Today's episode of The Bitcoin Show is brought to you by Mt. Gox and the Thank You Economy book and CarpeVM.com Hey everybody, welcome to The Bitcoin Show. Today we have several things going on. So many things are going on. It's like crazy. We're taping several shows today in fact. But one of the things we're going to do is we're going to start a new program we're calling the Bitcoin Fire Hydrant Free Money Giveaway.  But anyway, get your scanner ready, aim it at the screen and when you see a QR code you're going to get free money. So we're going to have a QR code displayed on the screen live which is going to be a Mt. Gox voucher code and if you don't know how to redeem that go to mtgox.com create a free account if you don't have one already and then you do funding options, add funds, Mt. Gox redeem mobile code. You'll paste that redeemable code right into that box and hit redeem. If you also if you have the app for Android there's a redeem code button right on there so you can scan it and hit redeem even faster and you'll beat the other guys. So whoever redeems it first it can only be redeemed once but we're giving away free Bitcoin. We'll be doing that several times throughout the show so keep watching and we're going to, this is a new feature we're going to do every day. We're going to give away Bitcoins every single day. So keep your phone aimed at the screen. You have to watch like this. All right. But anyway, today's guest is Yifu Guo, co-founder of Bitsyncom and we have major news about tablets, tablets for everybody but especially for Bitcoin so hang in there. Welcome. We're back. So today's guest is Yifu Guo. Yifu, you there? Can you hear me? Yeah. What's happening? What's happening? A lot. Bitsyncom, you did a presentation recently, right? That is correct. So give us the executive summary. What was it about? Well, other than talking about, I'm going to skip over how our monetary system is terrible and how Bitcoin is the next thing but majorly see Bitcoin as a problem and without problem, it's designed for a future that's not here quite yet. Designed for a future where internet accessibility is widely available and internet accessible devices are cheap. And a few months ago, I went to the Bitcoin conference here in New York and everyone's working and I thought, well, the software will come, right? I mean, it has to but what about the hardware? If you're going to become a cashier at some restaurant, you've got to learn how to use the cash register. And with that in mind and I began my quest to find and when I had an encounter was that, well, they're cheap capital solutions over in China and they're already now. Okay. So what do you think is the solution to that? Well, I feel that like it has to be compelling enough. I mean, like Amazon kind of fire just recently released like, you know, the $199 reader that's selling big but I think that you could go even cheaper than that. And what I found out is that we always knew that, you know, because China makes everything that it's definitely going to be cheaper over there. The question is how cheap was cheap? And I found out that, well, you could get a very impressive spec of a tablet for fairly a lot of money, say under $150 or maybe even under $150 and that could, you know, facilitate as a point of sale system with a customized Android ROM and it will be, you know, just for everybody. Right. And even if you're not into bitcoins, I feel that these tablets are, you know, they really sell themselves due to the fact that they're so cheap and versatile and I feel that a lot of people want one because that's what people need at the moment. Switch over here to my screen and I want to show you this is an article from Computer World. Actually, let me just interrupt us just for one second and tell you that we just gave away some bitcoins while you were talking. There is a QR code on your screen and that giveaway was brought to you by coinbits.com. Coinbits.com, Bitcoin news bits. Check it out for all the latest news on Bitcoin. Anyway, if you were quick enough, you just got some bitcoins. All right. So thanks to coinbits.com. Now back to this Computer World article about tablets. They're talking about tablets priced under $100 with Android 4.0. You were saying that's obviously it says in China. So it's under $100, maybe $99 if you're in China. But this technology delivered in the US, what is it going to cost? Well, I don't know, shipping plus whatever the profit margin people want to do. And that's the thing. If you look at all corporations, too, they aren't the middle man, essentially. They don't make the stuff. They package it. They rebrand it and they sell it to consumers like us. And in this whole presentation, one of my point is to providing potential peer-to-peer. And that's one of the goals where we're moving all the middle man. You're moving the corporations. You're moving like the redistributors.  And the future where banks are replaced by bitcoins or by you and people like you and you can pay everything and anything with bitcoins. That's what essentially we're trying to lead into this by building infrastructure. Okay, cool. Yeah, so this goes hand in hand with what we're doing here. I'm working on a thing we call Bitcoin Promote, which is two things. One is liquidity, making it easier to buy Bitcoin and sell Bitcoin. And also the merchant services, which I call BitcoinSolutions.com, where we're actually on Saturdays as a group of us volunteers who are literally going door-to-door, merchant-to-merchant, and selling them on the idea of accepting Bitcoin and why they should. We're going to try and build a community. I was telling you last night, we're going to try and, I'll call it Bitcoin Villages or something, but a community of neighborhood or neighborhoods that may have 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 businesses of all kinds of businesses that accept Bitcoin. And one of the challenges that we have is that the cashier has to have Internet access. They have to have an app or browser or whatever at the very minimum. They have to have Internet with a browser. And so that's where you guys come in with this idea of a real lightweight, affordable tablet, and it has Wi-Fi, right? Or you can plug in a USB Internet. Yeah, totally. I mean, the cool thing about generic OEM-based tablets is that they have these extra features, such as like HTML and USB host, which essentially allows you to plug in USB devices such as a USB to either an adapter or a mouse and keyboard or a USB hub.  Rock, solid, reliable, and support, and free open source, of course. So it's very transparent. You know what's going on. You don't have to worry so much about viruses and things. Exactly. Speaking of connectivity, and that's actually the second part in the stage of the whole thing, the presentation I gave on was on three technologies. One of them is the Bitcoin and the other one is the tablet. The third one, I'll quickly mention, is the meshnet. The meshnet essentially is an ad hoc mesh wireless mesh network that's going to be owned and operated by the people and not the corporations. And effectively, and what a really interesting idea of that has been talked about is the fact that when you join such a tower network, there's going to be a host of Bitcoin wallet, and when you provide bandwidth to the meshnet, Bitcoin come into your wallet, and when you leech bandwidth from the meshnet, Bitcoin trickles out your wallet, and that creates like a whole self-saving ecosystem where you don't, you know, where bandwidth essentially becomes the value. And Bitcoin facilitates that, and they're both peer-to-peer systems, so they work well together, and I feel that that is the way of the future, especially the way we're progressing out. And that's another sector of the infrastructure, so the tablet solves the Bitcoin's problem of connectivity, and then the meshnet solves the tablet's problem of connectivity. And by bringing all these three things together, it's a pretty bright future, and that's what we see here at the CINCOM. A synergistic environment ecosystem, a bit-sin synergy. So the meshnetwork, see, that was a new concept to me, but it makes perfect sense because everybody has access bandwidth. You're paying for that super-speed internet access when you're not even home, and it's just being wasted, you know. So in a sense, it's just not being used, so why not share it? And then while you're sharing it, you're actually earning Bitcoin, and then whenever you use it, you know, use other people's access, then it costs a little bit, but probably you'll end up with more, kind of like a ratio, a file-sharing ratio, on a peer-to-peer, like a BitTorrent site or something like that, where it keeps the score of how much you take and how much you give, and as long as you're giving it at least as much as you're taking, you're all good. Right, precisely. And another thing is like load balancing. It's effectively load balancing the entire network. When you're not using the insets, somebody else might be using it, and I buy it first, but really, you only maybe need one internet connection for whatever the radius, block, or power could cover. That would be okay. You don't have to, like everybody, every household, paying $69.99 or $99.99 for a month for just the internet, and maybe TV, which ironically runs on your internet line, so it's kind of like, you know, you don't need all these things. I know, right? And I feel that a lot of people aren't aware, and another problem we have with technology, technology has black, we really understand that. And I feel that if you want to learn Bitcoin properly or understand it, you have to understand the system that comes before it, because every system is built on top of each other. Right. It's built on top of the internet, the central banking, and all of this other stuff that sort of are the fabric of our society that we just kind of use, and our work is comfortable with, but don't really don't get. It's like losing to house mortgages we never really understood when we signed it, and things like that happen. And I feel we should really be educated in the sense and that's what this whole, you know, another movement about this project is about, it's about transparency, it's about education, and just bringing to everybody the data they need to understand what they're seeing. Exactly. Yeah. And then the mesh network makes so much sense because there are, you know, we're paying for internet at home, and obviously we're not there all day, but there are other people that are there that could be using it. And meanwhile, here at the office we've got, you know, 35 megabit up and down through fiber and all that, but when we're not here, there are people, there are residences around here that could be using it, you know, or whatever. So it makes so much more sense to share like that. Yeah, limiting waste, it's very green. Right, exactly. The only ones who are not going to like it are obviously the... The ISPs, but that's the thing, you know, that is the future. The future is where your internet providers and banks are being replaced by you and people. Yeah. Well, this will drive the cost down. It's competition. Plus, it's much greater than the global eye of the economy where you're not trusting a corporation, you're trusting an anonymous entity, you're trusting like your neighbor.  