#How Many Things Can I Stack Up To Get Big Number On Transcript

[nereb-and-dungalef]

I keep drinking coffee thinking it's gonna make me Productive and then instead of doing the work I actually have to do I just compulsively make spreadsheets :(

[ikroah]

How many times have you heard someone say “if I had his money, I could do things my way?” But little they know that it's so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind. —“A Satisfied Mind,” Porter Wagoner (1955)

It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’ #21 - Freeside V

Collaborative Issue! Guest Artist: @tarberrymentats​

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Notes / Original Pencils / Transcript

Notes

Okay so here’s the thing. Yes, in-game there are sewers beneath Freeside that you can enter and explore. Yes, as far as dangers go, there are ghouls in parts of the sewer. No, none of these sewer tunnels actually allow you to subvert the Vegas gate via subterranean means, like I very confidently thought they did when I first outlined this volume of IKROAH and scripted this issue probably close to a year ago. Yes, it would have required rewriting the entire outline of Volume 2 to account for this because Agnes would have to get out of Freeside a different way. Yes, I care much more about telling a strong and coherent narrative than I do about what strictly happens in the video game Fallout: New Vegas. Yes, this is very sexy and cool of me.

Everybody give a big round of applause to @tarberrymentats​ for crushing the art again just like they did last December, they’ve been one of my favorite artists since I first ever became a part of this community and it’s been great to become such good friends outside of just the Fallout fandom. I love it so much when I get a guest ink-and-colorist because adhering so close to my pencils creates this really interesting hybrid of our styles that you just don’t get from any other kind of collaboration. It’s an especial honor to have had Halk work on this issue specifically, too; I couldn’t help but get the number one ghoul aficionado to assist with an appearance from of my favorite minor NPCs in the game: Rotface! He was fun to write, and fun to use as a way to show a little bit more of Agnes’ character and history. First that “maniac medic” thing Beth mentioned, now this? What the fuck is her deal? Maybe we’ll finally find out for sure in an issue or two. Maybe.

Also of note: IKROAH has a brand new font! Caveat Brush has been the font for all of the previous issues, but as my lettering has gotten much better and much more attentively professional over time, I started to disagree with it. The new font going forward is “Unmasked” from BlamBot, a possibly generic font that is nevertheless very suited for my purposes here.

Original Pencils (click for full size)

It felt really great to draw Agnes again after so long. With this issue primarily just being a conversation, I wanted to make sure the layout was interesting throughout, and conveyed the emotional beats and narrative focus very intentionally. I’ve included the original thumbnail sketches on the pencils for page 5, because that page had so much empty space anyway due to the way it looked in the final product. You can see a few alternate designs for the fifth page among them, such as a more typical-looking page, a dizzying overhead shot, and a close-up of the Lucky 38, but I went with the sort of “tunnel system” layout for Rotface’s dialogue rather than try to stack a bunch of balloons.

You can also see on the fourth page an original sketch for Agnes’ “flashback” panel (to the very first issue of IKROAH) that wound up getting replaced for old art. It just didn’t look good with the whole page around it, and using the old panel from Issue #1 carried a lot more weight. It was still a pretty cool design, though, so I’m glad you can all still see it in the pencils.

And lastly, there’s the final page, which was actually added after I had already scripted and drawn the entire issue. The issue originally ended just with Agnes walking away, but it felt like it was missing something, and this extra coda with Agnes and Cass entering the sewers was a much better final note. I just want to say, going into this issue, it was probably my least favorite that I had scripted just because it felt far too purely functional as a matter of getting Agnes from Point A to Point B. But it went through many dialogue revisions, especially during the process of lettering it after it was already drawn, that kept the same idea while adding much more emotional depth, and now I’m instead very fond of this issue and what it does for Agnes’ character.

Tumblr was being very difficult with letting these particular pencils be viewed at full size on desktop, so just click here (1), here (2), and here (3) for them instead.

Transcript

EXT. FREESIDE, a street corner. A ghoul known as ROTFACE sits on the sidewalk against the building of a pre-war water filter installation business.

Suddenly, over him, is:

AGNES: Is this seat taken?

ROTFACE: It is if you’re asking, ugly. Take a hike. Unless you maybe care to spare a cigarette.

AGNES SANDS sits down next to the ghoul.

AGNES (sitting down): Thanks, Zeke.

ROTFACE: Don’t mention it. How’re you doing, Agnes? S’been a while.

AGNES: Yeah, I was, uh…shot in the head.

ROTFACE: You’re fine other than that though, right?

AGNES (weakly smiling): Yeah. Yeah, just peachy.

ROTFACE: Y’know, I heard you were back in town—well, figured, because what I heard specifically was that you killed Dixon.

AGNES (removing two cigarettes from a box): Oh. Well…there was, uh, well, it was this whole thing with the Followers*—

CAP: *Last ish. -Lou

ROTFACE: Oh, I’m well aware, ha ha. Grecks said he could hear Dr. Farkas chewing you out from four blocks away.

AGNES (handing cigarette to Rotface): Zeke, I really don’t want to talk about it.

ROTFACE: Alright, sorry. Tough break, Ag. I mean it.

AGNES: Um…nice hat, by the way.

ROTFACE: Aw, thanks! You think so? Cost a lotta caps, but man, worth it. Really brings out my eyes.

AGNES: Wait—where’d you get the money?

ROTFACE: Just because I’m a beggar doesn’t mean I can’t save up for stuff. something nice every once in a while. And last time I really got anything nice for myself was that steak I had after top surgery. Besides, this is more of a long term investment. I spend my caps on food, that’s gone as soon as I eat it, right? But this hat? Bought it three weeks ago.

AGNES: I worry about you…please don’t buy hats instead of food.

ROTFACE: Bury me in it, then. If you worry so much, why don’t you buy me something to eat?

AGNES: I would, Zeke, but…I can’t. I literally can’t. I’m broke.

ROTFACE: Get your own corner to beg on, then.

AGNES: I’m serious, Zeke, come on. I’m only here at all because I need to get on the Strip.

ROTFACE: For business or pleasure?

AGNES: Uh…no, it’s…I…I…

A memory of blinding light from the barrel of a pistol, a gunshot, and then the silence and darkness of the grave.

AGNES: There’s someone I’ve been trying to find.

AGNES: But I blew the last caps I had here just trying to scrounge enough for the gate.

AGNES: ...I’m worried I’ve really fucked up.

ROTFACE frowns sympathetically.

ROTFACE: Y’knooow, I heard that security has been kind of lax at Mick and Ralph’s lately—

AGNES: No. I’m not going to steal it, Zeke. And not from them.

ROTFACE: Not gonna steal from Dixon either, or did you at least loot his corpse?

AGNES glares fiercely at ROTFACE.

ROTFACE: …eheh. Sorry.

ROTFACE: Well…alright, fair. I'd be a bad friend to make you go back to that shit, anyway. So let me be a good friend. Maybe I can get you onto the Strip.

AGNES is stunned. She leans toward ROTFACE urgently.

AGNES: You’ve got enough cash for the gate check!?

ROTFACE: Ha! Good one. If I did then I sure as hell still wouldn’t be in Freeside. No, what I do got for you is a damn good tip: you want to go in? Go under. But it’s dangerous.

ROTFACE: What you do is pry open the manhole on east Fremont and take the old sewer tunnels. It's gonna be miles of maze-like bullshit, sure, but all the pre-war stuff's still connected. The first ladder you're gonna want goes up behind the Ultra-Luxe, I think. Squatters used to sneak onto the Strip this way sometimes, but it's been a while, might be sealed off by now…might be. I'm not sure. That's not why they stopped.

ROTFACE: No…that'd be because of the ghouls. And not the kind capable of a pleasant conversation like moi.

AGNES: Huh. If it is sealed, would you know with what?

ROTFACE: Probably nothing that you couldn't pick apart in your sleep. Shit's gotta flow somewhere, and sewers need maintenance, so it shouldn't be all tombed up with concrete like what Mr. House did to that one vault hotel.

ROTFACE: But yeah, that's it. Fuck the gate check. Get a little messy, or just a whole lot lucky—and Agnes Sands is on the Vegas Strip for free.

ROTFACE: Really gotta watch those ghouls, though. Get caught, and you may not spend any money, but it still might cost an arm and a leg. Know what I mean?

AGNES: Thanks. It’s, uh…at least I know what to expect.*

CAP: Wouldn’t be the first time. See IKROAH #11. -Lou

ROTFACE: No problem, friend. And I’ll sell my hat for a nice grassy plot if you don’t come back.

AGNES (standing up): You really mean that?

ROTFACE: Hell no. You’ve told me before that you’d want to get cremated, anyway. Now scram, I don’t need deadbeat beggars like you hogging my corner.

AGNES (walking away): Thanks, Zeke. I’ll be seeing you.

ROTFACE (waving goodbye): Aw, don’t mention it, Agnes. And best of luck to you in Vegas!

EXT. ELSEWHERE IN FREESIDE.

AGNES walks a few blocks to reconvene with ROSE OF SHARON CASSIDY, and they share a few words before they continue walking together.

ROTFACE (cont.): I always wanted to go and try the machines. Y’know, slots…but if I was a good gambler then I probably wouldn't be a beggar, ha ha.

EXT. ELSEWHERE STILL, EAST FREMONT STREET.

AGNES and CASS approach a sewer lid over a manhole in the middle of the dilapidated street.

ROTFACE (cont): There's always some kind of system in place that just makes sure you lose anyway, right?

CASS casts a nervous glance toward AGNES.

ROTFACE (cont): So it’d probably be a bad idea no matter what.

AGNES returns the look impassively.

ROTFACE (cont.): There’s an old saying like that, I think, but...gun to my head, I can’t remember how the whole thing goes…

The manhole lid is off, and AGNES and CASS are gone.

[striveattemptfail]

Football Vs. Husband: Which Do You Know Better? | Zimbits ft. Tater, G, 1.8k

Summary: Bitty gets quizzed on two of his favourite things: Jack and...... football?

Based on the Buzzfeed video of the same name. Takes place sometime in Sept-Oct 2019. Minor spoilers for 4.25 Faber and 4.26 Check, Please! (If you can call em spoilers LOL.)

Read on Ao3

A/N: Fun fact: At the time I wrote this (2017), it was set in the “future” (2019), but now that year is literally the past for us hahahahahahskfjasldfjasldfjklaskdfj. In the fic summary I say “minor spoilers” because what I originally wrote as wish fulfillment in 2017 became canon in 2020.

Anyway, this is a near verbatim copy of Ned Fulmer getting quizzed on his wife vs football—like fr some of the dialogue is exactly the same LOL. Thanks to @smol0ctopus​ for the beta and the omg stream! please server for advice!<3 Any other mistakes are mine.

YouTube transcript of Football Vs. Husband (Check, Please! #151: A Falconers Special!) [Descriptive captions by biittyyreciipees, airhockeycanbeviolent, and f4lcsboy: Check, Please! Captioning Team]

Eric Hey, y’all! Didja miss me? Because I sure did miss you! Now, today’s video is a lil special. Y’all’ll see that I’ve got myself some lovely guests here from Providence’s own Falconers team. (gestures towards Jack and Tater) Say hi guys!

Tater (waves) Hi!

Jack (single nod, smiles) Hello.

Eric I’ve got here regular guest and my husband, Jack Zimermann, and his teammate, Alexei Mashkov—

Tater But you call me Tater!

Eric (laughs) But we call him Tater! Tater, why don’t you explain what’ll happen here today?

Tater Is collaboration with Falcs TV! We had special tournament to see if players knows their SOAPs more than favorite thing.

ONSCREEN CAPTION SOAPs = Significant Others And Partners, for all y’all non-hockey fans out there! Click here (highlighted annotation inserted) to watch the tournament on the Falconer’s official website or check this video’s description!

Eric I had me such a great time over on Falcs TV with Jack that I wanted to share the fun with y’all here!

Tater (nods) Zimmboni crush everyone in tournament!

ONSCREEN CAPTION “Zimmboni” is Jack’s hockey nickname, like “Tater” is for Alexei. Everyone on the team has one! In fact, I have one too: Bitty! But Alexei likes to call me “B”.

Jack (shrugs, gives small smile) I know history. I know my husband.

Eric (laughs, blushes)

Tater Now, is time to see if B know Zimmboni just as much!

Eric I’m feelin’ pretty confident that I do. What do you think, sweetpea?

Jack I think Bits knows me better than myself, to be honest.

Eric Jack! (blushing again)

Tater Yes, yes, is very cute! But I’m want to ask questions now, yes?

Eric (turns to camera) Now, I tried to get ‘em to quiz me on baking—because y’all and your mama know that I love it—but Jack here insisted that I get asked about football instead.

Jack Baking’s too easy. I figured you’d appreciate the challenge. You know a lot about American football, eh?

Eric (rolls eyes) “American football”—I know y’all in Canada just call it football too! Now, I’d argue, but that’ll take up the rest of this video, so I guess it’s time to get to the quiz!

Tater Yes!

(video transition with dramatic music)

Tater (holds up stack of cards in hands) Here, I’m hold questions about NFL and college football, plus questions about Zimmboni for B to answer. Like during Falcs’ tournament, I’m ask SOAP about their favorite subject first, then ask about their partner. B, is ready?

Eric As I’ll ever be!

Jack Gonna crush it, Bits.

Eric Let’s hope so, sweetheart.

Tater Will be good, B, I’m sure! Question one, name five offensive positions in the NFL.

Eric Lord, how easy—quarterback, running back, wide receiver, offensive tackle, tight end.

ONSCREEN CAPTION Score: 5/5

Tater See, B! You be fine! Name five of Zimmboni’s favourite foods.

Eric Ooh, alright. So PB&J sandwiches, chicken tenders... scrambled eggs, uh, cassoulet... (Caption Note: French food pronunciation is not butchered, because food)

ONSCREEN CAPTION Score: 4/5

Tater One more, B.

Eric Hm, let’s see—

Tater (snickers) Remember this easiest question in stack.

Eric Oh, hush, you.

Jack Bits? Maybe a dessert?

Eric (hits head with base of palm) Oh, goodness me, right! Maple sugar crusted apple pie.

ONSCREEN CAPTION Score: 5/5

Tater (nods) Yes. Okay, how many minutes in football quarter?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: Quarters in the NFL and NCAA football are 15 minutes.

Eric 15 minutes.

Tater How long is Zimmboni’s pre-game ritual?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: 15 minutes max. Like all athletes, hockey players have specific rituals before their games.

Eric About thirty minutes?

Tater (whooping laughter) 15 minutes, max.

Jack (laughs)

Eric (gasps, shakes head) That is not true, that can not be true! Honey, I’ve seen you take 15 minutes making your pre-game PBJ sandwiches. (scoffs)

Jack (makes a face)

Tater Sorry, B. Must give big zero for that question.

Eric (rolls eyes) Hmph!

Tater B, you get 20 seconds—name as many starting quarterbacks in the NFL as possible. Ready, set, go!

Eric Matt Ryan, Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen, Philip Rivers, Tom Brady—ugh—Baker Mayfield, Derek Carr, Carson Palmer.

ONSCREEN CAPTION Score: 8

Tater Have 10 seconds, name as many as Zimmboni’s lineys when he finally move to first line.

ONSCREEN CAPTION Lineys = Hockey linemates. Fun fact: Jack moved from third to first line during his first season in the Falcs back in 2015!

Eric (opens mouth)

Tater But! Must name them by nickname!

Eric (single nod, determined expression)

Tater Okay? Ready, set, go!

Eric Alright so excluding Jack, that’ll be you, Tater, then we got Marty, Thirdy, Guy, and Snowy if you count the goalies!

Tater (solemnly nods) Always count goalies!

Eric Then that’s five for five. Gettin’ a lil easy there!

ONSCREEN CAPTION Score: 5/5

Tater Haha! Okay, who are on cover of Sports Illustrated for this season’s NFL and college previews?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. were on the cover for the NFL preview. Trevor Lawrence was on the cover for the college preview.

Eric Oh, Coach and I were just talkin’ about this! I know the NFL preview was Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry, but the college preview... (brief pause, placing chin on fist contemplatively) I think it’s Trevor Lawrence?

Tater Correct! What magazine cover did Zimmboni appear on first?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: Trick question! Jack’s first ever appearance on a magazine cover was not as a hockey player. He first appeared on People Magazine as a baby with his parents, Robert “Bad bob” Zimmermann and Alicia Zimmermann.

Eric Can I ask a question?

Tater ...no.

Eric Well, shoot, alright. If you mean his first cover as an athlete, I’ll say Sports Illustrated, but if you mean his first one ever I think it’s People Magazine when he was a baby.

Tater (censored beep) Wow!

Jack (raises eyebrows) You remember that?

Eric Well, you told me! And Alicia did show me when we visited for Christmas one year. (smug smirk)

Jack (covers face in hand, exasperated sigh) Of course she did.

Tater Next question! How many Super Bowl rings does Tom Brady have?

Eric Oh goodness. I think it’s five?

Tater Six!

Eric What?

Tater Is six!

Eric (groans) Of course it’s six. Whatever, it’s fine, I try not to think about Tom Brady anyway. I don’t mind getting this one wrong. In fact, I’m kinda glad because I certainly don’t care for the man. Like, who—

Jack Bits. We’re in the middle of a game right now?

Eric (blushes) Oh, right.

Tater It’s alright, B, haha. But we move on with game now, yes? (single nod) Now, how many rings Zimmboni normally wear?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: 1.

Eric One! He usually just wears his wedding ring, but today he’s got his 2016 Stanley ring! Wanna show it off, honey?

Jack (sheepishly holds up hands to show the two rings)

ONSCREEN CAPTION Fun fact: The team who wins the Stanley Cup get matching rings. Jack got his first one when the Falcs won the Cup in 2016!

Tater Is tough one now: How many times have the Atlanta Falcons made the playoffs?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: 14.

Eric (sighs) Oh Lordy, that's hard. Alright, so by the time I was born they were at five so— (voice continues in fast forward) —they did in ‘98, then... ‘02? After was 2004, not 2005, or ‘06... so the next one was 2008. Then there was that streak from 2010 to 2012. Then the next one was 2016, and then ‘17. Not ‘18 and ‘19. So that’s... (begins to count on fingers)

Tater (back to regular speed, looking impressed) You have answer, B?

Eric I'm gonna go with fourteen as of this year.

Tater (censored beep)!!!

Eric (laughs)

Jack (censored beep), Bittle.

Tater Is amazing! You have both number and years!

Eric I’m Southern, and my daddy’s a football coach. (shrugs) Can’t help it!

Jack (chuckles) This is why I wanted you to answer stuff about the football instead of baking.

Eric (rolls eyes, swats Jack’s arm) Oh, this boy.

Tater Next question! What is most number of times Zimmboni fight in one season?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: 3 fights.

Eric Ooh, shoot. I should know this one too, huh? Okay, so his first season he only got in one fight— (voice continues in fast forward) —and second season was also one, I think. After that, uhh, I think he finally got in two. Last year was three maybe? And this season hasn’t even started. But last year? Was it three? I don’t quite—hm.

Tater (back to regular speed) Your answer, B?

Eric I’m gonna go with three fights for last season.

Tater (shaking his head)

Jack What did I say?

Tater (censored beep) Is correct. (huffs) What year did Falcons join the NFL?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: 1965.

Eric Uhhh, oh goodness, I know Coach told me this at some point... (pause) I think it was 1965?

Tater Correct! What year Zimmboni first try skating?

ONSCREEN CAPTION Answer: 1992. Fun fact: Bad Bob had Jack skating as soon as Jack could walk!

Eric Skating, huh? ‘Cause I’ll bet the son of Bad Bob tried on his first skates before he even turned one, huh? (smiles cheekily)

Jack (nudges with elbow, gives Eric a small smile) Not the question.

Eric Oh alright, not the question. Hmm, I know it was before you turned three so, I’ll say... (drawling out answer) nineteen-ninety... two?

Tater (throws cards out of hand, shaking his head) Is correct again!

Eric Oh my god!

(high pitched sound as Eric fist pumps the air)

Jack (laughs, bringing an arm around Eric before kissing his cheek)

Tater B, I'm frustrate to say you know Zimmboni as much as you know football.

ONSCREEN CAPTION FINAL SCORE: Football = 6, Husband = 6. T I E ! ! !

Jack Knew it. Told you so, Bits.

Eric That sounds like a chirp, and I will not have that on my vlog, Mr. Zimmermann. So with that, I guess we’re done! (looks towards camera, claps once) Well, that about does it for today’s video! Thank you so much to my special guests, Providence Falconers’ Jack Zimermann and Alexei Mashkov, for joining me today. (gestures towards Jack and Tater)

Tater (nods with a wide smile) Thanks for having us, B!

Jack (smiles and nods) Always great to be here.

Eric Be sure to check out the Falcs TV videos too! Link in the description or right over here! (points to space, highlighted annotation inserted) And thanks for tuning in! Next week, I’ll have a new video for y’all on the best ways to add protein to your favourite sandwiches.

(Eric, Jack, and Tater wave at the camera)

Eric Bye, y’all! See ya next time!

(More notes on Ao3.)

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 10

The door opens and the bell rings and Peter and I both look up; the lady I’d ran into earlier on my first day in Gumption walks in and nods to Peter. Through the course of the story we’d finished breakfast and then I’d walked with Peter down to the 7-11 and he’d clocked in and started his shift while I sat on a stack of beer cases and listened, turning the voice recorder to its highest sensitivity to capture everything he was saying. I could always go back and take a transcript later if I had to, if the audio was too loud or too distorted.

Her eyes stray over me but whatever she thinks she doesn’t betray anything with her expression. I’ve reached out automatically and covered the voice recorder with my hand as soon as I heard the door open; it was an automatic action, quick as a whip, no conscious thought required, and I slide my thumb down its ridged side, click it off.

“Hey, Michelle,” Peter says.

“Hey, Peter,” she says.

He glances at his watch and whistles. “I didn’t realize it was four already.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” she says, a slight layer of sarcasm flavoring her words. I can feel my hackles rising but I ease myself down. Peter’s eyes flick over to me.

“Well,” he says, and I feel my mouth drop open.

“No way. You can’t be serious.”

“What?”

“You aren’t going to finish the story?”

Peter grins at me. “I have to go get ready,” he says in a soft voice. “I’ll finish telling you later.”

“Oh my god.”

“What?” he repeats.

“What the hell happens to Makado?”

“She…” he starts, and then stops. I can see a flicker of pain cross his face like the dappled back of a fish beneath a sunstruck river. My heart falls within my chest and I realize that I’m becoming far too invested to be objective, I need to take a step back. “She made it out fine,” he tells me. I don’t believe him.

Despite all of my efforts to cajole him he won’t tell me any more. He assures me that we’ll have enough time tonight, that it’s going to be a lot of sitting around and waiting while I film far-off dots moving around under the cover of darkness and that he’ll tell me then. It smells like a cop-out to me, like he just doesn’t want to get into what happened to Makado.

It’s unbelievable enough already, though, isn’t it? Amalgams and copepods and all of that stuff. I hear it and I think, oh, this is the plot to a movie. This isn’t real, it can’t be. Even though I’m only a few miles from it, even though I’m going to be going there tonight, it doesn’t feel like the Pit is a place that actually exists. It feels like somebody is pulling my leg.

Or it would, if it weren’t for the look on Peter’s face when he talks about Makado. That at least is real. Whether everything else around it is fake, I guess there’s a little kernel of doubt still sprouting in my head somewhere, the tiny eternal skeptic inside of me that isn’t willing to believe anything it can’t touch or feel or see itself.

We walk out of the 7-11 together and look at each other. Peter nods. “Same place as where you followed before. You know how to get there?”

I nod as well. “Line up the two rocks and the cactus with the setting sun and walk straight until I hit the three boulders in the dip of the hill.”

“Good memory. If you mess up you’ll be able to see us probably anyway, I’ll have my flashlight.”

“How many people are coming?”

“Besides you there’s three others, one guy from the cult for his initiation and two others who…well, you know.”

“Yeah. Was that what Erica was talking to you about the other day?”

“When she pulled up at midnight or whenever? Yeah, she was just telling me who to look out for. Because those guys want to be able to get back out again I have to give them different instructions, that kind of thing.”

I shudder in spite of myself. “Well, see you tonight.”

“See you,” he says. He turns and walks quickly away and then past the corner of the building and I am alone. I stand there for a moment and then lean up against the side of the building. The sun is hot but not terribly so and here in the shade it’s really quite a nice afternoon.

A car pulls up and turns into one of the pumps. It’s the second customer I’ve seen all day. The guy looks over at me but it isn’t anyone I know or have seen before, and after a moment he puts his card in and fills up the tank, then drives off.

I look round and, after a moment, let myself slide down the faux-brick façade of the 7-11 and stretch my legs out in front of me. My knee cracks like a gunshot as I do and I wince. I take my phone out of my pocket and dial a number and listen as the harsh buzzing tone drills one, two, three, four, five times into my ear, and then there’s a click and the answering machine picks up.

“Hi, you’ve reached Mark Dzilenski. I’m not able to take your call right now but if you leave me your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks, bye.”

“Hi, dad,” I say, and I feel a wave of emotion pressing at me that I refuse to confront. I swallow. “I’m sorry our call got disconnected the other night, I think there’s something wrong with my phone. It was good hearing your voice, I’m glad you and mom are doing okay.”

I lick my lips. Alright, Roan, you’ve been very glib so far. Spit it out.

“I, uh,” I start. Come on. “I got some news the other day that I wanted to tell you, I…”

“If you are satisfied with your call, you can hang up, or press 1 for delivery options. To re-record –“

I hang up the call, and then I stand up. I rummage in my bag for a cigarette and light it, and then walk slowly back to the hotel, taking my time. I’m meeting Peter at one in the morning but my nerves are already balling around themselves in a panic. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“So what?” I ask out loud. I look over and see my distorted reflection looking back at me in the thick glass window of a closed barbershop. I look tired. “So what?” I mutter again. I look at the me in the window a little longer but I don’t like the way she looks at me so I toss my cigarette on the ground and crush it out and hurry a little more. It feels like there is a cloud looming behind me but it’s just in the sky, promising rain.

When I get back to the hotel room I unfold my laptop, dump the audio files from the voice recorder back onto it, and then I connect to the extremely rickety wi-fi network the motel offers and I look up what exactly the penalty is for trespassing on federal property. It’s not that bad, actually; a misdemeanor in all cases, at least under federal law. I don’t know if the site around the Pit is solely administered federally or if state law would also apply, though. Or would it count as trespassing on a military base? Apparently that can be a felony, if it’s important enough or if you’re being malicious about it. I do more googling around but the information I turn up is cryptic and limited. I wonder, not for the first time, if I’m putting myself on some kind of list doing this sort of research, then shake my head. Whatever.

The evening passes slowly and my nervousness doesn’t fade no matter how many cigarettes I smoke, leaned over on the wiry metal bannister, staring off into the flat, unexciting horizon. I watch television just to pass time, let Baggage and The Price is Right and Family Feud wash over me like an ocean, like waves, like I’m drowning. Am I drowning? If I were sane I think I’d feel like I were drowning.

When the time comes I put some pants on, long ones this time, shrug into my jacket, make sure I have my voice recorder and my camcorder and my slim little folding knife, more of a letter opener than anything else. I laugh at myself when I tuck it into my pocket but I still do it.

“Alright Roan,” I say to myself, staring in the mirror, sounding braver than I really feel, tucking my hair back in a ponytail. “Let’s go commit a felony.”

 * * *

 Peter raises his hand in greeting as I crest the hill and I wave back at him, click the light on my phone off and move down, join the little circle. He’d said there would be three others; two are here so far. One is a small Asian girl, so skinny it looks like she’d burst into flame if she crossed her legs too fast, and the other is a tall, heavy guy, looking like he’s in his late forties, balding hard. He has bags under his eyes and he keeps reflexively running his hands together. “Hi Lily,” Peter says to me and I blink and almost look behind myself to see if there’s someone back there, but he winks at me and I realize I’m supposed to be Lily. I wonder if there’s anything else important he’s left out.

“Hey,” I say. The Asian girl glances at me and then looks away again. Her eyes are very dark and it looks as though she’s chewing lightly on the inside of her cheek, sucking it inwards and holding it between her teeth and then letting it go again.

“This is Bao and Rey,” he tells me, indicating each of them. I nod at them.

“Hey,” I say again. “You guys, uh…excited?”

Peter shakes his head minutely and I feel faintly embarrassed, like I’ve said something I clearly shouldn’t have without realizing the taboo.

To their credit, they definitely do not look excited; nervous is more accurate. Perhaps haunted would be appropriate as well. Rey keeps glancing out into the darkness as though he can see something moving around out there; I can see his eyes focus on something and track it for a while before slipping off like a thrown egg slipping slowly down a window. I look out into the darkness as well but even though my eyes aren’t as adapted now thanks to Peter’s big utility flashlight throwing enough light to make me squint, it is very clear that there is nothing out there, nothing large enough that he’d be able to see it and track it like that.

I want to talk to him, I want to take out my recorder, I want to pry my way into his head, but I restrain myself. This is clearly not the time. The camcorder is still in my jacket pocket, the bulky night-vision attachment screwed onto its snouty muzzle already, fully charged and ready to go, but clearly I am supposed to be pretending to be one of these people. While we lapse into another uneasy silence and Peter checks his watch, I consider my new existence as Lily.

These two people are clearly so far gone that they barely recognize me as a person, let alone the deeper distinction between Roan and Lily. The way Rey keeps seeing ghosts and watching them like he’s ready to bolt or to fight, the way Bao keeps jumping at sounds none of the rest of us can hear, clearly they’re the two who are – what even is the right word? Afflicted? Who are, at least in Peter’s estimation, beyond retrieval?

I look at Bao. She’s young, maybe about my age, maybe a little younger. Twenty-two or twenty-three? Very possibly. Bao…the name sounds more Chinese than Japanese or Korean but I don’t know enough about Eastern culture to positively identify her, plus obviously there are more Asian countries than just China, Japan, and Korea. And if I’m supposed to be one of these people then should I care? Should I be getting into character?

I look again at Peter and feel a faint spark of anger at the fact that he didn’t let me know, didn’t warn me, but then I realize he didn’t really have a way to – he doesn’t have my number, and maybe this was something that resolved itself later in the afternoon after we’d parted, this need for secrecy.

I’ll draw the line at aping those nervous tics. Just watching these two is making me sad, giving me a feeling like someone’s taking hold of my heart and squeezing. It feels cruel, knowing I can do nothing.

Clearly the reason I’m Lily is because the third person, the guy from the cult, will know I’m coming, or at least will recognize my name. I think back and wonder if anybody had had a chance to take a photo of me while I was out walking around the town, but I’d have given people so many opportunities to take one without me noticing that it’s pointless to dwell on.

Surely if there was some sort of danger, if the cult knew for sure I would be here and they were perhaps willing to prevent me from coming somehow, Peter would have contacted me. He knows the motel I’m at, he might not know the room but if Erica Walken could get the phone number to it, surely Peter could have as well…right?

I toss my head, work my jaw sideways. It feels like it wants to crack but it doesn’t; I can feel the tension in the bulgy little knot of muscles down the side of my cheek. It doesn’t matter. I’m here, and I’m going in with them, cult or no cult.

There’s a crunching of feet on the dry hard earth behind us and Rey and I both turn to watch the third guy, tall and dark, making his way down the hill to us. He’s young, with a trimmed beard, and close-cropped hair. His eyes are very small; they linger on me for a moment and then flick to Rey and Bao.

“Alright,” Peter says, “everybody’s here. We’re going to be going under the fence through a hidden tunnel. It’s going to be tight so you guys are going to have to drop to your stomachs and crawl. It was going to be a waste-drainage pipe but they didn’t give the contractors they hired to do it the right plans and so it turned out that they were digging right on top of one of the power lines for the electric fence. They just left the pipe in there and put a fake rock over the entrance.”

I almost laugh when I hear that. It’s too easy. There must be a catch, mustn’t there?

“The pipe is going to let you out on the side of the patrol road inside the fence,” Peter says, looking between us. He weights his words carefully. “There should not be a patrol moving at the time that we go through,” he says, “but on the off chance that there is, whoever is in front needs to just freeze and wait, you understand?”

He looks around at us until we each nod. It takes Bao the longest but she does acknowledge, at least, that he’s speaking. “You,” he says, pointing to the guy from the cult, “your name is Marcus, right?”

“That’s right,” he says. He has a slow, deep, purposeful voice.

“You’re going to be in front. I don’t normally come in but I will be this time, I have some business to take care of inside. Me and Lily here,” he says, pointing to me, “will be in the rear. You two will be in the middle,” he says, and Rey and Bao nod, a little quicker this time.

“Once we’re inside, you’re going to be going in through a disused emergency exit that they haven’t sealed up because the Pit uses it to breathe. I’m not going to lie to you, it won’t be pleasant. It’s going to be tight, hot, smell horrendous, and it’ll be pitch-black, but it’s a one-way trip without any side branches, so just push through it and you will get through and out into the old Bronchial section. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there but all of my information says that any damage is fairly minimal and you should still be able to get through. Once you’re in, you’re on your own. If you want to come back out, take the same drainage pipe that we go in through and be careful not to cross the road right in front of a patrol. This area that we’re in, there aren’t any cameras, there’s no other detection, so as long as you look out for patrols, you’re fine. If you get caught, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. If you don’t tell them anything, the worst they can do is felony trespassing and a $500 fine. It isn’t great but it also isn’t the worst thing in the world. Understood so far?”

We all nod. My heart is beating quickly; I can hear it in my ears, a little thump reminding me that I’m really doing this, I’m really going to do it.

“Great,” Peter says. “Once you’re inside, the deeper you go the less likely it is that someone will catch you. Flip side is, the deeper you go, the more likely it is something will catch you. Anything with a sign that says ‘LVC’ or ‘Main Gullet,’ don’t go that way, you will get caught. I don’t know what you want to do down there or how long you want to do it for, doesn’t matter to me, but try not to get caught. And one more thing,” he says, looking very seriously at all of us. “Do not, under any circumstances, try to go in or out any other way than the one we’re going to take. That means do not go down to the main orifice. That is the most watched area in the entire facility and it is completely open. I know that this way isn’t great but it’s safe, easy, and it is unobserved. Everybody good?”

Once again we all nod, but I wonder whether or not Rey and Bao have really absorbed the information. Rey keeps watching things moving around in the shadows and Bao’s eyes are unfocused and glassy, and her head rocks lightly to the beat of something none of the rest of us can hear.

Peter gives instructions on how to get to the entrance, which I can now identify as being the same way as he and Makado got out during the disaster, the same breathing orifice that they’d pushed their way through four years ago.

Something about the…the enormity of it, of the thing beneath us and ahead of us and surrounding us, is getting to me. I can feel my skin prickling and a flash of heat passes over me suddenly and I nearly gasp but I contain myself. It wouldn’t do to have a panic attack right now, I tell myself, and I slowly, gradually, get myself back under control. I can feel my hands shaking at my sides and I shove them deep into my pockets. I want a cigarette.

There is finally, it seems, nothing left to talk about, no more instructions or warnings Peter can give us. He nods to himself, going over some kind of mental checklist, and then shrugs. “Alright,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 * * *

 Fifteen minutes later I’m already laughing at myself for getting so worked up over something so banal. Yeah, the other day when I followed Peter it had seemed like very serious business but here, actually making the trip myself, I can’t help but feel like it’s very small potatoes. It’s just a fence, I say to myself as we walk up to it, and then that turns into it’s just a waste drainage pipe, one that I have to shimmy through on my belly, grimacing as dust and grime gets on my nice coat, but it can’t be helped.

Peter’s behind me and Bao is ahead of me; Peter is staring at my ass, I’m sure, but then I realize that it’s pitch black in here so maybe I can give my ego a break and not assume it’s all about me. I keep having to prop myself up on my hands and knees to readjust the camcorder and make sure I’m not smashing it to bits on the hard floor of the pipe, but eventually we make it through and then we’re standing on an identical bit of hard, scrubby earth, except now we’re on the other side of the fence. As I watch, Bao, Rey, and Marcus all take off along the path, crossing it quickly and dropping down into the ditch below, and then they are just dark silhouettes making their way beneath the sharp half-moon. I get out my camcorder and flip it on and start filming them; the night-vision is really not that effective but it’s way better than just filming in the dark.

Peter clambers to his feet next to me and dusts himself off. “Well,” he says after a moment, “there they go.”

“They really don’t get caught?”

“Not usually. The ones who’re there to, you know, die to it, they go as deep as they can as quick as they can, far as I understand it, and the people with the cult tend to stay in the upper areas. There’s not very many personnel in the Pit right now so the odds of running into somebody is slim.”

I point ahead of us. “Can we go sit on that ridge? I want to get some shots of the Pit itself.”

“Sure. If a patrol comes we’ll have to duck down but it should be alright.”

We make our way across the road and down onto the ridge. I find a little flat section for us to sit on and then I pick out the three dark blobs making their way carefully up the hill. I whistle softly. “That’s the easiest way up there?”

“It is,” he says. “It doesn’t look like it but there’s a clear path, you just have to be careful of your footing.”

The figure in front stops for a moment. I can’t tell from this distance but I think it might be Bao. She stops and turns and looks across the great downward sloping crater of the Pit, and I pan the camcorder around and take a shot of it as well. I frown at the image. “That isn’t flesh down there, is it?”

“No,” Peter says. “They filled it all in with concrete. Do you see that little dark spot over there?”

I look where he’s pointing. “Yes.”

“That’s the orifice. They don’t keep it dilated as wide as they did during the park days, and the elevator is way smaller, too. There’s a little command center down in the gullet but it’s like, maybe a quarter of the size of the LVC. They’re all about minimizing impact now.”

Bao seems to be rocking unsteadily back and forth there on the trail and I turn the camera to record her. “So what happened to Makado?” I ask.

“I told you, she got out fine.”

“You know I don’t believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter if you believe it, it’s the truth.”

