My name is Emma Markovich. I work at the National Archives. My role is Head of Archive Sector Development. And I'm lucky enough to be joined this morning by my colleague, Philip Gale, and also by Tim Crumplin from the Alfred Gillett Trust, who is here to talk to us about his experience. So the main thrust of this session is to give you an overview and a bit of context and background into a fund that we were able to launch earlier this year from the National Archives called the COVID Fund for Archives. Now, this was not something that we expected to be doing. We were very fortunate and pleased to get the funding. And we thought you would be interested in hearing something about our experiences of developing what that funding stream was going to look like, delivering it out and what our plans might be for the future. So I'm just going to give you a little bit of context for the COVID Fund for Archives. So, of course, the pandemic hit us all like a tonne of bricks, and we suddenly found ourselves working at home, our organisations closed down. No idea how long this situation might go on for. So pretty quickly, at the National Archives, we ran an impact survey across the sector. We wanted to try and get an understanding, some quite fast and some quite high level information about what the level of risk was going to be for this situation. So both two collections, also what the risk might be to staff and plans for access arrangements, what kind of levels of furlough we were seeing across the sector, where they might be highest, what was the risk of long-term closures. So just to really try and get a picture of that, a snapshot for that moment in time, really, we thought was quite important. So we ran that survey. Thank you all very much. Those of you who participated, it was really very useful. There were also, of course, a lot of worries about forced or accelerated closure or downsizing, particularly in the business part of the sector. Now, of course, that is still potentially quite a high risk, but certainly, I think at the time of the initial lockdown, it was something everybody was extremely alive to, what was going to happen. Would we see fast pace collapse? And then, of course, from our perspective, what happens to those collections, then the archives of those businesses? So we were very, very alive to that. We had had some recent experience of securing the Thomas Cook archive, prior to COVID hitting, of course. And that proved a very useful up-to-date model and way of understanding what the costs might be of having to go in at quite short notice and save collections where the business might collapse. So we worked very closely with the crisis management team, as we always have done, to keep a very close eye on those businesses and try and understand what's coming, what's on the horizon. Debenhams and Arcadia Group were particularly high-profile examples, of course, but there are many, many others on a national and regional level. So the work of the crisis management team did actually grow hugely over the course of the year, as you can imagine, unfortunately. And then finally, I suppose, we were also quite concerned about private and deposited collections and the potentially accelerated risk of some of those being sold or removed from archive services. And we were very aware that that was a risk that might very quickly accelerate an increase. And we were also very aware, of course, that National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council in England were quickly dispersing their cultural recovery funds for the wider cultural heritage sectors, and that there, of course, as ever going to be some areas of those funds that archives might fall through the gaps. So we took all of these pieces of evidence and we turned it into a business case that we sent out to Her Majesty's Treasury and we were awarded £500,000 from the Treasury immediately and that was to spend specifically in grants out across the sector for collections at risk as a result of the pandemic. And we had a very, very quick turnaround on that. So the money had to be out of the door by the end of March, I think, gave us the Christmas period really to develop what that fund was going to look like and think about administratively how we were going to distribute it. We are lucky as well in that we have experience of distributing grants from the National Archives. As you know, we have our Archives Revealed Programme. We have a team, Lucy and Beth, who probably some of you have met so far at this conference who are very experienced in doing that. And we were also very fortunate that we had Philip and his team to think through from the collections at risk side where they have a lot of experience. So with that in mind, I'm going to hand you over to Philip who's going to tell you a little bit more detail about the operational management of the fund and some of the evidence we have gathered as a result of it. Let me explain. I'm going to very briefly give an overview of the fund. Some of the statistics from the fund and some of our plans for the future. The fund who was launched just before Christmas and the deadline was in the middle of January, bearing in mind that this was not exactly the best time to launch a fund. We received 85 eligible applications from across the United Kingdom. The fund was over subscribed by a ratio of one to four with approximately two million pounds being sought for a total of 500,000 pounds, which incidentally TNA in fact topped up with an additional 7,000 pounds. The fund was resulted in 25 grants being awarded to a variety of recipients across the United Kingdom. Details of the fund can be found published on our website and you will see the address on the slide. If we can go to slide number three, please. The interesting thing about these statistical aspects is that 23 of the applicants who had archived service accreditation, 62 applicants did not. An interesting statistic that suggests where perhaps the greatest vulnerabilities are. The fund was essentially to assist with any risk faced by a collection and it funded a variety of interventions including emergency storage, dealing with contaminated records and in one case a record, two cases record surveys and vulnerable records. The funds were distributed as follows. We received, well first of all, we received 66 applications from England, two from Northern Ireland, 16 from Scotland and one for Wales. Of those eligible applications, 40 came from non-public sector applicants, 45 came from public sector applicants. Interestingly, the grants were divided between public sector bodies got 15 grants and the non-public sector bodies got 10 grants. If we could go to slide number four, please. I think what is interesting looking at the grants is the way they were distributed. The grants in the end, we had sent 20 went to England, one to Northern Ireland, one to Wales and three to Scotland. And it is interesting that the local authorities received, 12 local authorities received grants, depending on how you define the local authority archive. Business and charities received a fair number of eight. We had no overt business archive grants as such with Alfred Gillett Trust being technically a charity and we had one religious organisation. But what was very clear is that the risk faced by vulnerable collections are very much focused outside the public sector in the initial phase of the pandemic. I think what the pandemic tells us is that the differential impact of the pandemic across the archive sector is there very clearly. Arts, business and charity archives are broadly much more vulnerable than public funded applicant funded collections in the first instance. It may well be with public expenditure plans that that story may shift. There is also the pandemic like and so much else of public and national life. It has highlighted existing inequalities of capacities and resources between different parts of the archive sector, whether by region, organisational type or credited status. And so unsurprisingly, it is the non accredited archives that have been facing the greatest risk. And the other pandemic impact clearly is the pace of change the pace of change has increased with the pandemic. We shift to digital collections and access. If we go to slide number five, please. I think what our experience of this fund has shows that there is a distinct structural need for two types of funding. One is for rescue acquisitions for vulnerable collections, where rapid intervention is required at short notice. And I should be saying a bit more about that later. And the other is perhaps what could be described as resilience funding to mitigate the risks that arise from inadequate premises, workforce skills and wider service capacities, which may have some resonances with the more broader national agenda for levelling up. And above all, there's probably also a need for a better mapping and coordination of other sources of funding. And with this in mind, we in TNA are looking at the evidence we've collected from the applications to the COVID-19, COVID archives and COVID-19 fund. And indeed our autumn and spring surveys of COVID impacts across the archive sector last year to see if there is a case to be made to Treasury for a post pandemic resilience fund. But clearly that is something that may or may not happen in the future. If we go to slide number five, please. However, we do have plans to create something. Right, yes, we can move to slide number six. We are having plans, however, to do something about the immediate need for rescue funds and now with discussions with the British Records Association as a pilot project to set up a rescue acquisitions fund. This fund will be eligible for vulnerable collections across the whole United Kingdom and it's clearly there for emergency funding for such as cleaning, conservation costs, storage and transport costs associated with a collection that's facing an immediate peril. A nice example of a recent example of such an intervention which happened with the assistance of the British Records Association and the Business Archives Council was the movement of the majority of the Arcadia group archives from their London offices up to Leeds where the costs were actually supported by the BAC and the BRA. And that's the sort of intervention we hope to be able to fund. As I say, we hope to launch this fund in autumn 2021. There is quite a lot that we could do with, I think, the data to get a better understanding of where the risks lie. But I think the headline is that clearly collections that have not got the protection of Archives Service Cretation and those particularly vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic and the charities in the business community and indeed some private collections where owners are no longer got that visitor-based income very real and indeed some of the consequences of the pandemic may become more apparent as we move to the post-pandemic phase and we will see which businesses and charities thrive and which ones may falter. That's enough for me. I'm going to introduce you to Tim Crumplin who's going to give you the recipients experience of the fund and how he found it as a fund to go with as a recipient. Thank you very much, Philip. I was intending to share with you a representation of the institution, the collection that I work for or with, our predicament, our application and our intended outputs as a consequence of being applied for the fund and being successful in receiving some money. As an employer of the Afro-Gillet Trust, the Afro-Gillet Trust is a charitable institution that operates from the Grange in Street. It's a great two-listed building in Somerset and the trust itself was established by the Clark family. They established the trust for three main reasons. Firstly, to care for the internationally significant business archive that spans seven generations of a Quaker family shoe firm, C&J Clark, which is known more generically as Clark's or to many people as Clark's shoes and is represented on the high street in most major conurbations. It's also an international shoe business now that trades globally. It's a global name. We also created the trust or the trust has been created to a whole collection to pertain to its host community, which is Street. And Street in Somerset is a model industrial town, which has kind of grown up around the factory pretty much. This particular representation is probably not the best one of a model town, but I wanted to show you the proximity to Glastonbury and hopefully, in so doing, people have a better idea of where that is geographically as Street, with the exception of