And I think you should. That's how you build communities. Good communities and good neighbors bring good things. Right. More competition is always better. We've got this problem of everything consolidating into, you know, five companies to two companies to one company in monopolies. Anti-trust law somewhere. Yeah, it's really a problem. We need competition. So all right, so back to the... I want to talk about the tablet. Oh, wait, one more thing about the mesh network. So you're talking about a tower and how far does this signal reach? Is it Wi-Fi? Yeah, it's Wi-Fi. I mean, it really depends on what the antenna we're using. Like if we're getting... I mean, we're really looking for places with high elevation because especially in Manhattan, you're looking at like, you know, 20, 40 feet of concrete and that's not very good for a single reception no matter where you are, what kind of antenna you use. But in theory, on a fairly open field, on a fairly open field, we're looking at maybe like five kilometers radius, five miles perhaps, three to five miles, that's very good. Maybe 20 miles point to point or even higher than that, depending on what equipment that we're using. But they're fairly cheap now. It has finally come to the point, like a few years ago before to do this, this would be practically impossible simply because the cost would be, you know, enormous. But now these commercialized thing has become cheap and manufactured in China again. And so we could actually just send them for maybe $50 to $100 and they would soar our needs and people, that's not so technical could also just get these things and put them together and just join the meshnet. Like they could just contribute which is a very nice peer to peer thing again and that's why this is great. Do you need any kind of a license to broadcast that signal that far? Is that regulated in any way? I really don't believe so because like we're running on the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum and that is like all commercial hours are licensed with that.  Because people have been trying to break that, like, you know, that there are people getting these huge array antennas trying to hit Wi-Fi networks over like 400 kilometers. If there's laws against that, I mean then I guess they wouldn't be doing it. But maybe there will be laws against this if, you know, these big ISP's got enough lobbying to do this stuff. If it gets abused, yeah. Okay, cool. That is something you have to worry about. That's interesting, another fascinating evolving technology like Bitcoin. Now I want to talk about these tablets again. The, bring this up on the screen. So this is just a prototype example of one. But then, now these are tentative specs that you sent me, right? These are, you've got, if I can just read it out, processors all winner, A10, 1, 1.5 gigahertz, right? Yeah, that's correct. GPU is Mali 400, 512 megabytes of RAM, 8 gigabytes flash, expansion memory, up to 32 gigabytes microSD memory card. It's a seven inch screen. Five point touch, yeah. TFT, Wi-Fi, G-Sensor. 800 by 480. Five point touch. What's a five point touch? Five point touch is five point multi-touch. On the screen, okay. Okay, G-Sensor, Wi-Fi 802.11, B and G. Not N, not N. These are subject to change, right? These specs? See the thing is, that's what's currently available now because prototyping availability is immediate, really. We're hoping to do a control group prototype. Okay, so these are the specs of the immediate prototype. And obviously they're going to keep improving. You got a front and rear camera, right? Front point three. Yeah, the front is a PGA camera. The back is a 2.0. Two megapixel. Oh, you meant back. You said black, but you meant back. OTG support video output mini HDMI. Wow. Yeah, GP image. And it's going to ultimately have Android 4.0. That's correct, it runs. It runs through the brand, it runs on com. Even the prototypes are going to have the ice cream sandwich? Yeah, I got it running on it, but it needs some work. It needs some work. It's coming soon. RSN, as we say, real soon now. Video 2160P and the battery is 3200, what is that, microamps? 3.7 volts. Size and weight, so it's 350 grams of weight. Yeah, it's about 170 grams, to be honest. Seven inch screen. I actually created a thing, because I'm just curious. And what's your best guess that this is going to start out at retail from you guys? I don't really know, depending on how much everybody else is going to be selling, because I know I'm not the only person who's getting access to this. But I would say that it's going to be about, or less, $150. That's what I'm aiming for. It's going to be less. It's either... $150 or less. That's probably going to be more. And that's what this project is about. When I first talked to Roger, I meant for you guys about it, that the whole thing is this project doesn't have a monetization aspect. It has a what? It's going to make a lot of money. It's not about making a lot of money. It's about bringing out... That's easing out on fighting infrastructure for the future to come. Yeah, okay. So your audio is breaking up a little bit, but let me paraphrase what you said and see if I'm right. So what you're saying is it's not about trying to make a lot of money and get rich. It's about bringing a solid infrastructure to the Bitcoin world and for everything. This is an Android tablet that can be used for absolutely anything. It just so happens that it's also the perfect tool for Bitcoin clients, where it's going to be designed for Bitcoin experience in general. The ROM is going to be customized so that it provides a very nice Bitcoin experience to the users. That's another main goal when it comes to the software. So you're doing custom software to make the Bitcoin user experience really smooth. I'm going to be able to customize the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. That's easy. How far along are you with that custom software? Well, I mean, I got the code in the kernelbook file just fine. It's a matter of getting like doing UI design, really. It's an experience that's key, right? I mean, there's odd... It has to be as simple as 1, 2, 3. It has to be a 3-clicking code, right? It has to be, you know, maybe perhaps the home screen has to have these things such as QR codes, quick transaction scanning. All these ideas that we're looking into and going to be doing user testing on. Right. Now, the MtGox mobile app for Android is already very easy to use. Yeah, of course. It could be totally included on this tablet. And another thing is that over at BitSync.com we have a pet peeve and that is not to introduce anybody to Bitcoin through a third party service. So we have to include some kind of like client that natively downloads blockchain or something, whether it be a Bitcoin J-based or a Bitcoin JS-based or some sort of system where it's like you are connected to networking. You're on top of the peers. Directly, yeah. And it's your choice to choose MtGox Trader or any other exchange. That is not of our concern. Mm-hmm. Cern is do things first and provide things easy. Like, you know, to give the option rather than forcing them onto, you know, MtGox. And I do agree that MtGox is really easy to use. And perhaps it is currently the best, you know, mobile application for Android out there. Mm-hmm. But it's not a native client. It's not pure Bitcoin, right? So do you think that, I mean, I know you may not know the answer to this, but do you think that or predict that the main official Bitcoin client will come out with an official version of Android? Mm-hmm. I say it's tough to say. But either way, there are other developers doing it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, BitcoinJ is already full blown on Java and it's very easy to pour to Android. In fact, there's some where it's already done so. Mm-hmm. And because those clients are also open source, I see no reason to support their development or simply use them because, you know, they work fine. Like, such as the Bitcoin wallet application on Android Market currently. That's the open source Bitcoin J implementation. And it downloads the blockchain.  Yeah, we deal with all those issues that inherit them off the net, but a lot of software people are solving that, such as the Font Thomas, you know, and everybody at the Bitcoin Consultancy, my car, my Google, you know, they're all looking and a lot of the major Bitcoin developers they're looking into these software issues. Like, software is going to come, right? That's the path I chose to facilitate the infrastructure. Yeah. Well, this is brilliant because it'll give users... Right. Because you have the platform. So this will give users the hardware platform that they can use a full-blown 100% Bitcoin network client. They'll be able to use the Mt. Gox app and any other apps that come along. Because it's just Android. It's perfectly for this. And the cool thing is that, you know, everybody already used Android. Android is not a new thing. We're not selling them a completely new, you know, ecosystem or an app sphere. They could use all their old stuff on this, just fine. They could do their mail, they could browse, they could watch YouTube. So they can do Angry Birds. Good habit that just so happens to run Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah, so it's basically just like a great big Android phone. They already know they're Angry Birds and their whatever it's called, you know, check-in, whatever those apps are. Whatever apps they used already, they can access the full Android market and buy apps just like any other Android device. That is correct. They will have the full access to the market. I want one next week. I want my hands on one of these right away. And this is what we're going to use when we're going door to door to these businesses. We're going to show them. If you don't already have a browser near your cash register, this is it. You can use a tablet. You can just have it sitting there. You can even mount it on a bracket for security or whatever. There's so many ways you could do it. And you can either do it through Wi-Fi or you could plug in a USB for your internet so it's, you know, locked down solid. This seems like a really, really slick way to get into it for point of sale as, you know, something that they can use immediately right now today. But also for absolutely everybody who wants a tablet. I want a tablet just to watch movies in bed or whatever.  So everybody wants a tablet. It's just, it's a Wi-Fi, Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0, you know, top of the line specs for less than $150, we'll say. So this is brilliant. Okay, so I've got to take a break right now and we want to thank our sponsors obviously who bring us to you every day. And did we do the second giveaway yet? We didn't. Okay, well let me know when we do. Keep your Android phones or whatever you've got. Even if you have an iPhone with a barcode scanner, you can scan the screen live and then you take that code you're going to get and that's a Mt. Gox redeemable code. So you have to go to your Mt. Gox account, go add funds, add Mt. Gox redeemable code, paste it in and click redeem. And if you're the first one to redeem it, it's free money for you. Just for watching, just for hanging out with us. So, and also be sure and send feedback. You can send feedback to us live, even while we're on the air if you send a message to feedback at onlyonetv.com Okay, and maybe we'll get to your questions while we're here. So let's see t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t. Okay, so we want to thank our sponsors that's what we're doing. First obviously Mt. Gox Mt.Goxmtgox.com I just had somebody call me like right before this show and say I want to buy some bitcoins. I say we'll set up an account on Mt. Gox and we did in two seconds. You just go to MTGOX.com, MtGox, we call it, and click the big green sign up button and it literally takes two seconds to create an account and you can buy bitcoins online from the comfort of your home or wherever you have a browser. It's very, very easy and they have so many ways, like 26 plus currencies they deal with directly now and so easy to get money in and out and then in many, many, many different ways. They have obviously the vast majority of the market share somewhere between 80, 90 percent of the market share and they have this amazing feature of the MtGox redeemable code. If I have MtGox and you have MtGox, I can actually just send you this code and it immediately transfers either US dollars or MtGox, I'm sorry, Bitcoin, directly into your account. See, as a MtGox account holder you have two balances. You have MtGox, US dollars balance and a Bitcoin balance, so they're two separate things. So I can send you one or the other and let's see, what else? So they charge very, very minimal fees and you can buy and sell bitcoins anytime, anywhere in the world from the comfort of your own home, many ways to get it in and out and there are also other add-on services like bitinstinct.com where you can go and get money in there like within an average of maybe 15 minutes, like crazy