“Alright, can you introduce me to her, then? I’d like to meet her, or at least have a phone call.”

Peter laughs. “I really don’t think you’d want that.”

“Why not?”

He makes a little grunting noise. “I think you’d find that she –“

“Holy shit!” I blurt. Peter jumps next to me, looks around wildly.

“What is it?”

I’ve already gotten to my feet. “Bao just fucking ran back down the trail and someone else lost their balance and fell off,” I tell him, pointing at the dark object bouncing down the cliff face towards the white concrete below. Whoever it is they’re flopping like a rag doll, and I wince with each impact. “Jesus Christ,” I say, pointlessly. Next to me, Peter curses.

“Stay here,” he tells me before hustling off into the darkness. It looks as though he’s heading for Bao; I can barely see her but it looks as though she’s collapsed against a large boulder maybe a hundred yards away at the base of the hill, her shoulders shaking.

Well, Bao’s fine. I guess. She must have lost her nerve. I turn around, peer through the screen of the camcorder. Whoever she pushed, either Marcus or Rey, he’s reached the bottom by now and slumped into a huddled pile at the bottom of the crater. I can see one limb extended out limply like an exclamation point. I look back at Bao; Peter’s reached her and is hunched down next to her, trying to get her to move. She’s hugging her legs to her chest and I can see her shaking her head frantically. Did she do it on purpose? I didn’t see the whole thing but it looked like she just panicked.

When I turn back to Rey I can see him moving, trying to get up. “Oh fuck,” I say. He pushes himself up on his hands and then his arm gives out and he falls and lays there. I can just barely see, through the camcorder, his chest rising and falling. “Goddam it,” I say to myself, and then I fold up the camcorder and stuff it back into my jacket pocket, and then I get up and start to carefully pick my way down the heavy rocky incline of the crater lip.

 * * *

 I’m scared. I’m not ashamed to admit it, I’m terrified. I’m scared that someone is going to see me, is going to see whoever it is at the bottom, Rey or Marcus, and roll up with the black helicopters and take me wherever the Men in Black take you. It’s an insane, worthless fear but I still feel it. About half of me wants to bolt and run, scurry my way back into that drainage pipe and out and never look back, but I look at the lump ahead of me, hardly even seeming to be a person, no matter how beat up, and I see him again trying to rise and again falling and then I’m down there with him, my ankle aching from where I stepped wrong and very slightly rolled it, and I get down on my knees next to him. “Hey,” I say, “I’m here, it’s okay.”

He’s muttering in anguished Spanish to himself and I have to repeat myself a few times before he cracks his eyes open, his face dirty, blood from a cut above his eyebrow seeping down and stinging at his eye. He says something to me in Spanish and I trot out the little I know. “No entiendo,” I say, “Uh. Habla ingles?”

“Yeah,” he coughs. “You’re – Lily?”

“My name is Roan actually. Are you okay? Can you stand?”

“Rowan?”

“Roan. Like the horse. My parents were hippies.”

He looks at me like I’m speaking Greek and I might as well be. I put my hand out. “Can you stand?” I ask again, and he takes it. I help him pull himself up but his leg buckles beneath him and he lets out a cry of pain that echoes in the deserted Pit, bouncing off the soft white concrete expanse.

“I think I broke it,” he says. “Oh god.”

He’s staring around again, wilder than before. I look around in spite of myself but as I knew there would be there’s nothing there. I reach into my pocket and click the voice recorder on.

“What do you see?” I ask him.

“You don’t see them?”

“No, I can’t,” I shake my head. “What are they?”

That gets his attention and he tears his eyes from whatever vision he can see cavorting around us. He looks at me closely. “You don’t…you don’t see them?”

“No.”

“Oh,” he says, sounding disappointed. He tries to rise again but I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Wait,” I tell him. “Your leg must be broken, we can’t –“

“I’m so close,” he says. His eyes are wild now, and fixed on me. Before I can take a step back he’s thrown his weight towards me awkwardly and grabbed my arm. His hands are sweaty. “You have to help me.”

“Put your arm around me,” I tell him, crouching down. He’s heavy enough that I don’t know whether I’ll really be able to help much, but if I get on the same side as his hurt leg I can at least make sure he doesn’t have to put weight on it. The hard part will be getting up again –

Rey cries out again and I wince. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “This is going to be rough but we have to get you up.”

“No,” he says, leaning on me. His face is pale now, his mouth tight and drawn with the effort.

“No?” I ask. “Come on, we need to leave like right now –“

“No,” he repeats, one shaking finger extended out ahead of us. He’s pointing to the tall gantry of the elevator down into the Pit. “We have to go there,” he says. “I have to –“

“Absolutely not,” I tell him. “We have to go –“

But he is starting forward towards the gantry and I curse and walk with him, because if I don’t he’ll fall, he’ll cry out again, he’ll fucking crawl on his hands and knees over to the goddam gantry, I can see it in his eyes, I know he will without even wondering how I know, and even though the lurching pace we set is clearly causing him pain, he urges me forward without any regard for his leg, hanging uselessly at his side, the foot jostling along the concrete every now and then and making him groan, a low deep animal noise that makes me feel as though I’m going to be sick.

We make it about halfway before a deep, rumbling alarm starts somewhere and ratchets up to a screech and all the lights click on and turn the night to day. All the strength seems to leave my body; I almost collapse. “Oh fuck,” I say.

“Come on,” he says. I glare at him; I’m sweating, the tight grip he has around my shoulders is starting to hurt, and he isn’t exactly slim. It’s taking all of my effort to keep him upright and walking and I am so close to just dropping him. I give him a dirty look and try to summon up my willpower, every single ounce of meanness and cruelty in my body and just twist out of his grasp and let him fall, but I can’t do it.

“Goddam it, Rey,” I tell him. “It’s a fucking elevator, they won’t let you on, there aren’t going to be stairs you can go down.”

“Come on,” he says again. The closer we get to the orifice the deader his voice gets. He keeps looking over his shoulder but there isn’t anything there, at least not yet; a pair of headlights are cresting the ridge and I can see people piling out of what looks like a Humvee but they aren’t anywhere close to us yet.

I reflect, briefly, on how useless this venture is; we probably could have gotten away if Rey hadn’t insisted on coming down here to peer down an empty elevator shaft. And if I hadn’t had such a damn big heart I could have gotten away, at least. Felony trespassing; well, I have the money for the fine, at least, but that’s got to be at least a year in federal prison, nothing to sneeze at. Maybe they have special accommodations for sick people? At the very least once I tell all of the prison lesbians what’s wrong with me they’ll –

“YOU TWO DOWN ON THE EXCLUSION PLATE!” a tremendous voice yells down at us through a megaphone. I nearly jump out of my skin but somehow manage to keep ahold of Rey. “STOP WHERE YOU ARE OR WE WILL SHOOT!”

I stop but Rey keeps going. “Rey, stop,” I tell him, but he doesn’t pay any attention to me. We’ve gotten far enough now that the end is in sight, the gantry is maybe twenty or thirty feet ahead of us and the yawning hole in the concrete is visible, but I can’t see inside it, not from this angle. “Rey!” I yell, but he pushes me back and I stumble to my knees. Rey breaks into a shambling run, or tries to anyway, but his leg simply is too hurt for him to put any weight on it. He nearly falls but he catches himself and bounces back up.

The first gunshot is unbelievably loud, even though it seems to come from a mile away. I hear it crack and I scream and fall down to my knees, my shoulders cringing together without any conscious effort on my part. I can see a spray of concrete splinters rising at Rey’s feet like shrapnel, and I realize the shot missed. He’s nearly there. I don’t know what he wants to achieve. I throw my jacket off and wrestle with the pocket, pull out the camcorder as quickly as I can force my shaking hands to operate, and snap it open so quickly I nearly break it. I start filming just in time to see the third, fourth, and fifth bullets bury themselves in him, two in his shoulder and one in his thigh. I cry out again but Rey is utterly silent. He’s down on his hands and knees but he tries to rise, and then another bullet catches him, this time in the back of the head, and he is down for good, and I realize that I’m crying, even while I’m trying very hard to keep the camcorder steady to get the shot of Rey’s supine body, one hand extending forward, reaching for the edge of the orifice, just ten feet away from him, a shocking red spray of arterial blood staining the concrete ahead of him like a punctuation.

Then two pairs of hands catch me under the shoulders and haul me to my feet and someone takes away my camcorder and they shove my head into a hood and then I can’t see. They force my hands together behind my back and handcuff me and I want to say something witty, quip something vaguely salacious like ‘easy boys, get to know me first before you get out the handcuffs’ but I can’t make my voice work the way it ought to and I’m still crying and shaking and I realize as they half carry half drag me to some kind of vehicle and fold me into it that I’ve wet myself, and any sort of bravery I might have been able to muster disintegrates into a painful, sharp-edged mass of shame and fear and embarrassment and a feeling not unlike I’m falling, like what I thought was just a rabbit hole has turned into a bottomless pit.

Continue with Part 11

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[dailyaudiobible]

01/01/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 1:1-2:25, Matthew 1:1-2:12, Psalms 1:1-6, Proverbs 1:1-6

Today is January 1st welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Happy New Year. Welcome���welcome aboard. We are about to set sail on a journey that we will be on together for the next 365 days, a full year to allow the earth to move its way all the way around the sun, a full year to live into and live life together and a full year to insert the Scriptures into an important part of our day, every day, informing what the year is going to look like. And believe me, well, if this is your first go around, if this is the first time you're like, “yup. This is going to be my year. I’m gonna read the whole Bible.” You’re gonna find that it…if you do that it's gonna touch everything about your life. Sticking to this every day for this next year will be probably the most enlightening thing you've ever done in terms of learning about God certainly but learning about yourself and your context, and who God is and who you are and where this is all going. These things come from daily interaction with the Scriptures. So, welcome aboard. And welcome back to those of you who have been taking this journey each year for years. Today is day one of the 16th trip, the 16th year, the 16th time through the Bible in a year here at the Daily Audio Bible. And if you’ve taken more than one journey, then you know that there are similarities and there are profound differences in every year because we are different. We are growing. We are changing. And the Bible seems to have this way of being immediate and relevant and present and even pressing into and challenging some of the things that we do and say and think. And that's a good thing because the Bible…the Bible’s a book, right? It’s this written book. It’s actually a book full of books, a collection of books that span thousands of years. And, so, we’re gonna meet a lot of people and we’re gonna watch their lives unfold, some in very short fashion, some in very long drawn out fashion. We’re gonna get to know a lot of people and we will watch the choices they make and where those roads lead only to find out how things changed. Those roads still go the same place. That gives us so much wisdom for the choices that we’re making because even the inconsequential choices go somewhere. And sometimes they go somewhere big that changes things altogether. We’ll see that in the Bible too. So, here we are…like opening the cover and getting to page 1. And all books have a beginning. And…and since the Bible is a book of books…well…there's lots of beginnings. And every time we come to the beginning of a new book we’ll try to talk about what we’re reading, where it sits in history, what's going on, why it's going on, give ourselves a little bit of context because one of the primary things we’ll find about the Bible is that understanding it, interpreting it, applying it to our lives, making it make sense or have any kind of effect on today you need context. Without context the Bible can get confusing. With context the Bible can blossom and bloom into the best friend we have ever had. So, as we open to page one basically we find the words, “in the beginning.” And is there a better way to start the story of this year, “in the beginning.”

Introduction to the book of Genesis:

That’s how the book of Genesis starts, the first book that we will encounter in the grouping of books known as the Old Testament. And by the way, we’ll read a little bit of the Old Testament, a little bit of the New Testament, a little bit of the Psalms, and a little bit of the Proverbs each day as we make our way through the journey. But Genesis is famous for being the first book, “in the beginning.” And normally what we think about when we think about Genesis is that it…it tells the story of creation. Ironically, that's like only a small part of the story of Genesis. The book of Genesis covers more time than any of the other books in the Bible. So, after we read the origin story, we’ll still have another 2500 years contained within the pages of Genesis, which is more time covered then the rest of the Old Testament combined. So, the first 11 chapters of Genesis will cover a couple thousand years and a couple thousand miles before slowing down and we’ll begin to focus on several specific generations of people that will…that we need to focus on because they shape the rest of the Bible and they influence our world until this very day. And I was just talking about groupings of books. Like the Old Testament is a grouping of books and the New Testament is a grouping of books, but there are subgroupings of these books within the larger…within the larger context. And, so, Genesis is a part of a group of books known as the Torah or the Pentateuch. And these books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And by the way, if you're using the Daily Audio Bible app…and if you’re not, try it out. The Daily Audio Bible app is the portal into community here. It's the…in the palm of your hand all things Daily Audio Bible. But within the Daily Audio Bible app you can check off the days that you've listened to. And as you stack those up each and every day as we move through these different groupings of books when we complete them, we will be awarded a badge that tells us you’ve completed this particular section of the Bible. So, this is where you are. This is what you completed. This is how many percent are completed of the New Testament and the Old Testament and the whole Bible. All that is right there to show us, to give us the sense that we’re progressing through because we are. So, make sure you have that as we begin this journey. And we will have plenty…we will have more than plenty to talk about as we make the journey, but I think I’ve given us enough of a flyover for right this minute. We've come here and we come here each day for the Scriptures, and we make a habit of making that the centerpiece because it is the centerpiece. It's the reason that were here. And, so, let's dive in on this January 1st on the first day of the year. We will read from the New Living Translation for the rest of this week and we will rotate, we change translations each week. And I can talk about that a little bit the end, but we’re at the beginning of today. Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Genesis today we read the story of creation, which is what Genesis is most famous for. But embedded in that narrative of the days of creation and what God was forming and fashioning we see over and over is that His intent was that it was good, that what He created was good. He looked at it and saw that it was good. And then when He created humanity in His own image. I mean that’s straight out of the book of Genesis, “let us create man in our own image.” So, when He creates mankind, He looks upon it and says this is very good. Like this exceptional, this is exceptionally good.” So, right from the beginning, right from the beginning of the story we are introduced to God and we are introduced to a God that creates good things and takes pleasure in good things. What we see is that this was the intent. This was the plan, that it is good, and that the creation was good even very good, exceptionally good. This is our starting point. But this needs to carry us forward, that God is good and what God does is good and just and right. And not only that, that God's intention was for us to be very good. We’ll have to wait a couple of days. It’s not gonna take that long for us to figure out what happened to that plan. So, we’ll stay tuned here in the book of Genesis for the next couple of days.

We also began the book of Matthew today. And I mentioned earlier that, you know, when we come to the beginning of a new book we’ll talk about each of these books. The fact of the matter is that this is January 1st and we’re starting four new books as well as a brand-new year so there’s a lot of ground to cover. So, we’ll talk about Matthew tomorrow and then we'll talk about the other two books, Psalms, the next day and Proverbs the day after that. Kind of getting ourselves moved in and just, yeah, unpacking our bags and getting settled in our quarters because this is gonna be a voyage that we’re on and we’re gonna sail out into the deep all the way across the year, but we’re just releasing the anchor, like we’re just getting out of harbor here. So, we are inside of land. We’re just getting settled in and we’ll do that over the next couple of days. But in the book of Matthew today we began reading the origin story of the birth of Jesus the Savior, the son of God, God made flesh. This God that we've read about in the book of Genesis, this good God with good intentions who had created an exceptional humanity in His own image…well…as the story goes, things get a little bit sideways and backwards and this God comes in person to make things right in the person of Jesus. And, so, that's the narrative we are beginning in the book of Matthew. And, so, today, you know we had this little section of genealogy. And what we were doing is reading really the names from the beginning all the way to the generations that that led up to Jesus. And we read a bunch of names and they maybe weird names, but we’re gonna to get to know all of those people. This won’t be the last time we read their names. Some of them we’ll get to know very well.

Then we turn the book of Psalms today and where just told “O the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or stand around with sinners or join in with mockers.” Like right out of the gate we’re getting this profoundly simple but profoundly true advice. “Those who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate upon it, their lives are like trees planted along a riverbank.” Alright. So, that's a metaphor we can understand. A good source of water, a good source of nourishment and they bear fruit in each season and their leaves don’t wither. Like that’s a good metaphor. We’ve just gone through a year of withering challenges, right? If our lives are planted and rooted by a riverbank with life-giving water, then it’s sustained us through this. And, so, if that's not the case, then we've been withering, and we've stumbled and fell our way here to find some nourishment from the Bible to try to just keep going forward. And that's fine because this is day one of being planted by a riverbank giving life-giving water and our leaves will never wither if we will stay rooted in that place. And the Bible will continually challenge that and show us how to do it.

And then we turn to the final section of Scripture, the Proverbs, and we learned why we would want to read the book of Proverbs. And what we’ll find is that the Proverbs can speak volumes in one sentence. It can just cut to the chase, cut right through all the crap and get right to the heart of the matter immediately. And, so, we’re told today the purpose of the Proverbs to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise. Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just and fair, to give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young. I want that. My hands up. Like I'm on board with that. Are we not all on board with that? What would it look like to walk in wisdom this year, to be wise in the things that we say and think and do this year. That could be a profound game changer, to have wisdom at the ready instead of just reacting to everything that comes our way, to actually have foreknowledge and wisdom. And when things come flying at us we have the wherewithal to consult wisdom and understand we don’t have to get bowled away by this. We have choices and we’re going to make wise. And, so, this is day one and the Bible is already speaking about how to live this life as we go into the future. So, that's our day. That's our day one.

And I just want you to know I’m grateful. I'm grateful we have boarded this ship and we all are gonna…are gonna sail across the year together, and that over the next weeks, we will settle in and move into the year and settle into the rhythm of the Bible being a part of our lives every day and settle into the fact that this is not a solitary endeavor. We are not alone. There are tens and tens and tens of thousands of us who are taking this journey together and we’re gonna get to know each other. Surprising as that might be, we’re gonna get to know each other over the course of the year. So, many stories will unfold before us in each other's lives that it won't be too long before we realize we’re falling in love with each other because we’re a community centered around one goal and that goal is to go through the Bible together and allow it to shape our lives. So, we are a community that's moving in the same direction and on the same page, literally. We’re all going through this together. And the truth of the matter is we’re all facing challenges, all of us. All of us are facing challenges. We all got here and boarded on this voyage for this year for a reason. Some of us have been taking the voyage for years. And we know how profoundly the Bible can impact a year. Some of us are just here for the first time having maybe grown up in the faith of the having been believers for a long time but acknowledging the fact that like 98% of believers in the world have never read the Bible, not the whole thing, not even anywhere close. And, so, this is the year. This is the year to find out what it really says. This is the year to let it speak on its own behalf in its own context.

And then…then there are those of you brothers and sisters who don't even know why you're here. This isn't your thing. Religion is something that you’ve sworn off a long time ago. You don't really want any of this…you’re just super curious about what an ancient holy book like…like it's basically life’s not working out as it is, so there needs to be something else, and maybe that something else, who knows…who knows maybe that something else is in the Bible. Maybe there's something there. What does it really say? What does it really mean? Where does it really lead people? How does it shape people's convictions? Maybe that's you. Welcome aboard. We are gonna have so much fun exploring those questions and peeking into those motivations and understandings.

And then there are those of you who have crawled here…and…your fingernails are bloody from just dragging yourself across the new year just…just committed to trying to make it through 2020. And you’re just here on your hands and knees, you have no more energy. Welcome. You have come to the right place. You are no longer alone, and you will not be alone during this journey at all. We all had a rough time of it last year. And…and maybe it's not just last year maybe it's the last decade or maybe it's as long as you can remember, and this is that. Like, there’s…something's got to give, something's got to change. And, so, with all the hope that you had left your spending it here and saying, “I'm gonna give a shot to the Bible. I don't even know what’s's gonna happen or what's really going on but I’m gonna give a shot to it because everything else is hopeless and this is it.

I get it. So many of us get it. That's how so many of us got here just with nowhere else to turn. But that sort of sick feeling in our stomach that God is so angry at us. We’ve messed things up so bad that if He's even there He's mad. And how do you even find your way into some sort of relationship, some sort of understanding that He's there and that…that He is actually good in that He does actually care and that He might actually look upon us as very good creations. Just doesn't feel like that. Feels like He's angry and that He's mad and that we keep failing and we cannot get it together more than one day. Maybe we can hold it together for 24 hours but then we’re gonna fall down again in some sort of way, And, so, we live our lives believing there is a God and believing that He's mad because we are failures. That’s not who God is. That's not the God that the Bible will introduce and is introducing to us. That's not what's going on here. God, the Bible will tell us, is love. And love Jesus will tell us is how we are to be known, how the world will know that we are following Christ is by our love. And maybe you're here and you don't like even the name, the idea, the word Christian because that's the last thing you have ever witnessed out of Christian people. That’s not what you’re gonna find here and I’m sorry about that actually. I think we all are. I think we've all had those experiences at one point or another. And it's hard because it's a broken world full of broken people and broken people break things. And we’re all guilty, all of us. But the way of Jesus is the pathway of love, loving your enemies, loving your neighbor as yourself, loving your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength.

And, so, I’m telling you, just hang out here for a while. Just hang out here. Just rest here. What you’ll find is that this becomes an oasis. The Daily Audio Bible every day becomes an oasis for us. We call it the Global Campfire. We all just come here to a safe place, a calm serene space in our lives that we can turn to each day knowing that the chaos may be happening all around the world, but we have a safe place to gather that’s virus free, pandemic free, but we’re all here together healing, mending, growing, becoming. And it is a joy, it is an honor, a true privilege to take this journey with you. And I’m telling you, no matter how you got here, this may be your 15th trip through. No matter how you got here. You may have crawled across the finish line of the year like I said. If we’ll let it love will find a way.

Song:

Find Our Way - Paul Alan

[heatherrdavis1]

