed to be? And he brocks a reporter, right? In the first movie he was portrayed as cool. He had his motorcycle, he had his TV show. How is he a loser? How is he pathetic? But I don't think it's for you either. I think you tell yourself that. I think you are setting the bar way too low. Listen, we as humans, we're willing to harm ourselves. We're willing to damage our bodies. We do it all the time. We pulverize ourselves. We eat fast food. That's clearly not good for us. We do extreme sports and activities that can break our brains at any second. You just get hit wrong one time in football and it's lights out. We climb on rooftops to put up lights. We soap, we shampoo with questionable substances. We get in huge fights with our family members about politics and religion when we know that's not going to do anything good for anyone. And we go to Venom to let there be carnage. So don't come at me and say, Adam, this is a fun movie. You didn't understand it.    Oh yeah, subscribe. Hey, thanks for watching the video.  If you enjoyed this video, I got plenty of rants on the channel along with reviews, poster breakdowns, movie feuds and any other movie related content. So please think about sticking by. Love to have you, even if you like to Venom.