a shoe manufacturing is a fairly small place. And finally, the trust was established by the Clark family to preserve the collections of the Clark family itself. So as Quakers, as non-conformists, they were very active in educational and social reform, the abolition of slavery, suffrage, temperance, those kinds of activities. And it's those collections that we want to also increase accessibility to and encourage researchers to come and work with. So in terms of our relationship with the TNA, the Africa Get It Trust benefited from a fairly proactive approach. We were very lucky in the early stages of the pandemic. In fact, I think this coincided purely by chance. Our development manager for the Southwest, Tim Powlett, actually communicated with us and said that he would like to visit in January 2020 and that he was going to try and put us into contact with some regional network contacts like Georgie Salcedo and Philippa Turner, and that they wanted to come to the trust in March 2020. So we were all quite excited by this. Obviously, March 2020 didn't happen. We went into lockdown, I think it was March the 16th, and remained in lockdown for most of the subsequent year. The initial communication, I suspect, from Tim had probably been provoked by the fact that the trust had actually advertised for a collections manager at this point. And we were actually beginning to engage as part of that appointment in a project to empty the contents of a 300-foot X shoe components factory that we have in Castle Carey, which we've been using as a remote storage facility, and we've kind of broken up into sections. This storage facility we'd had for about 20 years, and we were using it to accommodate three sections of shoe machinery, footwear collections, but also a fairly substantial business archive. Now, it was fairly poorly suited to storage for heritage purposes, as you can see, it's a single-skin building. It's got a tin roof, and it has a river running beneath it, a stream running beneath it. Sometimes the stream runs through it, but more often than not, it's just beneath. We also have a fragility about the building, certainly in terms of the heating system, but also the very fabric of the building. And this had prompted the trust to start removing material from the building in 2019 in small areas where we had specific problems. So as you can see here, fairly significant water ingress. Work wasn't supposed to begin in a concerted sense though until 2020, and following the appointment of the collections management, this was prevented by lockdowns. We had furlough as well for quite a few staff members, including myself, off and on. So we weren't able to make the progress that we needed to make in 2020. The situation was compounded as well by the terminal failure of the heating system. I actually went up to Castle Carey during lockdown just to check on it, and was fairly alarmed to witness this. I think the thermostat had failed, and the machine was actually glowing red. So we had to intervene and lock off all heating, which prompted the rapid degeneration of the facility during the following winter period, and culminated in a further threat to the collections. So whilst that was happening to the physical collections themselves, we had additional problems too, in that Business Archive had been deposited on loan from Clarks, who acted or act very much as one of the trust's principal stakeholders. They provide income through shares. The dividends that crew off of those helps to finance the trust, but also in payment of an ongoing service charge for services that we provide them with. And I think with Clarks, it raised concerns within the trust, because as a retail company, Clarks struggled. I mean, they'd been forced to close their retail outlets for most of 2020, as most high street businesses had been forced to close their outlets. And there were redundancies and rumours that Clarks would be sold, which raised even further concerns within the trust as to what might happen to the collections. And this characterised most of 2020. The purchase of Clarks by Lion Rock Capital actually only occurred in late December 2020. So throughout that period, as I say, we were quite concerned about the collections, but it was actually latterly in the very sort of late stages of December 2020 that the trust managed to purchase the business collection from Clarks as part of the Lion Rock Capital transaction. So that kind of provides some context and sort of the backdrop to how or when the TNA launched its COVID-19 archives fund. And that seemed to us at least a very sort of pragmatic approach to an unprecedented situation and offered as much needed support at a time when we most needed it. I think it targeted short notice work, and it was obviously a crisis fund, and it was kind of set up very much as a crisis fund, which suited our situation. And it wasn't limited by what we could ask for or what the money might be spent upon, but it was very much a salvage fund as far as we could see. And we'd now found ourselves very much in a salvage situation where we kind of planned a very measured approach to salvaging this collection in 2019-2020. We were now in a situation where we had to move the collection quite quickly. As Philip has also said, the eligibility criteria was very good for us because it wasn't explicitly dependent upon accreditation, and it gave us an opportunity to apply as an institutional archive with, you know, it was connected to a record-creating body. I think also, it was tailored, as as Philip has said, very much towards the charity and their private records at risk in the public domain area, which to my mind was acknowledgement of the threat that was being faced by smaller institutions such as ourselves. Now, as an applicant to the fund, I found that the eligibility criteria was both well-defined and well-executed. The amount of money available was well-suited, too, in that it wasn't a huge amount of money, but it wasn't a small amount of money either, so it actually made it very flexible, very kind of fluid and very fast to kind of enact which was exactly what we needed at the time. The application process, while simple, was also well-supported. So as I've mentioned, Tim Powell, he was very good. He actually initiated correspondence with me when the fund was launched. We'd actually considered going for it, and we thought we probably would, but I think him communicated with me and saying that I'm aware of the problems that you're encountering, and I suspect this fund would actually be very, very useful to you, was very good for me because as a small institution, we've got a very small collections team. We're very kind of practically focused. Bidwriting, fundwriting isn't something that anybody has kind of within their job description, really. But in being able to go to my line manager and sort of saying that we'd also been encouraged to apply by TNA, I think that gave me much needed kind of support in being able to convince her that it was time well spent. I think she would have supported it anyway, but it certainly didn't obstruct the issue. And as well, Philip, as head of standards and improvement, was very good. I mean, I had a 30-minute pre-application meeting where they basically allowed me to pour my heart out for 10 minutes and tell them of my situation and then spent 20 minutes very sensibly, like discussing my eligibility, how I might frame an application and when I had to have applied by, which for me was an invaluable sort of 30 minutes. It wasn't limited to what I might apply for either and it accommodated all the practicalities of saving my collection, which was very good. I found the process of applications of praise were also very streamlined. So by the time we'd actually submitted the application, I think we only had to wait for it, something like a month, six weeks, to actually know whether we'd been successful in our application. And there was also a very rapid authorization of funds. Philip kind of prompted me on criticisms and I don't really have a great many. I think the only thing I could come up with was the accountability element and whether that might be developed either going through the project or at the end of the project. But having said that, I think I've had such effective assistance from my TNA regional representative and they've already said that they would like to visit as soon as conditions, circumstances permit. The likelihood is that overarching level of, I sort of call it surveillance will happen anyway. So that was also very good. Moving on to the application itself and what we applied for, as the trust we applied for funding to purchase to decommissioned or refrigerated insulated 40-foot shipping containers. And we wanted to locate these in the grounds of the Grange and Streets so that we could provide a facility that we could transfer the archive collections from Castle Carry to and process them ready for a shift into the archive. I mean, we kind of wanted to use shipping containers specifically because we realized that we could install them quickly to remove the collection from the poor environment at Castle Carry as quickly as possible. And this was kind of, as I say, now is the priority, it's just getting the material out of the environment it's in and trying to put it into more stable conditions where we can quarantine and repackage the collection in a more controlled environment. We also wanted to try and improve accessibility with the greater versatility on our main site where we can actually enact social distancing and we've got additional amenities to allow staff and volunteers as well importantly to come to return safely back to site. We can actually increase the number of people on the project and we can also accelerate its progress as a consequence. And we can also position these storage containers close or join them to our purpose-built archive. So actually that processing and that transition into the archive should be that much easier. But we also wanted to incorporate some of the sustainability into our project too. So we were keen to relocate the collection, the business collection to streets so that it would aid outreach. We wanted to implement a predefined business hierarchy so that we could make the collection more accessible and start to catalog it or improve the cataloging of the collection to make it more accessible. We also want to develop the trust profile and make the collection more accessible to academia. That was one of the big pushes really. These collections, a lot of it hasn't been shared with the general public either the family collections or the business collection. And this is one of our kind of key criteria. That's what we wanted to contribute to the sector. So the use of shipping containers, particularly in disaster areas and as a kind of a disaster response. And when I was actually formulating my application, I'd seen very sort of scant research really. So there's a little bit by Ted Ling, which is he's produced a really good article, probably nearly 20 years old now. But with the exception of that, the only thing I came across was a research poster that had been used at a conference by Fuentes and Griswold. And we really wanted to be able to contribute to that understanding of the use of our storage containers in the storage of heritage collections and contribute to the sector by doing so. And we've also considered ways that the shipping containers might be repurposed for outreach activities or exhibitions moving into the future. So those were the reasons why we applied for the money. And I've also tried to outline how we're going to use the money. I think as conclusions, it's been a good introduction to us in terms of funding applications for a fledgling organization. We haven't really applied for money in the past, but I think we see this now as a launchpad to be able to actually start to fashion bids moving forward and funding applications. I think as well, it allows us to, it's a precursor to applications for more established opportunities like archives revealed, which is something that we've already touched upon this morning. I think it's probably raised our institutional confidence as well. And it's certainly made us start to consider the prospect of beginning the process of accreditation as an organization, which was something that we've always considered. But I think now it's something that we will probably push on with. And I think as well, finally, the last thing, I think is acknowledgement of the assistance that was given us to us by TNA and the ongoing assistance that they provide in terms of the provision of advice and training