STOCKS WILL FALL 90%!? Bitcoin Trump Programmer explains

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

And we’re alive. Yes. Welcome to another episode of Good Morning drift on here I on Ivan on tape. We are of course broadcasting live straight out of Stockholm Sweden. And we do the show each and every day at 8:00 p.m. Central European Time gets but on weekends on weekends. It’s 11:00. So that’s why I would do 11:00 and so there’s so much of it. Guys guys we have a lot to discuss because the stock market may not be open tomorrow and during the week because we do have signals from the Trump administration that they will issue even more log down in the U.S. and you will see exactly which measures they might be taken. But you understand also if they do more log down the stock markets are not going to react well and therefore we might see a situation in which the stock market doesn’t even open. And it’s important to note that we may go down 90 percent in the stock market as a whole because during the Great Depression we went down approximately 80 to 90 percent and we haven’t gone down that much since then. But at the same time we never really had the crisis like this where everyone needs to stay at home and the economy completely completely shuts off. And now people are talking about hyperinflation even outside of crypto man. It’s insane because normally when you mentioned hyperinflation and that it may happen in our countries like in Sweden in the US people tell you you are recruited a lunatic man. What are you talking about. You’re some kind of crypto maniac and the hyperinflation can never happen in our countries in the Western world or they will tell you you’re a gold bug. You want people to buy your gold like Peter Schiff. So look at the end of the day it’s only been us who thought about hyperinflation and who thought about the possibility of all currencies hyperinflation because you know that all fiat goes to zero. And today will share with you the fact that the CEO of the pension funds here in Sweden is not some kind of person from the street. This is the CEO of the pension funds managing billions and billions now coming out and saying that we may see hyperinflation. So this is key and the global media is not talking about it but you get it here. And we yes we will be discussing that and we’ll be discussing Tasos. We will be discussing other things as well. Welcome to the show. Great to see you here. Great. All of you who are watching live. And you know I guess if you are watching on YouTube you’re not watching dislike. You really missed the opportunity because we’re only live streaming on Ivan on take dot com slash life. So go there right now and be sure to subscribe. You will see a read subscribe button there so be sure to click it right now. Straight straight away so I can show you on the screen how it’s done. You see right here you see subscribe enable web notifications and telecommunications. You can do all of this and then you can also be part of the chat because this is only a real plot and that being said everyone who is watching this live welcome. Amazing to hear it. I see crypto koala. I see Danny Hoddle. I see Dino. I see. A group that Yoda. I see women. Charles guys how are you doing. Amazing to see so many of you here on this fantastic Sunday morning right. Well Alex Lebanon where you are watching from which countries we have today because always some kind of different country which is exciting for Fabrice us always that’s always that’s always great guys to have you here. And today you know that I am drinking green tea. Nowadays green tea no milk no sugar involved. And let me know what you’re drinking. Belgium nice nice nice. Me Connecticut USA Switzerland Barcelona Holland. Amazing guys. Amazing. So good to see here. Now before we go into the markets before we go into the market overview I just want to show you this. I just want to show you this which is quite the special news coming from Sweden. Look this lady right here she is the CEO of the pension funds. I tried to translate this page but the bridge crashes when you like entrant into translate. But this is like the state news and the look. This is the most important thing and I have translated this here. Basically they’re talking about how this situation can really go out of control with the with the virus with Coronas and everything that is going on. And she’s basically saying that look we’re looking at mass unemployment at around 20 to 40 percent unemployment and this means that there are very few businesses to go to. There’s even the risk that all of this money is being blown out that we are getting hyperinflation. Look it’s like she’s in crypto now. I mean maybe she should enter the crypto industry for real because she’s talking about this like a true crypto group part of the crypto community. So so big welcome. Alex you’re talking about that all of this money that is being blown into the system might create hyperinflation along with the fact that we have no demand in the economy because unemployment is so high. Nobody has can afford anything really at the same time. You do see this old money just being printed into the into the eco system without any true productivity. And here is where it becomes dangerous. Here’s where it becomes dangerous. So that’s her point. And look I think it’s very important to also look at this globally because here is basically the unemployment numbers that may come out next week. Let me show you let me move a bit. So look we don’t have this numbers confirmed confirmed yet it’s just a survey. But the US will come out with unemployment numbers next week. And here’s what we may be looking to on a weekly datum as you can see this is way past. I mean this red chart right here is way past anything that we’ve seen. I mean it’s way past 2008. Way past the 94 93 94 83 84. It’s way past everything. And the reason is because everyone is forced to stay at home so as Remy says Houston we have a problem as L.A. San Francisco New York and other cities are going into lockdown. Jobless claims is about to have the worst week ever. This is only the beginning. This is only the beginning. And it is something that we don’t really mind. People are not taking this seriously yet. People have not really started to think in terms of a depression although on this channel we’ve been talking about it and and all across the crypto space we’ve also been talking about it for quite some time. But normal people there still in this fairy tale that the virus will just go away tomorrow and look it may go away tomorrow. But what’s important for this lady you also said the CEO like the pension funds she said as well that look you cannot just shut off the economy like politicians are doing right now with curfews and stuff and then just turn it on and and think that is going to go back to normal. And think that you can just you know on off and it’s all back you just turn it on. Hey guys we just turn it on again when all of this cronies are gone and illness is gone. But that is not of course how it works. Once you set off a domino effect even if the virus is now gone everyone is happy to work happy to do business. It may be very difficult to turn it back on once the chain reaction really starts. We do see bankruptcies we do see insolvencies. We do see banks failing. It’s not something you can just turn back on and that’s it. So please keep it in mind please keep it in mind. Very very much. Now looking on the crypt Marcus we have bitcoin plus 4 percent where we feed him plus 3 percent of SRP plus two point nine percent whatever that they’re keeping one dollar and keeping the peg people still trusting and tether between cash two percent I mean all in all quite green market quite good quite good. Just continuously looking at the double digits here in the top 50 you have decreed that 20 percent else do you have no one else at double digits. The biggest winners of today are swipe 65 percent secret 19 see acquiring steam also performing with all of their issues they’re still performing well today hex. Who would have believed it 10 percent. Let me know if you Hoddle hex. Yeah I mean the reason why we’re seeing hex is because it’s quaint paprika like the only Web site where they have hex or not because Richard is always complaining that they’re not adding hex and other Web sites and that they are calculating it wrong. But anyway hex 10 percent or 8. So all in all quite bullish Marcus and looking at the losers. We don’t even have losers lexicon. No losers guys no losers as always. We do have our webinar is going to happen next week March 26. Keep it in mind completely free we’re talking about how to stack massive amounts of sass. Use the link below to sign up just scroll down right now and sign up it’s completely free and only sign up if you haven’t been in decades Academy. And if you haven’t been on the previous one obviously you can sign up as well but then you will recognize a lot and we do have our collaboration with the Bible. So I guess if you are trading bitcoin if you want to trade the theorem yours or SRP This is the platform for you. It is the change that we prefer right now the most. Why. Because the technical solution is amazing but also because they have great supports if you have any question just click here to support. I mean obviously we can long you can short you can use leverage up to 100 days which is important to lower timeframes but you should be extremely careful if you’re not a trader. If you’re just starting out you should really learn how to trade first and then use it. But yes use the link below. And you can get a great deal if you use the link below. So definitely do that. Now moving into the most important news of today it is the fact that we might see a complete shutdown of the whole nation of the U.S. as you will see in this in this article. But also when it comes to the stock market because you can not shut down and you cannot do what the president may have to do very soon without without actually shutting off the markets because the markets if they did not going to handle it they’re not going to handle that is at least how they are reasoning at least how they are thinking. So basically we may see next week and shelter in place which means the president will be asked to stay home and not leave the residence until unless they travel or unless it’s an emergency. So there are two travel lessons emerge. We can also mean travel unless it’s emergency. And so this is according to various publications and according to different sources this is not completely confirmed but you do see this going online right now and and people are writing about this a lot right now. And look it’s not impossible to reason because this is the situation we’re seeing all across the world already that people are asked to stay at home. This is not that that’s strange and it would just be normal if we’re seeing it in the US next week so Trump is also considering grounding all U.S. passenger planes. No no one will be allowed to take a plane to another state and the sources familiar with the matter say the measure being considered is for an unspecified timeframe. Also you got to realize that the U.S. president and the bipartisan members of Congress have already enacted several sets of orders like enforcing compressions to produce certain goods. So for example if you have a factory and you can produce medical supplies you will be forced to do that. And we’re seeing it across the world already in some countries and also in some countries you cannot export to your goods to other nations if it is needed in your country. So this is what we are already seeing in Europe that if you can provide for example medical supplies you can provide hand gel you know this alcohol gel then first and foremost you sell to your own country. And then if there’s anything left you can expert maybe but that’s also big maybe. So we’re seeing it in other countries as well in Europe. It might be true in the U.S. very very soon and EU officials and unnamed sources I mean you’ve got to take it maybe with a grain of salt because we don’t know exactly who it is a told The Washington Examiner that the Trump administration is seriously considering to shut down the stock market at the same time it grounds the U.S. passenger fleet. And Trump’s orders a nationwide shelter in place and it’s also it also makes perfect sense because look the markets will not be able to take this well. They’re not looking good guys. This is not good. We’re falling through the floor. This is the fastest collapse basically ever. We’ve never seen this fast collapse of the S&P. Look we’ve already fallen with 33 percent. I mean if you look at the bottom here it’s like 34 percent. It’s a lot. Yes man. It’s so much during such a short period of time. Look in the previous recession here we fell by approximately by approximately fifty seven 57. And it took so much longer time took my so much longer time to get to the bottom and all and all the wool fell from all time high 57 percent. Here we are already at 30. And it took just one week one two weeks. It’s insane. Yes it’s absolutely insane buy in two weeks we are already down this much and you see here how many weeks is it took here to go down. I mean we’re talking about 500 days overall. So yeah it was a long journey down and you were taking the elevator within the two weeks. Now the only way to really see a comparison to this because we might we may go way lower than 50 percent. It is actually the Great Depression and look Trading View. I didn’t find a good chart that went all the way back to the 1930s but we do have this right here on macro trends. And if you look at how much will fell how much S&P fell in at that time we basically were at four hundred four hundred seventy four at the peak and we went all the way down to let’s see if I can actually prick. Yeah. Eighty eighty four ish ish. Even lower man if you zoom zoom in. Let me let me try to zoom in. But this was one of the biggest false ever in human history if not the biggest. Yeah. It shows 84 Ish Ish Ish Ish. So look this may be comparable to this. This may be comparable comparable to this but at the same time you realize that it’s difficult to say exactly how much lower is going to be and seeing the fact that we went 60 percent in the last one seeing a great depression even lower seeing everything that is going on. You understand that at the end of the day we might of course see numbers at minus 80 percent in the stock market minus 9 C. It’s not impossible because we’ve seen it before and this situation right here where everyone stays at home zero demand for anything. Everyone is just sitting at home. There is no production because you cannot go to work. There’s no demand. There is no productivity. Then of course we might see minus 18 minus 90 percent in the stock market. It’s not it’s not that far fetched to be honest. So what does it say. What does it tell us. It tells us that the Trump administration might not want that right now. So it tells us before the election going down 90 percent of the stock market. Will not be a good thing. So of course shutting down the stock market for a one week two weeks it’s not completely out of the question. And we’ve had this before the last time was during the 9/11 attacks where President Bush closed until the September the 17th. So from 9/11 to September 19th it was closed. Basically a week a bit less then. We also saw the stock market drop by 14 percent on the day of this open after a week of closure in thirty three during the Great Depression we did actually see the President shut down the stock market as well. So you know that Roosevelt created Emergency Banking Act shutting it down. But at the same time with most people don’t remember is that at this time all gold was confiscated so federal. Sorry. Roosevelt was also behind this gold hoard the ban so we can not even have any gold and order as people’s stashes of gold were stolen and repatriated at a bad price. Very bad price. Basically they stole the gold from the population and then gave dollars for a very very bad price because once the trading opened again Gold prices soared. And you’re still with you and you’re stuck with your cash that the government gave you which is way less than what it was worth just a short while afterwards. On the free markets I mean it’s insane it’s insane guys and we don’t really know what’s gonna happen. Bitcoin is up ninety nine point ninety eight percent. That is the thing research on offer there is no way to shut down bitcoin but you gotta understand that once again and especially in 2020 people are swift learning that the American government and by the way any government any government will do whatever it wants. When there is a crisis. So just keep this in mind as if this is big. This is big. The situation we’re in is big is nothing to hide it’s nothing to really try to minimize or make it less serious. It is very serious and this is this is not looking good. Yemen is to get to it took very very quick to go all the way here. Anyway let me know what you think. Let me know what you think. It’s it’s not it’s not looking good at least from my perspective now obviously obviously it all depends on how much the cronies are here how long they’re here for and it may be the case that they are disappearing very quickly that this illness goes away and then may maybe the fact is we don’t really see this big dominoes fall yet that yes it’s possible to turn the economy back on that. Yes it’s possible to go back but at the same time it’s not looking good at all right now right now. But also what’s important to note is that if you live in the country where this thing hasn’t really taken off like in Sweden it’s not currently is not that big here. And it seems most people are relaxed. People don’t really care a lot. They go into town they basically do what they’ve always done to large extent to a large extent. Hotels Of course and the travel businesses are hurting because people are not travelling but when it comes to just walking around being in the sunshine people are completely completely cool with that. So if you’re not living like in Italy or Spain or China you don’t really experience how severe it is. And so for most people of course the symptoms as far as I understand they’re not very severe. So we’re going to see. Maybe it is the case that this blows over quickly that the world will say OK guys we overreacted with the curfews let’s just let’s roll them back. But it doesn’t look like that at least for now. So let me know your opinion on this in the chats right now. India will be the new hotspot says Jimmy. Yes it sounds likely to be honest with you. Sounds likely not gonna happen says Charles. Let’s see Ivan chat idea rather than typing out. We can simply click. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s a good idea. You can click. Oh yeah. That was actually a good idea. You don’t have to eat or you don’t have to type at. You just write the user name and then it will be highlighted. But that’s a very good idea actually. So when you click someone’s user name it will add it to your message. So that’s good user name on the click. That’s actually a good idea. Because right now what I do is that I copy paste user name in order for it to to highlight that for the other person when they send the message. But yes it’s easier to just click it will get worse before it gets better says Al. Alex in Belgium we are in complete lockdown without the government calling it a lockdown. It’s all about Worthing and it’s kind of kind of kind of the same situation that might unfold in Sweden as well. I don’t know. For now Sweden is quite relaxed. You can still travel here it’s still open. There’s no like super super hardcore curfews there and there are no curfews. But you’re not allowed to do gatherings of more than 500 people. That is the only thing basically. And look it’s not some kind of Armageddon. It’s not that big of a difference. So basically different strategies as we’ve been discussing that here. It’s more relaxed. You know we want to have this herd immunity in other countries. It’s more lockdown. We’re going to see. We’re going to see. I mean the good thing at least is that the economy is at least I mean it’s not complete shutdown. The shut shut off. And the numbers right now are showing that this strategy of not completely going into lockdown is working at least according to me it is working because it’s not that we do see some kind of an anomaly numbers here of some kind of Armageddon numbers in Sweden but Sweden is way more relaxed when it comes to shutting it off. And it’s good for the businesses because we don’t see this domino effect of bankruptcies like in other countries. It’s a bit better here but it’s not good. It’s not good either because a lot of course depends on exports. A lot depends on tourism. And there is not much like the government can do even if they try to to make it go better yet there is not much they can do because it’s so small nation it’s so export dependent. So doesn’t really matter what we do here. Then they were all affected by everything else. So that that’s important it does like that in most European countries like small nations they need to export. Let’s see Armageddon Mortal Combat. Right right right. China is stable. My girlfriend is from China. Lives in Barcelona. We’ll see. But you know in China they’re good at making sure people don’t go out there making sure you know when you go out there you may be in big trouble. I don’t know how it is in Spain because I haven’t been in Spain since this whole situation. But if you are living in Spain let me know what happens if you if you if you go out despite the curfew what will happen to you legally will they take you physically and put in jail straight to jail. I’m thinking about this sketch you know being yourself straight to jail or is it something that is completely cool you may get the fine and then you do whatever you want still. That’s the biggest issue with the Europe. I mean it’s good of course you don’t want to have a totalitarian totalitarian regimes. So it’s good it’s not bad. But in this particular situation with curfews it may not be working that well compared to totalitarian regimes. So yeah. OK yes. My wife is also Chinese and her family back home. Yeah it’s normal. Got very very very cool. I mean look at the end of the day this Corona thing might blow over. Coronas anyway moving on Yes we have some sad news from Russia unfortunately because the politicians don’t like crypto. They want to ban it. Basically you have this bill coming out and the creator of the bill one of these politicians saying that this is a senior Russian official has warned is delayed bill on digital assets will include a ban on issuing and selling crypto currencies. MAN Yeah this is big because Russia is one of the most important markets for crypto looked being in crypto now for since 2013 and working full time since 2017. I can tell you there’s so much Russian activity in crypto but at the same time it’s not necessarily that they’re based in Russia. They’re based all across the world but the Russians love crypto. I can tell you that we believe that there are big risks of legalizing the operations with crypto currencies from standpoint of financial stability. What does this mean. It means that the the Fiat garbage that their currency is an old currency is our fiat right now and they’re all garbage but it means that they don’t want competition of course because they’re even saying that look the ruble is the only way the only way to pay for things in Russia here. The ruble as the law says is the only legal means of payment in Russia. So obviously they don’t want competition because everyone understands that it’s garbage. It’s lost 50 percent. Like overnight a few years ago 2016 or 15 don’t remember exactly but if you lived there you of course remember when it lost that much. So obviously and that is by the way it’s like that in most countries it’s in most countries. Look at Norway. Look at Sweden. How much we’re losing against the dollar right now. So everyone understands that the national fiat currencies it’s it’s it’s not a good idea for you to handle that long term. And the thing is you always want to create demand. So that is why. That is why when you pay taxes you have to pay. In your national currencies because they need demand for their for their old coin basically for for their garbage. So taxes is maybe the most important demand because whatever you’re doing you will be buying your national currency to pay the taxes. There’s no way other way to pay it in the US. In some states you can pay it in bitcoin. It’s really mind blowing that you can. But in most countries you can’t. You have to buy their fiat. You have to do it. And so the same as of course when paying for things. And basically this if there is and this is a lie because they need demand for it and they need the masses that they can print more money and and do all kinds of operations whether it is funding government projects whether it is corruption whether it is whatever. Look the government wants to be able to print money. That only works if that money has some kind of demand. And the demand from the other ones is it has some kind of buyers that they can dump on. Basically look being encrypt crypto looking at all consumers so much because this is exactly how these central banks work. Look at all costs when they dump on the on their community. When they tried to create some kind of demand and then dump we’ve seen so much in 2007 seem like this low quality old coins that they tried to create some kind of demand some kind of excitement so they can basically dump their banks or create new currency and dump it. So you learn so much from crypto about how the world actually works because this is exactly like that. This is exactly like that. So anyway we’ll see. Yes. Now this is not banning owning crypto so nobody is going to ban owning crypto currencies because that’s impossible because it’s impossible to do it. But if you want to have an exchange you want to have a brokerage you can do anything. So yeah I guess it’s a bit sad. It’s a bit sad. Now we have a Tasos foundation trying to settle their lawsuit. This is very important for them to do because they are in the risk of being deemed a security. So they’re trying to just shut down this lawsuit because it’s been so much time. And they’re saying that’s expensive and time consuming lawsuits you know it needs to end because it’s meritless and and they continue to deny any wrongdoing because look Tesla is under heat from their investors because their investors are and are basically claiming that this is this his securities sale and they want their money back basically. And this has been going on for quite some time and they want 25 million so now there’s some kind of settlement being proposed by Tasos. And we’ll see if we’ll see what happens. But this settlement might be important because it may help dazzles to avoid future problems with regulation because if this goes further the judge might deem them a security. So that’s that’s the big thing for Tesla’s that they might avoid being a security and that being said guys that that doubles all the news content for this fine Sunday morning. All in all to summarize we do have talks about hyper inflation in high places like the CEO of one of the biggest pension funds in Sweden now talking about hyperinflation. We do have U.S. economy not doing that well stock markets crashing. We might not to insist on markets open next week or just being halted later in the week and Russia binding its banning businesses that are doing cryptocurrency trading or selling and unemployment may be a record high in the US like historically heights if this this plays out. This is a Bloomberg survey. You know this this red dots right here is a survey done by Bloomberg. How much the U.S. will lose jobs how many jobs will disappear. As you can see it dwarfs all other crises like during 2008 or during the 80s like this is unprecedented because this situation is unprecedented. Very special situation that we are in right now. Anyway guys what is your view on this whole situation. Let me know in the chat looking on Bitcoin. Obviously want to know what will happen to bitcoin based on all of this news and look at the end of the day short term it might be a good idea to really have both bullish and buyers because we don’t know look we are at a crossroads right now. We are at a crossroads. Are no clear super bullish signs except for for the halving which is the most super bullish sign ever. There are no clear super bearish signs either despite the fact that one might go down and retest the forecast three point nine okay. And overall we are in a downward trend right now and that’s obviously not something that is good. We are still huddling the 200 weekly moving average. That’s important but all in all looking on Bitcoin is basically on the at the crossroads. It’s not something that is particularly bullish or bearish about this whole situation. We’re just going to see what the market tells us. I mean you know that personally I am biased bullish for me even this is bullish because look we do have the having the most important event of this for a four year cycle and I do think it will it will play a big role and it is just in in the month one and a half months basically. So that is that is absolutely big. But all in all right now guys keep a close eye on the stock market because it may have a big effect on the crypto market short term and that’s why we’re covering it. That’s why we’re absolutely covering it and it’s very key to look at it right now because people are worrying they’re worrying about their funds they’re worrying about everything. Now as I told you previously this is only the first half of this recession the second half of this recession might look very different because in the first half everyone is just selling everything for dollars. But once you’ve sold all your assets for dollars because all assets are now falling in in relationship to the dollar once you’ve sold everything now you’re sitting with dollars. OK. So what is the next step. What have you achieved because you’re still seeing the Fed going bananas printing like crazy. Do you get zero return on this capital. You will if you study it you will understand that deflation comes before hyperinflation. So you will be looking for something else you will be looking for safe haven you will be looking for gold and you will be looking for bitcoin. So that is how I think the second half of this whole situation will be and we’ll see we’ll see if that theory holds. And let me know what you think. And guys don’t forget our webinar which is on March 26 and it’s a webinar how to stack massive amounts of stats in this bull market and it’s completely free. You check the link below. You click it and do this if you haven’t been in the previous one. And if you haven’t been in that category. All right we’ll go on the Jaguars. Let’s see. Barcelona permission to step out at home. Oh Fabrice I see that you have watched the documentary about the money because Fabrice now is educated saying that once velocity picks up with the influx money will go bad once we spend it. Exactly. So guys once again go and watch the hidden secrets of money. And by the way next Monday we’re going to have an interview live with Mike Maloney. It’s gonna be amazing man. He’s he’s he’s a documentary about this whole situation is so good. So he’s talking about that when the Fed prints all of this money the money doesn’t lose its value in the beginning in the beginning. Why. Because people are scared during a crisis like now. People are scared. They’re not spending money they’re hoarding. They’re hoarding everything. So we have a bunch of funds on the sidelines. They’re not being circulated. The velocity of money is very low. The demand is low but the Fed is just spraying money everywhere but the prices don’t increase. In fact they decrease because people are still selling all of their assets. And so we have this pile of cash on the sidelines once this velocity increases. Once people start spending again that is when hyperinflation hits. I mean that that is basically in your short explanation of this. Leg. Yes watch episode seven of hidden secrets of money and subscribe to. Yes yes yes yes exactly. My helicopter money all went in bitcoin does good stuff. That’s good. People will change their mindset in positivity. Things like vaccine comes out. Yeah yeah I think. Yes. Yes of course. But the economy as we discussed is not that you can just turn it on and off like gear like your PlayStation or x box or not. It’s not like that. Once you shoot dominos falling it might take 10 years before it recovers and dominoes of course of of bankruptcies and defaults. Hi Ivan I’m writing from Barcelona. The thing about continent here is that you get fined if you’re not. If you’re going to show if you’re not going to shop for food or medicine OK we’re going to get fined fines vary by region. More or less range from 300 to 600 euros an extreme case. Wow. You get 34 K euro in fine. If you have extreme disobedience. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it was the girls. But the real danger will come. By the way pretty old. Yes we do have a huge huge earthquake in Croatia. Yeah. It’s not good. Let me know if you’re watching this from Croatia guys because I also read that there is a huge earthquake. Ivan have you ever linked a wallet with unstoppable domains. Doesn’t look easy. Yeah yeah I have. It’s super easy. It’s super super easy. Just e-mail their support. They will help you. They have great support. Ivan y’know starting Bitcoin in next so and borrow dollars that way you can do that. You can do that but you’re trusting them that’s the thing. Also you can check out the review of P H just look a few videos back on my channel. You will find this review of P H which is basically like next so but they are newer and they sponsor their channel you should know that. So we did a review of them but their interest rates I mean they’re new. So they’re trying to bring something to the table trying to compete so their interest rates are super low is is below 1 percent. So check out next so check out Celsius but check out also P H I mean page they’re called something else but I don’t want to say their name because it sounds very funny. Ivan shill Kazim I feel it man. Right now we’re focusing on webinar we’re focusing on webinar. So guys if you’re not in the academy and you haven’t been on webinar go and sign up right now but obviously if you are already part of the academy and you’ll like it and I know many of you absolute like it. So it’s very good guys. When you give us good feedback it’s amazing. You can of course become Ophelia so go to the start page click here and then you can also earn money with us if you on board new students. Ivan I’m going to precious metals and Bitcoin mainly. What do you think. Well I think you should be prepared to lose money in the beginning because we’re still in the press in deflation. So both gold and Bitcoin might go down even more because we are in this first first stage so we should be prepared for that long term no financial advice. What I think is amazing long term I think it’s very good because look people will or people will go to gold at the end of the day. It’s is absolutely like that. So yeah that’s how I think that is. So look for example here. So let me show it to them. We’ve seen this happen exactly the situation here is 2008 and we’re looking at gold by the way we’re looking at the gold price in 2008 right here. Gold collapsed by approximately 30 percent so during the crisis gold’s collapsing 30 percent gold right now is also collapsing as you see here but you see what happened then. Gold completely exploded to the upside. UPS is completely explode to the upside here. And increase basically by man 170 one thousand 80 percent. So look it’s it’s always like that. You see deflation and then you see inflationary but this is a normal recession. The one recession we’re witnessing right now probably will be different. Well this may be even higher because the inflation might be way higher. So definitely keep that in mind that we may still you don’t know exactly where we are on this kind of chart. We’ve still may be just way through. And gold will go down even lower before we see this. So now we’re all in a similar situation. We’re seeing gold retrace. But if you can learn anything from history it is the fact that it’s not it’s not like that forever. Ivan let us assume that governments around the world decide to switch to bitcoin. How would that look like I mean would governments make it would Garrus make still still sense at all the governments. No no. Look it will be reserve asset. So it will be a reserve asset. Now will it be used in everyday trade maybe. Maybe. But primarily we’re looking at a reserve asset so that that’s the first step. That is what I think about when I hear adoption at least a government adoption. By the way if you also want interest you can go and you can scroll down if you’re watching this live you will see best crypto deals. And even if you scroll down on YouTube and check the description you will see this link about the best crypto deals I can show to hear as well. And if you go if if you go there you will see this Web site and you can also try crypto dot com to earn to earn interest on your crypto. If you are huddling so definitely do that. And then when you sign up you get 50 dollars. And I also guess this is ours. But this is mainly for all of you who want to earn interest on on crypto. So you know you have cell 60 up next. So you have a few of over the CFP is chef group dot.com. So this ones would do have collaboration with as well so you can get 50 dollars. What else is going on in the Charlie’s. And soon they’ll add backs as gold. OK. Catalan government is preparing an app and carried out magazine. Well you will get a responsible certificate like a good boy. If you carried the app so you get the certificate. Man you need the certificate. Doesn’t sound that sounds a bit weird like I don’t need this certificate. They all do need to download this app so we can track you basically your every step your every move your every breath and then you will get a good boy big boy certificate that you have been behaving well. Sounds sounds insane man. Am I understanding correctly. Barcelona man I don’t want to get to a conspiracy theoretic but basically they are tracking you full time and you get certificates. Man it’s. This is the certificate. OK. I don’t want to open that Google Drive Helling but look it’s. I don’t want to get to conspiracy theories. But you see when crises like this come and they force you to do all kinds of weird stuff like having this app they track you all the time. Now when the crisis is over they may of course repeal a bit of that control but they always don’t repeal everything. There is a bit left after each crisis. You have this emergency measures now everyone needs to do this and this and this give up all your freedoms and they say it’s temporary. When the crisis is over they say OK now we remove a bit we don’t remove everything we still may listen to your phone. We still may track you but we remove a bit. So yeah it’s getting worse actually with each crisis. So yeah everything will go down every little panic. And we will buy everything. That’s a good plan. I like it. Yeah I mean you get you. I think it according to me at least I’m telling myself that you got to be buying. I mean obviously. Obviously you don’t know how far it will go. We might with only down by 30 percent and we might go to 90 minus. But you understand that it’s it’s good prices even today. I haven’t I’m currently in JavaScript courses and they’ve been completing lectures. Oh you’re a weekly achievement. Oh man. You look e-mail support at Ivan dot Academy and we’re still working on that dashboard. If you think about the dash dashboard e-mail support that Ivan dot academy and they will take a look at your dashboard. Yeah. So in the academy we’re experimenting with these dashboards but they’re still in beta guys. They’re still in beta we still might have things to fix there. But. But basically you can see how well you’re performing in that cage match against other people and stuff like that. Yeah. Let me know by the way if. If. But it should work. But e-mail them. They will check it out. They will check it out. It doesn’t have a max supply like the Fed. Not really the Fed man because at the end of the day you do have. I mean in one way you don’t know the supply of if in another way it’s completely different from the Fed because you do have an underlying protocol and you do have an underlying community. And anyone can be part of that community. So can you be part of that community. Absolutely not. It’s kind of like in Bitcoin as well. By the way if you think about it Bitcoin smacks supply can be changed. Of course it can be changed just a number I can change it. You can change it. The thing is that it needs to be adopted by the nodes by the network. And the only reason why Bitcoin has 21 million is because it’s very difficult to convince everyone to install your update. So if a theorem foundation with Alec goes bananas and inflates if not you will install it because you’ve got to also understand that you have different stakeholders so you have for example maker Dow they have a huge power because they have oracles that that that are feeding all defy ecosystem the prices. So without maker you don’t really have defied. So italic needs to be in consensus with maker if they’re not in consensus with Alec wants to do something maker doesn’t want to do something well then italics change will not have Delphi basically. So it’s very different. And you can say that beta is also like the Fed because if if a large amount of minors and the developers come together of course they can change twenty one million of course. So yeah. But but. There is no way. Look in one way it feels that some people think that there’s some kind of magical property to to bitcoin that it’s always going to be like twenty one million. There’s some kind of magical property to the block chain but at the end of the day it is just this function that we discussed get block actually showed that sub sub but actually showed it yesterday. The only thing that is. Let me see is it validation that C++ lets you get block sub. Yeah. Here look you change this number from 50 to something else. You can double triple. You can do whatever with a supply. But then everyone needs to update does a thing. The same with if of course developers can do crazy things but then everyone has to update. So yeah it’s not like the Fed and Bitcoin is not like the Fed but here is basically how much reward miners are getting in each block. And this is really what says this 21 million because if you look at the fact that if we have more than 64 Hollings we don’t do any more hauling. So there will never be more than 60 for Hollings. And then if you run through the calculations here and you and you count how many blocks we’ll get 50 rewards. How many blocks will you get twenty five twelve point five six point twenty five and so on so forth then you end up with them with 21 million. So that’s the only thing if you change this variable right here it’s is gonna be different. What would it be good to have. Limit supply in if not really for it to be honest and it is two different assumptions about security. So eith one to have a inflation that is never ending. So they know that they will be able to pay for mining for for security through time they will be able to do it. Bitcoin is a bit more of a gamble because we’re gambling with the fact that transaction fees will be enough. So we do have this assumption that transaction fees will be enough and we don’t need block subsidy. Will it be like that. Maybe we’ll see. We’ll see. I talked to Dan held or head though. Apparently he had done some calculations that say that it will be like that. So it will work out but we don’t know practically. But theoretically according to his calculations it will work out. He basically look at how much the transaction fees are growing and how much they are replacing the block reward. So according to his research is gonna be all good but we’re making this assumption that the demand because right now the security is paid for by the demand in bitcoin that we can print new bitcoin and we can sell it on the market with dump it on the market and the market will absorb it and then we can go and pay for electricity. That is what we’re doing right now. Now in the future is going gonna be transaction fees. So now it’s different kind of demand. Now its demand for actually transacting and using the network and it’s not necessarily the same thing that is happening right now. Because right now we’re only we’re only relying on the fact that people value bitcoin that they hold it. Maybe they sell they buy a bit but they value bitcoin. That is what is paying for security right now in the future. We’re going to be relying on the transactions and that people will be actively using the network a lot a lot a lot each and every day that’s going to pay for security. And look it’s two different things like it’s two different demands of of two different things of Bitcoin like. One is justified this valuable and you don’t have to do a lot of transactions. This is what’s being right now. And here you have to do a lot of transactions. That is what’s going to pay in the future. Look it’s it’s all experimental. And the same with just different strategies. But obviously there is no way to cheat I don’t know how you would change 21 million. It would be completely crazy. But you know that Peter Todd. Wants to change that. And Peter Todd is one of the core developers. So look I don’t want to be a party pooper so to speak but. But I think you guys have been crypto enough to know the truth to know the truth because obviously when I’m explaining crypto to new people I am saying that it’s 21 million. That’s it. But when you when you start a bit more let’s see if I can. Yeah. Here. So Peter Todd is one of the people who wants to raise twenty one million constraint because he wants to be able to pay for security. So the reality is that it’s still social. It’s still social consensus. Yeah it’s. And that is the core. It’s not some kind of magical math. It’s still social that we don’t we we as a community make sure that if zero is a crazy crazy update with don’t tablet Yeah that’s it. I would have gold in my home if I didn’t lose it every year in a tragic boat accident. You live in the boat or what. Let’s see. Women tragic boat. Interesting. Me please name publicly recognize the the the the the. Yeah. DaVinci J 15 said his sell his house to go all in and buy Bitcoin. Hmm well right now we’re not. I know I know Tom Waits is also talking about going all in at 2.8 or something. You talked about but you know DaVinci he she is well off to say the least to say the least. So it might not be a good strategy for for everyone else. Any safe place or condition for buying verified legit gold in general. Well look I’m not a big buyer of gold so I cannot help you. Maybe someone in the shadows is a big buyer of gold. Be humble and Bitcoin says Eric. Yes. Because you never know what’s going to happen. Anything can happen. What probability do you give. For one case to prove a scenario. And how would that play out with some old coins like if so old coins will follow. Auctions will follow. And you understand a hyper Well I still give it just 10 percent 10 15 percent. Socrates gives it 90 percent right now. But to go down to 1 k is just look it’s not impossible but then would see true capitulation man. Then we have truly truly lost l lost a lot of faith at the same time. You need to see a full capitulation in order for us to restart and really go into a bull market. So maybe that’s what’s needed because in one way you see that when we bounced from 3 K last year in May and then we went all the way to 14 K. It felt a bit too quick. I mean we all were amazed how quick it is it was really a show of strength in bitcoin at the same time. Now looking at a situation where we are in right now and having like the correct answers in hand having I mean in hindsight when you look at the situation you can say that basically we did not see too much struggle too much struggle in the markets and the markets always want to maximize the struggle and pain before the reset because we want old weak hands to sell. So maybe that’s what’s happening right now that we’re maximizing our collective pain so. So at all we cancelled out and the summer so it could be it could be but still for me it’s a low percentage but it’s not impossible. I am I am listening to that success is a game that it’s it’s it’s on the radar at least it’s on the radar for me. Many people don’t even have it on the radar but that one case scenario is on the radar and right now as I told you previously in this episode it’s like at the crossroads I it’s difficult to be bullish but also difficult to be bearish. It’s essential it tells you that it’s. Yeah. So that’s why it’s important to focus on other things like the economy because this is gonna tell a lot you a lot more than studying only bitcoin right now because bitcoin is a small piece of a bigger puzzle. So that’s why we’re focusing on this right now. Let’s see. Distribution England would be a good life but not in a depression. Fabrice That’s correct. I am not listening to Socrates as women might. You will have to listen look it’s not listening or not. Doesn’t really matter but it’s important to have it on the radar. But you don’t have to. Obviously like you don’t have to. Evan can you talk about QE. What does being implement. It’s a lot man. It’s so much that you’re all almost losing track. You do have repo operations 1 trillion per day. You have 700 billion being deployed. Now they’re trying to change legislation that it will be possible for the Fed to buy stocks directly directly. I think next week we might see news about this. So yes that’s that’s big. It’s all it’s so much it’s difficult to keep track of everything. It’s a lot. Have I mean we’ve been discussing the the repo operations the VA emergency. This was called pandemic PPE man. What is called. I need to google this because it’s like a full package. Let’s see pandemic emergency. Oh maybe it’s by package maybe a pandemic emergency package. Yeah. I mean that one is what is it like few trillion. It’s a lot. Yes it’s a lot. But the most important thing to understand is that this will only continue. This is not something that’s going to be over in one two one two weeks one two months. Let’s see it and were speaking about up to a trillion. Look it would be now we’re really talking about the big stuff. There are a lot of stuff going on but you got to be looking at the big stuff. So look it would be the third coronavirus eight plan to be considered by Congress just this month. Trump signed the first eight point three billion package. This is only the beginning. Eight point three billion and this was on March 6. So this all happened on March 6. Since then we’ve completely completely exploded. Since then we’ve seen daily trillion operate. I mean it all started with just eight point three billion and this was from the government. Then the Fed also stepped in with trillions. And yet I mean it’s it’s a lot. But it’s a good point. We should we should have a summary of everything so we can point out. Yeah. What does the Russian government think of if it’s made by the italic. So what I. I don’t think they care a lot to be honest with you who is made for her. But the dialogue has been of course seen a lot with the government officials in Russia. I don’t think it’s anything significant they’re not using it for that much right now. And as as we discussed previously they will most probably ban crypto trading and crypto exchanges in Russia. So whether it’s made by Vitaly or not then Vitaly in Russia. I don’t think it matters a lot at all to be honest with you where he was born. What do you think about. But at the same time Alex is also a good question because it’s not impossible to imagine that the guys in high places in Russia got good deals on if and that they were positive for a while so they could they could cash out their positions but now is that they may be all out. So so now it’s time to ban made it that’s how how that was. Do you think VPN could be used to avoid this ban. Well not really. Because they’re going after businesses. They’re not going after you. So they’re going after businesses. Black pigeon says that CV cronies could have euro by our. Yeah maybe. Maybe we have to we have also to do things the way we spend our money where we have also two things the way man please work on your English Mac Bean. I don’t even understand what you’re writing. Ivan will we ever have a boxing match against the example that we’ve fantastic to be honest. That would be fantastic. Or just have or just have him on the channel. That would be great. Anyway guys thank you so much for watching yet again. I truly appreciate you helping out helping out with questions helping out with topics you are helping a lot. Thank you so much as always. Be sure to check out our webinar completely free. Be sure to check out the link below for by bit you get a great deal if used the link below you can long you can short you can trade Bitcoin if you use SRP and you get a great deal if you use the link below go to Ivan told us com slash deals or use the link below for Best Script deals and check out scripts come if you want to earn interest on your script or if you want to get like a credit and debit card crypto bank debit card. Also we have several domains we have glass no don’t channel. I mean you do get a lot of great deals here. That being said thank you so much. Once again if you’re watching on YouTube go to. I wouldn’t like the com slash live. That is the only way to watch it live any. All right. If you are now watching on. I want to get to com slash live. Be sure to click all of this like subscribe enabled web alerts and notifications on telegram. At least one of them you should pick so you’re always up to date. So that being said Guys thank you so much. And I’ll see you all tomorrow at 8 a.m.. Back back to Goodman Group Two back to work. Back to work day. This kind of the vacation for me. This is WEEKEND FOR ME. WHEN WE DO AT 11:00 so tomorrow my vacation is over we’re going to go back to 8:00 a.m. So have a good day and good byes. Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

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STOCKS WILL FALL 90%!? Bitcoin, Trump – Programmer explains