fast with a cash deposit and so on. So anyway, MtGox.com, we thank them for their support and obviously they're the creator of the MtGox mobile app for Android which we've been talking about that's full-featured and amazing. So we thank them for their support. Also, the Thank You Economy book. ThankYouEconomyBook.com is where you can check it out. It's by New York Times best-selling author Gary Vaynerchuk and it's his new book about social media and how to use social media, how to do it right to promote your business, your brand, whatever it is that you're doing, whatever it is that you want to promote using social media and how to really leverage that power that's there to bring your customers to your business in an old-fashioned way of customer service like your grandparents used to experience from the corner store. A real personalized, hand-holding, excellent service kind of thing, not just spamming people. That's what most people do. They do it all wrong and so it teaches you how to leverage this new technology to bring back old-fashioned values and an excellent customer experience and then you're not just selling stuff, you're building relationships with customers. So anyway, this is the Bible. Gary Vaynerchuk is brilliant. I mean, he's a young guy but he's a genius and this is his second best-selling book. So check it out. Thankyoueconomybook.com and we thank them for their support of the Bitcoin Show as well as Carpeviem. Carpeviem is C-A-R-P-E-V-M.com. Carpeviem.com. Video marketing, web video marketing. If you don't know anything about video and you want to market something, you have a website, everybody does, right? And you want to create your own video to do a presentation, to sell a product, to make a point, to do a demonstration, whatever it is, it's marketing, right? It's video marketing. That's, they're the experts. Carpeviem, they accept Bitcoin of course and so check them out. Carpeviem and they'll help you make a real professional video for your website, for your marketing presentation. All right? So we thank our sponsors for supporting us and actually while we were doing the sponsors apparently, we're picking random times. It's a random minute created by random.org number generator. And so I was actually right in the middle of our sponsors that we gave away our second free money giveaway. So that, that one was brought to you by MtGoxMobile app. So see, there it is. It's actually MtGoxLive, mtgoxlive.com slash mobile, which is the MtGoxMobile app we've been talking about. And that free money giveaway was brought to you by the MtGoxMobile app. So there you go. You got some free money. How's that? Boy, we got all that, all that done in one little break. So, all right. So back to this, tablets priced at a hundred and less than $150 and top of the line specs. This is like three generations ahead of something like the Samsung Galaxy Tab that everybody's talking about, right? This is like really, really cutting edge. How much faster is this processor than a Samsung Galaxy Tab, for example? How much faster is this processor? Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, I said how much, like how much faster is this processor in this tablet going to be compared to a Samsung Galaxy Tab? I would say maybe 20 to 30 percent, probably one. That's a fair estimate. 20 to 30 percent? Yeah. Okay. Wow. That's good. All right. I mean, it's really the price that's really compelling about it. The specs isn't too crazy because it is a modified chip of the Cortex-8. You know, it's not completely new, but they hit, what they really did is they hit a sweet spot by combining a really fairly cheap but still powerful CPU with a GPU that's very good. So they no longer sacrifice one for the other and they have this, that's why this chip is called, you know, the code name Allwinner, right? Allwinner because it has all these, it doesn't cut to many corners and it builds this very round chip that's fairly good for just all these things. And it doesn't, and according to, you know, online reviews of this, this particular prototype, everybody's saying the battery life is also really good. And it's, it's an unheard of really good battery life, which means we're looking at like eight to ten hours on media play. Eight to ten hours on media play. What is it in just standby? No, on video. Standby is much longer. What is it? Like, what would it be on standby? I don't know. I can't, I could give you like, you know, factory advertisement numbers, but I never go with those. No, well, if it's eight to ten hours on media play, it's got to be two or three times that. On video. I'm talking about video here. Yeah. It's got to be like two or three times that, just if it's just sitting there on standby. Yeah, just, just by share estimating like that, yes. I would say you could probably stand off like half a week without moving the power. Yeah, that's great. That is really slick. Yeah, totally. Battery has always been a big thing when it comes to these cheaper tablets, because that's what, in my opinion, a lot of people complain about, but from what I've seen and just playing with this battery, it drew impressive. That's like, what's the resolution look like on the screen? Like compared to the brightness and everything? Honestly, it's like, when you hear the numbers, they're not that impressive. But the screen looks much better in person. Yeah. I wasn't expecting it to be this nice. Wow. Amazing. That is cool. So, now you're, I know you're just getting prototypes arriving now, and these haven't actually officially even been released yet, but you've got prototypes coming. Like, if, if somebody wanted to order one of these from you, can they, can they do pre-orders? Are you taking pre-orders? Um, not exactly at the moment, because I need to finish, I'm really backed up after this presentation, because I, I attracted a bunch of interesting and people who are like, fairly interested at this project. And, and because it's, it's, you know, three directional and all that. So I want to, I want to settle the site, get through with the proposal and stuff, and hopefully raise some money on Kickstarter to do this correctly. And so I could just start bringing them at, become sort of like, you know, the, the local Chinese outlet for these things, or any other electronic technology that I could simply get contacts for. And, you know, that will facilitate growth over here without the need to pay through a third party, because I will be here. Yeah. That's the part I forgot to mention is your Kickstarter. You're, you're, you're, uh, creating a proposal for Kickstarter, uh, a Kickstarter campaign, I guess they call it. And soon that will be online on Kickstarter. And people can, um, donate to this project, which is going to help facilitate, uh, and also there's all kinds of rewards and bonuses that they get back, um, for doing that. That's just part of, you know, yeah, that's just part of Kickstarter. That's how they're, you know, well, it's. Okay. It's for their, their business model and stuff. So, but anyway, they can donate to this project and in, as a result. I'm also going to obviously open up a Bitcoin donation as well. You know, so it's not only, it's not only mainstream. Yeah. Dollars and Bitcoins. It's all accepted. That's what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to build infrastructure.  It has to be easy. That's the, that's the whole, like, idea of why I talk to everybody a little bit. Has to be easy. You know, it has to be, it has to be really easy. It has to be like three steps. It has to be less than three steps to get to Bitcoin from, you know, your money or the method you're purchasing is to get Bitcoin. It has to be less than three steps. That's what I always say. It has to be as easy as grandma's toaster or as easy to use as an elevator. It has to be intuitive. Right. And this is how we get, this is how we get there. By getting out the Bitcoin-enabled families and by building these Wi-Fi topics. I mean, they're obviously facilitate all of this as well. But majorly, Bitcoin would be very beneficial for this project as well as for Bitcoin itself. Yes, exactly. Did, so we did two, right? And we already announced that. Okay. You did three. Oh, we did the third giveaway. So I missed it. Did you? If you weren't watching live, maybe you missed it. But we did the third cash giveaway, Bitcoin cash, that is. And also brought to you by Mt. Gox mobile app. So be sure and check out the Mt. Gox mobile app. It's mtgoxlive.com slash mobile. And we just gave the third Bitcoin giveaway. So keep that, keep that barcode scanner on the screen. We're going to do these three times each episode, every, every episode of the Bitcoin show. So you're going to have to watch live. We'll be announcing whatever time it is that we're, we're taping live on my Twitter feed, actually. If you go to Twitter.com slash Bruce Wagner, all one word. Twitter.com slash Bruce Wagner. I'll announce when we're going to do the next live taping. And you can watch live and then scan the screen with your, with your phone and redeem those codes, get some free Bitcoins. Anyway, so back to this. Okay. So the Kickstarter campaign, you're going to be able to donate dollars, Bitcoins, PayPal, whatever, and to the campaign. And this is going to help facilitate all of this infrastructure building, the whole, the, uh, Yeah, totally. There's going to be a site that I'm going to talk more details about exactly than we've done. And the whole thing, like, uh, like, you know, we have, I think I have always been worried, keen on providing transparency to what we do. And we feel that is the right way to do things. So we're going to like, you know, tell you exactly what, what the steps and how we're going to spend this money to do this, as well as to build these tower and just give out information, you know, give out information, give out whatever that eats for this thing to facilitate. And we feel that when you, when you take me out of the equation, things become a lot easier because you're not trying to, you know, make a profit that you don't have to worry about return and all that. Right. So obviously they're not going to be able to get one of these tablets in time for Christmas or anything, but they, uh, maybe they could give, uh, they could give gift cards and say redeemable for one. Uh, is it going to be branded, uh, bits and come? Is that the brand? Um, it's currently, it's currently called name on the offline. Is what? It's currently called name under offline. That's what these tablets are called in terms of, they're all be up. Okay. So maybe people can give a gift card at Christmas and say, this is like, this is redeemable for a tablet when it's ready. But, um, I was actually, you know, well, the current plans to get, get all things done ready for the end of the year and launch the Kickstarter at 2012, 2012, like where, where early 2012, get a role in, and then, and then hopefully by Q2 next year, these tablets will be ready for order from everybody. And that's how we're going to do it. By then at the latest, it's a seven inch tablet. Thing is that you, if you don't do it quick enough, then, and then better pros will come out. Yeah. They'll be buying them at the drug store. So, well, but these, with these specs on this price point, you're going to be competing directly with companies like Samsung and Acer and whoever, whoever is, right? And that's the cool part is because they have to make profit. And I don't, and that's why I'm ultimately going to win because that's, that's what's going to happen. Yeah. And things are going to be open source as well. So I'm going to beat every, right? There's no point for, you know, everybody else. That's why everybody's switching to like biology and like Sam seven for, you know, the ROMs on the topic is open sources better. And they, they update quicker and they get the latest stuff. And they're just stable as the official one. They're not, you know, more stable. I love that stuff that they don't want. And I feel that that's, it's listening to the story. If you're, if you're, and this is what should appear as well. Mm-hmm. Exactly. They have to make a profit and I don't and open source is better. Yeah. This is the, this is the future for sure. So people are going to have super, super powerful high end tablets. These are basically going to be like, I don't know, $800 tablets that they're going to get for less than $150 effectively. Because branding, I say you'd be saving like $300 or more. Yeah. Easily, right? And then, but so for like less than half the price at least they'll have a super high end tablet for less than $150. This is going to be brilliant. You better order a lot of them. Yeah. Start small, make sure they all work well, work out all the bugs and then order more and more and more and more. Right? Like we're going to have some game working on this stuff.  