for funding applications. And I think that's something that's obviously been identified as something that's quite important, particularly for smaller or fledgling trusts or heritage organizations with archives. But yeah, that's it from me and I'm assuming we'll go back to Emma. Thank you. Absolutely brilliant, Tim. Thank you so much. It was really, really helpful to get that very kind of detailed walkthrough and you touched on so many issues that I think have been brought around by this fund and the experience that we've all had as applicants and as the lead organization in delivering it. So there's an awful lot of ways in which this conversation could go, I think. I would just like to pick up on something that you said and that I think Philip might want to just say a couple of words on, which is about how we kind of measure the impact. That's obviously going to be really very important in helping us build the case for further funding going forward is what actual impact have these current projects had and how we work with you going forward to evaluate and show what that looks like. And I know Philip has got a kind of a process in mind for doing that. But also just to say one of the other things that that's brought out as you said very strongly in your presentation is that you might not have been the type of organization we would usually have worked with and some of the experiences you've had of kind of led you to think quite differently about applying for accreditation and applying for funding and so on in the future. And that's something else that's really positive and I think a real learning experience for us at the National Archives as well in terms of thinking about the types of organizations that we traditionally work with and how this experience might change that too. So sorry, Philip, I don't know if you wanted to add anything there. Yes, just to say that we do have an evaluation plan and this will be news for the grantees but we are going to hold a webinar in the next month with we'll invite all the grantees to attend where we'll explain what we hope to do. We're going to send out a monitoring form and then we're going to hold interviews with each of the grantees to go through the form with them. And on that basis, we will probably visit a select number of the accreditation. This is very important because our credibility with our auditors, more importantly with the government, means it's important that we are seen to be spending public money effectively and in monitoring the impacts. And this will also feed into the evidence base for making the case for more funding in the future. And there's also the possibilities for one or two case studies perhaps to become more accessible with the agreement of those grantees. And they are very varied. We are talking from Will Martin Trust in Cornwall right up to the Ballast Trust in Scotland as well. So we are talking a wide range. So we have very much on the case and there'll be further developments in the next two days. Fantastic, thank you very much. Okay, so I'm going to turn to the questions in the Q&A. Please keep them coming in. We do have a little bit of time. And as I say, there are an awful lot of kind of things and ways in which this conversation could go. Absolutely brilliant question from Mary McKenzie who says, given Philip's point about non-accredited archive services and collections being more at risk, can you tell us what support is available to help services become accredited? And are there any thoughts on funding for this purpose? So I do think that's a great question. So I do think that's an absolutely great question because obviously accreditation is at the core of so much of what we do. And we are absolutely clear from the start that we don't want to disadvantage any organisations who are not in a position to go for accreditation. I think that's why it's so important and interesting to hear Tim's point about now kind of that Alfred Gillett Trust will be thinking much more in those terms and about going for that. I think accreditation as a process on the one hand is an awful lot of work but on the other hand it's really about trying to see that work as part of a process that could take as long as it takes in many ways and is a way in which the organisation can really help itself by putting in place some of those policies and practices that feed into the final accreditation application. So I think we're trying as an accreditation committee to really kind of make those points at the moment. We've been really aware that there's also a discrepancy across regions as well, across Scotland and Wales and that kind of national level as well. And even those organisations who are thinking about accreditation who are perhaps already accredited, even those organisations are wondering how they can resource this process. So it's a very, very live conversation at the level of the committee. And certainly there's a high level of awareness that there are organisations who will not feel that they are in a position to apply. And I think that it's one of the things that we want to do and one of the things we've talked about a lot is this point about changing the way we think about accreditation in many ways. And I think that aligns quite closely with the Arts Council and the approach they're taking from museums accreditation process as well, which is really about using this as a process to get everything in place over time, which will be a huge help to your organisation in many, many ways. I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add to that, Philip. Well, obviously our regional team are there to help, as Tim says, our regional teams are very active agents in encouraging accreditation and supporting people through accreditation. And maybe one possible aspect of any resilience funding that we might be put together maybe is some financial support in helping people move towards accreditation. It's very encouraging the experience of the fund is making people feel that accreditation is useful because it is the ultimate risk mitigation measure available. If you're accredited to Archive, you've got some protection by being a point to a framework that makes it harder for your employer or organisation to just ignore the archive or disinvest from it. So it's extremely important that we try and support accreditation, particularly as it reaches a mature stage of its development because it's now about eight years old and it has all the challenges of digital as well to look forward to. Yeah, that's true. Of course, it's a constantly moving process and you're absolutely right. The regions team at National Archives are amazingly helpful, a huge source of support. And I also want to say by way of a shout out and a thanks to Philip as well that he has been extraordinary in the process of this fund. At one point, I think you had at least 60 conversations with organisations trying to help them. I had over 100 meetings. So it's an amazing thing. Thank you. Okay, so the next question. This one is for you, Tim, I think, really. Did the Alfred Gillett Trust have any problems getting quotations for goods and services they wanted to include in the bid, given that suppliers were also experiencing disruption? Well, we basically went out to... I mean, what we do as part of the process anyway would be to get three quotes, I'm assuming, for all of the work that we wanted. But one of the things is the change of cost, I think, of things currently. So I remember one of our trustees smiling at me and saying, well, you've done really well there because you've asked for storage containers, which at the moment, everybody wants storage containers or they're stuck in docks. So the price of those is changeable. I mean, I had to kind of estimate a storage container in the end because the storage container suppliers were effectively saying, we'll only give you three days. I think it was even less than that, actually, for a quote. You know, it wouldn't stand for any longer than that because prices were so fluid. And then obviously we've had price changes with raw materials, with builders, with our contractors, groundsmen. So yeah, there were issues. It wasn't so much a problem. I mean, the storage container quotations were quite easy to get because obviously they were distance, but usually with their groundwork, it was a case of needing to get somebody on site to assess the site, which was hard because it was a closed facility. So luckily, most of the people with photographs, we were able to get individuals to give us quotes. So that was quite lucky. They could quote on site pretty much. I mean, they've been on site since just to verify that they can do what they've promised to do within the realms of what they propose to charge. But yeah, I mean, it has been a bit fluid. And certainly in terms of what we asked for and what we will now have to spend, that has changed to some degree, but it's kind of absorbable. I think that was one of my principal concerns, I think, when I applied just how much prices have changed. I think storage containers had changed, say for example, 10% to 15% within the space of actually putting the request in and then actually going back to pay for a storage container. So yeah, the point, yeah, it was a very good question, very stupid question and it has been a problem. Thank you. And we certainly had feedback from other applicants as well. In some cases, they couldn't even get quotes. So we were aware as part of the process that that was an issue and tried to be flexible accordingly, I think. Okay, did you want to add anything, Philip? If you did, you've probably got about a minute. Well, let me just say this has been enormously much a team effort, not just within TNA, but right across the sector. And it has been a strong learning curve and we very much want to build for the future on this so that we don't just leave it as a one-off. So hopefully you'll be hearing more about our collections of risk work in the years to come. No, absolutely, it's all ongoing, very live, very much on our radar, very much a concern and I agree it's been an absolutely great experience in terms of working with new organisations, hearing from Tim today really kind of does underline how this fund has actually been able to be so supportive in many other ways than just actually giving money for a particular bit of intervention work. So I think that's been a really important thing to draw out from this conversation and thank you very much.


Welcome back to Tennis Talk, my name's Cam Williams, and the WTA finals have just finished, meaning that the WTA season has come to an end. It is officially the end of the season, and we won't be back until late December, early January, for the WTA, which means the rankings are finalised. We have a final ranking for the year. Let's go have a look at the rankings. Here are the rankings for the WTA at the end of this season. Shriyantek, she stayed at number one for pretty much the whole year, once Barty retired. At number two, Kugula comes in at three, but Goff dropped down three spots from last week, down to number seven, making way for Garcia, who went up to number four. Sabalinga went up two spots at number five, and pushed down Sakurai to number six. So the changes due to the WTA finals really affecting the middle of the rankings. Kazakina, she came in at number eight, Kudumit over at nine, and Samona Heller rounds out the top ten for this year. And it's interesting because the only players that actually were in the top ten this time last year were Shriyantek, Jabur, Sakurai, and Sabalinga. So six players that we didn't have in the rankings this time last year have made it into the rankings this year. And more importantly, I guess, those players that were in the rankings this time last year completely out of the top ten. Some have gone down outside the top 50. So there you have it. They are the rankings for the year. That's the end of the WTA rankings for the year. You're seeing these surprises from maybe this time last year. Of course, this time last year Barty was world number one. Shriyantek was number nine this time last year, and Jabur number ten. So they've gone up a lot. And as I mentioned, a lot of players have dropped out of the top ten, making way for new players to get into the top ten. Players like Goff, Pagula, Kazakina, getting into the top ten for the first time. Again, let me know down in the comments below any big shocks for you on the rankings this year or is it pretty much exactly how you would expect the top ten to look like at the end of the season. The WTA finals ends the season, and they are the rankings for the year.