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

And we’re alive. Yes. Welcome to another episode of Good Morning drift on here I on Ivan on tape. We are of course broadcasting live straight out of Stockholm Sweden. And we do the show each and every day at 8:00 p.m. Central European Time gets but on weekends on weekends. It’s 11:00. So that’s why I would do 11:00 and so there’s so much of it. Guys guys we have a lot to discuss because the stock market may not be open tomorrow and during the week because we do have signals from the Trump administration that they will issue even more log down in the U.S. and you will see exactly which measures they might be taken. But you understand also if they do more log down the stock markets are not going to react well and therefore we might see a situation in which the stock market doesn’t even open. And it’s important to note that we may go down 90 percent in the stock market as a whole because during the Great Depression we went down approximately 80 to 90 percent and we haven’t gone down that much since then. But at the same time we never really had the crisis like this where everyone needs to stay at home and the economy completely completely shuts off. And now people are talking about hyperinflation even outside of crypto man. It’s insane because normally when you mentioned hyperinflation and that it may happen in our countries like in Sweden in the US people tell you you are recruited a lunatic man. What are you talking about. You’re some kind of crypto maniac and the hyperinflation can never happen in our countries in the Western world or they will tell you you’re a gold bug. You want people to buy your gold like Peter Schiff. So look at the end of the day it’s only been us who thought about hyperinflation and who thought about the possibility of all currencies hyperinflation because you know that all fiat goes to zero. And today will share with you the fact that the CEO of the pension funds here in Sweden is not some kind of person from the street. This is the CEO of the pension funds managing billions and billions now coming out and saying that we may see hyperinflation. So this is key and the global media is not talking about it but you get it here. And we yes we will be discussing that and we’ll be discussing Tasos. We will be discussing other things as well. Welcome to the show. Great to see you here. Great. All of you who are watching live. And you know I guess if you are watching on YouTube you’re not watching dislike. You really missed the opportunity because we’re only live streaming on Ivan on take dot com slash life. So go there right now and be sure to subscribe. You will see a read subscribe button there so be sure to click it right now. Straight straight away so I can show you on the screen how it’s done. You see right here you see subscribe enable web notifications and telecommunications. You can do all of this and then you can also be part of the chat because this is only a real plot and that being said everyone who is watching this live welcome. Amazing to hear it. I see crypto koala. I see Danny Hoddle. I see Dino. I see. A group that Yoda. I see women. Charles guys how are you doing. Amazing to see so many of you here on this fantastic Sunday morning right. Well Alex Lebanon where you are watching from which countries we have today because always some kind of different country which is exciting for Fabrice us always that’s always that’s always great guys to have you here. And today you know that I am drinking green tea. Nowadays green tea no milk no sugar involved. And let me know what you’re drinking. Belgium nice nice nice. Me Connecticut USA Switzerland Barcelona Holland. Amazing guys. Amazing. So good to see here. Now before we go into the markets before we go into the market overview I just want to show you this. I just want to show you this which is quite the special news coming from Sweden. Look this lady right here she is the CEO of the pension funds. I tried to translate this page but the bridge crashes when you like entrant into translate. But this is like the state news and the look. This is the most important thing and I have translated this here. Basically they’re talking about how this situation can really go out of control with the with the virus with Coronas and everything that is going on. And she’s basically saying that look we’re looking at mass unemployment at around 20 to 40 percent unemployment and this means that there are very few businesses to go to. There’s even the risk that all of this money is being blown out that we are getting hyperinflation. Look it’s like she’s in crypto now. I mean maybe she should enter the crypto industry for real because she’s talking about this like a true crypto group part of the crypto community. So so big welcome. Alex you’re talking about that all of this money that is being blown into the system might create hyperinflation along with the fact that we have no demand in the economy because unemployment is so high. Nobody has can afford anything really at the same time. You do see this old money just being printed into the into the eco system without any true productivity. And here is where it becomes dangerous. Here’s where it becomes dangerous. So that’s her point. And look I think it’s very important to also look at this globally because here is basically the unemployment numbers that may come out next week. Let me show you let me move a bit. So look we don’t have this numbers confirmed confirmed yet it’s just a survey. But the US will come out with unemployment numbers next week. And here’s what we may be looking to on a weekly datum as you can see this is way past. I mean this red chart right here is way past anything that we’ve seen. I mean it’s way past 2008. Way past the 94 93 94 83 84. It’s way past everything. And the reason is because everyone is forced to stay at home so as Remy says Houston we have a problem as L.A. San Francisco New York and other cities are going into lockdown. Jobless claims is about to have the worst week ever. This is only the beginning. This is only the beginning. And it is something that we don’t really mind. People are not taking this seriously yet. People have not really started to think in terms of a depression although on this channel we’ve been talking about it and and all across the crypto space we’ve also been talking about it for quite some time. But normal people there still in this fairy tale that the virus will just go away tomorrow and look it may go away tomorrow. But what’s important for this lady you also said the CEO like the pension funds she said as well that look you cannot just shut off the economy like politicians are doing right now with curfews and stuff and then just turn it on and and think that is going to go back to normal. And think that you can just you know on off and it’s all back you just turn it on. Hey guys we just turn it on again when all of this cronies are gone and illness is gone. But that is not of course how it works. Once you set off a domino effect even if the virus is now gone everyone is happy to work happy to do business. It may be very difficult to turn it back on once the chain reaction really starts. We do see bankruptcies we do see insolvencies. We do see banks failing. It’s not something you can just turn back on and that’s it. So please keep it in mind please keep it in mind. Very very much. Now looking on the crypt Marcus we have bitcoin plus 4 percent where we feed him plus 3 percent of SRP plus two point nine percent whatever that they’re keeping one dollar and keeping the peg people still trusting and tether between cash two percent I mean all in all quite green market quite good quite good. Just continuously looking at the double digits here in the top 50 you have decreed that 20 percent else do you have no one else at double digits. The biggest winners of today are swipe 65 percent secret 19 see acquiring steam also performing with all of their issues they’re still performing well today hex. Who would have believed it 10 percent. Let me know if you Hoddle hex. Yeah I mean the reason why we’re seeing hex is because it’s quaint paprika like the only Web site where they have hex or not because Richard is always complaining that they’re not adding hex and other Web sites and that they are calculating it wrong. But anyway hex 10 percent or 8. So all in all quite bullish Marcus and looking at the losers. We don’t even have losers lexicon. No losers guys no losers as always. We do have our webinar is going to happen next week March 26. Keep it in mind completely free we’re talking about how to stack massive amounts of sass. Use the link below to sign up just scroll down right now and sign up it’s completely free and only sign up if you haven’t been in decades Academy. And if you haven’t been on the previous one obviously you can sign up as well but then you will recognize a lot and we do have our collaboration with the Bible. So I guess if you are trading bitcoin if you want to trade the theorem yours or SRP This is the platform for you. It is the change that we prefer right now the most. Why. Because the technical solution is amazing but also because they have great supports if you have any question just click here to support. I mean obviously we can long you can short you can use leverage up to 100 days which is important to lower timeframes but you should be extremely careful if you’re not a trader. If you’re just starting out you should really learn how to trade first and then use it. But yes use the link below. And you can get a great deal if you use the link below. So definitely do that. Now moving into the most important news of today it is the fact that we might see a complete shutdown of the whole nation of the U.S. as you will see in this in this article. But also when it comes to the stock market because you can not shut down and you cannot do what the president may have to do very soon without without actually shutting off the markets because the markets if they did not going to handle it they’re not going to handle that is at least how they are reasoning at least how they are thinking. So basically we may see next week and shelter in place which means the president will be asked to stay home and not leave the residence until unless they travel or unless it’s an emergency. So there are two travel lessons emerge. We can also mean travel unless it’s emergency. And so this is according to various publications and according to different sources this is not completely confirmed but you do see this going online right now and and people are writing about this a lot right now. And look it’s not impossible to reason because this is the situation we’re seeing all across the world already that people are asked to stay at home. This is not that that’s strange and it would just be normal if we’re seeing it in the US next week so Trump is also considering grounding all U.S. passenger planes. No no one will be allowed to take a plane to another state and the sources familiar with the matter say the measure being considered is for an unspecified timeframe. Also you got to realize that the U.S. president and the bipartisan members of Congress have already enacted several sets of orders like enforcing compressions to produce certain goods. So for example if you have a factory and you can produce medical supplies you will be forced to do that. And we’re seeing it across the world already in some countries and also in some countries you cannot export to your goods to other nations if it is needed in your country. So this is what we are already seeing in Europe that if you can provide for example medical supplies you can provide hand gel you know this alcohol gel then first and foremost you sell to your own country. And then if there’s anything left you can expert maybe but that’s also big maybe. So we’re seeing it in other countries as well in Europe. It might be true in the U.S. very very soon and EU officials and unnamed sources I mean you’ve got to take it maybe with a grain of salt because we don’t know exactly who it is a told The Washington Examiner that the Trump administration is seriously considering to shut down the stock market at the same time it grounds the U.S. passenger fleet. And Trump’s orders a nationwide shelter in place and it’s also it also makes perfect sense because look the markets will not be able to take this well. They’re not looking good guys. This is not good. We’re falling through the floor. This is the fastest collapse basically ever. We’ve never seen this fast collapse of the S&P. Look we’ve already fallen with 33 percent. I mean if you look at the bottom here it’s like 34 percent. It’s a lot. Yes man. It’s so much during such a short period of time. Look in the previous recession here we fell by approximately by approximately fifty seven 57. And it took so much longer time took my so much longer time to get to the bottom and all and all the wool fell from all time high 57 percent. Here we are already at 30. And it took just one week one two weeks. It’s insane. Yes it’s absolutely insane buy in two weeks we are already down this much and you see here how many weeks is it took here to go down. I mean we’re talking about 500 days overall. So yeah it was a long journey down and you were taking the elevator within the two weeks. Now the only way to really see a comparison to this because we might we may go way lower than 50 percent. It is actually the Great Depression and look Trading View. I didn’t find a good chart that went all the way back to the 1930s but we do have this right here on macro trends. And if you look at how much will fell how much S&P fell in at that time we basically were at four hundred four hundred seventy four at the peak and we went all the way down to let’s see if I can actually prick. Yeah. Eighty eighty four ish ish. Even lower man if you zoom zoom in. Let me let me try to zoom in. But this was one of the biggest false ever in human history if not the biggest. Yeah. It shows 84 Ish Ish Ish Ish. So look this may be comparable to this. This may be comparable comparable to this but at the same time you realize that it’s difficult to say exactly how much lower is going to be and seeing the fact that we went 60 percent in the last one seeing a great depression even lower seeing everything that is going on. You understand that at the end of the day we might of course see numbers at minus 80 percent in the stock market minus 9 C. It’s not impossible because we’ve seen it before and this situation right here where everyone stays at home zero demand for anything. Everyone is just sitting at home. There is no production because you cannot go to work. There’s no demand. There is no productivity. Then of course we might see minus 18 minus 90 percent in the stock market. It’s not it’s not that far fetched to be honest. So what does it say. What does it tell us. It tells us that the Trump administration might not want that right now. So it tells us before the election going down 90 percent of the stock market. Will not be a good thing. So of course shutting down the stock market for a one week two weeks it’s not completely out of the question. And we’ve had this before the last time was during the 9/11 attacks where President Bush closed until the September the 17th. So from 9/11 to September 19th it was closed. Basically a week a bit less then. We also saw the stock market drop by 14 percent on the day of this open after a week of closure in thirty three during the Great Depression we did actually see the President shut down the stock market as well. So you know that Roosevelt created Emergency Banking Act shutting it down. But at the same time with most people don’t remember is that at this time all gold was confiscated so federal. Sorry. Roosevelt was also behind this gold hoard the ban so we can not even have any gold and order as people’s stashes of gold were stolen and repatriated at a bad price. Very bad price. Basically they stole the gold from the population and then gave dollars for a very very bad price because once the trading opened again Gold prices soared. And you’re still with you and you’re stuck with your cash that the government gave you which is way less than what it was worth just a short while afterwards. On the free markets I mean it’s insane it’s insane guys and we don’t really know what’s gonna happen. Bitcoin is up ninety nine point ninety eight percent. That is the thing research on offer there is no way to shut down bitcoin but you gotta understand that once again and especially in 2020 people are swift learning that the American government and by the way any government any government will do whatever it wants. When there is a crisis. So just keep this in mind as if this is big. This is big. The situation we’re in is big is nothing to hide it’s nothing to really try to minimize or make it less serious. It is very serious and this is this is not looking good. Yemen is to get to it took very very quick to go all the way here. Anyway let me know what you think. Let me know what you think. It’s it’s not it’s not looking good at least from my perspective now obviously obviously it all depends on how much the cronies are here how long they’re here for and it may be the case that they are disappearing very quickly that this illness goes away and then may maybe the fact is we don’t really see this big dominoes fall yet that yes it’s possible to turn the economy back on that. Yes it’s possible to go back but at the same time it’s not looking good at all right now right now. But also what’s important to note is that if you live in the country where this thing hasn’t really taken off like in Sweden it’s not currently is not that big here. And it seems most people are relaxed. People don’t really care a lot. They go into town they basically do what they’ve always done to large extent to a large extent. Hotels Of course and the travel businesses are hurting because people are not travelling but when it comes to just walking around being in the sunshine people are completely completely cool with that. So if you’re not living like in Italy or Spain or China you don’t really experience how severe it is. And so for most people of course the symptoms as far as I understand they’re not very severe. So we’re going to see. Maybe it is the case that this blows over quickly that the world will say OK guys we overreacted with the curfews let’s just let’s roll them back. But it doesn’t look like that at least for now. So let me know your opinion on this in the chats right now. India will be the new hotspot says Jimmy. Yes it sounds likely to be honest with you. Sounds likely not gonna happen says Charles. Let’s see Ivan chat idea rather than typing out. We can simply click. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s a good idea. You can click. Oh yeah. That was actually a good idea. You don’t have to eat or you don’t have to type at. You just write the user name and then it will be highlighted. But that’s a very good idea actually. So when you click someone’s user name it will add it to your message. So that’s good user name on the click. That’s actually a good idea. Because right now what I do is that I copy paste user name in order for it to to highlight that for the other person when they send the message. But yes it’s easier to just click it will get worse before it gets better says Al. Alex in Belgium we are in complete lockdown without the government calling it a lockdown. It’s all about Worthing and it’s kind of kind of kind of the same situation that might unfold in Sweden as well. I don’t know. For now Sweden is quite relaxed. You can still travel here it’s still open. There’s no like super super hardcore curfews there and there are no curfews. But you’re not allowed to do gatherings of more than 500 people. That is the only thing basically. And look it’s not some kind of Armageddon. It’s not that big of a difference. So basically different strategies as we’ve been discussing that here. It’s more relaxed. You know we want to have this herd immunity in other countries. It’s more lockdown. We’re going to see. We’re going to see. I mean the good thing at least is that the economy is at least I mean it’s not complete shutdown. The shut shut off. And the numbers right now are showing that this strategy of not completely going into lockdown is working at least according to me it is working because it’s not that we do see some kind of an anomaly numbers here of some kind of Armageddon numbers in Sweden but Sweden is way more relaxed when it comes to shutting it off. And it’s good for the businesses because we don’t see this domino effect of bankruptcies like in other countries. It’s a bit better here but it’s not good. It’s not good either because a lot of course depends on exports. A lot depends on tourism. And there is not much like the government can do even if they try to to make it go better yet there is not much they can do because it’s so small nation it’s so export dependent. So doesn’t really matter what we do here. Then they were all affected by everything else. So that that’s important it does like that in most European countries like small nations they need to export. Let’s see Armageddon Mortal Combat. Right right right. China is stable. My girlfriend is from China. Lives in Barcelona. We’ll see. But you know in China they’re good at making sure people don’t go out there making sure you know when you go out there you may be in big trouble. I don’t know how it is in Spain because I haven’t been in Spain since this whole situation. But if you are living in Spain let me know what happens if you if you if you go out despite the curfew what will happen to you legally will they take you physically and put in jail straight to jail. I’m thinking about this sketch you know being yourself straight to jail or is it something that is completely cool you may get the fine and then you do whatever you want still. That’s the biggest issue with the Europe. I mean it’s good of course you don’t want to have a totalitarian totalitarian regimes. So it’s good it’s not bad. But in this particular situation with curfews it may not be working that well compared to totalitarian regimes. So yeah. OK yes. My wife is also Chinese and her family back home. Yeah it’s normal. Got very very very cool. I mean look at the end of the day this Corona thing might blow over. Coronas anyway moving on Yes we have some sad news from Russia unfortunately because the politicians don’t like crypto. They want to ban it. Basically you have this bill coming out and the creator of the bill one of these politicians saying that this is a senior Russian official has warned is delayed bill on digital assets will include a ban on issuing and selling crypto currencies. MAN Yeah this is big because Russia is one of the most important markets for crypto looked being in crypto now for since 2013 and working full time since 2017. I can tell you there’s so much Russian activity in crypto but at the same time it’s not necessarily that they’re based in Russia. They’re based all across the world but the Russians love crypto. I can tell you that we believe that there are big risks of legalizing the operations with crypto currencies from standpoint of financial stability. What does this mean. It means that the the Fiat garbage that their currency is an old currency is our fiat right now and they’re all garbage but it means that they don’t want competition of course because they’re even saying that look the ruble is the only way the only way to pay for things in Russia here. The ruble as the law says is the only legal means of payment in Russia. So obviously they don’t want competition because everyone understands that it’s garbage. It’s lost 50 percent. Like overnight a few years ago 2016 or 15 don’t remember exactly but if you lived there you of course remember when it lost that much. So obviously and that is by the way it’s like that in most countries it’s in most countries. Look at Norway. Look at Sweden. How much we’re losing against the dollar right now. So everyone understands that the national fiat currencies it’s it’s it’s not a good idea for you to handle that long term. And the thing is you always want to create demand. So that is why. That is why when you pay taxes you have to pay. In your national currencies because they need demand for their for their old coin basically for for their garbage. So taxes is maybe the most important demand because whatever you’re doing you will be buying your national currency to pay the taxes. There’s no way other way to pay it in the US. In some states you can pay it in bitcoin. It’s really mind blowing that you can. But in most countries you can’t. You have to buy their fiat. You have to do it. And so the same as of course when paying for things. And basically this if there is and this is a lie because they need demand for it and they need the masses that they can print more money and and do all kinds of operations whether it is funding government projects whether it is corruption whether it is whatever. Look the government wants to be able to print money. That only works if that money has some kind of demand. And the demand from the other ones is it has some kind of buyers that they can dump on. Basically look being encrypt crypto looking at all consumers so much because this is exactly how these central banks work. Look at all costs when they dump on the on their community. When they tried to create some kind of demand and then dump we’ve seen so much in 2007 seem like this low quality old coins that they tried to create some kind of demand some kind of excitement so they can basically dump their banks or create new currency and dump it. So you learn so much from crypto about how the world actually works because this is exactly like that. This is exactly like that. So anyway we’ll see. Yes. Now this is not banning owning crypto so nobody is going to ban owning crypto currencies because that’s impossible because it’s impossible to do it. But if you want to have an exchange you want to have a brokerage you can do anything. So yeah I guess it’s a bit sad. It’s a bit sad. Now we have a Tasos foundation trying to settle their lawsuit. This is very important for them to do because they are in the risk of being deemed a security. So they’re trying to just shut down this lawsuit because it’s been so much time. And they’re saying that’s expensive and time consuming lawsuits you know it needs to end because it’s meritless and and they continue to deny any wrongdoing because look Tesla is under heat from their investors because their investors are and are basically claiming that this is this his securities sale and they want their money back basically. And this has been going on for quite some time and they want 25 million so now there’s some kind of settlement being proposed by Tasos. And we’ll see if we’ll see what happens. But this settlement might be important because it may help dazzles to avoid future problems with regulation because if this goes further the judge might deem them a security. So that’s that’s the big thing for Tesla’s that they might avoid being a security and that being said guys that that doubles all the news content for this fine Sunday morning. All in all to summarize we do have talks about hyper inflation in high places like the CEO of one of the biggest pension funds in Sweden now talking about hyperinflation. We do have U.S. economy not doing that well stock markets crashing. We might not to insist on markets open next week or just being halted later in the week and Russia binding its banning businesses that are doing cryptocurrency trading or selling and unemployment may be a record high in the US like historically heights if this this plays out. This is a Bloomberg survey. You know this this red dots right here is a survey done by Bloomberg. How much the U.S. will lose jobs how many jobs will disappear. As you can see it dwarfs all other crises like during 2008 or during the 80s like this is unprecedented because this situation is unprecedented. Very special situation that we are in right now. Anyway guys what is your view on this whole situation. Let me know in the chat looking on Bitcoin. Obviously want to know what will happen to bitcoin based on all of this news and look at the end of the day short term it might be a good idea to really have both bullish and buyers because we don’t know look we are at a crossroads right now. We are at a crossroads. Are no clear super bullish signs except for for the halving which is the most super bullish sign ever. There are no clear super bearish signs either despite the fact that one might go down and retest the forecast three point nine okay. And overall we are in a downward trend right now and that’s obviously not something that is good. We are still huddling the 200 weekly moving average. That’s important but all in all looking on Bitcoin is basically on the at the crossroads. It’s not something that is particularly bullish or bearish about this whole situation. We’re just going to see what the market tells us. I mean you know that personally I am biased bullish for me even this is bullish because look we do have the having the most important event of this for a four year cycle and I do think it will it will play a big role and it is just in in the month one and a half months basically. So that is that is absolutely big. But all in all right now guys keep a close eye on the stock market because it may have a big effect on the crypto market short term and that’s why we’re covering it. That’s why we’re absolutely covering it and it’s very key to look at it right now because people are worrying they’re worrying about their funds they’re worrying about everything. Now as I told you previously this is only the first half of this recession the second half of this recession might look very different because in the first half everyone is just selling everything for dollars. But once you’ve sold all your assets for dollars because all assets are now falling in in relationship to the dollar once you’ve sold everything now you’re sitting with dollars. OK. So what is the next step. What have you achieved because you’re still seeing the Fed going bananas printing like crazy. Do you get zero return on this capital. You will if you study it you will understand that deflation comes before hyperinflation. So you will be looking for something else you will be looking for safe haven you will be looking for gold and you will be looking for bitcoin. So that is how I think the second half of this whole situation will be and we’ll see we’ll see if that theory holds. And let me know what you think. And guys don’t forget our webinar which is on March 26 and it’s a webinar how to stack massive amounts of stats in this bull market and it’s completely free. You check the link below. You click it and do this if you haven’t been in the previous one. And if you haven’t been in that category. All right we’ll go on the Jaguars. Let’s see. Barcelona permission to step out at home. Oh Fabrice I see that you have watched the documentary about the money because Fabrice now is educated saying that once velocity picks up with the influx money will go bad once we spend it. Exactly. So guys once again go and watch the hidden secrets of money. And by the way next Monday we’re going to have an interview live with Mike Maloney. It’s gonna be amazing man. He’s he’s he’s a documentary about this whole situation is so good. So he’s talking about that when the Fed prints all of this money the money doesn’t lose its value in the beginning in the beginning. Why. Because people are scared during a crisis like now. People are scared. They’re not spending money they’re hoarding. They’re hoarding everything. So we have a bunch of funds on the sidelines. They’re not being circulated. The velocity of money is very low. The demand is low but the Fed is just spraying money everywhere but the prices don’t increase. In fact they decrease because people are still selling all of their assets. And so we have this pile of cash on the sidelines once this velocity increases. Once people start spending again that is when hyperinflation hits. I mean that that is basically in your short explanation of this. Leg. Yes watch episode seven of hidden secrets of money and subscribe to. Yes yes yes yes exactly. My helicopter money all went in bitcoin does good stuff. That’s good. People will change their mindset in positivity. Things like vaccine comes out. Yeah yeah I think. Yes. Yes of course. But the economy as we discussed is not that you can just turn it on and off like gear like your PlayStation or x box or not. It’s not like that. Once you shoot dominos falling it might take 10 years before it recovers and dominoes of course of of bankruptcies and defaults. Hi Ivan I’m writing from Barcelona. The thing about continent here is that you get fined if you’re not. If you’re going to show if you’re not going to shop for food or medicine OK we’re going to get fined fines vary by region. More or less range from 300 to 600 euros an extreme case. Wow. You get 34 K euro in fine. If you have extreme disobedience. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it was the girls. But the real danger will come. By the way pretty old. Yes we do have a huge huge earthquake in Croatia. Yeah. It’s not good. Let me know if you’re watching this from Croatia guys because I also read that there is a huge earthquake. Ivan have you ever linked a wallet with unstoppable domains. Doesn’t look easy. Yeah yeah I have. It’s super easy. It’s super super easy. Just e-mail their support. They will help you. They have great support. Ivan y’know starting Bitcoin in next so and borrow dollars that way you can do that. You can do that but you’re trusting them that’s the thing. Also you can check out the review of P H just look a few videos back on my channel. You will find this review of P H which is basically like next so but they are newer and they sponsor their channel you should know that. So we did a review of them but their interest rates I mean they’re new. So they’re trying to bring something to the table trying to compete so their interest rates are super low is is below 1 percent. So check out next so check out Celsius but check out also P H I mean page they’re called something else but I don’t want to say their name because it sounds very funny. Ivan shill Kazim I feel it man. Right now we’re focusing on webinar we’re focusing on webinar. So guys if you’re not in the academy and you haven’t been on webinar go and sign up right now but obviously if you are already part of the academy and you’ll like it and I know many of you absolute like it. So it’s very good guys. When you give us good feedback it’s amazing. You can of course become Ophelia so go to the start page click here and then you can also earn money with us if you on board new students. Ivan I’m going to precious metals and Bitcoin mainly. What do you think. Well I think you should be prepared to lose money in the beginning because we’re still in the press in deflation. So both gold and Bitcoin might go down even more because we are in this first first stage so we should be prepared for that long term no financial advice. What I think is amazing long term I think it’s very good because look people will or people will go to gold at the end of the day. It’s is absolutely like that. So yeah that’s how I think that is. So look for example here. So let me show it to them. We’ve seen this happen exactly the situation here is 2008 and we’re looking at gold by the way we’re looking at the gold price in 2008 right here. Gold collapsed by approximately 30 percent so during the crisis gold’s collapsing 30 percent gold right now is also collapsing as you see here but you see what happened then. Gold completely exploded to the upside. UPS is completely explode to the upside here. And increase basically by man 170 one thousand 80 percent. So look it’s it’s always like that. You see deflation and then you see inflationary but this is a normal recession. The one recession we’re witnessing right now probably will be different. Well this may be even higher because the inflation might be way higher. So definitely keep that in mind that we may still you don’t know exactly where we are on this kind of chart. We’ve still may be just way through. And gold will go down even lower before we see this. So now we’re all in a similar situation. We’re seeing gold retrace. But if you can learn anything from history it is the fact that it’s not it’s not like that forever. Ivan let us assume that governments around the world decide to switch to bitcoin. How would that look like I mean would governments make it would Garrus make still still sense at all the governments. No no. Look it will be reserve asset. So it will be a reserve asset. Now will it be used in everyday trade maybe. Maybe. But primarily we’re looking at a reserve asset so that that’s the first step. That is what I think about when I hear adoption at least a government adoption. By the way if you also want interest you can go and you can scroll down if you’re watching this live you will see best crypto deals. And even if you scroll down on YouTube and check the description you will see this link about the best crypto deals I can show to hear as well. And if you go if if you go there you will see this Web site and you can also try crypto dot com to earn to earn interest on your crypto. If you are huddling so definitely do that. And then when you sign up you get 50 dollars. And I also guess this is ours. But this is mainly for all of you who want to earn interest on on crypto. So you know you have cell 60 up next. So you have a few of over the CFP is chef group dot.com. So this ones would do have collaboration with as well so you can get 50 dollars. What else is going on in the Charlie’s. And soon they’ll add backs as gold. OK. Catalan government is preparing an app and carried out magazine. Well you will get a responsible certificate like a good boy. If you carried the app so you get the certificate. Man you need the certificate. Doesn’t sound that sounds a bit weird like I don’t need this certificate. They all do need to download this app so we can track you basically your every step your every move your every breath and then you will get a good boy big boy certificate that you have been behaving well. Sounds sounds insane man. Am I understanding correctly. Barcelona man I don’t want to get to a conspiracy theoretic but basically they are tracking you full time and you get certificates. Man it’s. This is the certificate. OK. I don’t want to open that Google Drive Helling but look it’s. I don’t want to get to conspiracy theories. But you see when crises like this come and they force you to do all kinds of weird stuff like having this app they track you all the time. Now when the crisis is over they may of course repeal a bit of that control but they always don’t repeal everything. There is a bit left after each crisis. You have this emergency measures now everyone needs to do this and this and this give up all your freedoms and they say it’s temporary. When the crisis is over they say OK now we remove a bit we don’t remove everything we still may listen to your phone. We still may track you but we remove a bit. So yeah it’s getting worse actually with each crisis. So yeah everything will go down every little panic. And we will buy everything. That’s a good plan. I like it. Yeah I mean you get you. I think it according to me at least I’m telling myself that you got to be buying. I mean obviously. Obviously you don’t know how far it will go. We might with only down by 30 percent and we might go to 90 minus. But you understand that it’s it’s good prices even today. I haven’t I’m currently in JavaScript courses and they’ve been completing lectures. Oh you’re a weekly achievement. Oh man. You look e-mail support at Ivan dot Academy and we’re still working on that dashboard. If you think about the dash dashboard e-mail support that Ivan dot academy and they will take a look at your dashboard. Yeah. So in the academy we’re experimenting with these dashboards but they’re still in beta guys. They’re still in beta we still might have things to fix there. But. But basically you can see how well you’re performing in that cage match against other people and stuff like that. Yeah. Let me know by the way if. If. But it should work. But e-mail them. They will check it out. They will check it out. It doesn’t have a max supply like the Fed. Not really the Fed man because at the end of the day you do have. I mean in one way you don’t know the supply of if in another way it’s completely different from the Fed because you do have an underlying protocol and you do have an underlying community. And anyone can be part of that community. So can you be part of that community. Absolutely not. It’s kind of like in Bitcoin as well. By the way if you think about it Bitcoin smacks supply can be changed. Of course it can be changed just a number I can change it. You can change it. The thing is that it needs to be adopted by the nodes by the network. And the only reason why Bitcoin has 21 million is because it’s very difficult to convince everyone to install your update. So if a theorem foundation with Alec goes bananas and inflates if not you will install it because you’ve got to also understand that you have different stakeholders so you have for example maker Dow they have a huge power because they have oracles that that that are feeding all defy ecosystem the prices. So without maker you don’t really have defied. So italic needs to be in consensus with maker if they’re not in consensus with Alec wants to do something maker doesn’t want to do something well then italics change will not have Delphi basically. So it’s very different. And you can say that beta is also like the Fed because if if a large amount of minors and the developers come together of course they can change twenty one million of course. So yeah. But but. There is no way. Look in one way it feels that some people think that there’s some kind of magical property to to bitcoin that it’s always going to be like twenty one million. There’s some kind of magical property to the block chain but at the end of the day it is just this function that we discussed get block actually showed that sub sub but actually showed it yesterday. The only thing that is. Let me see is it validation that C++ lets you get block sub. Yeah. Here look you change this number from 50 to something else. You can double triple. You can do whatever with a supply. But then everyone needs to update does a thing. The same with if of course developers can do crazy things but then everyone has to update. So yeah it’s not like the Fed and Bitcoin is not like the Fed but here is basically how much reward miners are getting in each block. And this is really what says this 21 million because if you look at the fact that if we have more than 64 Hollings we don’t do any more hauling. So there will never be more than 60 for Hollings. And then if you run through the calculations here and you and you count how many blocks we’ll get 50 rewards. How many blocks will you get twenty five twelve point five six point twenty five and so on so forth then you end up with them with 21 million. So that’s the only thing if you change this variable right here it’s is gonna be different. What would it be good to have. Limit supply in if not really for it to be honest and it is two different assumptions about security. So eith one to have a inflation that is never ending. So they know that they will be able to pay for mining for for security through time they will be able to do it. Bitcoin is a bit more of a gamble because we’re gambling with the fact that transaction fees will be enough. So we do have this assumption that transaction fees will be enough and we don’t need block subsidy. Will it be like that. Maybe we’ll see. We’ll see. I talked to Dan held or head though. Apparently he had done some calculations that say that it will be like that. So it will work out but we don’t know practically. But theoretically according to his calculations it will work out. He basically look at how much the transaction fees are growing and how much they are replacing the block reward. So according to his research is gonna be all good but we’re making this assumption that the demand because right now the security is paid for by the demand in bitcoin that we can print new bitcoin and we can sell it on the market with dump it on the market and the market will absorb it and then we can go and pay for electricity. That is what we’re doing right now. Now in the future is going gonna be transaction fees. So now it’s different kind of demand. Now its demand for actually transacting and using the network and it’s not necessarily the same thing that is happening right now. Because right now we’re only we’re only relying on the fact that people value bitcoin that they hold it. Maybe they sell they buy a bit but they value bitcoin. That is what is paying for security right now in the future. We’re going to be relying on the transactions and that people will be actively using the network a lot a lot a lot each and every day that’s going to pay for security. And look it’s two different things like it’s two different demands of of two different things of Bitcoin like. One is justified this valuable and you don’t have to do a lot of transactions. This is what’s being right now. And here you have to do a lot of transactions. That is what’s going to pay in the future. Look it’s it’s all experimental. And the same with just different strategies. But obviously there is no way to cheat I don’t know how you would change 21 million. It would be completely crazy. But you know that Peter Todd. Wants to change that. And Peter Todd is one of the core developers. So look I don’t want to be a party pooper so to speak but. But I think you guys have been crypto enough to know the truth to know the truth because obviously when I’m explaining crypto to new people I am saying that it’s 21 million. That’s it. But when you when you start a bit more let’s see if I can. Yeah. Here. So Peter Todd is one of the people who wants to raise twenty one million constraint because he wants to be able to pay for security. So the reality is that it’s still social. It’s still social consensus. Yeah it’s. And that is the core. It’s not some kind of magical math. It’s still social that we don’t we we as a community make sure that if zero is a crazy crazy update with don’t tablet Yeah that’s it. I would have gold in my home if I didn’t lose it every year in a tragic boat accident. You live in the boat or what. Let’s see. Women tragic boat. Interesting. Me please name publicly recognize the the the the the. Yeah. DaVinci J 15 said his sell his house to go all in and buy Bitcoin. Hmm well right now we’re not. I know I know Tom Waits is also talking about going all in at 2.8 or something. You talked about but you know DaVinci he she is well off to say the least to say the least. So it might not be a good strategy for for everyone else. Any safe place or condition for buying verified legit gold in general. Well look I’m not a big buyer of gold so I cannot help you. Maybe someone in the shadows is a big buyer of gold. Be humble and Bitcoin says Eric. Yes. Because you never know what’s going to happen. Anything can happen. What probability do you give. For one case to prove a scenario. And how would that play out with some old coins like if so old coins will follow. Auctions will follow. And you understand a hyper Well I still give it just 10 percent 10 15 percent. Socrates gives it 90 percent right now. But to go down to 1 k is just look it’s not impossible but then would see true capitulation man. Then we have truly truly lost l lost a lot of faith at the same time. You need to see a full capitulation in order for us to restart and really go into a bull market. So maybe that’s what’s needed because in one way you see that when we bounced from 3 K last year in May and then we went all the way to 14 K. It felt a bit too quick. I mean we all were amazed how quick it is it was really a show of strength in bitcoin at the same time. Now looking at a situation where we are in right now and having like the correct answers in hand having I mean in hindsight when you look at the situation you can say that basically we did not see too much struggle too much struggle in the markets and the markets always want to maximize the struggle and pain before the reset because we want old weak hands to sell. So maybe that’s what’s happening right now that we’re maximizing our collective pain so. So at all we cancelled out and the summer so it could be it could be but still for me it’s a low percentage but it’s not impossible. I am I am listening to that success is a game that it’s it’s it’s on the radar at least it’s on the radar for me. Many people don’t even have it on the radar but that one case scenario is on the radar and right now as I told you previously in this episode it’s like at the crossroads I it’s difficult to be bullish but also difficult to be bearish. It’s essential it tells you that it’s. Yeah. So that’s why it’s important to focus on other things like the economy because this is gonna tell a lot you a lot more than studying only bitcoin right now because bitcoin is a small piece of a bigger puzzle. So that’s why we’re focusing on this right now. Let’s see. Distribution England would be a good life but not in a depression. Fabrice That’s correct. I am not listening to Socrates as women might. You will have to listen look it’s not listening or not. Doesn’t really matter but it’s important to have it on the radar. But you don’t have to. Obviously like you don’t have to. Evan can you talk about QE. What does being implement. It’s a lot man. It’s so much that you’re all almost losing track. You do have repo operations 1 trillion per day. You have 700 billion being deployed. Now they’re trying to change legislation that it will be possible for the Fed to buy stocks directly directly. I think next week we might see news about this. So yes that’s that’s big. It’s all it’s so much it’s difficult to keep track of everything. It’s a lot. Have I mean we’ve been discussing the the repo operations the VA emergency. This was called pandemic PPE man. What is called. I need to google this because it’s like a full package. Let’s see pandemic emergency. Oh maybe it’s by package maybe a pandemic emergency package. Yeah. I mean that one is what is it like few trillion. It’s a lot. Yes it’s a lot. But the most important thing to understand is that this will only continue. This is not something that’s going to be over in one two one two weeks one two months. Let’s see it and were speaking about up to a trillion. Look it would be now we’re really talking about the big stuff. There are a lot of stuff going on but you got to be looking at the big stuff. So look it would be the third coronavirus eight plan to be considered by Congress just this month. Trump signed the first eight point three billion package. This is only the beginning. Eight point three billion and this was on March 6. So this all happened on March 6. Since then we’ve completely completely exploded. Since then we’ve seen daily trillion operate. I mean it all started with just eight point three billion and this was from the government. Then the Fed also stepped in with trillions. And yet I mean it’s it’s a lot. But it’s a good point. We should we should have a summary of everything so we can point out. Yeah. What does the Russian government think of if it’s made by the italic. So what I. I don’t think they care a lot to be honest with you who is made for her. But the dialogue has been of course seen a lot with the government officials in Russia. I don’t think it’s anything significant they’re not using it for that much right now. And as as we discussed previously they will most probably ban crypto trading and crypto exchanges in Russia. So whether it’s made by Vitaly or not then Vitaly in Russia. I don’t think it matters a lot at all to be honest with you where he was born. What do you think about. But at the same time Alex is also a good question because it’s not impossible to imagine that the guys in high places in Russia got good deals on if and that they were positive for a while so they could they could cash out their positions but now is that they may be all out. So so now it’s time to ban made it that’s how how that was. Do you think VPN could be used to avoid this ban. Well not really. Because they’re going after businesses. They’re not going after you. So they’re going after businesses. Black pigeon says that CV cronies could have euro by our. Yeah maybe. Maybe we have to we have also to do things the way we spend our money where we have also two things the way man please work on your English Mac Bean. I don’t even understand what you’re writing. Ivan will we ever have a boxing match against the example that we’ve fantastic to be honest. That would be fantastic. Or just have or just have him on the channel. That would be great. Anyway guys thank you so much for watching yet again. I truly appreciate you helping out helping out with questions helping out with topics you are helping a lot. Thank you so much as always. Be sure to check out our webinar completely free. Be sure to check out the link below for by bit you get a great deal if used the link below you can long you can short you can trade Bitcoin if you use SRP and you get a great deal if you use the link below go to Ivan told us com slash deals or use the link below for Best Script deals and check out scripts come if you want to earn interest on your script or if you want to get like a credit and debit card crypto bank debit card. Also we have several domains we have glass no don’t channel. I mean you do get a lot of great deals here. That being said thank you so much. Once again if you’re watching on YouTube go to. I wouldn’t like the com slash live. That is the only way to watch it live any. All right. If you are now watching on. I want to get to com slash live. Be sure to click all of this like subscribe enabled web alerts and notifications on telegram. At least one of them you should pick so you’re always up to date. So that being said Guys thank you so much. And I’ll see you all tomorrow at 8 a.m.. Back back to Goodman Group Two back to work. Back to work day. This kind of the vacation for me. This is WEEKEND FOR ME. WHEN WE DO AT 11:00 so tomorrow my vacation is over we’re going to go back to 8:00 a.m. So have a good day and good byes. Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

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STOCKS WILL FALL 90%!? Bitcoin, Trump – Programmer explains