Yeah. They're not going to come with whatever factory, you know, Android on the other side is going to be ours. You know, I have the option to choose a big one. We're going to have the regular tablet, just a science for better usage, you know, or a full thick plain, flowing experience, which has all the merchant applications or, you know, all the things that make it really easy and stuff like that. That's what really will be focused on after we're securing the, you know, tablet and the, and the features we're looking at to contact your manufacturer and getting an FD near your communication. We'll feel that's a big, you know, high-level product. You know, digital wallet like Google doing it and Facebook going to start doing it and they're going to be doing it with the next year. We have to either be as good as them or better. Right? As good or better with near field communications and all these new technologies, including in the new versions. This is, that's really, really exciting. So this is going to be the perfect appliance that people can use for Bitcoin transactions. Well, anybody can use it. The customers can use it too, obviously, but the point of sale as well. So it could just, it could just be the universal Bitcoin tool. It's both for the consumer and the, and the producer. And the merchants and the, right, exactly. So, so slick. So I know that in our project where we're going, like I said, we're going to be going door to door in Manhattan and we're going to be soliciting merchants and trying to convince them of why they should accept Bitcoin. This will be the hardware, you know, of choice right now that we can, yeah, exactly. Exactly. An excellent solution. Well, thanks for joining us today. We have to do this again. When, as soon as you have a new announcement, well, as soon as the prototypes come in, right, we can actually play with it. Yeah, then come on in and we'll demo it and show it on the camera. That'd be awesome. All right. Thanks for the update you through. Thanks for joining us today. All right. We'll do it again. All right. Thanks guys for joining us. We'll see you next time. Hope you got your free money. If nobody claimed it, you can get it on the recorded version. You never know. Maybe people were too slow. They weren't prepared. So anyway, watch us every episode. We're going to be giving away free bitcoins. Ciao. Till next time.


Hello, hello, everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel, Laura's Little Library, and welcome to today's video, which is my May wrap up in a very different location. It's the month of May. I read 19 books, but first off, yes, I'm in a different place. I'm in my parents' house. We just moved back to Michigan from Minnesota, and we're leaving our vacation in two days. We're driving to Chicago to catch the plane. So I have not set up any bookshelves yet, but when we get back from vacation, we will set up some bookshelves to film in front of. And also, all my videos for the next two months, every week, every video for the next two months that I'm away, is pre-filmed. So I will be in front of my bookshelves in Minnesota. But for today's video, we're here. It's going to be a little chaotic. Also, because I read 19 books, it's going to be relatively fast just because I want to be able to edit it and get it up. And really, a lot of these were kind of books. I had some five stars. I had some four stars, but a lot of them were three and two stars. Hey, yes. And I have Donatella here with me to talk about these books. I don't know how long she'll stay because she is still quite young, but at least she said hi. And yes, Donatella as in the Carrival trilogy. She is my sweet girl. Anyway, so I figured I'm going to start with the two star and work my way up to my five stars of the month. So this is going to be a lot of fun. So I had quite a few two stars, which is part mostly like really sad because, you know, it's a bummer to read books I didn't enjoy quite as much. But at the same time, I feel like if I don't know what I'm going to rate a book or I didn't like it all that much, I'm going to rate it three stars just because it's a book. But reality is, is that I need to be okay with rating two and one stars to books I did not enjoy. It's an honest review. It's so other people know what I honestly thought of it and can go accordingly.  You don't have to agree with it. In fact, there are some tropes that I don't like that I'm sure other people like.  Okay, it's my personal opinion. That's my disclaimer. But I'm also proud of myself for being okay with rating things two stars that I thought were two stars. Let's just get started. Okay, the first book that I'm going to talk about is Hot Dutch Daydream. Now, this book, there were two reasons why I wanted to read it. One, because of a set in the Netherlands of a set in Amsterdam. And I haven't read a lot of books that are set in Amsterdam. And I've been in a contemporary travel reading mood. So I thought, hey, this would be perfect. To the plot did somewhat sound interesting to me. But I ended up being a two star. I didn't have high expectations for it because of this. But I was quite bummed. It could have been so much better. Are you going to drink my tea? Don't drink my tea. So we set it in here. This is Ashitaka. Tell his brother. Anyway, sorry, where was I? Hot Dutch Daydream. I was not impressed with the love interest. I was not invested in their relationship at all. I didn't like him as a character. And then that made me really hard. It made it really hard for me to root for a couple. And I mean, I loved all the kind of going around Amsterdam. Like that's really why I read the book. But I still wanted there to be a lot more from the book that I felt like it just wasn't giving and the age of the characters. It was really weird because like, you know, she's about to go to college, but she acted super young. But then the work she was doing was like something I couldn't imagine doing in high school. I don't know. It was, it was, it just didn't hit me right. Another book that I read again, because it's travel based, I was in a very like travel contemporary mood. And I read one Italian summer, and I had heard mixed reviews of this. So I knew not to have super high expectations of it. But it still disappointed me quite a bit. There's the cheating trove in here, which I do not like at all. And that can just like ruin the book for me. But then it was also just kind of weird. But you have this main character. I didn't give a description for hot touch daydream. I also just didn't like the title of hot touch daydream. Like, anyway. So we follow this woman who is having kind of relational issues with her husband, they're just falling out of love. And then she loses her mom and they were supposed to go on a trip to Italy, where her mom has been once before and loved it. And she's very close to her mom. Like she's so close to her mom, it seemed unhealthy. And like I am very close to my mom. So that's not something that I would normally bat an eye at. But those two were just so close that I was like, this is a red flag to me. Anyway, so she loses her mom and she goes on the trip anyway. But instead, she ends up going back in time to when her mom was on her previous trip to Italy and learns about her mom. I don't even know. Like she, it's a way of her processing her grief in this kind of magical realism travel back in time-esque thing. And just think about if she really does want to divorce her husband. I don't know. They're just the point of this book was just kind of all over the place. There really wasn't much there other than processing grief, which I just don't think happened very well. The writing just was not great. So it was a two star for me. Then I had From the Jump by, I think it's by Lacey Walden. This is another travel book where our main character is super obsessed with work. And her friends always go on these amazing vacations without her. So then this year she designs the quitter job and joined them in South Africa. And now I was really excited about their trip to South Africa because that's not one that a lot of places write about, you know, the writing about Italy or France or, you know, just kind of these European destinations, right? So it was really quite refreshing to read about a vacation in South Africa, somewhere that is in Europe. And I was really excited about that. It ended up being like a corner of the book. I was expecting the whole book to be on this vacation and the drama and the romance to be on the vacation, but majority of the book happened after that vacation. Like she goes there, they do like two things, and then they're home again. And that was the entire rest of the book. So that was really disappointing for me because I thought it was going to be about the travel when it was the travel had kicked off a new thing for our character of doing what she wants and taking risks and blah, blah, blah, which was fine. But even if I knew that was the case going in, I'm not sure I actually would have read it. And then another travel read, just haven't met you yet. I don't know what it is, but any like English contemporary romance and even English thrillers, I don't, I haven't liked. I think it's probably a cultural difference, but just haven't met you yet is about this woman who is going on a trip and she bumps into someone. Oh no. And then when she gets through a destination, she realizes she actually switched suitcases with the man she bumped into. And so she, of course, opens up the suitcase, trying to figure out who it is so she can contact them and say, hey, I have your suitcase. You have mine. We need to fix this. And she realizes that all the elements in the suitcase create an image of her perfect ideal man. And as someone who had been like a reporter doing people's love stories like they're cute, her whole career, she was so excited that this is going to be the perfect meet cute for her to finally stop being single and lonely on this vacation island with a dream man. That's not the direction the book took. Okay, I don't I don't want to spoil it. But I was pretty disappointed with the path that it took. I just halfway through the book, I was like, oh, I know what's going to happen. I'm not going to like it. I don't care. It could have been worse. But honestly, I just did not care for it. I didn't like our main character. I thought she got just way too attached to this imaginary guy, which is kind of the point of the book, she gets overly attached when really, I think, you know, she's just trying to look for him. And the whole thing with her parents just meh. And then the whole there's a bit of an age gap. And that's not really my cup of tea or at least no one had done intentionally. I don't know. It just it didn't hit right. Again, like there are just so many things that I like, were kind of meh or not great. And there was nothing to it that was like, Oh, I really like this or this is really cool. Which is why I was a two star because I was like, there's nothing I liked about the book. It just I just didn't like it. I almost don't want the two stars. I read Queen Bee. And I was really excited about this one because it's a South Asian main character in like Regency times. And I read this for my book club. So we're all going to read it. And we it's for the beginning of July. So we haven't talked about it yet. I read it in May I read it super early because we had decided June and July's book because they were really close. So we decided to just do both one and then the other. I ended up getting both from the library. So I just read one, then the other. And