So, I'm going to go ahead and open the meeting. We've got a quorum here. It is 706. Now, I was going to revive the agenda in person, but I thought it might be helpful for you all to have a heads up. And so I added the December 8 minutes, because in the past, we have not kept our annual meeting only looking at annual meeting minutes. Although we should, but we haven't. We've combined it with regular meetings. So, indeed, I did distribute the December 20, 2021 minutes, but I would like to add the December 8 minutes. And also, at least on the agenda, or maybe I shouldn't add the disillusionment. That would take care of that. We don't have enough people to talk about it. And Justin, now do you have a complaint that I should add under other business? I suppose it depends. So, Mr. Whitaker has informed me today, and maybe he can speak to return public comment that he thinks that the, that the meeting was inappropriate improperly posted. As such, we can't move forward. Maybe let's wait until public comment. I don't know if this individual labeled advocate is Mr. Whitaker. He can make his point. You know, I don't, I'm not interested in adding it, but as Steven is. Well, if he sent you something and writing then it's a complaint we have to deal with. He did not. Oh, okay. Okay. This, this was just a conversation that I had with Mr. Whitaker this afternoon regarding, but then hold on. Steve answered my, but hold on one second. Steve answered my email today, 453, so let me just see if it's actually complaint. And Steve is voicing his complaints in this response to my, or to your email. I don't know. I mean, you tell me, Donna, do you see his response at 453 to your meeting agenda? Well, yes, because otherwise it's, it would be good to handle it now I think. Yeah, let's do it. Let's go for it. I would move that other business. Okay. It's not other business. It's questioning whether you have the ability to have any meeting at all right now because this meeting wasn't properly warned. Stephen, you have not been acknowledged. I cannot even see you on my screen. So you do not have the floor. I'm not in the meeting, Justin. So I think it makes, yeah, I mean, I don't know, Donna, you know a lot more about procedure than me. I do understand Steve's point that if like that, that his point is that the meeting can't open. I suppose the counterpoint is you can't deal with a complaint unless the meeting is open. Yeah, no, no, because we can still do the meeting and then if indeed were the board to take the complaint and they decide it's invalid. Then it's invalid. If they decided it's valid, then they can ultimately decide to vote it at the next meeting to approve it. So to me that's why it goes under other business. Yeah, it's fine with me. So if there's any other discussion on the agenda by the board members, the agenda is approved as adjusted. Public comments of something that's not on the agenda. Stephen you have something you want to say. Well, I just got. Oh, Kim. Sorry. My sound system was not working. I finally got it. Cooked up. I didn't quite understand was the meeting properly warned or wasn't. Well, as far as I'm concerned, it was it started in November. Everything was posted. Everything was published in the paper as it was supposed to be. So I don't know that's what the charter requires. And that's what happened. Was the and I announced it at all the meetings of the board in November and December as well as the two city meetings. Well, was there any way for the public to know how to get. Yes, I sent an address, not a phone number because our phone number doesn't work very well or Google number. What was the we get them an address to write for any comments was the zoom. The zoom is on all the agendas reoccurring. Yes. But as I understand the agenda wasn't published for the zoom until about four o'clock. Well, the website didn't get it published. But that's just one step in the process. So again, Kim, if you want to talk about that, that's under other business. Well, I'm just trying to figure out where we are tonight. Well, where, where, where I feel we are is that we went through all the steps. I missed one on the website. And it's also true that I put Thursday instead of Monday, but it doesn't make it invalid. But Donna also, there's no requirement in the charter whatsoever that anything needs to be posted on the website. That's right. But I mean that's if we're talking about charter requirements. It's just meeting law says website. I mean, in good faith effort, the intention was and that's my dropping the ball between you and me, but that's not insurmountable. So the board seems that's a valid. Yeah, we can decide later. Yeah. And then the board can decide if it is then what steps to take, or they can say it's not a valid thing. Well, the question is, is it a valid meeting. Okay, but let's just deal with that now Kim since you'd like to do that now. So, Stephen you want to state your complaint. I think you have touched on most of it I believe that the warnings that were printed in the newspaper assured the interested public that the link and the agenda would be posted on the website a week prior to the meeting. That just didn't happen. It happened that this afternoon, an agenda first put up as a minute minute year old minutes. And then finally when the agenda was put up, it referenced both Thursday and a Monday. And so, and it referenced an annual report from last year which still isn't up on the website. So you have bundled this beyond recognition. Okay, so I, as I stated I don't agree with that. I don't think it's anything as insurmountable. It's a matter that indeed there is human error there but there was lots of other avenues for the public to access this information and it was early. I got it out early because I knew how hard December was going to be in my life to run around and repost everything. So it got all the physical posting they got all the ads in the newspaper. I went to the library, I went to the library today and I saw an agenda that's the reference to meeting coming up on Thursday, and I had a library staff confirm that meeting isn't until Thursday. So, December 19. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I got the wrong date. But it means that the meeting is not legally warned and you cannot conduct a public meeting. Okay, that's how you feel about it. I feel like the meeting law allows for human error and the board can adjust for that. It's this decision that the board want to adjust for it. Kim obviously doesn't. Well, I don't know about that, but how many members of the public are there. There's only Stephen. Come on, let's face it. But isn't that I don't want to get it out there. It was put out there Kim. It was physically posted. It was advertised. Anyone interested can go on the website and get our names. When I look at the participants, all I see is David Delcore and Orca. There's no other members of the public. Well, Dave's here with his paper. So he found this and Stephen. Yeah. Okay. Well, I just want to make a record. Apparently, nobody other than those two people saw the meeting. But you're determined to proceed. I'm asking the board. If the board does not want to proceed, then we won't. We should just do it. Justin, sorry, didn't see your hand. I don't think that these are fatal errors in any way. I can only speak from my experience and like court proceedings and with complaints. This is what I would call a ministerial error. So when they're like small, tiny errors that can be very easily changed. Like if you named, for example, the wrong complainant on a criminal complaint, it can very easily be adjusted. At least this is my experience right up until the time trial. Because everybody knows what you're talking about. And so it's really about spirits and not about technicality in this particular instance. In December, I don't think the Thursday versus Monday thing. I don't think it's particularly close. It's not a close call at all. I don't think that's remotely fatal to this meeting being legitimate. The date was correct. If anyone needed to ask questions about it, they could have asked what the right one was these things happen all the time in all sorts of context so I don't think that was even close. On this side, it's particularly close to be honest. This has been a recurring zoom meeting call. It was the agenda was eventually posted posted today like three or four o'clock which means people had many hours of notice to click through be one thing if the meeting had started without a link available, although even then given that it's a zoom recurring zoom link. Maybe it would have been okay but probably not. I mean, that my opinion and I've already told Steven this I don't think these are legitimate gripes I don't think well they're legitimate gripes. I don't think they impact our go to the habit annual meeting whatsoever. And I, again, I do not think it's a post call. Doug, how do you feel about it. As far as going ahead and having the meeting that it's valid, even though it wasn't perfectly posted. Let's move ahead. Okay, now we have a complaint so we really need to have a motion that indeed they don't feel the complaint is valid. Or you can say that it was an inadvertent error, and that we will take more care with dates and getting things post posted timely. So we need all four of us to agree, because it has to four is a quorum, Justin your hands up, you have more to say yeah I would, I would move to that the complaint, although understandable is not fatal to the legitimacy of the meeting at all and that we can move forward. I suppose I would move to reject the complaint, although I find that language a bit harsh. You say you just disagree with it how about that. Sure. At the board finds the complaint did not be a valid reason to not move forward the annual meeting. Can I have a second on that. A second. Second. Okay. Any more discussion about the complaint. Yes, I have my hand. All right.  Okay. Well, can we can we get an opinion. What I'm concerned about is this is if, if the complaint. If it's a violation of state law. That's a little different from the court proceeding that Justin has. And I don't think we have a lot of important business to do tonight. And, but what we could do is maybe ask. It sounds like we, we got to get a legal opinion about some other things. Actually, it doesn't take a legal opinion. We've already gotten a legal opinion in the past about open meeting law. And when there is an invert error, the board can say. That either that they're going to correct things in the future. Or that indeed they feel the complaint is not a valid impact on the proceedings. Where I was going with this is. Since we could have a reconsideration. Legal says it's just not. Valid. I mean, I don't think we have a lot of important business to do tonight. So I'm reluctant to hold it up. But I would like, I would like to. If we're going to have to have a motion to reconsideration, I'd like to have a basis for it. A legal basis. I'm sorry, a motion for reconsideration of what? Well, at our next meeting. Well, this is our meeting. So indeed, if we have another annual meeting, you have three weeks of advertising posting in the paper. You have three locations in both cities that have to be posted. So many weeks ahead. So if this is not a valid annual meeting, then you do have a lot of work to do. And I'm hearing everyone but you feeling that. Again, that the complaint is not valid to the proceeding or the spirit of the intention. I don't know if it's valid. I wish somebody. Okay. I'm just going to call a vote and you can vote how you wish. Anyone else want to say something besides Kim. All right. All in. I lost Justin visually. So speak up all in favor of. Passing the motion by Justin second second by dub that the complaint was not valid to the proceeding. A hand I. Motion was to reject a complaint. Yes. I'm sorry. He felt the wording I have Justin. You may have written it down differently. Is that the complaint was not valid to the proceedings. I would understand him that I'm doing so because. If there's a legal opinion that says it is invalid. I'll move to reconsider. Okay. So you're voting no. No. I can't. I need a yes or no. I'm sorry. I voted to support the motion. Okay. So that's unanimous. Then you're forfeiting your right to motion to reconsider. Okay. Thank you, Kim. We have four votes.  So it's not very fair.  No problem. I can't. Okay. The next thing is. We already approved the minutes of the annual meeting that happened last year. I did include them so people can see the history. So those do not have to be approved. The minutes of December 8th were also attached. Any comments about the minutes or motion to accept them. I have some comments. Kim, was that a motion to accept? No, I do. You asked for comments. Well, okay. Let's have a motion first. Then we can have comments. I'm sorry. Doug. Donna, shouldn't we have comments about the before the motion? Just in case they need to. The board has to decide something is. I know we tend to do it backwards, but. Okay. If indeed the board should have a motion on the table to decide something's worth talking about, but I don't care. We can have comments. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm. Usually you have a motion, then you have amendments. Go ahead, Kim. Well, but I wish the minutes would. Reflect. Is that. Again, I wrote my real objection to the. To the document request. And I wish they would. Minutes would reflect that. That would reflect that. Okay. Okay. So within the December eight minutes. You want a statement. I think you did that last month too. You want a statement added to look to the website for Kim's additional comments. The minutes are all about motions, Kim. Motions. We accept this. Don't accept this. But there's also. I don't know what it's supposed to be, but I just wish there was a reference to the website. I would move. Donna, I would move to adopt Kim's amendment. I had to realize quite a bit. You have. More than you should have in minutes. I did not. Take it easy. Take it easy, chair. No, you did really well. But you put a lot in there. You were, I thought you were very good and. And expand and summarizing, but substantially put a lot in there people's comments. No, I thought you were pretty. I would move to, I would move to amend the minutes to, to accept Kim's suggestion that we just add a sentence saying. Kim's entire objection is, is can be found posted on the website. So what Kim's white paper, we're going to. I don't remember him submitting something to that meeting. I think it is. If it's not, I can definitely post it. It's posted now. I looked it up. Oh, there it is. Public record request appeal re Kim Cheney. Yeah. I posted it. So it's there. So just make a reference. Yeah. I can do that really easily. I would move that we do that. You want to make him. Yes. Okay. Right now it's just one of the amendments is to add that about Kim statement. Any other amendments to the minutes. Then I would entertain a motion to accept the minutes with that one addition. I would so move. Okay. Kim or Doug second. I'll second. I don't know what happened. Okay. All in favor. Raise your hand. Okay. Fine. Passes to Doug vote. Yes, he did. He raised his hand. Okay. Okay. So next is review with the proposed budget. So I distribute that with things taken out. So that 2425 or zeroed out. And current FY year showed a potential of. 27,000 dollars going to. Back to the cities. I don't know if you're ready for comments, but. Sure. Go ahead, Kim. I don't think we should vote to. I think the voting the money to. Voting the money back to the city is a separate. Issue. And. There was a motion to dissolve the corporation. Which I think we're going to take up. In January when Justin prepares a plan. And that. Seems to me we should decide that before. Deciding what to do with the money. And there was also. A recommendation by the league that we get. Independent. Legal advice that had to do this properly. And there may be some expense involved in that. So. I would accept the budget except not the recommendation. The money be dispersed back to the city at this point. Well, there was sort of a straw vote about the 25,000 requested. A general support, not a specific vote. So. I only had $2,000 left at that point. So I just put the whole 27. Going back to either to the cities. Or to support the impact study, but I can take that out and just leave it at the 25. Well. My preference. If we're not going to make any decision at this meeting, that was sort of the general decision at the last meeting. But it wasn't. I think that's a reasonable position. Especially given that we only have four of the six members here. And it's such a consequential. Decision. All right. But then so the existing proposed budget. Goes back to that. What it was before December 8th meeting. We have to have something that's a draft on our website that says, this is the budget we're considering. It's always being reconsidered and reconsidered until we send it to the city for the ballot sometime prior to January 26th. We've already had this is my fifth draft. Well, we can. I just want to be clear that you're going back to that. That was approved before. December 8th. Okay. I want to speak on this Donna. Well, you're not going to chance. Doug. Flip the thing muted. Okay, Doug. You should be able to talk now. I don't want to talk now. Oh. No comment on the budget. Okay. All right. So then we'll just go back to that. The fifth draft. Instead of the sixth. Okay. Fine. I'm still waiting to talk on the budget. Yes, you are. Justin, do you have anything, I think you said, you thought we shouldn't vote on it now shouldn't change it. So that means the draft. Okay. Steven. Yeah, I want to point out that in the meeting two meetings ago, where you kept muting me every time I tried to talk. And then you failed to open the public hearing on the budget. So I was denied the opportunity. You have not had a public hearing on this budget. And it's just par for the course. Of mangling this whole process. So. I intend to challenge it. I need to know who the service of process agent is to file a legal action. And you need to budget some legal fees. Okay. Anything else? You got a little more time on your two minutes. Well, I get more than two minutes when I need it. I'll take that up in court too, but I need to know who your service of process is Donna. Cause I'm suing you and the CV PSA. And I need to know who to serve the papers on. Well, I guess you'll end up having to serve it to the chair. That's me right now. Congratulations. Okay. Can I get a restakement of what the motion is? There. There is no motion really. There's a general consensus. To leave the budget back where it was before the December 8th discussion. Which means what? It's draft five right now. I don't have it buzzing in my head. But I guess you'll end up having to serve it to the chair. That's me right now. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And now I don't have it buzzing in my head. With absolute security. But if you look. Oops. Where'd it go? Here it is. That. Budget had. I think 20 as a consultant and project manager. Not thinking about the 25 for. 25. And that was about the only difference. It had no money coming from the cities. Or 23. 25. 24, 25. It either had 30 or 50. Again, the draft I have here. Unfortunately doesn't have a heading. Whether this was a fifth or fourth. I brought this the sixth, which I didn't keep all the different versions, but I'll go back to it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. As I understand it, we're not bound. No, we have, we have several. We have at least one meeting and we can always create more meetings between. Now. And the 26th of January when it has to be finalized. The present motion is. A budget of zero for the. In March of. Well, before we went to zero from the cities, but now it's zero. And then after December 8th, we went to zero. So zero. And then in the out years, it's more. I want to support. I want to support zero and. And 23. I don't know what the proper way to do that. Well, then that's the December 8th budget was zero. The previous one had 30,000. And. And the 25, whatever's left. We're not deciding what to do with that until another meeting. Okay. So if I understand you, you would actually like to make a motion. And I thought we weren't going to do that, that we didn't feel we had, you know, our full six members with something so important as our budget. But you can make a motion Kim and you can see if it's supported. I'm just. Just trying to clear my mind when you were advocating before that this was not the meeting to make that decision on. Well, I don't know, we have a quorum, I guess. We do have a quorum. It's a matter of what I think Justin and I mentioned earlier, good faith effort. Whether we would prefer to have all six board members present to make that decision. But you can make a motion and see if it's supported, sir. No, let's see if anybody makes a motion. I don't think anyone, but you are as interested. So if you're going to make a motion or not. Well, there's no motion to approve any budget that I've heard. Okay. Fine. I'm going to go ahead then and move to the next item, which is the ballot warning. I'm going to go ahead and move to the next item, which is the ballot warning. For the two at large board members, they're just a, it's a blank. You don't have any names to insert, but we do publish that there are two at large board members. And if someone gets more than 30 right ends, then they can compete to who has the highest to fill those two slots. I did bring up. I can read you the actual warning. If people, it's the same one we've always had. We've had a public vote of three at large board members. We're going to be able to get the ballot for the first day. We'll be able to get the ballot for the first day. So we are warned to meet at their central polling places on the first of March, 2023 from seven AM to seven PM. At the same time in place and during the same voting hours, the members, the voting, the voters of the members of the center of Vermont public safety authority will meet for the purpose of electing by a stray and value at the following. Two at large board members to serve a term of three years. today, December 19th, 2022. And if not, then it would be January 12th. In fact, that's it. Your hands up. Yeah, I'd move to accept the ballot that's written. OK, the warning, OK, for the at-large. Thank you. Second to that. Can I voice a problem with that? Well, just a minute. Doug is seconding. OK, now discussion. Yes, Kim. Well, one of those would be to fill the unexpired term of householder, so it wouldn't be for three years. Oh, you're right. OK, the wording should be changed. Yes, OK. And the other would be here. So one is for, he won't have two years left. He'll only have one year left. And the other one is for three year. Right. OK. With that amendment to the motion acceptable to Justin and Doug. Yes. I forget that they're not all the same. It's my error. OK. Thank you. All in favor of the modified to verify that one is a three year, one is a one year. I'll say aye. Aye. OK. Passes unanimously. Thank you. So on the other business, we're not going to do the disillusion. And we've already dealt with the complaint. Any other business to come before this body? If not, then the next meeting is, oh, Doug. Yeah, that mute thing. Considering it is the season, I would like to extend to everybody my best wishes for a happy holiday season. Well, thank you, Doug. Thanks, Doug. Same. Yes, happy holidays, everyone. Reciprocal, thank you all. All right, so then our next meeting is January 12th, Thursday, 7 p.m. Thank you all for attending. I appreciate you taking the time. Good night. I'd like to figure out what you're going to do about the missing no public hearing on the budget. Good night. If it's a complaint, Steven sent it to me. We already did that. Hello and good morning. The board already acted on that when Steven wasn't talking to us. That was way back in November. You can check the minutes. We already talked about that. And it's just as valid, even though I didn't say the words, there was a discussion. And we talked about that at that meeting. It's in minutes. I'd also like to request that Doug put his comments in writing regarding that he made at the meeting two meetings prior, which we're not going to do that. No, no, sorry. I was denied access in a timely manner to the recording. So I couldn't transcribe it to benefit of city council. So it's important that Doug be on the record for what he said at the meeting. I know you don't want it to be heard, Donna, but that's... No, we're not recording. I thought I gave a pretty fair... I thought I gave a pretty fair synopsis of Doug's statement at city council meeting. Oh, yeah. But even that, the minutes are not there to quote everybody. They're not their purpose. And that we have recordings. That's an additional aspect, but no, I'm not asking someone to write up their comments for a past meeting. Oh, so not recording. That's no problem. Excuse me, Kim. Are they recording? Are they recording? Is there a record? Yes, there's a record. I've been asking for it for a week or two now, and I still don't have it. I'm sorry. The one we got was just gotten last week, and I believe Justin's already responded to you. No, he's not produced the record, and I need an info for them. Well, you have to tell him how you want to pay for it, Steven. I saw his email. Did I not, Justin? Wasn't there not an email? Oh, yeah, I did. I asked if you still wanted that, the hearing, and if you were requesting a waiver of the costs, just respond to me, Steven, and figure it out. Also keep in mind that EVPSA as discussed last year during the public records request discussion is not open Monday to Friday, nine to five for public records request. And so public records requests are only filled during very limited hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays due to lack of staffing. So we're gonna do our best, but yeah, that's what we do. That's actually the law right there. That's, you know, the... No, sorry, no, the town clerks, lots of offices have limited hours. It's totally part of the open meeting law. And likewise with no staff, no office. We've set them aside. We did them part of our organizing meeting. That's done. Out of order, Steven. All right, I try to close this meeting. Now I'm officially closing it at 742.