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

And we’re alive. Yes. Welcome to another episode of Good Morning drift on here I on Ivan on tape. We are of course broadcasting live straight out of Stockholm Sweden. And we do the show each and every day at 8:00 p.m. Central European Time gets but on weekends on weekends. It’s 11:00. So that’s why I would do 11:00 and so there’s so much of it. Guys guys we have a lot to discuss because the stock market may not be open tomorrow and during the week because we do have signals from the Trump administration that they will issue even more log down in the U.S. and you will see exactly which measures they might be taken. But you understand also if they do more log down the stock markets are not going to react well and therefore we might see a situation in which the stock market doesn’t even open. And it’s important to note that we may go down 90 percent in the stock market as a whole because during the Great Depression we went down approximately 80 to 90 percent and we haven’t gone down that much since then. But at the same time we never really had the crisis like this where everyone needs to stay at home and the economy completely completely shuts off. And now people are talking about hyperinflation even outside of crypto man. It’s insane because normally when you mentioned hyperinflation and that it may happen in our countries like in Sweden in the US people tell you you are recruited a lunatic man. What are you talking about. You’re some kind of crypto maniac and the hyperinflation can never happen in our countries in the Western world or they will tell you you’re a gold bug. You want people to buy your gold like Peter Schiff. So look at the end of the day it’s only been us who thought about hyperinflation and who thought about the possibility of all currencies hyperinflation because you know that all fiat goes to zero. And today will share with you the fact that the CEO of the pension funds here in Sweden is not some kind of person from the street. This is the CEO of the pension funds managing billions and billions now coming out and saying that we may see hyperinflation. So this is key and the global media is not talking about it but you get it here. And we yes we will be discussing that and we’ll be discussing Tasos. We will be discussing other things as well. Welcome to the show. Great to see you here. Great. All of you who are watching live. And you know I guess if you are watching on YouTube you’re not watching dislike. You really missed the opportunity because we’re only live streaming on Ivan on take dot com slash life. So go there right now and be sure to subscribe. You will see a read subscribe button there so be sure to click it right now. Straight straight away so I can show you on the screen how it’s done. You see right here you see subscribe enable web notifications and telecommunications. You can do all of this and then you can also be part of the chat because this is only a real plot and that being said everyone who is watching this live welcome. Amazing to hear it. I see crypto koala. I see Danny Hoddle. I see Dino. I see. A group that Yoda. I see women. Charles guys how are you doing. Amazing to see so many of you here on this fantastic Sunday morning right. Well Alex Lebanon where you are watching from which countries we have today because always some kind of different country which is exciting for Fabrice us always that’s always that’s always great guys to have you here. And today you know that I am drinking green tea. Nowadays green tea no milk no sugar involved. And let me know what you’re drinking. Belgium nice nice nice. Me Connecticut USA Switzerland Barcelona Holland. Amazing guys. Amazing. So good to see here. Now before we go into the markets before we go into the market overview I just want to show you this. I just want to show you this which is quite the special news coming from Sweden. Look this lady right here she is the CEO of the pension funds. I tried to translate this page but the bridge crashes when you like entrant into translate. But this is like the state news and the look. This is the most important thing and I have translated this here. Basically they’re talking about how this situation can really go out of control with the with the virus with Coronas and everything that is going on. And she’s basically saying that look we’re looking at mass unemployment at around 20 to 40 percent unemployment and this means that there are very few businesses to go to. There’s even the risk that all of this money is being blown out that we are getting hyperinflation. Look it’s like she’s in crypto now. I mean maybe she should enter the crypto industry for real because she’s talking about this like a true crypto group part of the crypto community. So so big welcome. Alex you’re talking about that all of this money that is being blown into the system might create hyperinflation along with the fact that we have no demand in the economy because unemployment is so high. Nobody has can afford anything really at the same time. You do see this old money just being printed into the into the eco system without any true productivity. And here is where it becomes dangerous. Here’s where it becomes dangerous. So that’s her point. And look I think it’s very important to also look at this globally because here is basically the unemployment numbers that may come out next week. Let me show you let me move a bit. So look we don’t have this numbers confirmed confirmed yet it’s just a survey. But the US will come out with unemployment numbers next week. And here’s what we may be looking to on a weekly datum as you can see this is way past. I mean this red chart right here is way past anything that we’ve seen. I mean it’s way past 2008. Way past the 94 93 94 83 84. It’s way past everything. And the reason is because everyone is forced to stay at home so as Remy says Houston we have a problem as L.A. San Francisco New York and other cities are going into lockdown. Jobless claims is about to have the worst week ever. This is only the beginning. This is only the beginning. And it is something that we don’t really mind. People are not taking this seriously yet. People have not really started to think in terms of a depression although on this channel we’ve been talking about it and and all across the crypto space we’ve also been talking about it for quite some time. But normal people there still in this fairy tale that the virus will just go away tomorrow and look it may go away tomorrow. But what’s important for this lady you also said the CEO like the pension funds she said as well that look you cannot just shut off the economy like politicians are doing right now with curfews and stuff and then just turn it on and and think that is going to go back to normal. And think that you can just you know on off and it’s all back you just turn it on. Hey guys we just turn it on again when all of this cronies are gone and illness is gone. But that is not of course how it works. Once you set off a domino effect even if the virus is now gone everyone is happy to work happy to do business. It may be very difficult to turn it back on once the chain reaction really starts. We do see bankruptcies we do see insolvencies. We do see banks failing. It’s not something you can just turn back on and that’s it. So please keep it in mind please keep it in mind. Very very much. Now looking on the crypt Marcus we have bitcoin plus 4 percent where we feed him plus 3 percent of SRP plus two point nine percent whatever that they’re keeping one dollar and keeping the peg people still trusting and tether between cash two percent I mean all in all quite green market quite good quite good. Just continuously looking at the double digits here in the top 50 you have decreed that 20 percent else do you have no one else at double digits. The biggest winners of today are swipe 65 percent secret 19 see acquiring steam also performing with all of their issues they’re still performing well today hex. Who would have believed it 10 percent. Let me know if you Hoddle hex. Yeah I mean the reason why we’re seeing hex is because it’s quaint paprika like the only Web site where they have hex or not because Richard is always complaining that they’re not adding hex and other Web sites and that they are calculating it wrong. But anyway hex 10 percent or 8. So all in all quite bullish Marcus and looking at the losers. We don’t even have losers lexicon. No losers guys no losers as always. We do have our webinar is going to happen next week March 26. Keep it in mind completely free we’re talking about how to stack massive amounts of sass. Use the link below to sign up just scroll down right now and sign up it’s completely free and only sign up if you haven’t been in decades Academy. And if you haven’t been on the previous one obviously you can sign up as well but then you will recognize a lot and we do have our collaboration with the Bible. So I guess if you are trading bitcoin if you want to trade the theorem yours or SRP This is the platform for you. It is the change that we prefer right now the most. Why. Because the technical solution is amazing but also because they have great supports if you have any question just click here to support. I mean obviously we can long you can short you can use leverage up to 100 days which is important to lower timeframes but you should be extremely careful if you’re not a trader. If you’re just starting out you should really learn how to trade first and then use it. But yes use the link below. And you can get a great deal if you use the link below. So definitely do that. Now moving into the most important news of today it is the fact that we might see a complete shutdown of the whole nation of the U.S. as you will see in this in this article. But also when it comes to the stock market because you can not shut down and you cannot do what the president may have to do very soon without without actually shutting off the markets because the markets if they did not going to handle it they’re not going to handle that is at least how they are reasoning at least how they are thinking. So basically we may see next week and shelter in place which means the president will be asked to stay home and not leave the residence until unless they travel or unless it’s an emergency. So there are two travel lessons emerge. We can also mean travel unless it’s emergency. And so this is according to various publications and according to different sources this is not completely confirmed but you do see this going online right now and and people are writing about this a lot right now. And look it’s not impossible to reason because this is the situation we’re seeing all across the world already that people are asked to stay at home. This is not that that’s strange and it would just be normal if we’re seeing it in the US next week so Trump is also considering grounding all U.S. passenger planes. No no one will be allowed to take a plane to another state and the sources familiar with the matter say the measure being considered is for an unspecified timeframe. Also you got to realize that the U.S. president and the bipartisan members of Congress have already enacted several sets of orders like enforcing compressions to produce certain goods. So for example if you have a factory and you can produce medical supplies you will be forced to do that. And we’re seeing it across the world already in some countries and also in some countries you cannot export to your goods to other nations if it is needed in your country. So this is what we are already seeing in Europe that if you can provide for example medical supplies you can provide hand gel you know this alcohol gel then first and foremost you sell to your own country. And then if there’s anything left you can expert maybe but that’s also big maybe. So we’re seeing it in other countries as well in Europe. It might be true in the U.S. very very soon and EU officials and unnamed sources I mean you’ve got to take it maybe with a grain of salt because we don’t know exactly who it is a told The Washington Examiner that the Trump administration is seriously considering to shut down the stock market at the same time it grounds the U.S. passenger fleet. And Trump’s orders a nationwide shelter in place and it’s also it also makes perfect sense because look the markets will not be able to take this well. They’re not looking good guys. This is not good. We’re falling through the floor. This is the fastest collapse basically ever. We’ve never seen this fast collapse of the S&P. Look we’ve already fallen with 33 percent. I mean if you look at the bottom here it’s like 34 percent. It’s a lot. Yes man. It’s so much during such a short period of time. Look in the previous recession here we fell by approximately by approximately fifty seven 57. And it took so much longer time took my so much longer time to get to the bottom and all and all the wool fell from all time high 57 percent. Here we are already at 30. And it took just one week one two weeks. It’s insane. Yes it’s absolutely insane buy in two weeks we are already down this much and you see here how many weeks is it took here to go down. I mean we’re talking about 500 days overall. So yeah it was a long journey down and you were taking the elevator within the two weeks. Now the only way to really see a comparison to this because we might we may go way lower than 50 percent. It is actually the Great Depression and look Trading View. I didn’t find a good chart that went all the way back to the 1930s but we do have this right here on macro trends. And if you look at how much will fell how much S&P fell in at that time we basically were at four hundred four hundred seventy four at the peak and we went all the way down to let’s see if I can actually prick. Yeah. Eighty eighty four ish ish. Even lower man if you zoom zoom in. Let me let me try to zoom in. But this was one of the biggest false ever in human history if not the biggest. Yeah. It shows 84 Ish Ish Ish Ish. So look this may be comparable to this. This may be comparable comparable to this but at the same time you realize that it’s difficult to say exactly how much lower is going to be and seeing the fact that we went 60 percent in the last one seeing a great depression even lower seeing everything that is going on. You understand that at the end of the day we might of course see numbers at minus 80 percent in the stock market minus 9 C. It’s not impossible because we’ve seen it before and this situation right here where everyone stays at home zero demand for anything. Everyone is just sitting at home. There is no production because you cannot go to work. There’s no demand. There is no productivity. Then of course we might see minus 18 minus 90 percent in the stock market. It’s not it’s not that far fetched to be honest. So what does it say. What does it tell us. It tells us that the Trump administration might not want that right now. So it tells us before the election going down 90 percent of the stock market. Will not be a good thing. So of course shutting down the stock market for a one week two weeks it’s not completely out of the question. And we’ve had this before the last time was during the 9/11 attacks where President Bush closed until the September the 17th. So from 9/11 to September 19th it was closed. Basically a week a bit less then. We also saw the stock market drop by 14 percent on the day of this open after a week of closure in thirty three during the Great Depression we did actually see the President shut down the stock market as well. So you know that Roosevelt created Emergency Banking Act shutting it down. But at the same time with most people don’t remember is that at this time all gold was confiscated so federal. Sorry. Roosevelt was also behind this gold hoard the ban so we can not even have any gold and order as people’s stashes of gold were stolen and repatriated at a bad price. Very bad price. Basically they stole the gold from the population and then gave dollars for a very very bad price because once the trading opened again Gold prices soared. And you’re still with you and you’re stuck with your cash that the government gave you which is way less than what it was worth just a short while afterwards. On the free markets I mean it’s insane it’s insane guys and we don’t really know what’s gonna happen. Bitcoin is up ninety nine point ninety eight percent. That is the thing research on offer there is no way to shut down bitcoin but you gotta understand that once again and especially in 2020 people are swift learning that the American government and by the way any government any government will do whatever it wants. When there is a crisis. So just keep this in mind as if this is big. This is big. The situation we’re in is big is nothing to hide it’s nothing to really try to minimize or make it less serious. It is very serious and this is this is not looking good. Yemen is to get to it took very very quick to go all the way here. Anyway let me know what you think. Let me know what you think. It’s it’s not it’s not looking good at least from my perspective now obviously obviously it all depends on how much the cronies are here how long they’re here for and it may be the case that they are disappearing very quickly that this illness goes away and then may maybe the fact is we don’t really see this big dominoes fall yet that yes it’s possible to turn the economy back on that. Yes it’s possible to go back but at the same time it’s not looking good at all right now right now. But also what’s important to note is that if you live in the country where this thing hasn’t really taken off like in Sweden it’s not currently is not that big here. And it seems most people are relaxed. People don’t really care a lot. They go into town they basically do what they’ve always done to large extent to a large extent. Hotels Of course and the travel businesses are hurting because people are not travelling but when it comes to just walking around being in the sunshine people are completely completely cool with that. So if you’re not living like in Italy or Spain or China you don’t really experience how severe it is. And so for most people of course the symptoms as far as I understand they’re not very severe. So we’re going to see. Maybe it is the case that this blows over quickly that the world will say OK guys we overreacted with the curfews let’s just let’s roll them back. But it doesn’t look like that at least for now. So let me know your opinion on this in the chats right now. India will be the new hotspot says Jimmy. Yes it sounds likely to be honest with you. Sounds likely not gonna happen says Charles. Let’s see Ivan chat idea rather than typing out. We can simply click. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s a good idea. You can click. Oh yeah. That was actually a good idea. You don’t have to eat or you don’t have to type at. You just write the user name and then it will be highlighted. But that’s a very good idea actually. So when you click someone’s user name it will add it to your message. So that’s good user name on the click. That’s actually a good idea. Because right now what I do is that I copy paste user name in order for it to to highlight that for the other person when they send the message. But yes it’s easier to just click it will get worse before it gets better says Al. Alex in Belgium we are in complete lockdown without the government calling it a lockdown. It’s all about Worthing and it’s kind of kind of kind of the same situation that might unfold in Sweden as well. I don’t know. For now Sweden is quite relaxed. You can still travel here it’s still open. There’s no like super super hardcore curfews there and there are no curfews. But you’re not allowed to do gatherings of more than 500 people. That is the only thing basically. And look it’s not some kind of Armageddon. It’s not that big of a difference. So basically different strategies as we’ve been discussing that here. It’s more relaxed. You know we want to have this herd immunity in other countries. It’s more lockdown. We’re going to see. We’re going to see. I mean the good thing at least is that the economy is at least I mean it’s not complete shutdown. The shut shut off. And the numbers right now are showing that this strategy of not completely going into lockdown is working at least according to me it is working because it’s not that we do see some kind of an anomaly numbers here of some kind of Armageddon numbers in Sweden but Sweden is way more relaxed when it comes to shutting it off. And it’s good for the businesses because we don’t see this domino effect of bankruptcies like in other countries. It’s a bit better here but it’s not good. It’s not good either because a lot of course depends on exports. A lot depends on tourism. And there is not much like the government can do even if they try to to make it go better yet there is not much they can do because it’s so small nation it’s so export dependent. So doesn’t really matter what we do here. Then they were all affected by everything else. So that that’s important it does like that in most European countries like small nations they need to export. Let’s see Armageddon Mortal Combat. Right right right. China is stable. My girlfriend is from China. Lives in Barcelona. We’ll see. But you know in China they’re good at making sure people don’t go out there making sure you know when you go out there you may be in big trouble. I don’t know how it is in Spain because I haven’t been in Spain since this whole situation. But if you are living in Spain let me know what happens if you if you if you go out despite the curfew what will happen to you legally will they take you physically and put in jail straight to jail. I’m thinking about this sketch you know being yourself straight to jail or is it something that is completely cool you may get the fine and then you do whatever you want still. That’s the biggest issue with the Europe. I mean it’s good of course you don’t want to have a totalitarian totalitarian regimes. So it’s good it’s not bad. But in this particular situation with curfews it may not be working that well compared to totalitarian regimes. So yeah. OK yes. My wife is also Chinese and her family back home. Yeah it’s normal. Got very very very cool. I mean look at the end of the day this Corona thing might blow over. Coronas anyway moving on Yes we have some sad news from Russia unfortunately because the politicians don’t like crypto. They want to ban it. Basically you have this bill coming out and the creator of the bill one of these politicians saying that this is a senior Russian official has warned is delayed bill on digital assets will include a ban on issuing and selling crypto currencies. MAN Yeah this is big because Russia is one of the most important markets for crypto looked being in crypto now for since 2013 and working full time since 2017. I can tell you there’s so much Russian activity in crypto but at the same time it’s not necessarily that they’re based in Russia. They’re based all across the world but the Russians love crypto. I can tell you that we believe that there are big risks of legalizing the operations with crypto currencies from standpoint of financial stability. What does this mean. It means that the the Fiat garbage that their currency is an old currency is our fiat right now and they’re all garbage but it means that they don’t want competition of course because they’re even saying that look the ruble is the only way the only way to pay for things in Russia here. The ruble as the law says is the only legal means of payment in Russia. So obviously they don’t want competition because everyone understands that it’s garbage. It’s lost 50 percent. Like overnight a few years ago 2016 or 15 don’t remember exactly but if you lived there you of course remember when it lost that much. So obviously and that is by the way it’s like that in most countries it’s in most countries. Look at Norway. Look at Sweden. How much we’re losing against the dollar right now. So everyone understands that the national fiat currencies it’s it’s it’s not a good idea for you to handle that long term. And the thing is you always want to create demand. So that is why. That is why when you pay taxes you have to pay. In your national currencies because they need demand for their for their old coin basically for for their garbage. So taxes is maybe the most important demand because whatever you’re doing you will be buying your national currency to pay the taxes. There’s no way other way to pay it in the US. In some states you can pay it in bitcoin. It’s really mind blowing that you can. But in most countries you can’t. You have to buy their fiat. You have to do it. And so the same as of course when paying for things. And basically this if there is and this is a lie because they need demand for it and they need the masses that they can print more money and and do all kinds of operations whether it is funding government projects whether it is corruption whether it is whatever. Look the government wants to be able to print money. That only works if that money has some kind of demand. And the demand from the other ones is it has some kind of buyers that they can dump on. Basically look being encrypt crypto looking at all consumers so much because this is exactly how these central banks work. Look at all costs when they dump on the on their community. When they tried to create some kind of demand and then dump we’ve seen so much in 2007 seem like this low quality old coins that they tried to create some kind of demand some kind of excitement so they can basically dump their banks or create new currency and dump it. So you learn so much from crypto about how the world actually works because this is exactly like that. This is exactly like that. So anyway we’ll see. Yes. Now this is not banning owning crypto so nobody is going to ban owning crypto currencies because that’s impossible because it’s impossible to do it. But if you want to have an exchange you want to have a brokerage you can do anything. So yeah I guess it’s a bit sad. It’s a bit sad. Now we have a Tasos foundation trying to settle their lawsuit. This is very important for them to do because they are in the risk of being deemed a security. So they’re trying to just shut down this lawsuit because it’s been so much time. And they’re saying that’s expensive and time consuming lawsuits you know it needs to end because it’s meritless and and they continue to deny any wrongdoing because look Tesla is under heat from their investors because their investors are and are basically claiming that this is this his securities sale and they want their money back basically. And this has been going on for quite some time and they want 25 million so now there’s some kind of settlement being proposed by Tasos. And we’ll see if we’ll see what happens. But this settlement might be important because it may help dazzles to avoid future problems with regulation because if this goes further the judge might deem them a security. So that’s that’s the big thing for Tesla’s that they might avoid being a security and that being said guys that that doubles all the news content for this fine Sunday morning. All in all to summarize we do have talks about hyper inflation in high places like the CEO of one of the biggest pension funds in Sweden now talking about hyperinflation. We do have U.S. economy not doing that well stock markets crashing. We might not to insist on markets open next week or just being halted later in the week and Russia binding its banning businesses that are doing cryptocurrency trading or selling and unemployment may be a record high in the US like historically heights if this this plays out. This is a Bloomberg survey. You know this this red dots right here is a survey done by Bloomberg. How much the U.S. will lose jobs how many jobs will disappear. As you can see it dwarfs all other crises like during 2008 or during the 80s like this is unprecedented because this situation is unprecedented. Very special situation that we are in right now. Anyway guys what is your view on this whole situation. Let me know in the chat looking on Bitcoin. Obviously want to know what will happen to bitcoin based on all of this news and look at the end of the day short term it might be a good idea to really have both bullish and buyers because we don’t know look we are at a crossroads right now. We are at a crossroads. Are no clear super bullish signs except for for the halving which is the most super bullish sign ever. There are no clear super bearish signs either despite the fact that one might go down and retest the forecast three point nine okay. And overall we are in a downward trend right now and that’s obviously not something that is good. We are still huddling the 200 weekly moving average. That’s important but all in all looking on Bitcoin is basically on the at the crossroads. It’s not something that is particularly bullish or bearish about this whole situation. We’re just going to see what the market tells us. I mean you know that personally I am biased bullish for me even this is bullish because look we do have the having the most important event of this for a four year cycle and I do think it will it will play a big role and it is just in in the month one and a half months basically. So that is that is absolutely big. But all in all right now guys keep a close eye on the stock market because it may have a big effect on the crypto market short term and that’s why we’re covering it. That’s why we’re absolutely covering it and it’s very key to look at it right now because people are worrying they’re worrying about their funds they’re worrying about everything. Now as I told you previously this is only the first half of this recession the second half of this recession might look very different because in the first half everyone is just selling everything for dollars. But once you’ve sold all your assets for dollars because all assets are now falling in in relationship to the dollar once you’ve sold everything now you’re sitting with dollars. OK. So what is the next step. What have you achieved because you’re still seeing the Fed going bananas printing like crazy. Do you get zero return on this capital. You will if you study it you will understand that deflation comes before hyperinflation. So you will be looking for something else you will be looking for safe haven you will be looking for gold and you will be looking for bitcoin. So that is how I think the second half of this whole situation will be and we’ll see we’ll see if that theory holds. And let me know what you think. And guys don’t forget our webinar which is on March 26 and it’s a webinar how to stack massive amounts of stats in this bull market and it’s completely free. You check the link below. You click it and do this if you haven’t been in the previous one. And if you haven’t been in that category. All right we’ll go on the Jaguars. Let’s see. Barcelona permission to step out at home. Oh Fabrice I see that you have watched the documentary about the money because Fabrice now is educated saying that once velocity picks up with the influx money will go bad once we spend it. Exactly. So guys once again go and watch the hidden secrets of money. And by the way next Monday we’re going to have an interview live with Mike Maloney. It’s gonna be amazing man. He’s he’s he’s a documentary about this whole situation is so good. So he’s talking about that when the Fed prints all of this money the money doesn’t lose its value in the beginning in the beginning. Why. Because people are scared during a crisis like now. People are scared. They’re not spending money they’re hoarding. They’re hoarding everything. So we have a bunch of funds on the sidelines. They’re not being circulated. The velocity of money is very low. The demand is low but the Fed is just spraying money everywhere but the prices don’t increase. In fact they decrease because people are still selling all of their assets. And so we have this pile of cash on the sidelines once this velocity increases. Once people start spending again that is when hyperinflation hits. I mean that that is basically in your short explanation of this. Leg. Yes watch episode seven of hidden secrets of money and subscribe to. Yes yes yes yes exactly. My helicopter money all went in bitcoin does good stuff. That’s good. People will change their mindset in positivity. Things like vaccine comes out. Yeah yeah I think. Yes. Yes of course. But the economy as we discussed is not that you can just turn it on and off like gear like your PlayStation or x box or not. It’s not like that. Once you shoot dominos falling it might take 10 years before it recovers and dominoes of course of of bankruptcies and defaults. Hi Ivan I’m writing from Barcelona. The thing about continent here is that you get fined if you’re not. If you’re going to show if you’re not going to shop for food or medicine OK we’re going to get fined fines vary by region. More or less range from 300 to 600 euros an extreme case. Wow. You get 34 K euro in fine. If you have extreme disobedience. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it was the girls. But the real danger will come. By the way pretty old. Yes we do have a huge huge earthquake in Croatia. Yeah. It’s not good. Let me know if you’re watching this from Croatia guys because I also read that there is a huge earthquake. Ivan have you ever linked a wallet with unstoppable domains. Doesn’t look easy. Yeah yeah I have. It’s super easy. It’s super super easy. Just e-mail their support. They will help you. They have great support. Ivan y’know starting Bitcoin in next so and borrow dollars that way you can do that. You can do that but you’re trusting them that’s the thing. Also you can check out the review of P H just look a few videos back on my channel. You will find this review of P H which is basically like next so but they are newer and they sponsor their channel you should know that. So we did a review of them but their interest rates I mean they’re new. So they’re trying to bring something to the table trying to compete so their interest rates are super low is is below 1 percent. So check out next so check out Celsius but check out also P H I mean page they’re called something else but I don’t want to say their name because it sounds very funny. Ivan shill Kazim I feel it man. Right now we’re focusing on webinar we’re focusing on webinar. So guys if you’re not in the academy and you haven’t been on webinar go and sign up right now but obviously if you are already part of the academy and you’ll like it and I know many of you absolute like it. So it’s very good guys. When you give us good feedback it’s amazing. You can of course become Ophelia so go to the start page click here and then you can also earn money with us if you on board new students. Ivan I’m going to precious metals and Bitcoin mainly. What do you think. Well I think you should be prepared to lose money in the beginning because we’re still in the press in deflation. So both gold and Bitcoin might go down even more because we are in this first first stage so we should be prepared for that long term no financial advice. What I think is amazing long term I think it’s very good because look people will or people will go to gold at the end of the day. It’s is absolutely like that. So yeah that’s how I think that is. So look for example here. So let me show it to them. We’ve seen this happen exactly the situation here is 2008 and we’re looking at gold by the way we’re looking at the gold price in 2008 right here. Gold collapsed by approximately 30 percent so during the crisis gold’s collapsing 30 percent gold right now is also collapsing as you see here but you see what happened then. Gold completely exploded to the upside. UPS is completely explode to the upside here. And increase basically by man 170 one thousand 80 percent. So look it’s it’s always like that. You see deflation and then you see inflationary but this is a normal recession. The one recession we’re witnessing right now probably will be different. Well this may be even higher because the inflation might be way higher. So definitely keep that in mind that we may still you don’t know exactly where we are on this kind of chart. We’ve still may be just way through. And gold will go down even lower before we see this. So now we’re all in a similar situation. We’re seeing gold retrace. But if you can learn anything from history it is the fact that it’s not it’s not like that forever. Ivan let us assume that governments around the world decide to switch to bitcoin. How would that look like I mean would governments make it would Garrus make still still sense at all the governments. No no. Look it will be reserve asset. So it will be a reserve asset. Now will it be used in everyday trade maybe. Maybe. But primarily we’re looking at a reserve asset so that that’s the first step. That is what I think about when I hear adoption at least a government adoption. By the way if you also want interest you can go and you can scroll down if you’re watching this live you will see best crypto deals. And even if you scroll down on YouTube and check the description you will see this link about the best crypto deals I can show to hear as well. And if you go if if you go there you will see this Web site and you can also try crypto dot com to earn to earn interest on your crypto. If you are huddling so definitely do that. And then when you sign up you get 50 dollars. And I also guess this is ours. But this is mainly for all of you who want to earn interest on on crypto. So you know you have cell 60 up next. So you have a few of over the CFP is chef group dot.com. So this ones would do have collaboration with as well so you can get 50 dollars. What else is going on in the Charlie’s. And soon they’ll add backs as gold. OK. Catalan government is preparing an app and carried out magazine. Well you will get a responsible certificate like a good boy. If you carried the app so you get the certificate. Man you need the certificate. Doesn’t sound that sounds a bit weird like I don’t need this certificate. They all do need to download this app so we can track you basically your every step your every move your every breath and then you will get a good boy big boy certificate that you have been behaving well. Sounds sounds insane man. Am I understanding correctly. Barcelona man I don’t want to get to a conspiracy theoretic but basically they are tracking you full time and you get certificates. Man it’s. This is the certificate. OK. I don’t want to open that Google Drive Helling but look it’s. I don’t want to get to conspiracy theories. But you see when crises like this come and they force you to do all kinds of weird stuff like having this app they track you all the time. Now when the crisis is over they may of course repeal a bit of that control but they always don’t repeal everything. There is a bit left after each crisis. You have this emergency measures now everyone needs to do this and this and this give up all your freedoms and they say it’s temporary. When the crisis is over they say OK now we remove a bit we don’t remove everything we still may listen to your phone. We still may track you but we remove a bit. So yeah it’s getting worse actually with each crisis. So yeah everything will go down every little panic. And we will buy everything. That’s a good plan. I like it. Yeah I mean you get you. I think it according to me at least I’m telling myself that you got to be buying. I mean obviously. Obviously you don’t know how far it will go. We might with only down by 30 percent and we might go to 90 minus. But you understand that it’s it’s good prices even today. I haven’t I’m currently in JavaScript courses and they’ve been completing lectures. Oh you’re a weekly achievement. Oh man. You look e-mail support at Ivan dot Academy and we’re still working on that dashboard. If you think about the dash dashboard e-mail support that Ivan dot academy and they will take a look at your dashboard. Yeah. So in the academy we’re experimenting with these dashboards but they’re still in beta guys. They’re still in beta we still might have things to fix there. But. But basically you can see how well you’re performing in that cage match against other people and stuff like that. Yeah. Let me know by the way if. If. But it should work. But e-mail them. They will check it out. They will check it out. It doesn’t have a max supply like the Fed. Not really the Fed man because at the end of the day you do have. I mean in one way you don’t know the supply of if in another way it’s completely different from the Fed because you do have an underlying protocol and you do have an underlying community. And anyone can be part of that community. So can you be part of that community. Absolutely not. It’s kind of like in Bitcoin as well. By the way if you think about it Bitcoin smacks supply can be changed. Of course it can be changed just a number I can change it. You can change it. The thing is that it needs to be adopted by the nodes by the network. And the only reason why Bitcoin has 21 million is because it’s very difficult to convince everyone to install your update. So if a theorem foundation with Alec goes bananas and inflates if not you will install it because you’ve got to also understand that you have different stakeholders so you have for example maker Dow they have a huge power because they have oracles that that that are feeding all defy ecosystem the prices. So without maker you don’t really have defied. So italic needs to be in consensus with maker if they’re not in consensus with Alec wants to do something maker doesn’t want to do something well then italics change will not have Delphi basically. So it’s very different. And you can say that beta is also like the Fed because if if a large amount of minors and the developers come together of course they can change twenty one million of course. So yeah. But but. There is no way. Look in one way it feels that some people think that there’s some kind of magical property to to bitcoin that it’s always going to be like twenty one million. There’s some kind of magical property to the block chain but at the end of the day it is just this function that we discussed get block actually showed that sub sub but actually showed it yesterday. The only thing that is. Let me see is it validation that C++ lets you get block sub. Yeah. Here look you change this number from 50 to something else. You can double triple. You can do whatever with a supply. But then everyone needs to update does a thing. The same with if of course developers can do crazy things but then everyone has to update. So yeah it’s not like the Fed and Bitcoin is not like the Fed but here is basically how much reward miners are getting in each block. And this is really what says this 21 million because if you look at the fact that if we have more than 64 Hollings we don’t do any more hauling. So there will never be more than 60 for Hollings. And then if you run through the calculations here and you and you count how many blocks we’ll get 50 rewards. How many blocks will you get twenty five twelve point five six point twenty five and so on so forth then you end up with them with 21 million. So that’s the only thing if you change this variable right here it’s is gonna be different. What would it be good to have. Limit supply in if not really for it to be honest and it is two different assumptions about security. So eith one to have a inflation that is never ending. So they know that they will be able to pay for mining for for security through time they will be able to do it. Bitcoin is a bit more of a gamble because we’re gambling with the fact that transaction fees will be enough. So we do have this assumption that transaction fees will be enough and we don’t need block subsidy. Will it be like that. Maybe we’ll see. We’ll see. I talked to Dan held or head though. Apparently he had done some calculations that say that it will be like that. So it will work out but we don’t know practically. But theoretically according to his calculations it will work out. He basically look at how much the transaction fees are growing and how much they are replacing the block reward. So according to his research is gonna be all good but we’re making this assumption that the demand because right now the security is paid for by the demand in bitcoin that we can print new bitcoin and we can sell it on the market with dump it on the market and the market will absorb it and then we can go and pay for electricity. That is what we’re doing right now. Now in the future is going gonna be transaction fees. So now it’s different kind of demand. Now its demand for actually transacting and using the network and it’s not necessarily the same thing that is happening right now. Because right now we’re only we’re only relying on the fact that people value bitcoin that they hold it. Maybe they sell they buy a bit but they value bitcoin. That is what is paying for security right now in the future. We’re going to be relying on the transactions and that people will be actively using the network a lot a lot a lot each and every day that’s going to pay for security. And look it’s two different things like it’s two different demands of of two different things of Bitcoin like. One is justified this valuable and you don’t have to do a lot of transactions. This is what’s being right now. And here you have to do a lot of transactions. That is what’s going to pay in the future. Look it’s it’s all experimental. And the same with just different strategies. But obviously there is no way to cheat I don’t know how you would change 21 million. It would be completely crazy. But you know that Peter Todd. Wants to change that. And Peter Todd is one of the core developers. So look I don’t want to be a party pooper so to speak but. But I think you guys have been crypto enough to know the truth to know the truth because obviously when I’m explaining crypto to new people I am saying that it’s 21 million. That’s it. But when you when you start a bit more let’s see if I can. Yeah. Here. So Peter Todd is one of the people who wants to raise twenty one million constraint because he wants to be able to pay for security. So the reality is that it’s still social. It’s still social consensus. Yeah it’s. And that is the core. It’s not some kind of magical math. It’s still social that we don’t we we as a community make sure that if zero is a crazy crazy update with don’t tablet Yeah that’s it. I would have gold in my home if I didn’t lose it every year in a tragic boat accident. You live in the boat or what. Let’s see. Women tragic boat. Interesting. Me please name publicly recognize the the the the the. Yeah. DaVinci J 15 said his sell his house to go all in and buy Bitcoin. Hmm well right now we’re not. I know I know Tom Waits is also talking about going all in at 2.8 or something. You talked about but you know DaVinci he she is well off to say the least to say the least. So it might not be a good strategy for for everyone else. Any safe place or condition for buying verified legit gold in general. Well look I’m not a big buyer of gold so I cannot help you. Maybe someone in the shadows is a big buyer of gold. Be humble and Bitcoin says Eric. Yes. Because you never know what’s going to happen. Anything can happen. What probability do you give. For one case to prove a scenario. And how would that play out with some old coins like if so old coins will follow. Auctions will follow. And you understand a hyper Well I still give it just 10 percent 10 15 percent. Socrates gives it 90 percent right now. But to go down to 1 k is just look it’s not impossible but then would see true capitulation man. Then we have truly truly lost l lost a lot of faith at the same time. You need to see a full capitulation in order for us to restart and really go into a bull market. So maybe that’s what’s needed because in one way you see that when we bounced from 3 K last year in May and then we went all the way to 14 K. It felt a bit too quick. I mean we all were amazed how quick it is it was really a show of strength in bitcoin at the same time. Now looking at a situation where we are in right now and having like the correct answers in hand having I mean in hindsight when you look at the situation you can say that basically we did not see too much struggle too much struggle in the markets and the markets always want to maximize the struggle and pain before the reset because we want old weak hands to sell. So maybe that’s what’s happening right now that we’re maximizing our collective pain so. So at all we cancelled out and the summer so it could be it could be but still for me it’s a low percentage but it’s not impossible. I am I am listening to that success is a game that it’s it’s it’s on the radar at least it’s on the radar for me. Many people don’t even have it on the radar but that one case scenario is on the radar and right now as I told you previously in this episode it’s like at the crossroads I it’s difficult to be bullish but also difficult to be bearish. It’s essential it tells you that it’s. Yeah. So that’s why it’s important to focus on other things like the economy because this is gonna tell a lot you a lot more than studying only bitcoin right now because bitcoin is a small piece of a bigger puzzle. So that’s why we’re focusing on this right now. Let’s see. Distribution England would be a good life but not in a depression. Fabrice That’s correct. I am not listening to Socrates as women might. You will have to listen look it’s not listening or not. Doesn’t really matter but it’s important to have it on the radar. But you don’t have to. Obviously like you don’t have to. Evan can you talk about QE. What does being implement. It’s a lot man. It’s so much that you’re all almost losing track. You do have repo operations 1 trillion per day. You have 700 billion being deployed. Now they’re trying to change legislation that it will be possible for the Fed to buy stocks directly directly. I think next week we might see news about this. So yes that’s that’s big. It’s all it’s so much it’s difficult to keep track of everything. It’s a lot. Have I mean we’ve been discussing the the repo operations the VA emergency. This was called pandemic PPE man. What is called. I need to google this because it’s like a full package. Let’s see pandemic emergency. Oh maybe it’s by package maybe a pandemic emergency package. Yeah. I mean that one is what is it like few trillion. It’s a lot. Yes it’s a lot. But the most important thing to understand is that this will only continue. This is not something that’s going to be over in one two one two weeks one two months. Let’s see it and were speaking about up to a trillion. Look it would be now we’re really talking about the big stuff. There are a lot of stuff going on but you got to be looking at the big stuff. So look it would be the third coronavirus eight plan to be considered by Congress just this month. Trump signed the first eight point three billion package. This is only the beginning. Eight point three billion and this was on March 6. So this all happened on March 6. Since then we’ve completely completely exploded. Since then we’ve seen daily trillion operate. I mean it all started with just eight point three billion and this was from the government. Then the Fed also stepped in with trillions. And yet I mean it’s it’s a lot. But it’s a good point. We should we should have a summary of everything so we can point out. Yeah. What does the Russian government think of if it’s made by the italic. So what I. I don’t think they care a lot to be honest with you who is made for her. But the dialogue has been of course seen a lot with the government officials in Russia. I don’t think it’s anything significant they’re not using it for that much right now. And as as we discussed previously they will most probably ban crypto trading and crypto exchanges in Russia. So whether it’s made by Vitaly or not then Vitaly in Russia. I don’t think it matters a lot at all to be honest with you where he was born. What do you think about. But at the same time Alex is also a good question because it’s not impossible to imagine that the guys in high places in Russia got good deals on if and that they were positive for a while so they could they could cash out their positions but now is that they may be all out. So so now it’s time to ban made it that’s how how that was. Do you think VPN could be used to avoid this ban. Well not really. Because they’re going after businesses. They’re not going after you. So they’re going after businesses. Black pigeon says that CV cronies could have euro by our. Yeah maybe. Maybe we have to we have also to do things the way we spend our money where we have also two things the way man please work on your English Mac Bean. I don’t even understand what you’re writing. Ivan will we ever have a boxing match against the example that we’ve fantastic to be honest. That would be fantastic. Or just have or just have him on the channel. That would be great. Anyway guys thank you so much for watching yet again. I truly appreciate you helping out helping out with questions helping out with topics you are helping a lot. Thank you so much as always. Be sure to check out our webinar completely free. Be sure to check out the link below for by bit you get a great deal if used the link below you can long you can short you can trade Bitcoin if you use SRP and you get a great deal if you use the link below go to Ivan told us com slash deals or use the link below for Best Script deals and check out scripts come if you want to earn interest on your script or if you want to get like a credit and debit card crypto bank debit card. Also we have several domains we have glass no don’t channel. I mean you do get a lot of great deals here. That being said thank you so much. Once again if you’re watching on YouTube go to. I wouldn’t like the com slash live. That is the only way to watch it live any. All right. If you are now watching on. I want to get to com slash live. Be sure to click all of this like subscribe enabled web alerts and notifications on telegram. At least one of them you should pick so you’re always up to date. So that being said Guys thank you so much. And I’ll see you all tomorrow at 8 a.m.. Back back to Goodman Group Two back to work. Back to work day. This kind of the vacation for me. This is WEEKEND FOR ME. WHEN WE DO AT 11:00 so tomorrow my vacation is over we’re going to go back to 8:00 a.m. So have a good day and good byes. Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

The post STOCKS WILL FALL 90%!? Bitcoin, Trump – Programmer explains appeared first on Cryptosharks.net.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/stocks-will-fall-trump/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=stocks-will-fall-90-bitcoin-trump-programmer-explains source https://cryptosharks1.blogspot.com/2020/03/stocks-will-fall-90-bitcoin-trump.html

[tetsookie]

Merry Christmas @cawnvictofmurder​!! I’m your secret santa for the @haikyuuwriters​ exchange! >u</

Title: Try your Luck Rating: Teen and Up (just for mild swearing) Pairing: Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei, Bokuto Koutarou/Akaashi Keiji Chapter: 1/3 Summary: Kuroo didn't think of himself as an unlucky person, but the universe had to prove him wrong. Thankfully, a little bird came to tell him that was all about to change. (Also on Ao3!)

Kuroo was screwed.

The man sighed, letting the book’s thick binding flutter shut as he lay his head on the desk in defeat. This was it. His entire academic career was in shambles.

Kuroo figured he really should’ve studied harder. Maybe, done a bit more work or met with the teacher a smidgen more than a grand total of two times. He felt confident that his charm could’ve won that old hag over even if everything else had failed. Not that it mattered now that all his classes were over, and yet, he couldn’t help worrying anyways.

Because he honestly never would have imagined—heck, nobody could have imagined that Kuroo Tetsurou, valedictorian, ladies’ man, university spokesperson, and all around accomplished third year student would be failing a class.

Given, he really should not have taken a class outside of his chemistry major, but he honestly believed he could handle whatever ‘Advanced Theoretical Physics’ had to dish out. It seemed easy enough—just a tad more difficult math than he was used to, and the professor was a little wonky, but he had confidence he would be able to pass with flying colors.

Obviously, he was wrong.

Kuroo traced a line with his finger under the book’s title, “Common Unlucky Symbols” that was etched across the cover. He had studied all he could and crammed the rest, and now that all hope was lost and he didn’t have anyone to blame but himself, he felt desperate enough to search for other godforsaken reasons the universe hated him. No matter the excuse, he was going to have a big fat ‘FAIL’ on his transcript and he would have to deal with the consequences of explaining the whole ordeal to his parents, and worse yet—risk losing his scholarship.

He groaned again as his head connected with the desk and the man with poorly bleached hair behind him gave him a glance.

“Is that really the best way to feel better?”

Kuroo grumbled in response, refusing to lift his head from the desk, but clutching the book in front of him with clenched fists. “No, but I’ve reached a new low asking for academic advice from Bokuto of all people. He told me that maybe I was cursed or ran into more black cats than I was supposed to or broke a mirror in a past life and it’s led me to—” he gestured wildly in the directions of the book’s contents. “This.”

“Hm,” the man turned his attention to the shelves, resuming his task. “Maybe you should’ve asked Akaashi to help instead.”

“He’d never let me live it down, you know that, Kenma,” Kuroo moaned.

“And, you don’t think Bokuto won’t tell Akaashi anyways?”

Kuroo paused, bolting upright, his hair even more of a mess than usual. “Fuck.”

“You really didn’t think this through, did you, Kuroo?”

“Cut me some slack, I’m trying here!”

“Then can you try to help me with these books? If you didn’t know, we’re supposed to be working, not researching wild superstitions.”

Kuroo sighed, running a hand through his hair once before getting up to organize books with his co-worker. He had only started volunteering at the public library since last semester and although the work was tedious at times, Kuroo tended to enjoy the labor more than he abhorred it. He had honestly applied for the position to fill up his resume at first, but overall, it wasn’t too bad. It gave him some down time between classes and he got to talk to all types of people whenever he manned the reference desk. It beat his last job as a waiter by a landslide, and he was paid for that job.

Still… it didn’t stop him from feeling antsy about ending his shift as soon as he could so he could tackle the twisting in his gut. Kuroo’s eyes seemed locked on the clock on the wall, ticking away ten minutes from 4pm. Sensing his unease, Kenma sighed next to him.

“Kuroo.”

“I know, sorry, sorry,” Kuroo stammered, fumbling with some magazines. “I just feel like I’m wasting time here when I could be doing something.”

“It’s the last day of the semester, there isn’t anything else to do.”

Kuroo knew it, but it didn’t stop the sting. He sighed, trying to keep his nerves at bay as he arranged the last of the issues in his hands onto the displays.

“We’ll have a few days off work too, so you can relax.”

“Right…” he murmured, slipping the last magazine in its place.

“Kenma!”

Kuroo turned to see a familiar redheaded boy leap through the entrance and head towards his co-worker, a smile like sunshine on his face. Kenma smiled softly.

“Shouyou.”

Kuroo watched as the two friends greeted each other and discussed plans about playing video games now that they had more free time. Kenma quickly gathered his things and the two of them made for the door together.

Kuroo sent Kenma off, giving a final comment about ‘kids having fun’ which earned him an eye roll from Kenma. After their footsteps receded, Kuroo felt his shoulders slump, and he retreated into the backroom to stack some of the remaining books onto the rolling carts.

Damn. It was summer break now, he should be out having fun like Kenma and his friend. It wasn’t as if the two were too far apart in age and yet, Kuroo himself felt a bit worse for wear. How far was retirement again? Even though he applied to continue volunteering over the summer as well, he wondered if that was the wisest choice given his current academic circumstances.

Kuroo suppressed another sigh as he took off his employee tag and dropped it into the cup at the front desk. The receptionist at the computer gave him a look, and without saying anything, pushed a book across the table towards Kuroo.

“Yaku, what’s—”

“Take it,” Yaku said, fingers already typing away at the keyboard in front of him. “For the summer. You were looking at it before.”

Kuroo looked more closely at the book to verify and sure enough, the words “Common Unlucky Symbols” stared back at him. He nearly erupted in laughter, but the surprise kept his thoughts steeled.

“No, I really don’t nee—”

Yaku waved him away with a free hand. “Already checked out under your name.”

Kuroo stopped, as if to argue the point, but didn’t seem to find the strength in him to do so. He sighed, tucking the book under his arm. “Thanks. I’ll see you. Let me know if the new intern gives you trouble.”

Yaku made a face, pausing his work momentarily. “If Lev hasn’t alphabetized those folders by the time I finish up here…”

Kuroo chuckled, heading towards the automatic doors at the entrance. “Good luck.”

Stepping outside, Kuroo started walking back to his apartment complex, flipping open the book to pass the time. He skimmed through several pages he had seen before: number 1, black cats, number 7, broken mirrors, number 11, salt spilling, and ironically numbered 14, the number 13. The list went on and on, reaching all the way to one hundred. Despite the ridiculous attributions to bad luck these symbols seemed to point to, and the complete lack of scientific basis most of these superstitions had, it was no doubt somewhat entertaining to see the many things people blamed for their misfortunes. Kuroo had to admit, some of these unlucky symbols he had never even thought of before like number 26: passing a cemetery. Bad luck could be avoided if you hold your breath while passing the cemetery. However, you could avoid the unlucky consequences if you run into a black or brown dog.

Kuroo couldn’t help feeling the entire ordeal was ridiculous. What if that unlucky person never encountered another black or brown dog? Would he need to hold his breath until he himself ended up in the cemetery?

As if to stop that thought process, the book flew out of his hands as Kuroo walked right into a collection of trash cans and onto the floor. “Common Unlucky Symbols” skid across the concrete a few feet in front of him, pages splaying out on the ground.

“Sh—” Kuroo swore, awkwardly adjusting himself on one of the trash cans while watching the rest of them clang across the neighborhood, the contents of some emptying all over the place.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair and reaching for the book when something caught his eye. At first sight, it looked to be a black garbage bag, but upon closer inspection, it was some kind of… cat? Kuroo rushed forward to see the animal that had popped out of the trash can and turned it over to reveal a fairly large crow.

Kuroo nearly doubled back in shock. It wasn’t uncommon to see crows around the city from time to time, but one this big and close to him was definitely something he wasn’t used to. Kuroo figured it had probably hopped into the trash can to search for food when he had coincidentally disrupted its dinner.

Kuroo straightened up and was about to fix the mess he had made when he realized the crow wasn’t exactly moving. He paused, wondering if the bird was even alive.

Curiosity got the better of him and he found himself stooping in front of the animal once more. With unsure fingers, he reached forward to brush the feathers back. The black wings were softer than he expected, and he found himself drawn closer and closer to the bird.

Suddenly, the crow twitched, as if awakened from a deep slumber. It shook its wings deftly, and Kuroo’s hands yanked back, anticipating the bird’s flight.

The bird stood up on its two feet, gave Kuroo a good look once over and then hobbled away before falling over once more.