I just get the feeling that some people in my book club are going to like it. But for the most part, we're just going to tear this book apart. Because I was really excited for it. And then I just wasn't pleased with it. It took it took a long time for me to really get into it. Just because we were kind of thrown in with this girl who got kind of disgraced and embarrassed because of rumors spread about her. So then she goes to the school where she kind of gets corrected in the social lights term. You know, like she's like the daughter of the Duke or something. And so she's very high standing. She's about to enter her season to hopefully find a man to marry. But she gets disgraced. It doesn't end up well for her. So she goes away and she decides that she is going to come back under a different name, like three years later. And she's going to get her revenge on the girl who started the rumors. And I'm like, there's so much of this that does not make sense. Like I get three years. The idea the idea is that three years have passed and she basically is gone through puberty. And which is why she's unrecognizable, which A, no, just because somebody goes through puberty doesn't mean they're completely unrecognizable and they can just choose a new name, be a whole new person. B, if she had gone through puberty during that time to look unrecognizable and along with dyeing her hair and cutting it. But again, you know, that's not really a huge thing. Then she shouldn't have been in her season in the first place. Like there were just so many things that did not add up that I didn't like. And I mean, I admire that she wasn't a perfect main character, but I mean, no, she kind of frustrated me. The romance was okay. But I was bored for a lot of the book. I felt like it was really slow moving and not a lot happening. And I was just waiting. I just really honestly, if it wasn't a book club book, I really consider on just skipping to the end reading the end and being done with it. Like I was very much considering DNFing it. It just not at all what I had hoped for. I felt like there was a little bit of hype for it. And it just was quite disappointing, honestly. Then my last two star read was Imogen. Obviously, this is by Becky Albertalli. And I kept going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to read this book. But you have your main character who is a senior in high school and her one of her close friends actually is a year older than her and is her freshman year of college. And so it takes place over spring break like she goes to visit for a weekend and kind of meet all the friends. And this is also the school that she is going to go to. Like that's already decided she's been accepted and she's going to go there. It was a similar thing with for the jump where like the weekend visiting her friends didn't take up the entire book, which is a good thing because then it would have been a really slow book. But like I just didn't care. There was so much filler. And the real kicker about this book is that the main character, Imogen, her friend, tells her other friends and it's a very queer book in that Imogen is a straight girl who has all these queer friends and a queer younger sister and etc. and so forth.  So she claims that she and Imogen used to go out. And so she says that Imogen is bisexual. And so while Imogen is at the weekend she's hanging out with all these queer people and she is pretending to be bisexual to say her friend's representation. I had a lot of issues with that summary to begin with. But I was like you know what I'm just gonna give it a chance and I who knows because it really is the friend who is bisexual who is forcing this upon her straight friend. But honestly I was just so bored. I fell asleep a couple of times throughout the book and when I woke up I was like I don't need because I was listening to the audiobook and I was like I don't want to go back and listen to what I missed and I don't really need to because nothing new happened and I don't really care. So and I hated the ending. I was so annoyed at the ending of this book. I was like really you really had to go that you really had to do that. That's really kind of lame. So I was not pleased with the book at all and I just don't quite understand why that was so necessary. There were just a lot of like as a bisexual in college I know no no so it was the two stars. I'm still gonna keep the book but it was the two stars. Now we can move on to all the three stars which is a lot of books as well. First third star book that I'm gonna talk about is Love From Scratch. This I thought it was going to be an adult contemporary romance. It was YA which I also love YA contemporary romance but this one was alright. So Love From Scratch is a kind of competition like rivals to lovers so you've got two interns. One is a southern belle and the other is this big guy and they are at a food like kitchen advertising company and like like a social media kind of empire-esque and they end up filming a show together. A cooking show she doesn't have a lot of cooking experience whereas he does. He is kind of the baker and she handles more like the social media advertising marketing side of things and they both really want this one like job in the fall but they're both students and they're kind of competing for it. Honestly this was such a forgettable book. I was really excited for this. I was kind of like anticipating it but really the romance was meh. I mean the guy was I didn't really like how he treated the main character even if it was all like fun and games like I just that with how he was claiming to feel about her just didn't make sense to me and I don't know I was just kind of annoyed. I felt like too much was riding on it and yeah it was just a three star like it was it was what it was. Nothing special nothing intriguing but not like it was bad per se like it entertained me enough. Switching gears I read The Dutch Wife which is a historical fiction. I saw this in a good will and I was like yeah I kind of want to because I'm going to be going to the Netherlands this summer and I want to read historical fiction. It's another world war two which I'm trying to read more than just world war two historical fiction but again it was a good will for really cheap and it's by Ellen Keith and it and really what sold me on this so I mean again I am ethnically Dutch um and I am a wife so I was like oh I'm very intrigued by this because our main character is mentioned that she likes to make cakes like I don't like she works in a bakery or something but you know it's war times so it's not something she gets to do. I'm sorry the camera is shaking the cat on the bed really what sold me on this was the blurb Raiders of the Nightingale will be rewarded by this original and unforgettable tale. I loved the Nightingale that one just brought me to tears so I decided to pick this up because we actually follow three POVs and there are quite a few trigger warnings in here okay so the Dutch wife is you start off and she has been captured and separated from her husband and she is actually put to work in a brothel at a German camp it's actually a German concentration camp and um so she's there for the prisoners not the officers um which I thought was definitely a new and original take that I haven't read before um even in like the concentration camps like I've read another book with a concentration camp a world war two but it didn't tackle this side of things there are a lot of trigger warnings there with her being raped by German soldiers and everything like that because she is there against her will but you also follow the point of view of one of the German soldiers he's a little bit higher in rank I don't remember what rank specifically but he's fairly high up and he gets really attached to her and so and it's a very unhealthy like kind of abusive relationship in that like he falls for her and she doesn't love him back but she kind of has this like um Stockholm syndrome of like this is the only man she sees and there's this intimate connection between them but at the same time she misses her husband and wants to make sure that her husband is still alive and so it was really fascinating and heartbreaking to read about that entire situation and then you actually have a third point of view of a gay man in Argentina and he becomes one of the despacitos which if you don't know the despacitos is a huge issue that has been happening for years and years in so many countries where the government possibly um is basically kidnapping people and children and they are the despacitos mean the disappeared and so he's a gay man in Argentina he's a gay man in Argentina where the Nazis you know kind of flee too once they start losing the war and just his experience as a kidnapped gay man and everything that he goes through there so it's really interesting to see how these stories are connected even though they don't come together in the end it's a very like hard-hitting lots of serious topics lots of triggering topics um I liked the writing but I just had some issues with like character development and other aspects of it that made it a three star but um hmm I can see how fans of the nightingale might like this but I do not think it is up to like the nightingale standards like nightingales up here like for me it was a five star this is like a three maybe almost a four star um but yeah wow it it just hits hard on a much much different note I read a venom dark and sweet by judy i lin this is the second book in the magic steeped in poison duology so I've now officially finished the duology and the idea behind this uh asian inspired fantasy world is that you do magic through tea the tea itself is not magic you are wielding magic but you only do it through serving tea um so this was three stars it wrapped up the duology quite nicely you really got into a lot more political intrigue and like it just got so much bigger like I like the first book a lot more but I understand the value in this one and everything I just I don't know it just got to be so big it kind of got to add a handle a little bit I think of the position that our main character in in relation to everything happening it didn't quite make sense of their importance and how they were going to do something about it so but I mean look at that cover it's beautiful and I I thought it was so such a cool magic system to read about and we learned a little bit more about it but I just wish there was even more of a concentration in it so yeah I read that one too and then I read a book that is arguably sci-fi they're it's the same idea as like one italian summer so it's it's throwback by Maureen Gu and it's um you have our korean american main character who she does not get along with her mom but she loves her grandma um and her grandma goes into a coma and she gets into a ride chair which actually ends up transporting her from 2025 to 1995 when her mom is running for like homecoming queen and so she is sent back to kind of repair the relationship between her mom and her grandma and help her mom run for homecoming queen um so it's kind of got that sci-fi element there um I'm three stars there are elements of it that I liked but really the main character bothered me so much she was just so complaining and it was kind of really annoying to read from but at the same time her mom was not better like I think our main character was way too realistic to like an actual high school student of just being annoyed at everything and not liking uh their parents and just you know complaining all the time I I'm really glad that you know there were some things of like oh technology is different and sayings are different um a lot of ideology is different but and I mean it was handled okay like our main character has these very modern liberal views which I appreciate because I tend to share those views but it was so much so and especially like she went back to 1995 like she knows that society is different but she really just did not know how to handle it but yeah I don't know like it was trying to take the surface level idea of winning prom queen and relating that to a deep emotional level of a relationship between the daughter and her mother and I don't think that