Hello, there. Very quick note before the video starts proper. This was supposed to be online a week ago, and unfortunately, life just got in the way of me finishing it until now. Very recently, the Nintendo Switch emulator that I speak about in this video, SUYU, has been hit by a DMCA takedown from Nintendo, and the developers behind it are currently sourcing alternative hosting solutions. I don't think that this negates the premise of the video. If anything, I think it supports my argument that emulation enthusiasts are not going to be deterred just because Nintendo leans on them quite hard. With that said, here's the video I hope you enjoy. Emulation is not going away just yet, but the community has been given a bit of a scare. Despite not making it to court, Nintendo's lawsuit against Tropic Haze's Yuzu emulator has proven to be a turning point for video game emulation. Following legal advice, Tropic Haze opted to settle out of court, agreeing to pay Nintendo $2.4 million, and cease all work on both Yuzu and the 3DS emulator Citra. Shortly thereafter, developer David Berra pulled his Game Boy emulator, Pizza Emulator, from the Google Play app store, citing a desire to, quote, prioritize his family over the development of his apps. In the wake of such a large settlement for the Nintendo, there is no doubt that emulator developers across the Internet are considering their positions, and whether their projects are worth the potential monumental danger that comes from angering the House of Mario. That said, I'm firmly of the opinion that game emulation, even Nintendo emulation, is here to stay. Indeed, even in the wake of Yuzu's devastating settlement, a group of emulation enthusiasts are already working on a spiritual successor that builds on Yuzu's code, cheekily named SUYU. There are two big factors to consider here. One, what the law actually says, because emulation in certain circumstances is actually perfectly legal, and Nintendo knows this, and is trying very hard not to rock the boat on that front. Two, quite aside from the laws of any given country, we need to factor in human behavior, which even at the best of times is more than a little messy. It's crucially important to understand that the Yuzu settlement has actually absolutely nothing to do with emulation. No, really. In the phrasing of the initial lawsuit, which I covered in a previous video, Nintendo spends a lot of time waffling about how evil emulators are, but the issue at the heart of the lawsuit was actually all to do with the circumventing of Nintendo Switch's security measures. The legal challenge wasn't really about the emulator at all, but rather the duplication of Nintendo's unique prod keys that are designed to prevent piracy. In a fascinating article from Ars Technica, many players within the wider emulation community weigh in on why basically they think that Yuzu actually just got sloppy by not shutting down the sharing of these keys, and even worse providing clear instructions on how users can extract keys themselves. According to one anonymous developer, I think Yuzu definitely crossed some line when they started explaining how to actually pirate games. Developer Lai Koda explains further, saying, I can assure you experienced emulator developers are very aware of copyright issues. I've personally always maintained strict rules about how I deal with copyrighted content in my project, and most other people I know from the emulation scene do the same thing. I've personally experienced how strict most emulator communities' Discord servers' forums are regarding copyright and piracy, so it's really weird to me that Yuzu devs wouldn't be like that. With my own experience of emulators, I've personally seen the same thing. Emulators exist and have a wide variety of purposes. If you have troubleshooting concerns, there are plenty of Discords and forums and subreddits full of people who are willing to help you. But if you ask where to get ROMs or ISOs or actual copies of games, your questions will be deleted and you risk being banned. This is because, as Lai Koda points out, emulation communities know the rules. Emulation is legal. Piracy is not. It's a subtle distinction in some cases depending on your use, but it's a line that Nintendo does not want to push. There are three major lawsuits that come up when we discuss the legality of emulators. Sega v. Accolade, in 1991, was hotly contested, but the ultimate outcome was that Accolade reverse-engineering the code to run Mega Drive games was deemed fair use. I'm not going through all the details here, by the way. If you want a more in-depth explanation of the legality of emulation, I recommend you check out Moon Channel. Many of you probably already have. In 2000, Sony v. Kinetics saw Sony attempt to prevent the sale of a PC PlayStation emulator. In this case, the emulator was not deemed to infringe on Sony's copyright, but in a case of emulation proponents winning the war but losing the battle, Sony was able to drag things out long enough to basically bankrupt kinetics. Sony v. Blem, also in 2000, was, well, for the sake of simplicity, I'll just say that it was vaguely similar and did involve a judge issuing a protective order to try and, quote, protect David from Goliath, that it didn't work. Essentially, Sony kept hitting Blem with lawsuits until they ran out of money, even at one point trying to sue them for using PlayStation screenshots in their advertising, which was ultimately ruled to be fair use as it constituted comparative advertising. In all three of these lawsuits, big gaming companies went to bat against smaller companies in an attempt to prove that emulation was illegal. And in all three cases, and again, I'm keeping things nice and simple here, not running through all the details, in all three cases, the big companies lost. And with that, we have a decent body of precedent making emulation legal, which means Nintendo absolutely does not want to sue an emulator for emulating. While there's a chance that Nintendo's lawyers might be able to establish a new precedent and in so doing basically kill off emulation forever, that's a slim chance. And there's a danger for Nintendo that any lawsuit might backfire the way that Sony and Sega's lawsuits backfired on them because there are still a lot of gray areas in the law, one of which I'm going to talk about in just a minute. First though, I want to reiterate. This is why Nintendo used the prod keys approach with Yuzu. They can't just make emulation illegal without a big fight. They can, however, go after you for the loophole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that I spoke about in my last video on the subject. This means that, especially for older consoles, it's hard to shut down emulators using the legal system because there's far less complex copy protection and it's easier for coders to work around them. According to LightCoder, for most older emulators, users don't have to break copyright or encryption at all. A lot of talented people have worked on methods to dump copyrighted boot ROMs, firmware, etc. out of original hardware. Any user that owns an original system should be able to dump these files themselves. The comments on my last video about emulation and lawsuits were tremendously varied and I thank you all for them. While I don't tend to respond to comments, I do read them all, even ones where people complain that I am not Breton Stripes. I'm sorry. Her work schedule has gone from part-time to basically full-time lately. She records a video whenever she can, but things are just very hectic for her at the moment. Some people, commenting on the Yuzu lawsuit video, are glad that pirates are going to have a harder time of things now. On the other side of the spectrum, there's this comment about how Nintendo controllers are physically inaccessible for some players. An emulation offers a way to play games pain-free. Another common reason given for using an emulator over original hardware is that, well, emulators are just plain better. Nintendo's never been spectacular at keeping up to date with screen resolutions. And as noted with this comment, a PC emulator will let players enjoy the games they've purchased legitimately in 4K. And yes, if you're watching this video after the Switch's successor has been announced, you might know a thing or two about screen resolutions on Nintendo consoles that I don't know right now as of March in 2024. Please forgive me for not being psychic. This kind of practice, often known as format shifting, is generally agreed as a perfectly respectable practice. Much like ripping music from a CD and putting it onto an iPod in 2005, nobody's ever going to get too upset about it. Except, format shifting isn't actually legal in many parts of the world. Nor is it necessarily illegal. It is, well, unlawful to bring back a word from a previous video. There's no definitive answer in the US as to whether or not a person copying their own purchased media is legal. It's just that no music company has ever been brazen and vindictive enough to try and sue anybody over it. Format shifting was briefly legal in the UK in 2014, but big music pressured the government to rescind this. As noted in our video on piracy, the UK government website will still tell you that it's legal, even though it isn't. In practice, though, there's a difference between a law that is enforced and a law that is just on the books. Entirely ignored by basically everyone. As said, you'd have to be incredibly brazen and vindictive to try and sue someone over format shifting. Yup. Here we come nicely to the second part of the challenge of stopping emulation. Just because something is against the law, it doesn't mean that people will stop doing it. Let me show you something. This is the Google Trends search traffic for the phrase Nintendo ROMs, how often people have searched for this over the past few years. Here's another one, Nintendo emulator. I'm keeping things broad so that we can compare like for like over the history of Nintendo piracy slash emulation. There are two things worth noting here. First, Google searches for Nintendo ROMs is on the rise at the moment, but it is nowhere near its peak. Interest in pirating these games is significantly down from what we might call the golden age of ROMs. Second, I went into this graph with a goal in mind. I had a theory that if you compared the Google Trends searches with major milestones in Nintendo lawsuit history, you'd see a rise, not a drop, in search terms in the aftermath of say, Nintendo suing love ROMs. My theory was incorrect. According to Google Trends, Nintendo's various efforts to shut down and remove ROM hosting websites from the internet has made absolutely zero impact on the number of searches for Nintendo ROMs and emulators, which in some way actually proves my point a little better. Nintendo's efforts to stem video game piracy are like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a thimble.  When it comes to emulators, Nintendo is simply outgunned. As mentioned, up top, a group of coders have taken the open source work done on Yuzu and are continuing it, not for profit, but for the simple love of emulation. The team behind Suyu, yes, the name is deliberate, claim to be taking every possible step to keep their project nice and legal. This includes a much harsher line against discussion of piracy and security key techniques on Discord and in forums. It means making sure absolutely no money changes hands over the emulator and it even means getting potential contributors to sign a contract relating to copyright infringement before joining the project. Whether or not this works, I have my doubts. The team at Suyu showed just how passionate some fans are about making emulators. Regardless of what the law may say, regardless of Nintendo's mighty legal team, humans cannot be forced to follow the rules when they don't agree with the rules. Even leaving aside issues of emulation and piracy entirely, history is filled with cases of people refusing to obey laws they don't agree with, even when doing so is extremely dangerous. That's the moral of the story. Laws do not govern people. People govern people. Thank you for watching.


Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin. Charlie Lee is primarily known in the crypto world as the creator of Litecoin. Having overseen its implementation of Segregated Witness in 2017, Lee announced he had sold his personal stake later that year. Lee was previously director of engineering at US-based Exchange and Wallet Provider Coinbase. And before that, worked at Google. Eric Voorhees, CEO of Shapeshift.io. Activating the industry almost since it began, Eric's greatest claim to fame is arguably his crypto exchange platform, Shapeshift, and his well-known Bitcoin gambling game, Satoshi Dice. His active online presence ensures his voice is heard throughout the industry and mainstream media regarding Bitcoin's biggest questions. Don Tapscott, author of Blockchain Revolution. Don has become an increasingly well-known figure in the cryptocurrency industry, having been one of the foremost authorities on the impact of technology for decades. He is well known for authoring the book Blockchain Revolution in 2014 and has been an active blockchain governance reference and proponent since. Andreas Antonopoulos, Bitcoin evangelist and author of Mastering Bitcoin. Andreas has spent years speaking and educating consumers and experts alike on Bitcoin, blockchain, and the principles of decentralization. His prolific output led him to become the go-to source for crypto knowledge worldwide. Since 2014, he has released two editions of his reference book, Mastering Bitcoin. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. He is known as one of the founders of Ethereum. Vitalik has spent seven years in the cryptocurrency space. In that time, he has helped shape the industry as we know it, founding Bitcoin magazine in 2011 before writing the Ethereum White Paper in late 2013.


Hi everyone, Joe for JazzBeesCaseBreaks.com coming at you with a dual case break of hip parade football autographed edition platinum Edition as well series 20 20 total boxes in here as well very big. Thank you to this group Thanks to the people who bought spots straight up I appreciate that and congrats again to the winners of spots in those two fillers that we did those chronicles hanger packs All 32 teams are in trade at your own risk. Let's roll it randomize it six in a six 12 times one two three four five six seven eight nine ten 11 and 12th and final time after 12 we've got ed p down to Chad see six into six 12 times for the teams one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 and 12th and final time after 12 we got the ATL all the way down to Miami All right, Ed with the Falcons Mike with the Titans Josh with the Giants Matthew last spot mojo with the Eagles Joe Cook with the Packer is Zach with the Buccaneers Greg with the commanders Jared with the Broncos Matthew with the Seahawks Kevin with the Patriots Eric with the Colts James with the Jets Brian with the Texans Nicole with the Niners Eric with the Vikings Ken with the Ravens Jason with the Saints Lee with the Rams Matthew with the Jaguars Chad with the Cardinals Eric with my Raiders Jason with the Chiefs Ed P with the Lions Chad with the Cowboys and Panthers Joe you with the Bengals Chad with the Chargers Kevin with the Steelers Joe Cook with the Browns Allen Bears Bills and Chad Miami Dolphins All right, let's Get all the teams on one screen here All right, we're gonna pause the video when we come back We're gonna see if there's any we're gonna see if there's any trades. I don't love the break stick around BRB All right, welcome back everybody a trade was done Chad and Joe cook Working on a trade making things happen. So Joe's out of the Packers spot now and into Dallas into the Dallas spot We'll put it put a T there so we know that's from a trade Chad is out of the Dallas cowboy spot and into the Packers spot Hopefully hits for both Good luck Now let's go ahead and print and we'll rip. So there it is autograph platinum edition series 20 Good luck everybody. Here is the print out Hot off the presses on a Wednesday hump day. I'm day. Good luck. We're gonna lead off with a Christian Watson two-color patch and autograph Proton patch autograph. So Chad drawing first blood in the trade 31 out of 75 Christian Watson RPA Well plenty of boxes to balance that out Joe plenty of box. We got 19 boxes to go. All right next up is Brandon Ayak Ruby and autograph nice hit from flawless 18 out of 20 It's gonna be for Nicole and the Niners nice little color match on that too Ruby red next one Is lights Kamara action 129 out of 149 that is 2017 Prism football Saints that's gonna be for Jason waters with the spot that he won in the filler little tape on the blade here Yep, that's his rookie here. Although it doesn't have the rookie badge on it. Oh We got a thick one here Mark duper Jalen waddle origins of greatness three out of five dual autograph We got to take a look at that That is Chad with the Dolphins with a spot. He got straight up. They're super duper and Jalen waddle three out of five Chad All aboard the Big Head Express Feel feel free to let uh Feel free to let the team know hit that support button. Let us know give you send them the feedback Lakers clippers starting big match up here. Who's Mark do per super duper? Come on. Come on. Jilo Oh another train whistle, that's Chris Godwin From 2017 XR football one-of-one patch and autograph Zach with Tampa Bay All aboard the Big Head Express Nice nice to see some train whistles in here next is T Higgins RPA 28 out of 85 nice patch nice auto nice stuff That's gonna be for Joe Joe you and the Bengals We got a graded card here. It's an eight five nine There's the Cowboys Dak Prescott rookie auto Dak Prescott two out of seventy five Eight five nine already graded for you That's Joe cook on the other side of that Packers Cowboys trade. There you go. See nothing to worry about Joe cook nothing to worry about You weren't worried, right? All right next up is rookie Jersey and auto from obsidian football Matt Jones 35 out of 100 Patriots Kevin Wilson with the pass with a spot that you won in the filler Not too shabby Love seeing the Lakers down eight nothing already and guys missing free throws There we go eight one Rookie ticket autograph Najee Harris in that ticket stub format 14 out of 22 It's gonna be for the Steelers that'll be for Kevin Wilson with a spot that he won in the filler Back to back. Well, that's rookie Dak Prescott. I think back in 2016. They were they were not as Not have as high standards For those grades. All right next is Desmond Ritter Nice from illusions football three-color patch and auto 12 out of 50 Going to ed Pete and the dirty birds But wait, there's more All right another 10 boxes Dual-key love these dual case breaks Go big or go home Thanks, everybody All right first one out of the gate is 248 out of 375 Philip Rivers SP exciting rookie auto in Jersey. I see what they did there That goes to Chad and the chargers with a spot that he won in the filler Sometimes those fillers do work out Kevin saying let's see a Kenny P Yeah, let's next up is Whoa Jim Brown Wow from leaf limited 6 out of 50 Cleveland this is for you and Joe cook with a Cleveland Brown very nice Yeah, there you go Joe cook Congrats. That's what the spot. He got straight up. We got chrysalov it from Zenith triple relic and auto 12 out of 25 for the Saints Jason with the Saints Let Joe cook next up is Impeccable stars autograph Nick Bosa 70 out of 75 Niners Nicole with the Niners There you go Joe cooks a big fan of Brown for the Browns also. Yeah, and Brown's great All right next is Travis Etienne 18 out of 18 for the Jaguars Immaculate three-color patron. This might be immaculate first off the line Goes to the Jaguars. That'll be for Matthew and the Jags. All right next up Next up is a dual relic dual autograph Desmond Ritter Drake London For the ATL that's gonna go to Ed P 43 out of 50 on that one. Hopefully we'll hear Ritter to London for years to come nice dual relic dual auto all right next is Dak Prescott another Dak Prescott Jersey and autograph for Joe cook and Dallas 24 out of 199. That's also from 2016 Phoenix football doesn't have a Rookie logo on it, but that's his rookie here. All right another one Three more to go fingers crossed everybody Hopefully if you've been hit list hopefully we'll find hits for the hit list Good luck. We've got rookie ticket autograph Mike Evans nice another Buccaneers receiver for Zach Gwynne from old 2014 contenders Folks can if you like contenders contenders basketball in the store right now jazby's case rakes comm check it out ABC always be closing. I don't have a more hit parade at the moment, but maybe we'll dig up some more How about some Dalvin cook? rookie patch and autograph 42 out of 99 Does Joe cook have Dalvin cook? No, Eric does though Eric clicks with the Minnesota Vikings there you go Eric on the board. All right Last one good luck ladies and gentlemen.  That's Jalen Hertz rookie auto four out of 25 Jason Jaspy might might be eyeing this one with a little jealousy here There you go Matt. Congrats to you on the board with last spot mojo. There you go gang I'm Joe for jazby's case rakes comm another hit parade break knocked out. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye. Bye


courses seems. Yeah then it's basically like any other sort of education center. The teacher matters, right? A lot of people ask me what type of school would you know do you recommend, do you recommend private schools, alternative schools, public schools and stuff like this. I can't recommend the school. For me it's the teacher that matters. End of story. I've had, I've worked with students that are in private school that are paying up the yin yang. The parents are paying up the yin yang for these kids to go to high school. And I've worked with kids who are alternative schools. I've worked with kids who are homeschooling. I've worked with kids who are in self-learning or whatever it is. All different, different spectrums, different places, right? There is no one school, one system that I've found that works for everyone. If you're self-learning, you need the right tools at your disposal to be able to self-learn. If you're going to school, find the good teachers, get in their classes really. That's private, chartered, public, alternative schools. Doesn't matter, okay? It's the teacher that matters. The rest is tertiary at best.