Kuroo felt his heart twinge. Its leg.

Don’t do it, a voice in the back of his head reminded. You’ve more than likely lost your scholarship, you can’t afford to take care of it.

It’s just a measly little bird.

Kuroo watched the crow seem to angrily look down at its bad leg before getting up again and tripping over its own beak. It made several more attempts before resting on the ground for a bit, giving Kuroo a look as if asking the human to leave.

As if he could.

Kuroo clenched his fists, cursed his own good nature and walked the few steps over to pick up the bird with both his hands. The crow seemed to protest this, fidgeting and squawking, seemingly sending glares the college boy’s way. Yet, after a moment of fighting, the crow seemed to give up the physical struggle, opting to shoot Kuroo daggers instead.

Hastily, Kuroo stood the rest of the trash cans upright before hurrying back home, the crow cradled into the crooks of his arms. He must be crazy, bringing a wild animal into his apartment. Not to mention a crow of all things.

The crow watched as he fumbled with his keys, jamming them into the keyhole with more force than was probably necessary. Kuroo probably didn’t need to rush—after all, the crow had shown quite a bit of attitude. It was with no doubt doing fine, minus its slight physical defect. Yet, Kuroo couldn’t stop himself from caring. That had always been his strength, but probably his greatest weakness as well.

After all, there were a number of things he really should’ve considered. What if the crow had rabies? What if it was sick to the point beyond recovery? What if taking the time to save it was foolish on his part?

Moments before he stumbled through the entrance to his apartment complex, one final thought flashed a warning through his mind.

“Common Unlucky Symbols”: Number 13, Crows.

[seddm]

Daron’s Q&A at Creativa Fest

I transcribed the questions Daron answered to during a panel at the Creativa Fest 2017. Below, a summary of what she said; after that, a complete transcription. Thanks to Alfrely on YouTube for having provided the video!

Continues after the Keep Reading

RECAP

- Daron has an idea for the series' finale.

- The original plan was for Marco not to have any friends: "Star and Marco are kinda like these only children, and they connect together, and they have like this special bond", but Disney executives wanted him to have male friends as well, and they came up with Alfonzo and Ferguson. Since they didn't really know what to do with them, they have been absent from S2. They are going to "come back a little" in S3.

- Daron has no real reason for Marco being Mexican, she just wanted him to be the average angelino.

- Daron originally pitched the show, when she was still a CalArts student, to Cartoon Network (to Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti) for a project called “The Cartoonstitute”. They didn’t want to make anything out of it, but later Renzetti introduced her to Nickelodeon,where a one minute short was created, without them wanting to tale it any further, though. She eventually pitched it to Disney, where a pilot episode was and then greenlit into a full show (the whole process took about a year).

- In Blood Moon Ball, when Marco heard a voice talking to him, seagulls sounds were supposed to play, making it immediatly obvious how the one speaking was the Sea Captain in the frame, but the sound was forgotten during the episode's mixing. What or who he is might be “a bit” relevant in the future.

- There will probably be more "Tomco moments". “I am a fan of Tomco myself” said Daron, laughing.

- Daron couldn't say if we're going to learn something about Star and Tom's past, but there will be more on them.

- According to Daron all the dimensions seen in the show are “in the same space”, as if they were always “on the same planet”, but in different dimensions [imagine it as a stack of papers, the scissors allowing to go from one to another]. But, at the end of the day, “It’s fantasy. I think we are always like trying to make it logical, but I also think that at a certain point if you overthink it nothing probably actually makes sense”.

- Daron is happy to see the fandom being so excited about shipping, but also believes that fans likes to be “upset”, and that a show has to keep things interesting, no one would watch a show that were to be just “"Star and Marco get together and they will be like so happy, the end”. She also specified that they don’t let the fandom influence their writing, and that it’s understandably impossible to make everyone happy.

- Jackie is not a mermaid, nor magical. She sees her as a typical Venice Beach girl who is into skateboards and the ocean. And Janna is not a witch.

- Daron sometimes sees a fan theory and thinks "Oh that was really good!" (in relation to the show being written so much in advance compared to what airs). She also mentions liking a theory about Moon having been an exchange student in Toffee's dimension [specifying that's not what they actually did.]

- Adam had to audition to be cast as adult Marco in Running With Scissors, since Daron initially think his voice would have been too young sounding.

- Since Star has been a thing for Daron years before the show's production began, she doesn't really feel like she's "talking to Star" when she talks to Eden -while several of the crew members do feel that way, same with Adam.

- There's some shared background to Moon and Toffee's story.

- Writing is Daron's favorite part of making an episode, and she doesn't impose her ideas, but goes with the best one, discussing it with her crew. She also feels like, while the original idea for the show is hers, it would have never become as big as it is now without all the people working on it.

- There's going to be more about Eclipsa.

- Daron has ideas for other shows, but hasn’t really had time to develop them so far, being busy on Star.

- Star is her favorite character, as she is "close to her heart".

- StarFan13 was originally a one-time gag in Brittney's Party (boarded by Ian Wasseluk), but they then liked and kept using her.

- What Star did in Storm the Castle is a "precursor" to dipping down, she was channeling magic through her.

- Daron wanted to do some kind of "cameo crossover" with Rick & Morty and Gravity Falls, placing a common object in a scene, but while they ended up doing it, she didn't manage to. Talking about the idea of an actual crossover, she “feel like it could be... maybe Gravity Falls, maybe...?”.

- While some might have saved themselves, most of Ludo's old monsters died in the explosion in Storm the Castle.

- Daron doesn't know yet what she's going to do once the series is over, she might take a break, or eventually make a new show.

- Daron wishes Disney would do SVTFOE toys, and suggest fans to bother them to do it [Disney apparently values a lot people asking for products at their stores, when it comes to choose what merchandise to make]

- While talking about the show's animation, Daron said that they "had some troubles-", but then got interrupted and didn't pick up the question again. This might be related to the " number of difficulties producing the first season" she mentioned in this interview.

- While drawing a Marco on a fan’s book, Daron accidentally gave him heart cheeks, thus making the first official (?) Marar cosplay. If you want to hear Daron almost saying “Oh shit”, click here.

- Daron sometimes gets surprised by seeing fans liking episodes or scenes that she felt like were bad. "I think people connect with different parts of the show". She chose not to say if she has least favorite episodes, as not to lessen all the hard work everyone puts into the show, but said that first season was a little rough, since they still had to figure out things.

- Mewberty, Blood Moon Ball, Storm the Castle, Into the Wand and Face the Music are (among) her favorite episodes, and she was very excited about Ludo in the Wild.

- Most of the tapestries in Into the Wand were designed by one of the storyboarders, Jushtin Lee, and then got turned into the final designs seen in the episodes by background and layout artists.

- There are going to be songs in future episodes as well.

- There are probably going to be more guest stars in S3, but that's something for Disney to announce.

- We might see Star's "mewberty form" again [related post by show’s producer Hammersley].

- Daron designed Star and Marco, but for most of the other characters she just gives rough sketches or ideas to the designers. She described Hekapoo to Becky Dreistadt, the artist who designed her, as "a kinda fiery elf thing".

- Daron is not familiar with drawing Tom, since she didn't design him. It kinda shows.

- We might get to know what Lekmet's role in the Magic High Commission was, and Daron answered to a question about him being really dead or not with "Well he's gone to ashes, so...".

- Daron wants her characters, and villains, to have a perspective, and she feels like they did that with Toffee, comparing him to a Magneto-like character, who is not wrong, but is going about things the wrong way. He has "his own perspective" about how Mewmans treat monsters.

- Daron and Cheyenne Curtis (S1 designer) drew "like 100 dresses", since the executives at Disney were very concerned about it, not wanting them to be too girly or to have puffy sleeves (but Daron managed to put them in S2).

- The livechats, which were Disney's idea, are not “totally canon”, but they had an outline.

- The Star and Marco Guide To Mastering Every Dimension was supposed to be published after the first 14 episodes in S2, and the events into it are a little bit after Bon Bon The Birthday Clown and before the episodes that aired in February.

- As seen in Crystal Clear, Eclipsa, frozen in Rhombulus’ crystals, moved her arm, and the glove remained stuck in place just like Star's socks.

- Daron can't tell where Toffee's finger ended up when Star's room disappeared from Marco's house, nor if the color coding of dimensions in Heinous' metallurgy book in St. Olga's Reform School for Wayward Princesses has a connection to the wand/magic.

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPTION

Q- Do you have a finale planned for the show? A- Yeah, I kinda got an idea.

Q- What happened to Al & Ferg A- It's funny like you know pitching a show for a network and stuff, so... and Disney is so awesome, they just let me do so many cool things in the show and they've been like so awesome, they really are trying to do amazing things in animation. But one of the things they really wanted for the first season with Marco, is that they were like "He doesn't have male friends. And we want him to have male friends 'cause we want him to be more... male, I guess? I don't know." So I didn't know... my original plan was for, you know it's like Star and Marco are kinda like these only children, and they connect together, and they have like this special bond. And I didn't really see Marco as having like friends. So I had to came up with some friends, so I created Ferguson and Alfonzo. I have to say that I didn't feel like I was getting a lot out of them. Like I really didn't know what to do with them. They are - they do come back a little in the 3rd season, I can tell you that. They are not gone forever, but honestly, I really didn't know what to do with them, they were kinda hard for me to write. But I'm glad that you like them. It was almost becoming a joke, we were like "Oh, we don't like them". They are in the comic, though.

Q- Why is Marco Mexican? A- Well so, you know, I grew up in Los Angeles, and I just wanted Marco to be your average angelino, so he's mexican, makes sense, you know? So no real reason other than that, you know. Asker: he looks a lot like you husband Daron: yeah a little bit, there's my husband, everybody look at him. I'm just embarrassing him a little bit

Q- In the Blood Moon Ball chapter there was this voice that talked to Marco, will we get to know who it was? A- Ok, that's a funny story too. So the voice is supposed to be the Sea Captain in the frame. And when we were doing the animatic. You know when we do the animatics, it's all the storyboard drawings, and they are all timed to be animated, we had the sound effect of seagulls, right? So that when you saw the picture you heard the seagulls, you'd knew that it was the sea captain. But when we did the final mix of the episode, the mix is like... we put all the final music and sounds and dialogues together, and check the levels and make sure that all- it's what you see on TV, for some reason the seagulls dropped down. We forgot, we didn't notice the seagulls were gone. And then when it was on tv there were all these people like "Who was talking to Marco? Was it the moon? Was it-" and I was like "Ah damnit we forgot the seagulls!". So it's the sea captain. Who does actually... maybe tie a little bit later. You'll see.

Q- How was it to pitch the series? A- I was kinda lucky, I went to school at CalArts in Los Angeles, and a lot of our teachers are actually coming from the studios to teach. You know so they are coming from CN, Nickelodeon, Disney... to each class, and you have the opportunity to know the teachers. And somewhere I heard that cartoon network, actually, they were taking pitches, they were taking pitches from students, from anybody. You just had to sign up, and it was called "Cartoonstitute". So I signed up for that, and I had been drawing Star for a little bit, and when I got the opportunity to pitch for Cartoonstitute I came up with a plot and some of the characters, and I actually pitched it to Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti, which was amazing, I was like twenty. You know, Star is like ten years old, I created Star like ten years ago. My original pitch to them... and you know, CN ultimately didn't want to do the project, but I made a connection with Rob and Craig. So when I was in my fourth year at school Rob recommended me to Nickelodeon, so I brought it to Nickelodeon, they liked Star, so we did a one minute short that we produced, and they ultimately didn't want to take it any further, so... and I was like out of school, trying to find a job was very hard, it took me like a year to find a job, I was very broke, and then I brought it to Disney, eventually, and they wanted to try it! So then we made a pilot, which is a long process, right? It was very exciting just to get the pilot, and then I... I don't know how many pilots a year they do. I mean I feel like if I had to guess, maybe Disney they hear like a hundred pitches, and then they take like 10 pilots- probably less, probably more like five pilots, and then maybe they pick one to make a show. So it's very exciting to get to the pilot phase. And that took about a year, just to make the pilot, and then they tested it on kids and- you know there's a whole process for that, and in the meanwhile I was working at different studios, I was working at Warner Brothers doing a little bit of animation, I did storyboard revisions at Nickelodeon. Which is actually a really good- if anybody, like you know, wants to work in animation like at places like CN or Disney and stuff. Storyboard revision is a really good step in the door, you are basically cleaning up storyboards and stuff like that. And they were eventually like "Ok we want to make it into a show", and I was like "Aaah!", very exciting. But yeah, so... I think the thing I'm happy about with Star is that it really... I pitched a lot of other things too, but I feel like Star was close to my heart, like it was important to me, and I think that came through, you know? Like I think that if you are coming up with the ideas there has to be like a personal connection, or it's just not- or else you are just making something to sell them I guess, and it's never going to feel authentic, you know?

Q- I really love Tomco, so are we going to see more Tomco moments or episodes like Friendenemies? A- Oh, ehm- I can say... probably yes? There will some more Tomco happenings. I am a fan of Tomco myself.

Q- Will we know more about Star and Tom's past relationship in the future? A- There will be more on Star and Tom. I can say that. There will be more on them. I like Tom, Tom's fun.

Q- There's a theory about Jackie, that she's a mermaid, that she's half Mewman A- I like the theory that she's a mermaid, but... she's not a mermaid. She is, she's- I feel like she is like a Venice Beach girl, she likes skateboard, she's into the ocean... but she is not magical. Although I do like the theory, like you know she is a mermaid, and Janna is a witch, you know, it's cool... but not real.

Q- What's your favourite fan theory A- There are so many that are really cool. It's funny because you know sometimes- we are writing the show so far ahead, like right now we are writing the fourth season, since it takes so much to produce the episode, so we are like so ahead, sometimes I see fans came up with some things and I'm like "Oh, that was really good". But you know I- god, there was this whole one that people had that was like that Moon was an exchange student in Toffee's dimension, kinda like Star is to Marco. I was like "Oh that's a cool idea". We never did that, but that's a cool idea [inaudible part about her looking at theories on Reddit?] sometimes they say something and I'm like "Oh they already know, they already guessed!"  Like I know people are excited about Eclipsa, so that's cool.

Q- How is it working with Adam McArthur like in Running With Scissors A- He's great. I mean, Adam has has such- all the actors, Adam and Eden and... Ryder Strong, who is Tom, everybody, the cast is so good. Alan Tudyk is Ludo, everyone is really great. Oh my god, I got to work with Jeffrey Tambor, who is Glossaryck. It's so cool. But yeah, Adam is like he is so- what's cool about Adam is like he, you know, as opposed to like Eden, she is on, this television show she is very busy, Adam is busy too, he does lot of acting, but he makes time to really interact with all the fans and stuff. "Running With Scissors", I got a story about that. So I was gonna cast- since he sounds so young, Adam, I wanted to cast, like, a manly man to do adult Marco, I was gonna cast somebody else, 'cause I didn't know Adam could do it, but he was all like "Let's try" and he did a great voice and I was like "Ok, you're good". He was like "I had to do try outs to be myself". Sorry.

Q- When you talk to Eden Sher, since she's the voice of Star, do you ever feel like "Oh my god I'm talking to Star"? A- Well, I mean I know someone of the crew, like sometimes Eden comes around, to say hi to the crew and stuff. Or you know, we do a party for the crew and she'll be there. And other people from the crew would come up to me and be like "Oh my god she sounds just like Star". For me, I mean, we had try outs, so Star was kinda real before Eden, I guess. [inaudible] but I guess Star was a character already. So for me maybe not, does it make sense? And people tell me the same about Adam too, "Oh my gosh he is Marco". Actually Marco has a funny story, he was like at a comic convention thing, he got snubbed by a Star fan. He saw a girl in a Star costume and he was like "Can we take a picture together?" and she's like "No!" and she walked away. And I told Adam he should have called after her, you should have been like "Staaar!". You gotta be careful not to snob people at comic conventions.

Q- Some theories say that Moon and Toffee had a relationship, not necessarily romantic... A- Well you saw the scroll (tapestry?) right? You saw "Into the Wand". So yeah, there's, there's... there is a background to them

Q- In the episode Mathmagic it was revealed that there is this multiverse. We saw multiple realities of Mewni, the Earth. So I was kind of confused, does it mean that Mewni and Earth exist in like one universe. For example, you can build a, I don't know, a spaceship or something to travel from Earth to Mewni? A- Well, I was like- I always liked the idea of other dimensions, I always thought that was cool. So I guess everything is in the same space. That's why they use scissors and they kind of cut into different realities, so they can kinda go through, but they are all on the same planet, I guess. I know sometimes it feels like it's other planets- I don't know. It's supposed to be- it's all like a dimension, that you can kinda travel through with the scissors. I think it- it's fantasy. It's always like- I think we are always like trying to make it logical, but I also think that at a certain point if you overthink it nothing probably actually makes sense. I like the idea of different dimensions, that's cool. So they are all in the same space, and uh- they are connected, you know?

Q- How do you feel about the fandom making all... weird relationships and... do you feel pressured by some people going "We want Tomco, we want Moonfee, we want everything"? A- That's so funny. I mean, you know- I'm very excited that the fans can be excited for whatever they want, you know? I mean, any "-co" they like, that's great. We don't really let that affect the writing in the show. Like I don't look at that when I'm writing the show. You can never make everybody happy, there will always be people- but I also think people like to be upset, you know? If you think about what's the show, what is like- what show would it be if it were just "We're gonna have Star and Marco get together and they will be like so happy", the end. There's no show, what is that show? No one would watch that show. So you have to keep it exciting.

Q- When you are working on an episode  what part do you like the most? A- I like the writing, I guess... yeah, I like the writing and I like working with the team, like, it's amazing- you know, I've been on the show, I don't even know how long, I feel like I've been working on the show forever, I think it's been four years, I think? And some of my crew have been with me since the very beginning and I see them everyday and I really love my crew and they are really really cool, and I think the most fun part for me is- yeah, it would be, you know, the pitch of a boarder, there would be the boarders, the director, me, the writers, and we'd be going "Oh why isn't this working" or "How can we make this better", if someone has an idea it's like "Yes let's do that" and it's so cool that- like I love working collaboratively and it's amazing to see... I don't know it's just like- I came up with this one idea, you know, the idea was this big, but then it got this big this big this big, bigger and bigger, and I feel like I could have never made it this big, but then with all these great people who really care, you know, and it only gets better 'cause they care. I think the worst thing like anybody like a boss or like a show runner, I think the worst thing you could do is just go like "No this is my show, it's my idea. It's all about me, it has to be my idea, maybe you got a good idea, but let's use only my idea" cause I think it's, I mean, A) it's not fun for anybody, and B) I don't think you're going to get the best thing. My theory is always like- the best idea wins. You know if there are like three people with different ideas on how to do something I always try to go "Ok what's interesting let's do this idea", you know. So it's- it's good, I like it.

Q- Are we going to see in the season something about Eclipsa? A- Yes I think you're going to see more Eclipsa

Q- Do you have any ideas for other series? A- I do! You know, sometimes I come up with ideas, but I don't really have time to develop them ,as the show is really... consuming, you know?

Q- Who is your favorite character in the show? A- Star. Star is close to my heart (asker asks about Starfan13) I like Starfan13. You know I think who came up with Starfan13 was Ian Wasselik, he was a storyboarder during the first season. He just had her in that episode, you know with the locker? It's like "I filled my locker with pictures of you!" and I liked it, you know, so we kept using her.

Q- Did Star dip down in Storm the Castle? A- Yes. She did dip down, like a precursor to dip down, she was definitely like channeling, you know?

Q- Would you do a crossover? A- You know, I really want say I know... I know Alex Hirsch, I know Justin Royland, and I was like "I want-" 'cause they all go into dimensions, and I was like could we place an item, and they kind of did, and then I- didn't get to do it. It's just that's hard to coordinate that stuff, but... like if it were like a real crossover? I feel like it could be... maybe Gravity Falls, maybe...? (someone says "Mabel and Star would be really good friends") I think so. Yes, they are very- very positive people. (someone says "Why not Rick and Morty?") I do like Rick & Morty too, although I feel like Star and Marco would get in trouble, it'd be really bad for them to hang out with Rick and Morty.

Q- What happened to the monsters who were in the castle when it exploded [in Storm the Castle]? A- I think they might be dead. Maybe not all of them, some of them probably got out, but I think some of them are dead.

Q- What do you plan to do after the end of the series? A- After the end of Star? I don't know! I hope the series can go for a long time, you know? But you never know... So after Star I'll maybe just do another show, eventually, maybe take a break. But uh- 'cause it takes so long, you know? I've been on Star for maybe four years already, so...

Q- Is the show classic animation, or does it use puppets? A- Ok so it's like a bunch of things- we had some troubles with- oh shi- [Daron realizes that she was drawing, while signing for the fans, heart cheeks on Marco, interrupts herself and doesn't continue with the answer later]

Q-  Do you think Disney is going to make a Princess Marco action figure? A- I wish they'd do toys! Everybody should keep bothering them to do the toys... but I... yeah, princess Marco, he's- he's fun

Q- Is there any episode or character you don't like? A- Oh! I- I don't know, you know it's funny 'cause there are certain episodes you are just "Oh this is terrible" and then it goes on TV and people like it, you know? Or some people like part of it, and it makes me feel better, I think people connect with different parts of the show. First season was a little rough, you know? 'Cause you are figuring stuff, but... I mean, I could say- I don't know, I don't wanna diss any of them, 'cause everybody works hard on them you know. I can tell you some of my favorites, first season definitely I loved Blood Moon Ball, Mewberty, Storm the Castle... Into the Wand is very nice- I really loved Ludo in the Wild, I was really excited.

Q- Did you design the tapestries in Into the Wand? A- No, they were actually- so the storyboarder who did that, Jushtin (Lee), he had those in the storyboards and they were really cool, and then our painters and layout people followed up on them and made them really awesome. And uh, our characters have designers too, you know, fleshed out from the board, but Jushtin originally came up with a lot of those.

Q- How was working with Patrick Stump? A- Oh my god, that was really cool. That was one of my favorite episodes too. That was cool, that was like so... our casting- we have like a casting person it was her idea to hire Patrick, and like oh man, it was awesome, and he was so nice. And each time someone has to sing in the show- something about singing just gets to you, you know? Like when Adam sang in Friendenemies, our supervising producer Dominic Bisignano tried it.

Q- Will we get more songs in the future? A- I- yeah, I think so. Songs... well yeah, there are some songs. God, they're like so all over the show, that I'm trying to remember like where- where they are.

Q- Are they going to be more special guests in the future? A- I- probably, I can't tell you that. That's one of those things like Disney castings, you know they want like to "get the story".

Q- Are we going to see Star in her mewberty form? A- Maybeee.

Q- Will we see new villains? A- I can't give spoilers guys!

Q- Did you design all the characters on the show? A- Uh- well I designed Star and Marco, and I have the ideas, like a rough sketch. You know what's awesome? Like, running a show is like- I have like Becky Cheyenne Stephanie- I have like characters designers who are really good, so I can just do some crappy thing and give it to them and it's like "woooa" it's like amazing, and that's really fun. Like I remember that with Hekapoo, Becky designed her, and I was like "Ok she gotta be like this kinda firey elf thing" and Becky did like this whole page full of things and I was like "That one!" and that's exactly what she is. And that's very lucky for me. But like- like with Tom, for instance, I didn't design him, I think it was Cheyenne? Someone asked me to draw Tom earlier and I was like "Uuh no sorry!" 'cause I don't know him as well, you know? But Star and Marco, I designed them.

Q- What inspired you, or how did you come up with Toffee? A- So Toffee kinda came from like- you know Ludo started as a villain, right? But he was not a scary villain, he's a goofy villain, which is fun too, but I wanted somebody who is a real nemesis, some really evil foe to fight. And I've never been really like- all the characters in the show, everyone has a perspective, you know. I really don't those kind of over the top villains who are just "Hahahah I'm evil I'm going to take over the world!". You know, it's not very interesting. So I always wanted the villain to have a perspective, and definitely with Toffee, I always thought of him more like a Magneto character. You know, like he is not wrong, but he's going about things the wrong way, you know? So I think it's more interesting. 'Cause I think you guys noticed, but we hinted to it- we begin to hint to it, but, you know the Mewmans are not maybe treating the monsters the best, and that's something Star is really learning about, and Toffee of course has his own perspective about it.

Q- Did you design all of Star dresses? A- Ok so the dresses were the funniest thing. It was like, you know- there are the executives, at Disney, you know, this guy, he was very concerned about the dresses. Like me and Cheyenne, I think we drew like a hundred dresses. And I wanted her to have different dresses, but he was like "We don't want puffy sleeves, we don't want it to be too girly" and I was like "Oh my gosh we drew so many dresses". But I think the one she ended up with are cool. And in the second season I got the puffy sleeves.

Q- What's going on with Eclipsa's arm in Crystal Clear? A- I can't tell you what's up with that- I can tell you her arm it's not missing, and it just looks like that. But uh- well, I want you to know that this is not a spoiler or anything, but, like, you know how Star was trying to get her foot out of there? So Eclipsa she just got her glove kinda in there

Q- Is Lekmet really dead? A- He's kinda gone to ashes, so... I love Lekmet, he's so sweet too. And poor Rhombulus, right? They are so- they are so close

Q- Are we going to know what was Lekmet's job? A- Yeah I think so, yeah.

Q- (talking about livechats) A- They are fun like, this was Disney's idea, these livechats- we got to have a good time. I wouldn’t say they’re, like, totally canon, just because it's... we try to like, ya know, make it in—we got like the outline.

Q- (talking about the Star and Marco Guide To Mastering Every Dimension) A- The book was actually written- season 2, it was written- it was supposed to come out after the first fourteen. So it's a little bit after the first fourteen and before the ones that aired in February, you know? So it's not quite... to the ending, you know?

Q- In Running With Scissors was actually there something between Hekapoo and Marco? A- I don't know, Marco went a long time- on his own...

Q- (talking about Marco being mentally 30) A- You know he's always been an old soul, I feel like, and I think that, uh, just, he's an old soul, still. But he has his memories.

Q- At the end of the season we see Star's room disappearing from the Diaz's house. I was wondering what happened to Toffee's finger- A- I can't tell you that!

Q- In Miss Heinous' metallurgy book there were colors for the many dimensions, and Earth was color green, which was also the color of the wand. Is there a connection or- A- I can't tell you!

Q- What is Starfan13 going to do now without Star? A- I don't know-

[kennethmjoyner]

iManage CEO Neil Araujo: ‘Making Knowledge Work is Why We Exist’

It has been quite a journey for the document management company iManage. Cofounded in 1995 by Neil Araujo and Rafiq Mohammadi, it was acquired in 2003 by Interwoven for $171 million. In 2009, Autonomy acquired Interwoven for $775 million, and then in 2011 Hewlett Packard purchased Autonomy for $11.1 billion, getting iManage in the deal.

But the Autonomy acquisition turned into a fiasco for HP due to alleged accounting improprieties by Autonomy, resulting in both litigation and a write-down of nearly $8.8 billion of the purchase price.

Amid this turmoil, the iManage leadership was able to buy out the company and its business from HP. Cofounders Araujo and Mohammadi returned to top leadership roles as CEO and chief scientist, respectively, and set to work on reinvigorating the core on-premises product and relaunching its cloud product, which it did in 2016 as iManage Cloud.

Since then, it has made several key acquisitions, including of UK artificial intelligence company RAVN Systems in 2017 and last year of legal transaction management company Closing Folders.

Still management owned, the Chicago-based company is a market leader for document management, with more than 750 employees and 2,500 law firms using its platform, according to its website, including many of the world’s largest firms.

Last week, just ahead of the start of ILTACON, Araujo sat down with me via Zoom for a conversation about where the company is today and its roadmap for the future. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, which I have edited for clarity, concision and continuity.

AMBROGI: Maybe you can start by giving an overview of where you are today. What are the highlights?

ARAUJO: Sure. I’ll break that up into two parts. One is the commercial update and the second is what are we doing from an executed vision and an execution standpoint.

In terms of a commercial update, as we started this conversation, what we thought would be a few weeks working from home is 18 months and growing. The irony of it, though, is that iManage is about 70% bigger from revenue standpoint.

AMBROGI: From a revenue standpoint?

ARAUJO: Yes, from a revenue standpoint, we’ve added that much, just over the last 18 months. And it’s primarily based on the strength of our cloud business. Our business has grown 200% in a little over a year, so it’s probably greater if you consider the last 18 months.

AMBROGI: Does that include customers of the on-prem version moving over to the cloud?

ARAUJO: Yes. When we report cloud revenue, it is net new customers as well as customers that may be on-prem that have moved to the cloud. We’ve seen an acceleration there that is probably driven by COVID, driven by remote working, and by this understanding that remote working is not a temporary phenomenon, but probably go to stay in some form – not in exactly the same way as it is right now, but in some form.

So that’s been the big story from a revenue standpoint and a commercial standpoint, but the more exciting bit for me, Bob, as someone that has been in this industry and at iManage since day one, is what impact we’re having in the market. We’ve done some of our largest and most complex deployments over the last year.

These are the likes of Baker McKenzie moving to our cloud globally, Clifford Chance, Shearman & Sterling, Borden Ladner Gervais in Canada, Allen & Overy. And we recently announced, though it’s not deployed, Linklaters, so we close the circle, so to speak, on the Magic Circle. It’s been a very rewarding year, from that standpoint.

AMBROGI: Does that mean you have all the Magic Circle at this point?

ARAUJO: Yes, we have all the Magic Circle at this point. So it’s been a rewarding year and I have to be super thankful to our ecosystem and our employees for their resilience during the period we’ve gone through.

Our decision not to do ILTA was really based on those principles. We know we will miss the social interaction, and we know that there’s some downside, but, at the end of the day, I think the health and welfare of our customers and employees comes above everything else, and it was a very simple decision from that standpoint, given Delta, given, the trends that we saw for positivity in Clark County, we just felt we had to do the right thing.

AMBROGI: I think it was a responsible thing to do, and I think it probably has led some others to reconsider their attendance.

ARAUJO: Yeah. Even though we have not gone to the event, we have changed nothing with our sponsorship, because we know that the organization requires our support at this time, more than ever, and our decision was really based on the health and welfare of the people that come there and go there.

AMBROGI: Yes.

ARAUJO: Getting back to what we’ve been up to at iManage, executing on some of these big projects has been priority number one because the majority of our implementations now are in the cloud, and these are some of the largest, most complex, cloud deployments you can talk about.

AMBROGI: Are you satisfied with the iManage Cloud? I mean, is iManage Cloud where you want it to be, or where do you still want it to get to in terms of your development?

ARAUJO: In this industry, if you’re completely satisfied, you stop, right? You’re never completely satisfied. But I couldn’t be happier with where we are relative to the rest of the market. Our entire application stack – that is, the user experience as well as the administrative and the cloud infrastructure that supports it – is brand new over the last five years. There is not a shred of line that I wrote 20 years back that’s around anymore. What that means is, in terms of security, performance, maintainability, resiliency, it is, I believe, far superior to anything that’s available in the market and anything that can be achieved on prem. So, from that perspective, I’m really, really happy.

Where we are taking it next is bringing in some of the more advanced capabilities that we have matured over the last several years, particularly in the area of knowledge and AI, and making those more easily available in our cloud architecture. What that allows a firm to do is say, “Okay, now I moved to the cloud, and now what?” And the “now what” is that now you can leverage your content, your years of history, that is trapped in your documents, and now you can leverage it in a much more powerful way. That’s the area that we are focused on over the next six, 12, 18 months.

AMBROGI: That’s the “making knowledge work” principle that the company talks about?

ARAUJO: Right. That’s one of the principle things that we worked on – going back to the market, doing the most rigorous market research we’ve done in our history. The purpose of that research was to understand something very simple: Why is it that customers invest in tech like ours? Because sometimes the outcome that customers are seeking is lost because they’re focused on the task. The task is document management, email management, records management, but the reason they invest in it is because they want to make knowledge work.

Finding that vocabulary, in a way that would resonate and would bring together everything that iManage has done and is doing over the last several years, which is that we’re not just a repository anymore, right. We have big investments in governance and in workflow, we have big investments in AI and knowledge, and making knowledge work brings all of this together because it’s the purpose of why we exist, the purpose of why customers buy technology and invest in technology like ours in the first place.

It was very big. It involved literally hundreds of conversations, over a thousand customers, and at the end of it, it was three magic words, making knowledge work. It’s informed not just our messaging and our story, it’s informed our strategy, what is it that we prioritize. And it’s informed our outlook, as we think about our organization. Once you understand the outcome that a customer is looking for, you don’t celebrate internally, you don’t celebrate until the customer has achieved that outcome, and that’s a good thing for the customer, and that’s a good thing for iManage. Does that make sense?

AMBROGI: It makes perfect sense. So, how does that inform your roadmap going forward from here? With that broader vision of making knowledge work, how do you continue down that road?

ARAUJO: There are four areas, I’d say. The first is what we call user experience and workflow. For the kinds of things that we do, we touch end user workflow significantly. If end users don’t adopt the system, there’s no point. So we’ve made a significant investment in user experience, and it’s really paid off, particularly during COVID, when you don’t have access to the same classroom training. These deployments that I talked about, in one of them, we moved over about 10,000 users over a weekend. That would have been impossible in the previous days of the technology that I wrote, because the phones would have been off the hook asking, How do I do this? How do I do that? I believe the reason we were able to do 10,000 users is the teams, both the customer team and our team that worked with them – and our partners were awesome. But the work that we put into user experience really paid off and you could have users come in on a Monday morning and go to a new system and figure it out, because we had done the design work upfront and the thinking and the taking out of the kinks upfront. So, a big focus on user experience.

I also said workflow. Workflow for us is looking at very specific areas where law firms can optimize productivity and efficiency. Last year, we announced the acquisition of Closing Folders. That’s gone really well, I couldn’t be happier with the team, couldn’t be happier with how that particular application is being adopted by customers almost organically. Closing Folders automates the legal transaction management process. If you are a transactional lawyer, particularly if you’re a transactional associate, it does magic in terms of building signature packets and distributing them and assembling them back together and building a closing binder. It’s a process that clients hate to pay for and associates hate to do, because it’s boring work, but it’s important. So you’ll see us do more in that workflows area.

Another workflow that’s in beta right now, that we will be releasing probably towards the end of the year, early next year, is called iManage Tracker, and that was developed organically, that’s not an acquisition. What Tracker does is it automates the most fundamental of legal workflows, which is the checklist. It’s the starting point for, “What do I do to tackle this particular matter?” Most people use Post-it notes. If you’re really sophisticated, you use Excel or tables in Word. We built an application around it that’s integrated into the document management experience.

So as you’re completing documents, you can check off your checklist, and everyone on the team knows exactly who’s got the ball on which document, where we are, and what the deadlines are. We think it takes a lot of stress off the people that are managing the matter and off the team that needs to know as it’s working on a complex matter. The Tracker applies not just with transactional lawyers, but we’ve seen strong resonance across different buyer groups.

I’d say workflow and user experience are probably bucket number one. Bucket number two for us is what we call the ownership experience, which is how do we make owning what iManage does cheaper, faster, better. It’s primarily the work that we are doing in our cloud, but also the work that we do in administrative tooling, so that the system is easier to manage. In our cloud, for example, all of our customers are on the latest version. And our cloud today does not require downtime to do an upgrade. You can be working and there’s an upgrade going on, and you refresh your browser and you’ve got the latest version. What that means is, we can deliver security patches, we can deliver new functionality, and since you don’t have a scheduled downtime, you’re more likely to be on the latest version. That’s an example – a real, tangible example – of how we’re advancing the ball with respect to ownership experience, making the ownership experience better.

The third pillar for us is security and governance, for obvious reasons. And that’s where we’ve invested in this in a more focused way over the last four to five years, with what we call a Zero Trust model, which is the security framework that we use in our cloud. It is the best way to deal with certain attack factors, particularly attacks that go against the data directly on the backend. And then we’ve invested significantly in what we call need-to-know security, which allows you to segment your data and manage that segmentation more easily so that, if one user’s credentials are compromised, you’ve not sold the farm, so to speak, because the data is segmented.

The third area of security and governance, which is very exciting, is the work we’ve been doing with Microsoft and Azure. It’s around leveraging some of the huge investments Microsoft has made in security, but that have been hard to leverage. For example, Azure Conditional Access, which allows you to manage more effectively who can access your data in the cloud, and which IP addresses, which machines. And then Microsoft Information Protection, which protects your documents even when they leave your networking and firewall. So when, if I email you a document, if you don’t have access to it, you will not be able to see it. That tech has been around, but very hard to really access, and we are looking at bringing that to market, in a way that’s much more consumable by small firms and large firms.

Then the final focus is on how do I mine my data for insights.  I’m negotiating a clause and I’m pretty sure my firm has done this 100 times in the last one year. What position did the opposing firm take in the last 10 times that we negotiated. The answers are in our system, just very hard to get to, and the work that they’re doing with knowledge will allow us to answer those questions more and more effectively.

AMBROGI: With so much going on involving AI-driven contract systems out there right now, do you see yourself making any further acquisitions to help you build out more of that AI functionality around analyzing what’s in documents and mining that data?

ARAUJO: The bits that I talked about are technologies that we’ve been developing, building on IP that we acquired from RAVN. We are applying it at much larger scale than has been done in the industry before. When you apply this tech at DMS scale, it requires architectures that are different. There is great work that’s been going on in the AI field by some really good companies out there. We never put acquisitions off the table, but it wouldn’t be for this use case that I described. There are probably other use cases that might be interesting for us.

AMBROGI: I believe you’re still a management-owned company. Are you thinking of looking for outside investment at any point, or are you thinking about even putting the company out and going public?