connection worked as well as they wanted it to also the twist ending wasn't super twisty like you kind of saw it coming so it was the three stars like I enjoyed reading it it took me a while to really get into it but then once I got into it I appreciated it a lot more so it was good I would recommend this and then we're getting back into the contemporary romance and I read happy place which is Emily Henry's new book and I gotta say this is not my favorite of her books okay don't hate me so if you don't know much about this book uh we have our main character who she and her fiance uh were like friends to lovers but they actually broke up five months ago and they didn't tell anyone that they've broken up uh but their friends are getting back together for one last uh like group trip to this cabin before um the dad who owns the cabin sells it and so it's one last like summer like vacation and so it's a it's a fake dating second chance like they pretend to still be engaged but they're not but you know then they're falling back in love and etc and so forth there were just a lot of like not necessarily unhealthy things in here but like not enough changed for the characters where I think they're gonna last when I read a romance I want to think that these characters are gonna last they're gonna get married and they're gonna live happily ever after I do not think these characters in real life would get married and live happily ever after and that's kind of the ending that the book wants you to think it has and I just I don't believe it so I know it's kind of harsh to say and I'm sorry but um like I've been a big fan of Emily Henry and I mean I'm not a fan of friends to lovers but you kind of get the dual POV of like at the beginning of their relationship and now but I've liked Emily's Henry's books I don't know if this is my least favorite but it's kind of close to of her books I still highly recommend this um like if you're a fan of Emily Henry definitely give this a try but like I don't I just I just don't see how it would work and I don't like the resolution between the characters and I don't like how everything played out you know it's a bunch of adults who are not acting like adults like they're supposed to be mature human beings and they're not and that bothers me because they are old enough to have a sense of how life goes and they just they frustrated me they every single friend frustrated me except for one and she did not get enough page time to save the book in my opinion I'm also a little spiteful that this is hard cover I know that Emily Henry changed publishers and that's why I like this is hardcover and her other books aren't but I really wanted the book as soon as it came out and I wanted it to match but it doesn't match so I know I'll get a grip it's fine but yeah and like the whole thing with it being a happy place it confused me so much because it'd be like happy place here happy place here happy place they are happy like all these different happy places and I'm like I thought the cabin was the happy place but really it's that's how you're supposed to know that you're going back in time but I just thought it wasn't super clear and it confused me and I didn't like it so you know three stars like Emily Henry's writing is fine but I just I don't know I think this book was a miss so I think Emily Henry is still gonna be an autobi author for me I still look forward to what else she releases I just hope that they're better than this one don't hate me if you love this great I'm happy for you but just don't hate me okay I beach read is still my favorite book lovers is still my second favorite okay that's just I think it's a mixture of trope like what I personally like I personally like enemies the lovers more so just okay don't hate me sorry it's just my opinion you can have a different opinion that's perfectly fine now I'm moving on to a bunch of queer reads so the last three star book that I read in May was Friday I'm in Love and this is by Cameron Garrett I was so excited to read this it's about a main character who really wanted a sweet 16 party but didn't get one her and her mom couldn't afford to throw her a sweet 16 party so instead she decides to throw a coming out party she hasn't really told anyone except her best friend that she is gay and so she wants to throw this big prideful rainbow party and come out to everyone and celebrate and just kind of get it all done and over with while having an awesome huge party but again you know it's not like she can't afford it so she strikes a deal with her mom her mom will pay for half and chill pay for half and so she works to make that happen I mean it was a cute fun read I just I don't know some of the things that happen in here I was like okay and like I liked the romance I thought the romance was really cute but I do think it could have been better I don't know I liked this one I love the cover such a beautiful cover I just think you know for what it was it was a good book it's a 16 year old trying to have a party on a budget that's fine like it's a good book I would very much recommend this I just think for my personal tastes there were some elements that I would have liked to be a little different but yeah this was a good one this was a good it was a good three star book okay now let's move on to four star books I have three four star books this month one I am so happy I read it's been on my tbr for quite a while and that is out of the blue by jason june who's the author of Jay of Jay's gay agenda this is a clear like merpoke book so you have one guy who is a lifeguard and he just had his boyfriend break up with him and he didn't think there was something wrong the relationship he was all excited to take these next steps of life together I mean they're in high school so he's thinking you know graduation college things like that and he's all excited to just be with his boyfriend so cute then his boyfriend breaks up with him for his ex best friend which is like ouch super painful then we have kress who is a mer person and they have to go on their journey that every mer person takes of going on land for a moon cycle for about a month to help a human kress is not excited about this not excited about it at all but they end up meeting our lifeguard main character and deciding they are going to help him get his boyfriend back so it's a fake dating to make the ex jealous but then of course they actually fall in love and there are just there are so many things going on in here it's the perfect summer read obviously because kress is a mer person but also that it's la it's summer everyone's swimming and everything like that you know just very warm beachy vibes and it's queer so i think it's perfect for june so i've read it in may and to get excited for june i'm not going to spoil it but that ending i still can't decide if i liked the ending or not i'll just say that probably the reason that this was a four star book to be honest when it got to kind of the last quarter of the book i started to get a little annoyed about what was happening so but still an amazing book the fake dating was so cute they are both just so cute so if you haven't read this and you need a good queer beach read check this one out i finally read tokyo dreaming it took a while okay it took a while for me to get to this um and i liked it i had heard that there were reviews of people who didn't like it as much as the first one and i mean i can kind of see where that is but honestly i liked it i liked the premise of it being her parents wanting to get married and all the politics involved in that um and you know everything that our main character does to help her parents but try and stay true to herself and what she wants versus what her role as um the daughter of the prince of japan is and everything like that i thought it was just another fun read did i like it as much as the first one no i mean the first one was a five star and this one's only a four star i think we just missed some of princess isamese like unique charm but i think i understand why she had to tamper that down to be like a better in the public eye for everything like that but yeah i i still think the duology is definitely worth reading i loved it so much fun so there you go and then the last four star book that i read this month was the golden spoon this is the great british baking show but in america and with the murder mystery so here's the thing about this one my friend read it physically and she didn't like it at all she told me not to read it well she was very excited for it so i put a hold for the audiobook on the library then she read it and she didn't like it she told me not to read it but then my hold came through and i was like well i'm bored so i'm just gonna read it anyway and here's the thing one reason why she didn't like it was because there were too many povs to read from and they all read kind of the same for her and they all blended together which made it really hard to read the story however i listened to the audiobook and they had a different narrator for each point of view so it was actually significantly easier for me to keep track of which point of view we were reading from and hear a different character voice not necessarily in the writing but with the narrator when the old woman when it's the old woman point of view you have an old woman reading it when it's the young minnesotan girl you've got a young narrator reading it when it's a guy you've got a guy reading it like so i did not have near as much of a hard time following the book because of that so i would definitely recommend the audiobook version of this if you're going to read it unless you are really good at keeping track of povs because there are quite a few or you know do a combination listen to it while following along whatever but just it's a better reading experience if you listen to the audiobook now i was excited because i love the great bittish baking show as someone who is baked for over two years like as my career i'm excited i love reading baking books um and i loved all the baking elements it felt very great great bittish baking show it was amazing that aspect of it was phenomenal that was the best part of the book however the murder mystery part of it was something that was highly advertised with it but it honestly did not happen until the end of the book like so much of the book was just the baking competition and you're like waiting for someone to get killed like because you don't know who's going to get killed you obviously don't know who does it and i feel like there were parts of the book that were trying to be eerie or trying to be creepy but it wasn't creepy enough like i was not getting chills waiting to see who's going to die i was just like i like the competition this is just a baking book there's nothing more and then all of a sudden the last 30 the book you have the murder you find out who did it and you go through the aftermath of it and that's it so it was very condensed at the end of the book and i didn't really like that i wish it had like been more throughout like the beginning or even the middle of the book just to make sense that it's a murder mystery baking book so that part was definitely disappointing honestly if that had been handled better it probably would have been a five star read but just because like and even then it's like person got murdered you know almost instantly who did it and you know who gets blamed for it and then that's it it's it's just kind of done so it was very rushed at the end and that was really disappointing so all right now i get to go to my five star reads i had four five star read books this month i read so many books and i am so happy so i read immortality a love story this is the sequel to anatomy a love story by danah schwarz this sequel actually takes place after the first book i thought it was going to like follow a different character or be something else no it does take place after the first book so the cliffhanger that the first book has i thought was just going to be an open ending and i was content with continued on so which which wasn't too bad you know it's fine that's totally fine again i just loved it the gothic medicinal like dead body 1800s scotland was there and