Hello, everyone, and welcome to ItzDocon 2023. My name is Naranjan, and I'm a software engineer on the Azure Kubernetes service team at Microsoft. I'm working on the ItzDoc add-on for AKS, and I've also contributed to the ItzDocode base and documentation. In this presentation, I'm going to be covering some best practices for securing egress traffic from your Kubernetes cluster with ItzDoc. So if you're already familiar with ItzDoc, you most likely know that it secures communication between applications in the mesh with MTLS by default. The next step for operators is securing traffic, entering and exiting the mesh, also known as north-south traffic. This is important because we want to prevent attackers from infiltrating the network, or in the event that they do, prevent them from accessing unauthorized and harmful endpoints on the internet. Now, ItzDoc does offer several options to secure control of outgoing traffic. This includes mesh-wide settings, several custom resources, and an egress gateway that can perform TLS origination. However, these functionalities and configurations by themselves still aren't enough to fully secure outbound communication. For instance, organizations often have requirements that egress traffic needs to flow from dedicated nodes and be logged. And to truly achieve defense in depth, we need to integrate our mesh with cloud security tools such as firewalls, NAT services, security groups, as well as Kubernetes network policies. Now, let's take a look at an example of how exactly ItzDoc can integrate with these external mechanisms in five steps. I'm going to quickly break down these steps individually and highlight some caveats to keep in mind throughout the process. Then we'll take a closer look at a real-world example of what this could look like in practice. I've added these steps and configurations to my personal GitHub repository, which I've linked in a subsequent slide. So the first step is to set up our firewall rules and create our cluster in an associated virtual network or sub-network. Few important caveats to keep in mind here. The cluster administrator needs to ensure that applications can communicate with the API server and pull images from Docker Hub, MCR, or other image registries. Since we're setting up monitoring extensions on our cluster, these specific endpoints need to be whitelisted as well. When we create our cluster, we also want to be sure to use a CNI plugin that supports Kubernetes network policies. Additionally, administrators should provision a dedicated egress gateway node pool that can communicate with external services. We apply taints to these nodes to repel application pods that don't have the corresponding tolerations. The next step is to install its DOD and the egress gateway with the following specifications. This can be done with Helm or the ITSDO operator API, though the latter is discouraged. When installing its DOD, we set the outbound traffic policy mode to registry only. This restricts workload's communication to external services that have been selectively added to its DO service registry. The egress gateway should be installed in its own namespace for separate administrative control of the gateway. Also remember to apply the appropriate tolerations and node selector to the gateway deployment to ensure that the gateway pod gets scheduled onto the dedicated egress nodes. Third, we onboard our applications to the mesh and apply the appropriate custom resources. One thing to note here is that when setting the service entries, remember to set the resolution to DNS so that the gateway resolves DNS for the host name that it receives in the incoming request. Now, in terms of encrypting outbound traffic, there are two options. The applications can send HTTPS requests to outbound services directly. Or the applications can send plain text requests to the gateway and the gateway originates TLS with the external host. The benefit of the TLS origination approach is that it gives us the additional option to use authorization policies. This allows for even more fine green control of egress traffic. Next, we configure Kubernetes network policies. As we will see, this ensures that even if attackers bypass the proxy, they still can't gain unauthorized access to external services. Keep in mind that operators need to apply the policies individually to each namespace in which they want them enforced. Finally, we need to log and monitor traffic exiting the mesh and the cluster. To enable Envoy's access login, you can set the access log file field in the Itzdio mesh config. Or to enable access logging on a per workload basis, we can use Itzdio's telemetry API. We can then view access logs and firewall logs in a log analytics workspace associated with our cluster's monitoring extension. Now, it's time to take a look at a real-world example of what such a setup looks like in practice. This demo uses Itzdio deployed onto an AKS cluster. However, keep in mind that these general principles and guidelines apply for other Kubernetes distributions as well. So let's examine the cluster setup and the demo environment. Again, in my tutorials repository that I've linked, I provided these steps and configurations for you to try out on your own. So I've taken the steps outlined in Microsoft's user-facing docs to set up my firewall and routing rules. I then deployed the AKS cluster in a subnetwork associated with the firewall, like what we saw in that diagram. My cluster has Azure monitor container insights enabled, and I've also set the CNI plug-in to Azure CNI to enable Azure network policies. Additionally, the outbound type for this cluster is user-defined routes, which allows us to customize our cluster egress. As you can see from the output of Kube CTL get nodes up top, I've created two node pools, the first one being the default that AKS provisions, and the second one that I created specifically for the egress gateway. For the mesh environment, I have the egress gateway here deployed in the Itzdio egress namespace, and as you can see, it got scheduled onto my dedicated egress node. In the Itzdio mesh config, notice I have the outbound traffic policy here set to registry only, and I have on-voice access logging enabled. Here, my CNN service entry adds the host addition.cnn.com to Itzdio service registry. This way, sidecars and gateways can communicate with CNN. I have two destination rules configured here. One to set MTLS between the sidecars and gateway, which I've deployed to each test namespace, and the other to configure the gateway to perform TLS origination. I've created network policies to restrict POT traffic to Kube system, Itzdio system, and the Itzdio egress namespaces, and I've applied these policies to each namespace individually. There are three namespaces I'm using in this test environment. In the default namespace, the sleep application does not have a sidecar. In the test egress unauthorized namespace, the sleep pod does have a sidecar but doesn't have the corresponding authorization policy to communicate with CNN. The sleep pod in test egress is authorized to communicate with CNN. So let's see what happens if I try to send a request from the sleep pod in the default namespace without a sidecar to CNN. As you can see, the request here hangs because the network policy is blocking it. However, even if I delete the network policy, as I'm about to do right now, the request will still fail. This is because the firewall is preventing workloads not deployed onto the egress notes from communicating with unauthorized services. My request from the sleep pod in the unauthorized namespace will also fail with the 403, blocked by the denial authorization policy. However, because the test egress namespace is authorized to communicate with CNN, the egress gateway will permit this request which will succeed. We can gain some additional insights about our test environment and firewall on Azure portal. In terms of how only the egress notes can communicate with specific external services, I queued to the following outbound firewall network rule. Allow traffic with a source IP of either of the egress notes to communicate with addition.cnn.com. I set the protocol and port to TCP on port 443 because this is what the gateway uses when communicating with CNN over TLS. This works because the source IP of external traffic is translated to the node IP by default. Also, here are the application rules I was mentioning earlier that enables applications to pull images from Docker Hub and for Azure Monitor to forward logs to the analytics workspace. In our analytics workspace, we can query firewall logs. This gives us important information like whether traffic was denied or allowed and the protocol, source and target of each request. For instance, in this query here, I'm able to see the firewall permitting the egress gateway's request to CNN that we just saw earlier. Azure Monitor is also forwarding standard error and standard out from every container in the cluster to the analytics workspace. So the Envoy access logs from the egress gateway that we just saw are also visible in the log analytics workspace here. For example, here's the access log for the request that the gateway authorized from the test egress namespace. Before concluding, I wanted to highlight some additional steps platform administrators may want to take to lock down egress traffic even further. With Kubernetes role-based access control, access to the HDO system and HDO egress namespaces can be restricted to admins. Second, policy enforcement through admission controllers can ensure that application pods don't get scheduled onto the egress nodes. Finally, operators may want to strip outbound requests of Envoy headers that can potentially leak sensitive information. For more information on outbound traffic with HDO, firewalls, or relevant cloud tools, check out some of these resources. Thank you for your time. I hope you found this session helpful and please enjoy the rest of HDOCon.