ARAUJO: We value the structure that we have right now because it’s aligned what’s best for all of our stakeholders – our customers, our shareholders, and our employees. We are profitable. We’ve got positive cashflow. Our big constraint is not cash, our big constraint is talent, and how do you get people with the right cultural fit and the right intellectual fit and that are passionate about this particular market. You can expect us to be active on the M&A front – that is acquiring – as we go into 2022, along those pillars that I talked about. But at this time, we have miles to go before we sleep, to quote Robert Frost.

AMBROGI: I know that our time is up. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that we haven’t hit on yet?

ARAUJO: The one thing that we get questions a lot from customers in the briefings that we’ve done with them is what they can expect from the Microsoft relationship. As you know, we announced a significantly deeper relationship with Microsoft. It’s certainly been very good for us, and I think it’s good for the customers, and involves a few things. One is it’s our embrace of Azure globally. What that does is it allows us to focus far more on the application layer rather than on the infrastructure, from a SaaS perspective. So I think you will see an acceleration in the roadmap as a result of that over time, because we’ve got more engineers focused on the applications rather than the infrastructure.

The second area where that cooperation, I think, is going to play dividends is the deeper integration with Teams and with Office 365. It’s a very seamless integration with Teams, and Teams has gotten very popular, particularly as remote working has taken hold in law firms.

The third area is in security – enabling firms to leverage investments that Microsoft has made in security, whether it is for customer-managed encryption keys, Microsoft information protection, so that you can encrypt documents when they leave the DMS, or things like Azure conditional access, which gives you a better control over who can access your information in the cloud.

We tend to be two of the largest vendors for most of our customers, so us working together is only good news for our customers.

AMBROGI: Thank you.  I appreciate your taking the time this morning.

from Law and Politics https://www.lawsitesblog.com/2021/08/imanage-ceo-neil-araujo-making-knowledge-work-is-why-we-exist.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[mathematicianadda]

Consequentia mirabilis: the dream of reduction to logic https://ift.tt/3erY1je

Euclid’s Elements, read backwards, reduces complex truths to simpler ones, such as the Pythagorean Theorem to the parallelogram area theorem, and that in turn to triangle congruence. How far can this reductive process be taken, and what should be its ultimate goals? Some have advocated that the axiomatic-deductive program in mathematics is best seen in purely logical terms, but this perspective leaves some fundamental challenges unresolved.

Transcript

Here’s a way to think about one of the key ideas involved in Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. Picture a stack of books sitting on your desk. It has the shape of a rectangle. Let’s say you’re looking at the side with the spines of the books; they make a rectangle. Now, give the stack of books a whack with your hand. So the pile is knocked askew. The shape of the stack is now a parallelogram instead of a rectangle. But the area is the same. I mean the area of the side facing toward you, the side with the spines of the books.

It’s obviously the same area because it’s made up of the same books as before. You just moved the books around. You moved the same amount of area into a new configuration.

Also the height is the same: the height from the desk to the top of the pile. This is still equal to the sum of the thicknesses of each book.

This illustrates the geometrical theorem that the area of a parallelogram is equal to the area of a rectangle with the same base and height. This is Euclid’s Proposition 35.

This is a key ingredient in Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. To prove the Pythagorean Theorem we need to show that the area of the squares on the sides is equal to the area of the square on the hypothenuse. We do this by starting with one of the small squares on the sides and showing that its area can be remolded and made to fit into the big square in such a way the theorem becomes clear.

So the idea of Euclid’s proof is to transform one area into another. Its shape is transformed but the area remains the same. And the transformation he uses is basically this one with the stack of books knocked over into a parallelogram shape.

Euclid starts with a stack of books corresponding to one of the small squares. He knocks it over into a parallelogram shape. He rotates the parallelogram by 90 degrees so it’s now aligned with the big square instead. And he straightens the parallelogram back out again, just like you would straighten out a stack of books. This is how he shows the equality of areas that the Pythagorean Theorem asserts.

The book analogy is not perfect because Euclid so to speak slices his stack of books two different ways. If we want to think of his first step, transforming a square into a parallelogram, in terms of a book stack, then we must visualise the spines to go a particular way. Then when Euclid is straightening the parallelogram back out later, if we want to visualise that in terms of books, we need to picture the spines of the books differently, sitting in another direction. It’s a different stack of books, so to speak. Different but equal. If you have Euclid’s text in front of you, you can draw this into the diagram, how the books need to be oriented for each step to work, and you will see clearly that you have to change perspective halfway through. Euclid is talking about triangles instead of rectangles and parallelograms but that doesn’t matter, the principle is the same.

So we are continuing our adventure of reading Euclid backwards. We reduced the Pythagorean Theorem to a more basic proposition, the book stack proposition, 35. What does that in turn depend on? Remember that we are trying to boil everything down to its molecular components. How does Euclid prove Proposition 35? That is to say, how does he reduce this this proposition to more basic ones?

I should clarify that Euclid doesn’t do anything like this stuff with the books. I explained this theorem with this analogy to a stack of books, but certainly Euclid’s logic doesn’t depend on anything like that. That would be much too informal. The books need to be “infinitely thin” for the argument to work perfectly, and that’s a whole can of worms foundationally that Euclid certainly doesn’t want to go in to. Instead he offers a purely finitistic proof.

Euclid’s proof of Proposition 35 is very clear and satisfying. Euclid proves that one area is equal to another by adding and subtracting pieces in a clever way. So he decomposes it into a couple of puzzle pieces that fit just right with each other. Even though the two areas as wholes have entirely different shape, Euclid shows that there is a clever way of cutting the situation into puzzle pieces that are equally suited to each area.

The two areas are two parallelograms of different shape; they’re like two different languages so to speak. You would have thought that they couldn’t communicate very easily. But these puzzle pieces establish a common understanding; something that is equally natural and understandable in either language. So these puzzle pieces, this universal language, can be used to translate one area into the other.

If we think in terms of reducing the truth of the theorem to more basic facts, this means that, with the puzzle pieces, we have basically reduced the equality of the entire areas to the equality of the each corresponding puzzle piece separately. The puzzle pieces are all triangles, and the fact that corresponding ones are equal comes down to triangle congruence theorems. That is to say: Under what conditions are two triangles the same? For example, they are the same if the have side-angle-side in common.

That turns out to be the next step down if we keep reducing the Pythagorean Theorem. Like a French chef simmers a sauce to make it thicker, so we keep boiling the Pythagorean Theorem, and now we’re down to this. Triangle congruence, and some stuff about parallels as well. We have to keep reading Euclid to find out what happens if you keep cooking it.

But before we keep wilting down the Pythagorean Theorem on the Bunsen burner to see what it’s made of, let’s take a moment to reflect on this theorem about the stack of books, or the areas of parallelograms.

Proclus has an entertaining remark about this theorem in his ancient commentary on the Elements. He points out that it shows that the same area can have many different perimeters. The stack of books, if you make it more askew you will increase the perimeter while keeping the area the same. A very stretched-out parallelogram has a lot of perimeter but not a lot of area.

According to Proclus, military commanders in antiquity did not understand this, with detrimental consequences. Suppose an enemy army is advancing toward your borders. You want to know how many they are. So you send a spy in the cover of darkness at night to scout the situation. The spy sneaks up on the enemy’s night camp and stealthily walks around it, counting the number of step. He then rides back and reports this number.

So the number of steps around the camp is taken to be a measure of its size. For cities as well you could do this: How big is the city? Just walk around the city walls and count the steps. It’s so-and-so many steps big.

Of course this is a mathematical mistake, because it measures the perimeter when you really wanted to know the area. And the stack-of-books theorem shows that they are not at all the same.

Anyway, that’s just a fun story. All the propositions of Euclid have some cultural significance like this. It’s like you see sometimes the period table of chemistry and for each element they’ve added a little example of some familiar real-world thing where this element occurs. “You know kids, lithium isn’t just some weird science thing, you use it every day!” It’s in whatever, toothpaste or something. So you can do that with Euclid’s Elements as well. A little story for each theorem to lighten the mood and make things a bit more culturally relevant. But that’s just for kicks and giggles.

Let’s get back to the more scientific purpose: the systematic reduction of all geometrical knowledge to some sort of ultimate minimum foundation. We are just a few steps in to this process and it’s already starting to raise some philosophical conundrums. It was natural enough to take apart the Pythagorean Theorem into more basic results, like the one about areas of parallelograms. Then that in turn could be reduced to triangle congruence.

But this can’t go on forever. And we’re already down to such basic facts that it’s becoming very difficult to see how there could be anything “more basic” to reduce them to.

This path of reduction, it looked so natural when we set out on it. Starting from the Pythagorean Theorem, this seemed like an obvious way to go. But our clear path through the woods is now becoming darker and thornier. It’s no longer clear where to go from here. Instead of blindly forging ahead in the same direction, we need to take a step back and think about where it is we want to go. What kinds of things should the foundations of geometry be?

There are in fact a number of possible answers to this that are very different and completely incompatible with each other, yet each of them is quite plausible in their own right. Let’s have a look at some of the main ones. I mean philosophical views of the status of axioms, or starting points, in mathematics. Or what pretty much comes to the same thing: philosophical interpretation of the ultimate nature of mathematical reasoning and the source of its credibility.

Do you think mathematics is ultimately empirical, like physics? Is geometry just the science of physical space? If so, that suggests that the axioms of geometry should be the most fundamental and testable things from an empirical point of view. Geometry should start from things you can check in the field or in a lab. Measuring things with rulers, for instance. That should be the starting point of geometry if you think the certainty of geometrical reasoning ultimately derives from sensory experience and data collected from the world around you.

Or do you think mathematics is ultimately pure reason? Then the axioms don’t need to be physically testable but rather mentally fundamental. That suggests that goal of the reductive process is to boil theorems down to the most obvious or intuitively undoubtable starting points.

This divide between empiricism and pure reason is mirrored in Aristotle and Plato, one might argue. We will look into that in more depth another time.

Let’s focus now on yet another point of view: That of logic. There are two ways you can say mathematics is pure reason: One associates reason with the human mind. Intuition, aha-moments. Those are mental experiences, maybe to some extent subjective experiences. Another characterisation of pure reason is logic. This envisions the laws of reason as detached from human considerations, such as the mind and its subjective experiences. Instead it tries to give a purely objective account of reasoning.

Suppose we try to argue that mathematics is basically logic. So it’s not based on anything contaminated by humanness, such as the senses or the mind. Instead mathematical truths are simply necessary truths in some absolute sense. Their truth follow from absolute laws of reason that are some kind of abstract truths more fundamental than human experience or physical reality.

This point of view doesn’t really impose any evident restrictions on what kinds of things the axioms of mathematics should be. The starting points of mathematics do not need to be physically measurable, nor intuitively obvious, and so on. Logic does not imply such prescriptions, like the other views did.

Mathematicians just deduce consequences of definitions and axioms. Mathematics doesn’t care what the axioms are. From this point of view, mathematics doesn’t make any claim to establishing absolute truths. All of mathematics is just “if ... then ...” statements. If these axioms are true, then these theorems follow.

The axioms themselves, then, can be pretty much arbitrary for all the mathematician cares. This is a very modern view. Modern mathematicians pretty much accept this. It’s certainly a very convenient view for the mathematician. It’s a sort of abdication of responsibility.

What is a philosophy of mathematics supposed to do? What is it for? Surely it should explain the obvious facts about mathematical reasoning, such as that it somehow establishes seemingly absolute truths. When we read a proof such as Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean Theorem or the parallelogram area theorem, the proof is so compelling. It gives us complete conviction that the theorem must be true. It’s unlike anything we ever see in other domains. There are no such absolutely compelling and irrefutable proofs in politics or ethics. Why not? What’s so special about mathematics?

History reinforces the point. Every last one of Euclid’s theorems are as true today as they were when they were written well over two thousand years ago. Every civilisation accepts these universal truths. Why does this happen only in mathematics?

A philosophy of mathematics should answer these questions. But the logic interpretation of mathematics does not. It doesn’t pinpoint any particular characteristic of geometrical reasoning that explains why it should be so unique in these regards. It doesn’t explain why the particular axioms of geometry that Euclid investigated were universally accepted in so many contexts, and turned out to be so uniquely suited to describe the physical world in all kinds of scientific advances that the Greeks had not even dream of yet.

So in this way the logic philosophy of mathematics is perhaps a kind of coward’s philosophy. It’s a non-philosophy, as far as many key questions are concerned. It just doesn’t have any kind of answer to the major questions that other philosophies of mathematics sees it as their duty to address.

There’s a famous essay called “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences.” Famous physicist Eugene Wigner said this in 1960. Everybody cites it all the time.

But ask yourself: Why did no one say this until 1960? Did the effectiveness of mathematics somehow become unreasonable only then? Of course not. The effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences had been around forever. Including the effectiveness of ideas that were first developed for purely mathematical reasons but later proved to have hugely important and completely unforeseen scientific applications. For instance, the Greeks studies ellipses in great mathematical detail, and then two thousand years later it turned out, completely unexpectedly, that planetary orbits are ellipses. So this purely geometric topic became hugely important in science, which no one had predicted.

Why didn’t people say then: the effectiveness of mathematics is unreasonable? Why would it take all the way to 1960 before anyone drew this obvious conclusion?

I’ll tell you why. Because the conclusion that the effectiveness of mathematics is unreasonable only follows if one assumes the logic interpretation of mathematics. If mathematics is nothing but logical inferences from arbitrary axioms, then sure enough it’s a complete mystery, it’s completely unreasonable that mathematics can work so well.

But what people used to conclude from this is that it is the logic conception of mathematics that must be unreasonable. It is unreasonable to think that mathematics is nothing but logical deductions. Because that completely fails to explain so much of what we know about mathematics.

In 1960 the logic conception of mathematics had become the modern dogma that it remain to this day. It had become so ingrained in the mathematical psyche that mathematicians could no longer even conceive of rejecting it. Then they had no choice but to declare the effectiveness of mathematics in physics to be unreasonable. That’s why Wigner’s famous phrase is from 1960 and not 450 BC.

It’s not a fact that effectiveness of mathematics is unreasonable. Rather, one of two things is unreasonable: either the effectiveness of mathematics is unreasonable, or the conception of mathematics as nothing but logic is unreasonable.

For thousands of years people preferred to conclude from this that there must be more to mathematics than just logic. Euclid is not just “the axiomatic-deductive method.” This can’t be the whole picture. The axioms must be somehow more than arbitrary. What makes the axioms true? Logic itself doesn’t care and cannot help us with this question. So we need something more than logic in our philosophy of mathematics.

So I claim that only in very modern times did the logic conception become the norm. Maybe in some future episode I will discuss what circumstances made that come about. The important thing for our present purposes, as we read Euclid, is to understand that with the reduction process that we have begun, that consists of breaking down theorems into smaller and smaller pieces, the end pieces, the ultimate rock-bottom pieces, need to have some sort of claim to credibility. They cannot simply be whatever you’re left with when you keep reducing and reducing.

Or can they? I say everyone rejected that view, but I could play devil’s advocate. Listen for example to this fragment from Eudemus’ Physics: “As for the principles they talk about, mathematicians do not attempt to demonstrate them, they even claim that it is not their business to consider them, but, having reached agreement about them, they prove what follows from them.”

This is a bit of a disturbing quote, in my opinion. It seems to almost assert that logic view that I said was regarded as unacceptable at that time. Mathematicians only prove what follows from axioms, and they claim that “it is not their business” to worry about the status or truth of those axioms. Sounds strangely modern, just the view I assigned to the 20th century.

I think that’s not really what the quote says for various reasons. In part what Eudemus is saying is that the justification of the “principles” (that is to say the axioms) shouldn’t be regarded as part of mathematics but rather part of some other field, some more philosophical domain. But whatever, that’s just putting labels on things. That still means that the axioms are to be justified some way. So they are not arbitrary. The justification is “philosophy” rather than “mathematics”—sure, whatever, call it what you want, but it’s in any case very different from not justifying or being concerned with the nature of the axioms at all.

The quote also said, if you noticed, that the mathematicians don’t care about the axioms, “having reached agreement about them.” What does that entail? On what basis did mathematicians reach such an “agreement”? This opens the door for all kinds of considerations of the status and nature of the axioms within mathematics, even according to this quote, the devil’s advocate quote.

So I think it’s safe to say that the logic view by itself was not satisfactory. The starting points, or axioms, of mathematics need to have some kind of justification.

In fact, there is one way in which logic itself can provide such a justification. So the problem we need to solve is this. We started with the Pythagorean Theorem, we reduced it to more basic statements, then those to more basic ones, and so on. Where do we stop this process?

Do we stop when we just don’t see how to go any further? This is what I just criticised as untenable. Because this would mean declaring whatever we’re left with to be axioms, without convincing criteria of justification for which kind of things should be allowed to be axioms and which not. The axioms can’t just be arbitrary because then we can’t explain the successes of mathematics.

One hope of some logicians has been that everything could be reduced to definitions. There are no axioms! Everything is at bottom just definitions. The meaning of words. Mathematics is about drawing out consequences contained in the definitions of concepts, without any assumptions being made.

That would be great for the logician and some people have tried to fit geometry into such a mold. But it doesn’t work. Geometry needs assumptions, genuine axioms. You can’t get away with only definitions. You can’t reduce mathematics to a purely linguistic game. And besides, even if you could, what would be the guarantee that the definition corresponded to anything? That the entities defined actually exist? And that the definitions are not self-contradictory or inconsistent? Definitions alone cannot carry this burden of justification. You need something more.

But there’s one more ace up the logician’s sleeve, and it’s a pretty clever one. There are statements that are logically self-justifying. Statements such that, if you try to deny them, you have actually committed yourself to accepting them.

An example is the famous statement by Descartes: I think, therefore I am. How could you deny such a thing? What would you say if you wanted to deny it? “No, I don’t think that.” Or: “I think that’s wrong.” As you can hear, you walked right into the trap. By trying to deny that you are a thinking being, you made statements that actually presuppose that you are thinking being. The denial is self-defeating. You can’t deny the statement without actually implicitly conceding it.

Such statements are justified by “consequentia mirabilis,” as it’s called.

There’s an argument of this form already in an Aristotelian fragment. Aristotle uses it to prove the proposition: We ought to philosophise. Try to deny it. So you say: No, we should not philosophise. Well, in that case, it would be important to reach the conclusion that we should not philosophise. Reasoning our way to this conclusion would spare us from the mistake of philosophising. Then we could do more important things with our time instead of philosophising.

But now we are caught in a trap again. We wanted to establish that we shouldn’t philosophise, but in trying to argue this we actually committed ourselves to the position that we should philosophise, namely we should philosophise in order to establish the conclusion that we shouldn’t philosophise. So once again the attempted rejection of the proposition actually implies acceptance of the proposition.

Could it be that all the axioms of mathematics could be of this type? That would be a logician’s dream. That would be a great way of justifying ending the chain of reductions of theorems to lower and lower constituent parts. We have to keep reducing until you’re left with nothing but logically self-justifying statements. Consequentia mirabilis axioms only, which must be accepted as true because it is logically incoherent to try to deny them.

This view had its adherents. Clavius was fond of the consequentia mirabilis. Clavius was influential in discussions of Euclid around 1600; he was the editor of the standard Latin version of Euclid that everybody used. Even Saccheri, who did some very sophisticated work on the foundations of geometry in the 18th century, was keen on trying to reduce the foundations of geometry to consequentia mirabilis.

So this idea was clearly seen as very attractive. People really tried to make it work. But ultimately it failed. It was an approach based more on what the logician wanted than on what mathematics is really like and how mathematics wants to be understood.

So altogether, the reduction of mathematics to logic is an idea that has had great appeal to many. Several times in history, a complete reduction of mathematics to logic has seemed within reach, only for the quest to end in bitter disappointment. This is also what happened with Frege and Russell, Hilbert and Gödel, and so on, centuries later.

Bertrand Russell put it in interesting terms. Here’s what he says in his autobiography: “I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith.” He’s talking about his early career, around 1900. At this time he worked on an enormously ambitious project to reduce all of mathematics to logic. It didn’t work. As Russell himself says: “After some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.”

Russell’s case is quite typical, one might argue. Others have had the same experience when they have tried to achieve the same goal. It’s a great temptation: one logic to rule them all; “my precious.” Many have been seduced by that idea, and spent twenty years obsessed with it only to fail, as Russell did.

Let’s look at the most famous of the problems Russell ran in to: the so-called Russell’s Paradox. A popularised version of Russell’s Paradox goes like this. A barber shaves everyone who do not shave themselves. Who shaves the barber? There is no coherent answer. The barber cannot shave himself because he only shaves those who do not shave themselves. But he also could not not shave himself. Because if he didn’t shave himself he would by definition be one of the people he does shave, which is everybody who do not shave themselves. So either way leads to a contradiction.

Mathematicians unknowingly allowed this type of paradox to enter their logical systems. This stuff about the barber is just a translation into everyday terms of something that first occurred within mathematics itself.

Russell thought this problem was fixable. But others thought it was a comeuppance for logic that was both deserved and bound to happen. Consider for example the reply by Brouwer, an influential but eccentric mathematician in the early 20th century. Here’s what he says: “Exactly because Russell’s logic is no more than a linguistic system, there is no reason why no contradictions would appear.”

That is to say, since logic is divorced from meaning, divorced from the real world, why wouldn’t it be inconsistent and self-contradictory? History shows that inconsistencies can very easily creep into formal axiomatic systems, against the best efforts of even top mathematicians devoted specifically to building rigorous and coherent foundations. A long list of leading logicians have published systems of logic which turned out to be inconsistent.

According to Brouwer: “The language of Euclidean geometry is reliable only because the mathematical systems and relations, which are symbolized by the words of that language as conventional signs, have been constructed beforehand independently of that language.”

That is to say, it is precisely because it is not merely logic that Euclidean geometry is so reliable. It is anchored in the real world, and the physical world has a much better track record of being consistent than the thought-constructs of logicians.

Emil Post was another rebel at that time who likewise called for “a reversal of the entire axiomatic trend of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a return to meaning,” as he put it.

Logic had gone too far. Some formalisation and logic are powerful tools in mathematics. But you can take it so far that mathematical theories lose all bond with reality and meaning. Then there is no grounding anymore to protect you from contradiction and inconsistency.

Logic is “the hygiene which the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong,” said Hermann Weyl, another contemporary of these guys. But, like hygiene, you can overdo it. Some hygiene is much better than none, of course, but obsessive hygiene can undermine the natural state of the body and the immune system. Maybe logic is like that. It’s like cleaning everything away with bleach all the time. It’s good to clean, but if you overdo it you eventually clean away the very thing you were trying to protect.

There were big debates about such questions in the early 20th century; the people I quoted were all part of those heated debates about logic. But that’s a story for another day. For our purposes, we are interested specifically in logic-centric attempts at interpreting Euclid, and accounting for the success of Greek geometry. Indeed, such logic-centered interpretations have been sought eagerly. They are very agreeable for some purposes; they have an almost religious appeal, as Russell said. But ultimately there are severe limitations inherent in such views, which have meant that most people from antiquity to early modern times have felt that some additional ingredient, beyond mere logic, is needed for a successful philosophy of mathematics.

And as we read Euclid backwards, the closer we get to the beginning, the more essential it becomes for us to make up our minds about our philosophy of mathematics. Any moment now we have reached all the way down to the axioms and then push comes to shove. We’re going to have to take a stand and say: this is why we stop at these particular axioms and why you should believe them. Let’s keep reading Euclid and see how we can answer this challenge.

from Intellectual Mathematics from Blogger https://ift.tt/2FcxJEK

[riichardwilson]

Smashing Podcast Episode 22 With Chris Coyier: What Is Serverless?

We’re talking about Serverless architectures. What does that mean, and how does it differ from how we might build sites currently? Drew McLellan talks to Chris Coyier to find out.

Today, we’re talking about Serverless architectures. What does that mean, and how does it differ from how we might build sites currently? I spoke to Chris Coyier to find out.

Show Notes

Weekly Update

Transcript

Drew McLellan: He’s a web designer and developer who you may know from CSS-Tricks, a website he started more than 10 years ago and that remains a fantastic learning resource for those building websites. He’s the co-founder of CodePen, the browser based coding playground and community used by front-enders all around the world to share what they make and find inspiration from those they follow. Alongside Dave Rupert is the co-host of ShopTalk Show, a podcast all about making websites. So we know he knows a lot about web development, but did you know he once won a hot dog eating competition using only his charm? My smashing friends, please welcome Chris Coyier. Hello Chris, how are you?

Chris Coyier: Hey, I’m smashing.

Drew: I wanted to talk to you today not about CodePen, and I don’t necessarily want to talk to you about CSS-Tricks, which is one of those amazing resources that I’m sure everyone knows appears right at the top of Google Search results when looking for answers about any web dev question. Up pops your face and there’s a useful blog post written by you or one of your guest contributors.

Chris: Oh, I used to actually do that. There was a… I don’t know, it probably was during the time of when Google had that weird social network. What was that? Google Plus?

Drew: Oh, Plus, yeah.

Chris: Yeah, where they would associate a website with a Plus account, and so my Plus account had an avatar, and the avatar was me, so it would show up in search results. I think those days are gone. I think if you…

Drew: I think so, yeah-

Chris: Yeah.

Drew: But I kind of wanted to talk to you about something that has been a little bit more of a sort of side interest of yours, and that’s this concept of serverless architectures.

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: This is something you’ve been learning sort of more about for a little while. Is that right?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I’m just a fan. It seems like a natural fit to the evolution of front-end development, which is where I feel like I have, at least, some expertise. I consider myself much more of a… much more useful on the front-end than the back-end, not that I… I do it all these days. I’ve been around long enough that I’m not afraid of looking at a little Ruby code, that’s for sure. But I prefer the front-end. I’ve studied it more. I’ve participated in projects more at that level, and then along comes this little kind of a new paradigm that says, “You can use your JavaScript skills on the server,” and it’s interesting. You know? That’s how I think of it. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s why I care, is because I feel it’s like front-end developers have dug so deep into JavaScript. And now we can use that same skill set elsewhere. Mm, pretty cool.

Drew: Seems like a whole new world has opened up, whereas if you were just a front-end coder… I say, just a front-end coder, I shouldn’t. If you’re a front-end coder, and you’re used to working with a colleague or a friend to help you with the back-end implementation, suddenly that’s opened up. And it’s something that you can manage more of the whole stack yourself.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. That’s it.

Drew: Addressing the elephant in the room, right at the top. We’re talking about serverless, and obviously, naming things is hard. We all know that. Serverless architecture doesn’t mean there are no servers, does it?

Chris: I think it’s mandatory, like if this is the first podcast you’re hearing of it, or in the first… you’re only hearing the word “serverless” in the first dozen times you ever heard it, it’s mandatory that you have a visceral reaction and have this kind of, “Oh, but there are still servers.” That’s okay. If that’s happening to you right now, just know that, that’s a required step in this. It’s just like anything else in life. There’s stages to understanding. The first time you hear something, you’re required to kind of reject it a little bit, and then only after a dozen times or so, or after it’s proven its worth a little bit to you, do you get to enter the further stages of understanding here. But the word has won, so if you’re still fighting against the word “serverless”, I hate to tell you, that the train has left the station there. The word is already successful. You’re not going to win this one. So, sorry.

Chris: But I do think it’s interesting that… it’s starting to be like, maybe there actually aren’t servers involved sometimes. I would think one of the things that locked serverless in as a concept was AWS Lambda. They were kind of the first on the scene. A lambda is like a function that you give to AWS and it puts it in the magical sky and then… it has a URL, and you can hit it and it will run that function and return something if you want it to. You know? That’s just HTTP or whatever. That’s how it works, which… the first time you hear that, you’re like, “Why? I don’t care.” But then, there’s some obvious things to it. It could know my API keys that nobody else has access to. That’s why you run back-end to begin with, is that it knows secret stuff that doesn’t have to be in the JavaScript on the client side. So if it needs to talk to a database, it can do that. It can do that securely without having to expose API keys elsewhere. Or even where that data is or how it gets it, it’s…

Chris: So that’s pretty cool. I can write a function that talks to a database, get some data, returns that. Cool. So, Lambda is that, but AWS works. You have to pick a region. You’re like, “I don’t know. Where it should be, Virginia? Oregon? Should I pick the Australia one? I don’t know.” They have 20, 30. I don’t even know how many they have these days, but even lambdas had regions. They, I think, these days have Lambda@Edge, which means it’s all of the regions, which is kind of cool. But they were first, and now everybody’s got something like Lambda. All the cloud services. They want some kind of service in this world. One of them is CloudFlare. CloudFlare has workers. They have way more locations than AWS has, but they executed it kind of at a different time too… the way a CloudFlare worker… it’s similar to a lambda in that you can run Node. You can run JavaScript. You can run a number of other languages too, but… I think of this stuff largely, the most interesting language is JavaScript, just because of the prevalence of it.

Chris: It happens just at the CDN level, which I guess is a server, but I tend to not think of CDNs as a server. Not as obviously as something else. It’s starting to feel even more serverless-y lately. Is a CDN a server? I mean, I guess it’s a computer somewhere, but it feels like even less server-y.

Drew: It feels like, yes, a CDN may be a server, but it’s the most sort of minimal version of a server. It’s like a thin server, if you like.

Chris: Yeah. Sure.

Drew: All right. I’ve heard it said… I can’t remember the source to credit, unfortunately, but I’ve heard serverless described as being “like using a ride-sharing service like Uber or Lyft” or whatever. You can be carless and not own a car, but that doesn’t mean you never use a car.

Chris: Yeah, it doesn’t mean cars don’t exist. Mm, that’s nice.

Drew: You just summon one when you need it, but at the same time, you’re not paying the upfront purchase cost of a car. You’re not paying maintenance or fuel or-

Chris: Right, and the pricing makes sense, too, right? That’s nice. That’s a nice analogy, I think. And then, because it’s at the CDN level too, it just intercepts HTTP requests that are already happening, which means you don’t ask it… you don’t send a request to it and it sends a request back. It’s just happening during the request naturally, which also makes it feel less server-y. I don’t know, it’s interesting. It’s interesting for sure. So that’s a big deal, though, that you brought up the pricing thing. That you only pay for what you use. That’s significant too, because… let’s say, you’re a back-end dev, who’s used to spinning up servers their whole life. And they run the costs, “I need this kind of server with this kind of memory and this kind of CPU and these kind of specs. And this is how much it’s going to cost.” Serverless comes along and chops the head off of that pricing.

Chris: So, even if you’re a back-end dev who just doesn’t like this that much, that they’re just not into it, like your skill set is just what it is over the years, you compare the price and you’re like, “What? I could be paying 1% of what I was paying before?” You are not allowed to not care about that, right? If you’re this back-end dev that’s paying a hundred times more for their service than they need to be paying, you’re just kind of bad at your job then. Sorry to say. This has come along and this has shattered pricing in a lot of ways. You have to care about that. And it’s kind of cool that somebody else is… It’s not like you don’t have to worry about security at all, but it’s not your server. You don’t have… your lambda or cloud function, or your worker, or whatever, isn’t sitting on a server that’s right next to some really sensitive data on your own network. It’s not right next to your database.

Chris: If somebody writes code that somehow tries to eject itself from the worker or the lambda, or whatever, and try to get access to other things in their way, there’s nothing there to get. So the security’s a big deal too, so again, if that’s your job as the server admin, is to deal with the security of this thing. Running it, running certain things in Lambda, you just get some natural security from it, which is great. So, it’s way cheaper. It’s way more secure. It encourages these small modular architecture, which can be a good idea. It seems to be domino after domino of good ideas here. That’s why it’s notable. You know?

Drew: Yeah, I mean, traditionally with a server based architecture that we’ve been running for decades on the web, you have a web server that you run yourself. It holds your front-end code, your back-end code, your database and everything. Then you need to maintain that and keep it running and pay the bills, and even if it’s not being used, it’s there clocking up bills. The user would make a request and it would build all that HTML query stuff from the database, send it all down the line to the browser. That process works. It’s how loads of things are built. It’s probably the majority of how the web is built. It’s how things like WordPress work. Is this really a problem that we need to solve? I mean, we’ve talked about costs a little bit. What are the other sort of problems with that, that we’re… that we need to address, and that serverless might help us with?

Chris: Yeah, the problems with the old school approach. Yeah, I don’t know, maybe there isn’t any. I mean, I’m not saying the whole web needs to change their whole… the whole thing overnight. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t really, but I think it opens up doors. It just seems like, when good ideas arrive like this, they just slowly change how the web operates at all. So, if there’s some CMS that is built in some way that expects a database to be there, it means that maybe the hosts of the future will start leveraging this in interesting ways. Maybe it feels to you like it’s still just a traditional server, but the hosts themselves have farmed it out, how they operate, to serverless architectures. So you don’t even really know that that’s happening, but they’ve found a way to slash their costs by hosting the stuff that you need in serverless ways. Maybe yeah don’t even need to care as a developer, but at a meta level, that’s what’s happening. Maybe. I don’t know.

Chris: It also doesn’t mean that… Databases are still there. If it turns out that architecturally having a relational database is the correct way to store that data, great. I mention that because this world of Serverless is kind of growing up at the same time that JAMstack is. And JAMstack is this architecture that’s, “You should be serving your website off of static hosts, that run nothing at all except for…” They’re like little CDNs. They’re like, “I can do nothing. I don’t run PHP. I don’t run Ruby. I run nothing. I run on a tiny little web server that’s just designed to serve static files only.”

Chris: “And then, if you need to do more than that, if you need to pull data from a relational database, then please do it at some other time, not at the server time. You can either do it in a build process ahead of time, and pull that stuff out of the database, pre-build static files and I’ll serve those, or do it at runtime.” Meaning you get this shell of a document, and then it makes a JavaScript request to get some data and prefills it then. So you do it ahead of time or after time, but it doesn’t mean, “Don’t use a relational database.” It just means, “Don’t have the server generate it at the time of the request of the document,” which is a… I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a paradigm shift.

Chris: It’s not just JAMstack either. We’re also living in the time of JavaScript frameworks. We’re living in a time where it’s starting to be a little more expected that the way that a JavaScript application boots up, is that it mounts some components, and as those components mount, it asks for the data that it needs. And so, it can be kind of a natural fit for something like a React website to be like, “Well, I’ll just hit a serverless function to cough up the data that it needs. It hits some JSON API essentially. I get the JSON data that I need and I construct myself out of that data, and then I render onto the page.” Now, whether that’s good or bad for the web, it’s like, “I don’t know. Too bad. Ship has sailed. That’s how a lot of people are building sites.” It’s just client rendered things. So, serverless and modern JavaScript kind of go hand in hand.

Drew: I suppose you don’t have to wholesale… be looking at one architecture or another. There’s an area in the middle where parts of an infrastructure might be more traditional and parts could be serverless, I’m guessing?

Chris: Yeah. Well, they’re trying to tell you that anyway. Anybody that wants to sell you any part of their architecture is like, “You don’t have to buy in all right now. Just do it a little bit.” Because of course, they want you to dip your toe into whatever they’re selling, because once you dip the toe, the chances that you splash yourself into the pool is a lot higher. So, I think that… it’s not a lie, though, necessarily, although I find a little less luck in… I don’t want my stack to be a little bit of everything. I think there’s some technical death there that I don’t always want to swallow.

Drew: Mm (affirmative).

Chris: But it’s possible to do. I think the most quoted one is… let’s say I have a site that has an eCommerce element to it, which means… and let’s say large scale eCommerce, so 10,000 products or something, that this JAMstack architecture hasn’t gotten to the point where that’s always particularly efficient to rebuild that statically. So, the thinking goes, “Then don’t.” Let that part kind of hydrate naturally with… hit serverless functions and get the data that it needs, and do all that. But the rest of the site, which isn’t… there’s not as many pages, there’s not as much data, you could kind of pre-render or whatever. So a little bit of both.

Drew: Of course, plenty of people are dealing with legacy systems that… some old database thing that was built in the 2000s that they may be able to stick a sort of JSON API layer on top of…

Chris: Yeah.

Drew: … and build something more modern, and perhaps serverless, and then still interact with those legacy systems by sort of gluing it altogether in a weird way.

Chris: Yeah. I like that though, isn’t it? Aren’t… most websites already exist. How many of us are totally green-fielding websites? Most of us work on some crap that already exists that needs to be dragged into the future for some reason, because I don’t know, developers want to work faster, or you can’t hire anybody in COBOL anymore, or whatever the story is. You know?

Drew: So terminology wise, we’re talking about JAMstack which is this methodology of running a code pretty much in the browser, serving it from a CDN. So, not having anything dynamic on the server. And then when we talk about serverless, we’re talking about those small bits of functionality that run on their server somewhere else. Is that right? That we were talking about these cloud function kind of-

Chris: Yeah, I mean, they just happen to be both kind of hot ideas right now. So it’s kind of easy to talk about one and talk about the other. But they don’t necessarily need to be together. You could run a JAMstack site that has nothing to do with serverless anything. You’re just doing it, you just pre-build the site and run it, and you can use serverless without having to care about JAMstack. In fact, CodePen does nothing JAMstack at all. Not that we want to talk about CodePen necessarily, but it’s a Ruby on Rails app. It runs on a whole bunch of AWS EC2 instances and a variety of other architecture to make it happen. But we use serverless stuff whenever we can for whatever we can, because it’s cheap and secure, and just a nice way to work. So, no JAMstack in use at all but serverless all over the place.

Drew: That’s quite interesting. What sort of tasks are you putting serverless to on CodePen?

Chris: Well, there’s a whole bunch of things. One of them is, I think, hopefully fairly obvious is, I need… the point of CodePen is that you write each HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the browser and it renders it in front of you, right? But you can pick pre-processor languages as well. Let’s say you like Sass. You turn Sass on in the CSS, and you write Sass. Well, something has to process the Sass. These days, Sass is written in Dart or something.

Chris: Theoretically, you could do that in the client. But these libraries that do pre-processing are pretty big. I don’t think I want to ship the entire Sass library to you, just to run that thing. I don’t want to… it’s just not, that’s not the right architecture for this necessarily. Maybe it is down the road, I mean, we could talk about offline crap, yada, yada, Web Workers. There’s a million architectural things we could do. But here’s how it does work now, is there’s a lambda. It processes Sass. It has one tiny, tiny, tiny, little job.