that's all i wanted from it and that in the romance it's a gothic romance of 1800 scotland with a female main character who's trying to become a doctor it was great i thought it was a great continuation of the sequel um like if there were elements in the first book that were introduced at the beginning then i felt didn't quite carry through the rest of the book and i was a little disappointed in that but those elements came back in this second book and i was like yes oh yay it's here we're getting into this element of not quite science fiction but gothic medicine yay i'm excited i love that so i was very happy that we returned to that um the characters i don't want to spoil the first one if you haven't read it but if it sounds interesting to you like read it i i loved it it was great in a similar vein kind of i read how to sell a haunted house by grady hendrix and i think this is my favorite grady hendrix books that i've read yet i've read um the southern book collabs guide to playing vampires and i've read the final girl support group and i liked those those were both four stars like those were both kind of lacking some sort of continuity or subject matter that was just like this could have been clearer or executed better but how to sell a haunted house i loved i got creeped out by this book so good the puppets it's a puppet book okay just so you know it's a puppet book and i don't want to say too much about the like actual summary of the book i feel like the title had a sell a haunted house and the fact that it's with puppets is all that you need to know so i was thoroughly creeped out i i liked how everything happened finally i got a five star grady hendrix books i'm so happy i can't wait to read more from this author and i can't wait to see what else they come up with awesome i read fake dates and mooncakes by share lee this is a queer male male baking fake data fake dating romance there's a lot happening in this little book um you have one main character who he works in his family's restaurant and he it's his aunt's restaurant because his aunt started to raise him after his parents passed and um they're struggling quite a bit and there's this mooncake festival or competition and he wants to make the mooncakes that his grandma used to make in order to um enter in this competition to try and save the restaurant um and then you have the other guy who is like this rich guy he is very much like the crazy rich asian style family of he his cousin is having a wedding and he needs a date to the wedding so this family stops trying to pair him up there's lots of family drama family politics there so he enlists the help of the restaurant guy to be his fake date and then of course they fall in love um at the wedding and it just kind of takes off from there like the wedding was kind of the first half of the book and then the mooncakes are the second half of the book so you get both events in the book and you get their relationship throughout and it was just an adorable read with amazing asian cuisine and gay love and it just uh i i blew right through this it was so heartwarming and then the final book and probably my favorite book of the month i think i think yeah this was probably the best book i read this month was practice makes perfect by sarah adams this is a grumpy sunshine not really fake dating but like practice dating so okay the book when in rome by sarah adams happens before this book i have not read that book i've had it on my tbr for a long time and i've had it on hold at the library for a long time i didn't realize that this was in the same vein like following the same family but you don't need to have read when in rome before reading this okay that means that i really want to read when in rome now because i know the characters so you have the sister of the brother from when in rome she owns a flower shop and she's an adorable sunshine like she owns a flower shop come on now um lives in small town rome kentucky everybody knows everything honestly the townsfolk were some of my favorite characters like the banter between townsfolk like just these two old ladies coming to the flower shop their interaction their conversation was hilarious i loved it and i love it when you have side characters like that who are fleshed out have their own backstory have their own private jokes like that that just that's what really made this book so almost perfect for me it was just how well thought out everything was and in this town that is so fleshed out and writing and then you have the bodyguard of the celebrity from the first book and he's back because those two are getting married and so he needs to protect her as they go through the wedding and you can see he is a dark tattooed masterpiece of a man our our florist is not great at dating all she really knows how to do is talk about flowers and so the bodyguard is kind of forced into agreeing to help her practice and i love how they handled that the the safety and the communication that happened there but that also them falling for each other and just i loved it all the banter the characters literally i don't think there's anything that could have been better about this book this is definitely a contender for one of my favorite books of the year and romance isn't even my favorite genre of all time um it is adult romance left all of that too um but my favorite genre is fantasy but this this could take the cake we'll just have to wait and see but i i highly recommend it if you have heard about this book and you're intrigued at all just read it it was so good if you like this video give it a thumbs up comment down below some of your reads that you read in may that you liked or really didn't like if you read any of these books if you agree or disagree with my thoughts i would love to chat with you down below also feel free to subscribe i am posting videos once a week um over the course of the summer but be sure to hit the bell to be notified when those videos do go up otherwise i have bookish social media linked down below you can keep up with what i'm reading and all of my adventures in europe and everything down there so make sure you follow me there uh but that should be everything so until i see you all in the next video i wish you happy reading


From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm your host, John Furrier with theCUBE. Our next guest is Ms. Shalwa, who's the industry general manager of energy, resources and manufacturing. A great guest to break down this next generation of infrastructure, modern applications and changing the business in super important areas. Regulated verticals, nice, great to see you. Thank you for coming back on theCUBE. Thank you, John, good to meet you. You know, this is the area where I've been saying for years the cloud brings great scale horizontally, scalable data, but at the end of the day AI and automation really has to be specialized in the verticals. And this we're going to see the action, the ecosystems for connecting. This is a big deal here at Think this year. Transformation is the innovation, innovation at scale. It seems to be the underlying theme that we've been reporting on. So I'd love to get your thoughts on how you see this fourth industrial revolution, as you say, coming about. Can you define for us what that means? And when you say that, what does it mean for customers? Yeah, sure, sure. So in sort of simple terms, all the technologies that we see around us, whether it's AI, we talk about AI, we talk about 5G, we talk about Edge, cloud, robotics. So the application of those to the physical world in some sense, in the industrial world is what we define as the fourth industrial revolution. Essentially it's the convergence between the humans, the physical aspect by the machines and the cyber, the digital aspects, bringing that together. So companies can unlock the value from the terabytes and petabytes of data that our connected world is now able to produce. How does the IoT world come in? We've been, again, I did a panel, I think two years ago called the industrial IoT Armageddon. And it was really kind of pointing, it was kind of provocative title. But the point was, the industrial connections are all devices now and they're connected to the network, security super important. This industrial revolution includes this new Edge. It's got to be smarter and intelligent. What's your take on that? Yeah, absolutely. It is about the Edge, it's about devices, it's about delivering, capturing the data from the umpteen devices. We've recently heard about the chip shortage, which gives you an idea that there is so much utilization of compute power everywhere in the world. And the world is becoming very software defined. So whether it's software defined machines, software defined products, the washing machines that we use at home, the cars we use at home, they are gradually, everything is gradually becoming, not gradually, I'd say rapidly becoming intelligent. And so that Edge or IoT is the foundation stone of everything we're talking about here. Well, you mentioned software and a chip, SOC, that's a huge mega wave coming. That's going to bring so much more compute on into smaller form factors, which leads me to my next question, which kind of I'm kind of answering for myself, but I'm not a manufacturing company, but why should they care about this trend from a business perspective, besides the obvious new connection points? What's really in it for them? Yes, so big topic right now is this topic of resilience, right? So that's one aspect of this. The pandemic has taught us that resilience is a core objective. The second objective, which is front and center of all CEOs or CEOs is outperformance. And so what we're seeing is outperformance are investing in technology for many goals, right? So it's either sustainability, which is a big topic these days and huge priority. It's about efficiency, it's about productivity. It's also now more and more about delivering a much stronger customer experience, right? Making your products easier to use, much easily consumable as well. So if you when you pull it all together, it's an end-to-end thinking about using data to drive those objectives of outperformance as well as resilience. What's the progress being made so far on the manufacturing industry on this front? I mean, is it moving faster? Are you mentioning accelerating, but where is the progress bar right now? So I think as we came into 2020, I would have described it as we were starting to enter the chapter to companies moving from experimentation to really thinking of scaling this. And what we've found is the pandemic really caused a big focus on these. As Winston Churchill has been attributed, the court never waste a good crisis. So a lot of CEOs, a lot of executives and leadership really put their energy into accelerating digital transformation. I think we believe two-thirds have been able to accelerate their digital transformation. So the good news is, companies don't have to be convinced about this anymore. They have clearly their focus is on, where should I start? Where should I focus? And what should I do next, right? Is really the focus. And their investing is sort of two types of technologies is the way we see it. What I would call foundational technologies because there's a recognition that to apply the differentiating technologies like AI and capture and taking value of the data, you need a strong architectural foundation. So whether it's cyber security, it's what we call IDOT integration, connecting the devices back to the mothership. And it's also applying cloud. But cloud in this context is not about typically what we think is public cloud or a central spot. It's really bringing cloud like technologies also to the edge, IE to the plant or to the device itself, whether it's a mobile device or a physical device. And that foundation is that recognition that you've got to have the foundation that you can build your capabilities on top, whether it's for customers or clients or colleagues. That's a great insight on the architecture. I think that's a successful playbook. It sounds so easy. I do agree with you. I think people have said, this is a standard now, hybrid cloud, the edge, pretty clear visibility on the architecture of what to do or what needs to be done, how to do it, almost the story. So I have to ask you, we hear of this barrier. This is always blockers. I think COVID's released some of those, relieved some of those blockers because people have to force their way into the transformation. But what are those barriers that are stopping the acceleration for customers to achieve the benefits that they need to see? Yes. So I think one key barrier is a recognition that most of our plants or manufacturing facilities or supply chains really run in a brownfield manner. There's so many machines, so many facilities that have been built over decades. So there's a proliferation of different ages of devices, machines, et cetera. So making sure that there is a focus on laying out a foundation, that's a key barrier. There is also a concern that the companies have around cybersecurity. The more you connect, the more you increase the attack surface. And we know that acts and so on are a dominant issue whether it's for ransomware or for other malicious reasons. And so modernizing the foundation and making sure you're doing it in a secure way, those are the key concerns that executives have. And then another key barrier I see is making sure that you have a key core objective and not making sure making too many different varied experimentation beds. So keeping a focus on what's the core use case of benefit you're after and then what's the foundation to make sure that you're going after it. Like I said, whether it's quality or productivity or such like. So the key success if I get this right is you're going to have the right framework for this, as you say, industry 4.0. You got to understand the collaborative dynamics and then have an ecosystem. Can you unpack those three things? Because take me through that. You got to the framework, the collaboration and the ecosystem. What does that mean specifically? So the way I think the simplest way to think of it is the amount of work and effort that all companies have to put in is so great in front of them. The opportunities are so great as well that nobody can hire all the smart people that are needed to achieve the goals. Everybody has their own specific, I would say focus and capabilities they bring to bear. So the collaboration between manufacturers, the collaboration between operational technology companies like the Siemens, ABB, Schlumberges, et cetera and IT technology companies like ourselves, that three part collaboration is sort of the heart of what I see as ecosystems coming together. The other dimensionality of ecosystems is also looking at it from a supply chain or a value chain perspective because how something becomes more intelligent or smarter or more effective is also being able to work across a supply chain or a value chain. So those are key focus areas. Make sure we are collaborating across value chains and supply chains as well as collaborating with manufacturers and OT operational technology companies to be able to bring these digital capabilities with the right capabilities of operational technology companies into the manufacturers. If I ask you, how is you doing that? What specifically would you say? I mean, how are you collaborating? What's some examples? Give some examples of this in action. Certainly. So we recently announced over the last, say, nine months or so, three strategic, very transformative partnerships. The first one I'll share with you is with Schlumberger. Schlumberger is the world's largest oil feed services company and now also the world's largest digital technology company for the oil and gas industry. So we've collaborated with them to bring hybrid cloud to the digital platform so they now can deploy their capabilities to any customer regardless of whether they want it in country or on a public cloud. Another example is we've established a data platform with Schlumberger for the oil and gas industry to be able to bring again that data platform to any location around the world. The advantage of hybrid, the advantage of AI. With ABB, what we've done is we've taken our smarts in IT security connected with their products and capabilities for operational systems. And now are delivering an end to end solution that you can get cyber alerts or issues coming from manufacturing systems, right down to, right up to an IT command center where you're seeing all the events and alerts so that they can be acted upon right away. So that's a great example of collaborating with IT and OT from a security point of view. The third one is industrial IoT with Siemens and we've partnered with Siemens to deliver their MindSphere Private Cloud Edition or delivered on our Red Hat Hybrid Cloud. So this is an example where we are able to take our horizontal technologies, apply it with their vertical smarts and deep industry context, put our services capabilities on top of it so they can deliver their innovations anymore. It is just an expert on this, such a great leader on this area.  What's the big deal now if you had to, I mean, it seems like it's all coming together with Red Hat under the covers, get distributed networks with the Edge. It's all kind of coming together now for the verticals because you get the best of both worlds, programmable, scalable infrastructure with modern software applications on top.  Why is this wave so big and important? So I think there is no longer a, the big reason why it's important is I think there's no reason why companies have to be convinced now. The clarity is there that this needs to happen. So that's one. The second is I think there's a high degree of expectation among consumers, among employees and among customers as well that everything that we touch will be intelligent. So these technologies really unlock the value, unlock the value and they can be deployed at scale. That's really I think what we're seeing as the focus now and being able to deliver the innovation anywhere whether someone wants it at the edge next to a machine that's operating or be able to look at how a manufacturing facility or different product portfolios doing in the boardroom, it's all available. And so that shop floor to top floor connection is what everybody's aiming for. But we also now call edge to enterprise. And everything works better. The employees are happy. People are happy. The stakeholders are happy. I mean, it's great insight. Thank you for sharing here on theCUBE for Think 2021. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Absolutely, thanks John for having me. Okay, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE for IBM Think 2021. Thanks for watching.


So now we're going to go into the pay liabilities. Now if you have the payroll set up within the accounting system, remember you have two options. You could do it within QuickBooks, Payroll, or you can do it with a third-party provider. Either way, you typically have to pay more. If you do the payroll within QuickBooks, we want to make sure to use the widget to process the payroll. If you do payroll with a third-party provider, it's possible that you can actually kind of set your whole thing up still on a cash-based system and wait till everything in essence clears the bank and then just record everything as like a payroll liability and then adjust your payroll accounts on your financial statements to be correct periodically, possibly just at the end of the year so that you can make your financial statements and do your taxes as of that point in time based on the payroll reports provided from the payroll provider, like an ADP or a Paychex. If you're trying to automate your whole system, separate the bookkeeping from any kind of accrual stuff, that's a method that you could use, but you need to have a network with a payroll provider, you doing a bookkeeper that automates the bookkeeping and a CPA firm or tax preparer, all of which have the knowledge to do their part in the process. If you're doing payroll within the system, then of course we need to track payroll as we go because the system's going to have to generate all these other reports to properly report the payroll. So as of now that when we enter the payroll, we know what's going to happen is cash is going to go down so whenever we enter the payroll for the first month and the second month, we saw the checking account has payroll checks that are impacted. Here that's for the net check and then the expense is on the income statement under payroll expense, that's for the full amount earned. So the difference between the two is the payroll liability, what we kept from the employee because we were forced to and that we're going to pay to the government on their behalf in theory, even though they're kind of forced to do it. It's not really a voluntary thing, that's involuntary taxes. So here it is on the liabilities, they increase. Now the liabilities also increased by our portion, the employer portion of payroll taxes that being social security, Medicare and if we had it turned on federal unemployment tax are the main ones and over here we've got the taxes on this side. Now this is going to be reflected, you'll recall if I right click on the tab, duplicate it in the sub ledger reports which we will have if we're doing payroll internally which we're doing here because it was part of our free 30-day trial thing. So we'll test in it out playing with payroll which is always good times, good times, payroll play. So we're going to go down here and say I'm going to go to the payroll summary by employee and change the range from 010128 to 020128. What? What? 2-3. Okay so there we go, so there's the payroll for the two periods. Now we saw that this doesn't exactly match what we had in our system because we made some adjustments to our system general ledger accounts outside of processing the payroll. Now just to point out that that's still going to be an issue it's the same thing you have a similar issue when you're paying the payroll. So now I'm going to pay off for example the liability accounts. So if I go into the payroll liability account I'm going to be paying off part of this payroll liability account but I'm imagining that we process the January payroll that we now have to be paying off in February. So the end January payroll we've got a liability of 2028-46 and then the February payroll we're going to actually pay it to the government in March. Now obviously your payroll when you have to pay the payroll and setting up how soon after processing the payroll you need to pay it is something that you're going to have to make sure that you set up properly according to where you are and your requirements and your location when you do the setup and it'll depend on how often you pay do you pay people weekly semi-weekly and so on and how much payroll do you have in terms of how how soon after processing you got to pay the payroll liability but that's what we're going to do in our practice problem. So going back now normally to do that obviously all we would have to do is write a check right it's going to be like a check form or an expense type of form decreasing the checking account the other side decreasing the liability account here but normally we would want to do that with the payroll widget going to the tab to the left and going down to the payroll on the left hand side we processed the payroll in here using the run payroll item but remember some of our limitations in trying to do a practice problem with payroll inside of an accounting software is that payroll is generally designed to run real time so QuickBooks is trying to kind of automate everything and so it's hard to kind of work in the future or in the past like you need to do in a practice problem so we can't we don't so we don't have any like payroll check that is due as of this point in time when I process the check if you work this payroll problem in the future then you might have it due because you'll be in the future and you might you might have to be able to process the payroll also note that of course it's possible for you to kind of more automate the payroll process once it's going to be set up so that hopefully the the pain of the payroll will happen you know when it's required to happen soon after you process the payroll so you can kind of automate the system