Chris: You send it this blob of Sass and it sends you stuff back, which is the processed CSS, maybe a site map, whatever. It has one tiny little job and we probably pay for that lambda, like four cents or something. Because lambdas are just incredibly cheap and you can hammer it too. You don’t have to worry about scale. You just hit that thing as much as you want and your bill will be astonishingly cheap. There is moments where serverless starts to cross that line of being too expensive. I don’t know what that is, I’m not that master of stuff like that. But generally, any serverless stuff we do, we basically… all nearly count as free, because it’s that cheap. But there’s one for Sass. There’s one for Less. There’s one for Babbel. There’s one for TypeScript. There’s one for… All those are individual lambdas that we run. Here’s some code, give it to the lambda, it comes back, and we do whatever we’re going to do with it. But we use it for a lot more than that, even recently.

Chris: Here’s an example. Every single Pen on CodePen has a screenshot. That’s kind of cool, right? So, the people make a thing and then we need a PNG or a JPEG, or something of it, so that we can… that way when you tweet it, you get the little preview of it. If you share it in Slack, you get the little preview of it. We use it on the website itself to render… instead of an iframe, if we could detect that the Pen isn’t animated, because an iframe’s image is much lighter, so why not use the image? It’s not animated anyway. Just performance gains like that. So each of those screenshots has a URL to it, obviously. And we’ve architected it so that that URL is actually a serverless function. It’s a worker. And so, if that URL gets hit, we can really quickly check if we’ve already taken that screenshot or not.

Chris: That’s actually enabled by CloudFlare Workers, because CloudFlare Workers are not just a serverless function, but they have a data store too. They have this thing called key-value store, so the ID of that, we can just check really quick and it’ll be, “True or false, do you have it or not?” If it’s got it, it serves it. And it serves it over CloudFlare, which is super fast to begin with. And then gives you all this ability too. Because it’s an image CDN, you can say, “Well, serve it in the optimal format. Serve it as these dimensions.” I don’t have to make the image in those dimensions. You just put the dimensions in the URL and it comes back as that size, magically. So that’s really nice. If it doesn’t have it, it asks another serverless function to make it really quick. So it’ll make it and then it’ll put it in a bucket somewhere… because you have to have a origin for the image, right? You have to actually host it somewhere usually. So we put it in an S3 bucket real quick and then serve it.

Chris: So there’s no queuing server, there’s no nothing. It’s like serverless functions manage the creation, storage and serving of these images. And there’s like 50 million or 80 million of them or something. It’s a lot, so it handles that as scale pretty nicely. We just don’t even touch it. It just happens. It all happens super fast. Super nice.

Drew: I guess it… well, a serverless function is ideally going to suit a task that needs very little knowledge of state of things. I mean, you mentioned CloudFlare’s ability to store key-value pairs to see if you’ve got something cached already or not.

Chris: Yeah. That’s what they’re trying to solve, though, with those. Those key-value pairs, is that… I think that traditionally was true. They’re like, “Avoid state in the thing,” because you just can’t count on it. And CloudFlare Workers are being like, “Yeah, actually, you can deal with state, to some degree.” It’s not as fancy as a… I don’t know, it’s key values, so it’s a key in a value. It’s not like a nested, relational fancy thing. So there’s probably some limits to that. But this is baby days for this. I think that stuff’s going to evolve to be more powerful, so you do have some ability to do some state-like stuff.

Drew: And sometimes the limitation, that sort of limited ability to maintain state, or the fact that you have no… you want to maintain no state at all, kind of pushes you into an architecture that gives you this sort of… Well, when we talk about the software philosophy of “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”, don’t we?

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: Where each little component does one thing and does it well. And doesn’t really know about the rest of the ecosystem around it. And it seems that really applies to this concept of serverless functions. Do you agree?

Chris: Yeah. I think you could have a philosophical debate whether that’s a good idea or not. You know? I think some people like the monolith, as it were. I think there’s possible… there’s ways to overdo this and to make too many small parts that are too hard to test altogether. It’s nice to have a test that’s like, “Oh, I wonder if my Sass function is working. Well, let’s just write a little test for it and make sure that it is.” But let’s say, what matters to the user is some string of seven of those. How do you test all seven of them together? I think that story gets a little more complicated. I don’t know how to speak super intelligently to all that stuff, but I know that it’s not necessarily that, if you roll with all serverless functions that’s automatically a better architecture than any other architecture. I like it. It reasons out to me nicely, but I don’t know that it’s the end-all be-all of all architectures. You know?

Drew: To me, it feels extremely web-like, in that… this is exactly how HTML works, isn’t it? You deliver some HTML and the browser will then go and fetch your images and fetch your JavaScript and fetch your CSS. It seems like it’s an expansion of that –

Chris: It’s nice.

Drew: … sort of idea. But, one thing we know about the web, is it’s designed to be resilient because network’s fragile.

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: How robust is the sort of serverless approach? What happens if something… if one of those small pieces goes away?

Chris: That would be very bad. You know? It would be a disaster. Your site would go down just like any other server, if it happens to go down, I guess.

Drew: Are there ways to mitigate that, that are particularly –

Chris: I don’t know.

Drew: … suited to this sort of approach, that you’ve come across?

Chris: Maybe. I mean, like I said, a really super fancy robust thing might be like… let’s say you visit CodePen and let’s say that there’s a JavaScript implementation of Sass and we noticed that you’re on a fairly fast network and that you’re idle right now. Maybe we’ll go grab that JavaScript and we’ll throw it in a service worker. Then, if we detect that the lambda fails, or something, or that you have this thing installed already, then we’ll hit the service worker instead of the lambda, and service workers are able to work offline. So, that’s kind of nice too. That’s interesting. I mean, they are the same language-ish. Service workers are JavaScript and a lot of Cloud functions are JavaScript, so there’s some… I think that’s a possibility, although that… it’s just, that’s some serious technical that… It just scares me to have this chunk of JavaScript that you’ve delivered to how many thousands of user, that you don’t necessarily know what they have, and what version of it they have. Eww, but that’s just my own scarediness. I’m sure some people have done a good job with that type of thing.

Chris: I actually don’t know. Maybe you know some strategies that I don’t, on resiliency of serverless.

Drew: I guess there’s a failure mode, a style of failure, that could happen with serverless functions, where you run a function once and it fails, and you can run it a second time immediately afterwards and it would succeed, because it might hit a completely different server. Or whatever the problem was, when that run may not exist on a second request. The issues of an entire host being down is one thing, but maybe there are… you have individual problems with the machine. You have a particular server where its memory has gone bad, and it’s throwing a load of errors, and the first time you hit it, it’s going to fail. Second time, that problem might have been rooted around.

Chris: Companies that tend to offer this technology, you have to trust them, but they also happen to be the type of companies that… this is their pride. This is the reason why people use them is because they’re reliable. I’m sure people could point to some AWS outages of the past, but they tend to be a little rare, and not super common. If you were hosting your own crap, I bet they got you beat from an SLA percentage kind of level. You know? So it’s not like, “Don’t build in a resilient way,” but generally the type of companies that offer these things are pretty damn reliable. The chances of you going down because you screwed up that function are a lot higher than because their architecture is failing.

Drew: I suppose, I mean, just like anything where you’re using an API or something that can fail, is just making sure you structure your code to cope with that failure mode, and to know what happens next, rather than just throwing up an error to the user, or just dying, or what have you. It’s being aware of that and asking the user to try again. Or trying again yourself, or something.

Chris: Yeah, I like that idea of trying more than once, rather than just being, “Oh no. Fail. Abort.” “I don’t know, why don’t you try again there, buddy?”

Drew: So I mean, when it comes to testing and development of serverless functions, sort of cloud functions, is that something that can be done locally? Does it have to be done in the cloud? Are there ways to manage that?

Chris: I think there are some ways. I don’t know if the story is as awesome. It’s still a relatively new concept, so I think that that gets better and better. But from what I know, for one thing, you’re writing a fairly normal Node function. Assuming you’re using JavaScript to do this, and I know that on Lambda specifically, they support all kinds of stuff. You can write a fricking PHP Cloud Function. You can write a Ruby Cloud Function. So, I know I’m specifically talking about JavaScript, because I have a feeling that most of these things are JavaScript. Even no matter what language it is, I mean, you can go to your command line locally and execute the thing. Some of that testing is… you just test it like you would any other code. You just call the function locally and see if it works.

Chris: It’s a little different story when you’re talking about an HTTP request to it, that’s the thing that you’re trying to test. Does it respond to the request properly? And does it return the stuff properly? I don’t know. The network might get involved there. So you might want to write tests at that level. That’s fine. I don’t know. What is the normal story there? You spin up some kind of local server or something that serves it. Use Postman, I don’t know. But there’s… Frameworks try to help too. I know that the serverless “.com”, which is just terribly confusing, but there’s literally a company called Serverless and they make a framework for writing the serverless functions that helps you deploy them.

Chris: So if you like NPM install serverless, you get their framework. And it’s widely regarded as very good, because it’s just very helpful, but they don’t have their own cloud or whatever. You write these and then it helps you get them to a real lambda. Or it might work with multiple cloud providers. I don’t even know these days, but their purpose of existing is to make the deployment story easier. I don’t know what… AWS is not renowned for their simplicity. You know? There’s all this world of tooling to help you use AWS and they’re one of them.

Chris: They have some kind of paid product. I don’t even know what it is exactly. I think one of the things they do is… the purpose of using them is for testing, is to have a dev environment that’s for testing your serverless function.

Drew: Yeah, because I guess, that is quite a big part of the workflow, isn’t it? If you’ve written your JavaScript function, you’ve tested it locally, you know it’s going to do the job. How do you actually pick which provider it’s going to go into and how do you get it onto that service? Now, I mean, that’s a minefield, isn’t it?

Chris: Yeah. I mean, if you want to use no tooling at all, I think they have a really… like AWS, specifically, has a really rudimentary GUI for the thing. You can paste the code in there and hit save and be like, “Okay, I guess it’s live now.” That’s not the best dev story, but I think you could do it that way. I know CloudFlare workers have this thing called Wrangler that you install locally. You spin it up and it spins up a fake browser on the top and then dev tools below. Then you can visit the URL and it somehow intercepts that and runs your local cloud function against it. Because one of the interesting things about workers is… you know how I described how it… you don’t hit a URL and then it returns stuff. It just automatically runs when you… when it intercepts the URL, like CDN style.

Chris: So, one of the things it can do is manipulate the HTML on the way through. The worker, it has access to the complete HTML document. They have a jQuery-esque thing that’s like, “Look for this selector. Get the content from it. Replace it with this content. And then continue the request.” So you can mess with code on the way through it. To test that locally, you’re using their little Wrangler tool thing to do that. Also, I think the way we did it was… it’s also a little dangerous. The second you put it live, it’s affecting all your web traffic. It’s kind of a big deal. You don’t want to screw up a worker. You know? You can spin up a dev worker that’s at a fake subdomain, and because it’s CloudFlare, you can… CloudFlare can just make a subdomain anyway. I don’t know. It’s just kind of a nice way to do a… as you’re only affecting sub-domain traffic, not your main traffic yet. But the subdomain’s just a mirror of a production anyway, so that’s kind of a… that’s a testing story there.

Chris: It brings up an interesting thing, though, to me. It’s like… imagine you have two websites. One of them is… for us it’s like a Ruby on Rails app. Whatever. It’s a thing. But we don’t have a CMS for that. That’s just like… it’s not a CMS, really. I think there’s probably Ruby CMSs, but there’s not any renowned ones. You know? It seems like all the good CMSs are PHP, for some reason. So, you want a quality CMS. Drew, you’ve lived in the CMS market for a long time –

Drew: Absolutely.

Chris: … so you know how this goes. Let’s say you want to manage your sites in Perch or whatever, because it’s a good CMS and that’s the proper thing to use to build the kind of pages you want to build. But you don’t want to run them on the same server. Unless you want to manage the pages on one site, but show them on another site. Well, I don’t know, there’s any number of ways to do that. But one JavaScript way could be, “Okay, load the page. There’s an empty div there. Run some JavaScript. Ask the other site for the content of that page and then plunk it out on the new page.” That’s fine, I guess, but now you’re in a client side rendered page. It’s going to be slow. It’s going to have bad SEO Company, because… Google will see it eventually, but it takes 10 days or something. It’s just a bad story for SEO Company. It’s not very resilient, because who knows what’s going to happen in the network. It’s not the greatest way to do this kind of “content elsewhere, content on site B, show page of site A”, situation.

Chris: You could also do it on the server side, though. Let’s say you had… Ruby is capable of granting a network request too, but that’s even scarier because then if something fails on the network, the whole page could die or something. It’s like a nervous thing. I don’t love doing that either. But we did this just recently with a worker, in that we… because the worker’s JavaScript, it can make a fetch request. So, it fetches site A, it finds this div on the page, and then it goes and asks site B for the content. Gets the content. Plugs it into that div, and serves the page before it gets anything. So it looks like a server rendered page, but it wasn’t. It all happened at the… on the edge, at the worker level, at the serverless level.

Chris: So it’s kind of cool. I think you can imagine a fetch request on the browser probably takes, I don’t know, a second and a half or something. It probably takes a minute to do it. But because these are… site B is hosted on some nice hosting and Cloudflare has some… who knows what kind of super computers they use to do it. They do. Those are just two servers talking to each other, and that fetch request happens just so super duper, duper fast. It’s not limited to the internet connection speed of the user, so that little request takes like two milliseconds to get that data. So it’s kind of this cool way to stitch together a site from multiple sources and have it feel like, and behave like, a server rendered page. I think there’s a cool future to that.

Drew: Are there any sort of conventions that are sort of springing up around serverless stuff. I’m sort of thinking about how to architect things. Say I’ve got something where I want to do two sort of requests to different APIs. I want to take in a postal address and geocode it against one, and then take those coordinates and send that to a florist who’s going to flower bomb my front yard or something. How would you build that? Would you do two separate things? Or would you turn that into one function and just make the request once from the browser?

Chris: Mm (affirmative). That’s a fascinating question. I’d probably have an architect function or something. One function would be the one that’s in charge of orchestrating the rest of them. It doesn’t have to be, your website is the hub and it only communicates to this array of single sources. Serverless functions can talk to other serverless functions. So I think that’s somewhat common to have kind of an orchestrator function that makes the different calls and stitches them together, and returns them as one. I think that is probably smart and faster, because you want servers talking to servers, not the client talking to a whole bunch of servers. If it can make one request and get everything that it needs, I think that’s probably generally a good idea-

Drew: Yeah, that sounds smart. Yep.

Chris: But I think that’s the ultimate thing. You get a bunch of server nerds talking, they’ll talk about the different approaches to that exact idea in 10 different ways.

Drew: Yeah. No, that sounds pretty smart. I mean, you mentioned as well that this approach is ideal if you’re using APIs where you’ve got secret information. You’ve got API keys or something that you don’t want to live in the client. Because I don’t know, maybe this florist API charges you $100 dollars every time flower bomb someone.

Chris: Easily.

Drew: You can basically use those functions to almost proxy the request and add in the secret information as it goes, and keep it secret. That’s a viable way to work?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think so. I mean, secrets are, I don’t know, they’re interesting. They’re a form of buy in I think to whatever provider you go with, because… I think largely because of source control. It’s kind of like, you could just put your API key right in the serverless function, because it’s just going to a server, right? You don’t even have to abstract it, really. The client will never see that code that executes, but in order for it to get there, there’s probably a source control along the way. It’s probably like you commit to master, and then master… then some kind of deployment happens that makes that thing go to the serverless function. Then you can’t put your API key in there, because then it’s in the repo, and you don’t put your API keys in repos. That’s good advice. Now there’s stuff. We’ve just done… at CodePen recently, we started using this git-crypt thing, which is an interesting way to put keys safely into your repos, because it’s encrypted by the time anybody’s looking at that file.

Chris: But only locally they’re decrypted, so they’re useful. So it’s just kind of an interesting idea. I don’t know if that helps in this case, but usually, cloud providers of these things have a web interface that’s, “Put your API keys here, and we’ll make them available at runtime of that function.” Then it kind of locks… it doesn’t lock you in forever but it kind of is… it’s not as easy to move, because all your keys are… you put in some input field and some admin interface somewhere.

Drew: Yeah, I think that’s the way that Netlify manage it.

Chris: They all do, you know?

Drew: Yeah. You have the secret environment variables that you can set from the web interface. That seems to work quite nicely.

Chris: Yeah, right. But then you got to leave… I don’t know, it’s not that big of a deal. I’m not saying they’re doing anything nefarious or anything. How do you deal with those secrets? Well, it’s a hard problem. So they kind of booted it to, I don’t know, “Just put them in this input field and we’ll take care of it for you, don’t worry about it.”

Drew: Is there anything that you’ve seen that stands out as an obvious case for things that you can do with serverless, that you just couldn’t do with a traditional kind of serverfull approach? Or is it just taking that code and sort of almost deploying it in a different way?

Chris: It’s probably mostly that. I don’t know that it unlocks any possibility that you just absolutely couldn’t run it any other way. Yeah, I think that’s a fair answer, but it does kind of commoditize it in an interesting way. Like, if somebody writes a really nice serverless function… I don’t know that this exists quite yet, but there could kind of a marketplace, almost, for these functions. Like, I want a really good serverless function that can take a screenshot. That could be an open source project that lots of eyeballs around, that does a tremendously good job of doing it and solves all these weird edge cases. That’s the one I want to use. I think that’s kind of cool. You know? That you can kind of benefit from other people’s experience in that way. I think that will happen more and more.

Drew: I guess it’s the benefit that we talked about, right at the top, of enabling people who write JavaScript and may have written JavaScript only for the front-end, to expand and use those skills on the back-end as well.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think so, I think that’s… because there’s moments like… you don’t have to be tremendously skilled to know what’s appropriate and what’s not for a website. Like, I did a little tutorial the other week, where there was this glitch uses these… when you save a glitch, they give you a slug for your thing that you built, that’s, “Whiskey, tango, foxtrot. 1,000.” It’s like a clever little thing. The chances of it being unique are super high, because I think they even append a number to it or something too. But they end up being these fun little things. They open source their library that has all those words in it, but it’s like a hundred, thousands of words. The file is huge. You know? It’s megabytes large of just a dictionary of words. You probably learn in your first year of development, “Don’t ship a JavaScript file that’s megabytes of a dictionary.” That’s not a good thing to ship. You know? But Node doesn’t care. You can ship hundreds of them. It’s irrelevant to the speed on a server.

Drew: Yeah.

Chris: It doesn’t matter on a server. So, I could be like, “Hmm, well, I’ll just do it in Node then.” I’ll have a statement that says, “Words equal require words,” or whatever, and a note at the top, “Have it randomize a number. Pull it out of the array and return it.” So that serverless function is eight lines of code with a packaged@JSON that pulls in this open source library. And then my front-end code, there’s a URL to the serverless function. It hits that URL. The URL returns one word or a group of words or whatever. You build your own little API for it. And now, I have a really kind of nice, efficient thing. What was nice about that is, it’s so simple. I’m not worried about the security of it. I don’t… you know?

Chris: It’s just… a very average or beginner JavaScript developer, I think, can pull that off, which is cool. That’s an enabling thing that they didn’t have before. Before, they were like, “Well, here’s a 2MB array of words.” “Oh, I can’t ship that to the client.” “Oh, you’ll just shut down then.” You might hit this wall that’s like, “I just can’t do that part then. I need to ask somebody else to help me with that or just not do it or pick more boring slugs or some…” It’s just, you have to go some other way that is a wall to you, because you couldn’t do it. And now, you’re, “Oh, well, I’ll just…” Instead of having that in my script slash, or in my source slash scripts folder, I’ll put it in my functions folder instead.

Chris: You kind of like moved the script from one folder to the other. And that one happens to get deployed as a serverless function instead. How cool is that? You know? You’re using the same exact skill set, almost. There’s still some rough edges to it, but it’s pretty close.

Drew: It’s super cool. You’ve put together a sort of little micro site all about these ideas, haven’t you?

Chris: Yeah. I was a little early to the game. I was just working on it today, though, because… it gets pull requests. The idea… well, it’s at serverless.css-tricks.com and… there’s a dash in CSS-Tricks, by the way. So it’s a subdomain of CSS-Tricks, and I built it serverlessly too, so this is… CSS-Tricks is like a WordPress site, but this is a static site generator site. All the content of it is in the GitHub repo, which is open-source. So if you want to change the content of the site, you can just submit a poll request, which is nice because there’s been a hundred or so of those over time. But I built all the original content.

Drew: It’s a super useful place, because it lists… If you’re thinking, “Right, I want to get started with serverless functions,” it lists all the providers who you could try it and…

Chris: That’s all it is, pretty much, is lists of technology. Yeah.

Drew: Which is great, because otherwise, you’re just Googling for whatever and you don’t know what you’re finding. Yeah, it’s lists of API providers that help you do these sorts of things.

Chris: Forms is one example of that, because… so the minute that you choose to… let’s say, you’re going to go JAMstack, which I know that’s not necessarily the point of this, but you see how hand in hand they are. All of a sudden, you don’t have a PHP file or whatever to process that form with. How do you do forms on a JAMstack site? Well, there’s any number of ways to do it. Everybody and their sister wants to help you solve that problem, apparently. So I think if I was the inventor of the word JAMstack, so they try to help you naturally, but you don’t have to use them.

Chris: In fact, I was so surprised putting this site together. Let’s see. There’s six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty one, twenty two services out there, that want to help you serverlessly process your forms on this site right now. If you want to be the 23rd, you’re welcome to it, but you have some competition out there. So the idea behind this is that you write a form in HTML, like literally a form element. And then the action attribute of the form, it can’t point anywhere internally, because there’s nothing to point to. You can’t process, so it points externally. It points to whatever they want you to point it to. They’ll process the form and then they tend to do things that you’d expect them to, like send an email notification. Or send a Slack thing. Or then send it to Zapier and Zapier will send it somewhere else. They all have slightly different feature sets and pricing and things, but they’re all trying to solve that problem for you, like, “You don’t want to process your own forms? No problem. We’ll process it for you.”

Drew: Yeah, it’s a super useful resource. I’d really recommend everyone check it out. It’s serverless.css-tricks.com. So, I’ve been learning all about serverless. What have you been learning about lately, Chris?

Chris: Well, I’m still very much in this world too and learning about serverless stuff. I had an idea to… I used to play this online role playing game ages ago. I just recently discovered that it’s still alive. It’s a text based medieval fantasy kind of game. I played it when AOL was a thing, because AOL wanted to have these games that you had to be logged on to play it, because they wanted you to spend hours and hours on AOL, so they could send you these huge bills, which was, I’m sure, why they did so well at some point.

Drew: So billing by the second. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. So games was big for them. If they could get you playing games with other people on there. So this game kind of… it didn’t debut there, but it moved to AOL, because I’m sure they got a juicy deal for it, but it was so… I mean, it’s just, couldn’t possibly be nerdier. You’re a dwarven mage and you get rune staff from your leather sheath. And you type commands into it like a terminal. Then the game responds to you. I played that game for a very long time. I was very into it. I got into the community of it and the spirit of it. It was kind of a… it was like I was just alone by myself at my computer, but yet I look back on that time in my life, and be like, “That was a wonderful time in my life.” I was really… I just liked the people and the game and all that. But then I grew up and stopped playing it, because life happens to you.

Chris: I only found out recently, because somebody started doing a podcast about it again… I don’t know how I came across it, but I just did. I was like, “This game is alive and well in today’s world, are you kidding me? This text based thing.” And I was more than happy to reactivate and get my old characters back and play it. But only to find out that the clients that they have you download for this game, haven’t evolved at all. They are awful. They almost assume that you’re using Windows. There’s just these terribly cheesy poorly rendering… and it’s text based, you think it’d at least have nice typography. No. So I’m like, “I could be involved. I could write a client for this game. Put beautiful typography in it.” Just modernize the thing, and I think the players of the game would appreciate it, but it felt overwhelming to me. “How can I do it?” But I find some open source projects. One of them is like… you can play the game through an actual terminal window, and it uses some open source libs to kind of make a GUI out of a terminal window.

Drew: Really?

Chris: I don’t know. So that was kind of cool. I was like, “If they wrote that, there must be code in there to how to connect to the game and get it all going and stuff. So at least I have some starter code.” I was trying to go along the app, “Maybe I’ll do it in Flutter or something,” so the final product app would work on mobile phones and, “I could really modernize this thing.” But then I got overwhelmed. I was like, “Ah, this is too big a… I can’t. I’m busy.” But I found another person who had the same idea and they were way further along with it, so I could just contribute on a design level. And it’s been really fun to work on, but I’ve been learning a lot too, because it’s rare for me to jump into a project that’s somebody else’s baby, and I’m just contributing to a little bit, and that has totally different technology choices than I would have ever picked.

Chris: It’s an Electron app. They picked that, which is also kind of a cool way to go too, because it’s my web skills… so I’m not learning anything too weird, and it’s cross-platform, which is great. So, I’ve been learning a lot about Electron. I think it’s fun.

Drew: That’s fascinating. It’s always amazing how little side projects and things that we do for fun, end up being the place where we sometimes learn the most. And learn skills that can then feed back into our sort of daily work.

Chris: That’s the only way I learn things. I’m dragged into something that… I was like, “They’re not…” It’s rendered with a JavaScript library called Mithril, which is… I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but it’s weird. It’s not… it’s almost like writing React without JSX. You have to “create element” and do all these… but it’s supposed to benchmark way better than it… And it actually kind of matters because in this text based game, the text is just flying. There’s a lot of data manipulation, which is like… you’d think this text based game would be so easy for a browser window to run, but it’s actually kind of not. There’s so much data manipulation happening, that you really have to be really… we have to be conscientious about the speed of the rendering. You know?

Drew: That’s fascinating-

Chris: Pretty cool.

Drew: Yeah. If you, dear listener, would like to hear more from Chris, you can find him on Twitter, where he’s @chriscoyier. Of course, CSS-Tricks can be found at css-tricks.com and CodePen at codepen.io. But most of all, I recommend that you subscribe to the ShopTalk Show podcast if you haven’t already done so, at shoptalkshow.com. Thanks for joining us today, Chris. Do you have any parting words?

Chris: Smashingpodcast.com. I hope that’s the real URL.

(il)

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Smashing Podcast Episode 22 With Chris Coyier: What Is Serverless?

We’re talking about Serverless architectures. What does that mean, and how does it differ from how we might build sites currently? Drew McLellan talks to Chris Coyier to find out.

Today, we’re talking about Serverless architectures. What does that mean, and how does it differ from how we might build sites currently? I spoke to Chris Coyier to find out.

Show Notes

Weekly Update

Transcript

Drew McLellan: He’s a web designer and developer who you may know from CSS-Tricks, a website he started more than 10 years ago and that remains a fantastic learning resource for those building websites. He’s the co-founder of CodePen, the browser based coding playground and community used by front-enders all around the world to share what they make and find inspiration from those they follow. Alongside Dave Rupert is the co-host of ShopTalk Show, a podcast all about making websites. So we know he knows a lot about web development, but did you know he once won a hot dog eating competition using only his charm? My smashing friends, please welcome Chris Coyier. Hello Chris, how are you?

Chris Coyier: Hey, I’m smashing.

Drew: I wanted to talk to you today not about CodePen, and I don’t necessarily want to talk to you about CSS-Tricks, which is one of those amazing resources that I’m sure everyone knows appears right at the top of Google Search results when looking for answers about any web dev question. Up pops your face and there’s a useful blog post written by you or one of your guest contributors.

Chris: Oh, I used to actually do that. There was a… I don’t know, it probably was during the time of when Google had that weird social network. What was that? Google Plus?

Drew: Oh, Plus, yeah.

Chris: Yeah, where they would associate a website with a Plus account, and so my Plus account had an avatar, and the avatar was me, so it would show up in search results. I think those days are gone. I think if you…

Drew: I think so, yeah-

Chris: Yeah.

Drew: But I kind of wanted to talk to you about something that has been a little bit more of a sort of side interest of yours, and that’s this concept of serverless architectures.

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: This is something you’ve been learning sort of more about for a little while. Is that right?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I’m just a fan. It seems like a natural fit to the evolution of front-end development, which is where I feel like I have, at least, some expertise. I consider myself much more of a… much more useful on the front-end than the back-end, not that I… I do it all these days. I’ve been around long enough that I’m not afraid of looking at a little Ruby code, that’s for sure. But I prefer the front-end. I’ve studied it more. I’ve participated in projects more at that level, and then along comes this little kind of a new paradigm that says, “You can use your JavaScript skills on the server,” and it’s interesting. You know? That’s how I think of it. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s why I care, is because I feel it’s like front-end developers have dug so deep into JavaScript. And now we can use that same skill set elsewhere. Mm, pretty cool.

Drew: Seems like a whole new world has opened up, whereas if you were just a front-end coder… I say, just a front-end coder, I shouldn’t. If you’re a front-end coder, and you’re used to working with a colleague or a friend to help you with the back-end implementation, suddenly that’s opened up. And it’s something that you can manage more of the whole stack yourself.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. That’s it.

Drew: Addressing the elephant in the room, right at the top. We’re talking about serverless, and obviously, naming things is hard. We all know that. Serverless architecture doesn’t mean there are no servers, does it?

Chris: I think it’s mandatory, like if this is the first podcast you’re hearing of it, or in the first… you’re only hearing the word “serverless” in the first dozen times you ever heard it, it’s mandatory that you have a visceral reaction and have this kind of, “Oh, but there are still servers.” That’s okay. If that’s happening to you right now, just know that, that’s a required step in this. It’s just like anything else in life. There’s stages to understanding. The first time you hear something, you’re required to kind of reject it a little bit, and then only after a dozen times or so, or after it’s proven its worth a little bit to you, do you get to enter the further stages of understanding here. But the word has won, so if you’re still fighting against the word “serverless”, I hate to tell you, that the train has left the station there. The word is already successful. You’re not going to win this one. So, sorry.

Chris: But I do think it’s interesting that… it’s starting to be like, maybe there actually aren’t servers involved sometimes. I would think one of the things that locked serverless in as a concept was AWS Lambda. They were kind of the first on the scene. A lambda is like a function that you give to AWS and it puts it in the magical sky and then… it has a URL, and you can hit it and it will run that function and return something if you want it to. You know? That’s just HTTP or whatever. That’s how it works, which… the first time you hear that, you’re like, “Why? I don’t care.” But then, there’s some obvious things to it. It could know my API keys that nobody else has access to. That’s why you run back-end to begin with, is that it knows secret stuff that doesn’t have to be in the JavaScript on the client side. So if it needs to talk to a database, it can do that. It can do that securely without having to expose API keys elsewhere. Or even where that data is or how it gets it, it’s…

Chris: So that’s pretty cool. I can write a function that talks to a database, get some data, returns that. Cool. So, Lambda is that, but AWS works. You have to pick a region. You’re like, “I don’t know. Where it should be, Virginia? Oregon? Should I pick the Australia one? I don’t know.” They have 20, 30. I don’t even know how many they have these days, but even lambdas had regions. They, I think, these days have Lambda@Edge, which means it’s all of the regions, which is kind of cool. But they were first, and now everybody’s got something like Lambda. All the cloud services. They want some kind of service in this world. One of them is CloudFlare. CloudFlare has workers. They have way more locations than AWS has, but they executed it kind of at a different time too… the way a CloudFlare worker… it’s similar to a lambda in that you can run Node. You can run JavaScript. You can run a number of other languages too, but… I think of this stuff largely, the most interesting language is JavaScript, just because of the prevalence of it.

Chris: It happens just at the CDN level, which I guess is a server, but I tend to not think of CDNs as a server. Not as obviously as something else. It’s starting to feel even more serverless-y lately. Is a CDN a server? I mean, I guess it’s a computer somewhere, but it feels like even less server-y.

Drew: It feels like, yes, a CDN may be a server, but it’s the most sort of minimal version of a server. It’s like a thin server, if you like.

Chris: Yeah. Sure.

Drew: All right. I’ve heard it said… I can’t remember the source to credit, unfortunately, but I’ve heard serverless described as being “like using a ride-sharing service like Uber or Lyft” or whatever. You can be carless and not own a car, but that doesn’t mean you never use a car.

Chris: Yeah, it doesn’t mean cars don’t exist. Mm, that’s nice.

Drew: You just summon one when you need it, but at the same time, you’re not paying the upfront purchase cost of a car. You’re not paying maintenance or fuel or-

Chris: Right, and the pricing makes sense, too, right? That’s nice. That’s a nice analogy, I think. And then, because it’s at the CDN level too, it just intercepts HTTP requests that are already happening, which means you don’t ask it… you don’t send a request to it and it sends a request back. It’s just happening during the request naturally, which also makes it feel less server-y. I don’t know, it’s interesting. It’s interesting for sure. So that’s a big deal, though, that you brought up the pricing thing. That you only pay for what you use. That’s significant too, because… let’s say, you’re a back-end dev, who’s used to spinning up servers their whole life. And they run the costs, “I need this kind of server with this kind of memory and this kind of CPU and these kind of specs. And this is how much it’s going to cost.” Serverless comes along and chops the head off of that pricing.

Chris: So, even if you’re a back-end dev who just doesn’t like this that much, that they’re just not into it, like your skill set is just what it is over the years, you compare the price and you’re like, “What? I could be paying 1% of what I was paying before?” You are not allowed to not care about that, right? If you’re this back-end dev that’s paying a hundred times more for their service than they need to be paying, you’re just kind of bad at your job then. Sorry to say. This has come along and this has shattered pricing in a lot of ways. You have to care about that. And it’s kind of cool that somebody else is… It’s not like you don’t have to worry about security at all, but it’s not your server. You don’t have… your lambda or cloud function, or your worker, or whatever, isn’t sitting on a server that’s right next to some really sensitive data on your own network. It’s not right next to your database.

Chris: If somebody writes code that somehow tries to eject itself from the worker or the lambda, or whatever, and try to get access to other things in their way, there’s nothing there to get. So the security’s a big deal too, so again, if that’s your job as the server admin, is to deal with the security of this thing. Running it, running certain things in Lambda, you just get some natural security from it, which is great. So, it’s way cheaper. It’s way more secure. It encourages these small modular architecture, which can be a good idea. It seems to be domino after domino of good ideas here. That’s why it’s notable. You know?

Drew: Yeah, I mean, traditionally with a server based architecture that we’ve been running for decades on the web, you have a web server that you run yourself. It holds your front-end code, your back-end code, your database and everything. Then you need to maintain that and keep it running and pay the bills, and even if it’s not being used, it’s there clocking up bills. The user would make a request and it would build all that HTML query stuff from the database, send it all down the line to the browser. That process works. It’s how loads of things are built. It’s probably the majority of how the web is built. It’s how things like WordPress work. Is this really a problem that we need to solve? I mean, we’ve talked about costs a little bit. What are the other sort of problems with that, that we’re… that we need to address, and that serverless might help us with?

Chris: Yeah, the problems with the old school approach. Yeah, I don’t know, maybe there isn’t any. I mean, I’m not saying the whole web needs to change their whole… the whole thing overnight. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t really, but I think it opens up doors. It just seems like, when good ideas arrive like this, they just slowly change how the web operates at all. So, if there’s some CMS that is built in some way that expects a database to be there, it means that maybe the hosts of the future will start leveraging this in interesting ways. Maybe it feels to you like it’s still just a traditional server, but the hosts themselves have farmed it out, how they operate, to serverless architectures. So you don’t even really know that that’s happening, but they’ve found a way to slash their costs by hosting the stuff that you need in serverless ways. Maybe yeah don’t even need to care as a developer, but at a meta level, that’s what’s happening. Maybe. I don’t know.

Chris: It also doesn’t mean that… Databases are still there. If it turns out that architecturally having a relational database is the correct way to store that data, great. I mention that because this world of Serverless is kind of growing up at the same time that JAMstack is. And JAMstack is this architecture that’s, “You should be serving your website off of static hosts, that run nothing at all except for…” They’re like little CDNs. They’re like, “I can do nothing. I don’t run PHP. I don’t run Ruby. I run nothing. I run on a tiny little web server that’s just designed to serve static files only.”

Chris: “And then, if you need to do more than that, if you need to pull data from a relational database, then please do it at some other time, not at the server time. You can either do it in a build process ahead of time, and pull that stuff out of the database, pre-build static files and I’ll serve those, or do it at runtime.” Meaning you get this shell of a document, and then it makes a JavaScript request to get some data and prefills it then. So you do it ahead of time or after time, but it doesn’t mean, “Don’t use a relational database.” It just means, “Don’t have the server generate it at the time of the request of the document,” which is a… I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a paradigm shift.

Chris: It’s not just JAMstack either. We’re also living in the time of JavaScript frameworks. We’re living in a time where it’s starting to be a little more expected that the way that a JavaScript application boots up, is that it mounts some components, and as those components mount, it asks for the data that it needs. And so, it can be kind of a natural fit for something like a React website to be like, “Well, I’ll just hit a serverless function to cough up the data that it needs. It hits some JSON API essentially. I get the JSON data that I need and I construct myself out of that data, and then I render onto the page.” Now, whether that’s good or bad for the web, it’s like, “I don’t know. Too bad. Ship has sailed. That’s how a lot of people are building sites.” It’s just client rendered things. So, serverless and modern JavaScript kind of go hand in hand.

Drew: I suppose you don’t have to wholesale… be looking at one architecture or another. There’s an area in the middle where parts of an infrastructure might be more traditional and parts could be serverless, I’m guessing?

Chris: Yeah. Well, they’re trying to tell you that anyway. Anybody that wants to sell you any part of their architecture is like, “You don’t have to buy in all right now. Just do it a little bit.” Because of course, they want you to dip your toe into whatever they’re selling, because once you dip the toe, the chances that you splash yourself into the pool is a lot higher. So, I think that… it’s not a lie, though, necessarily, although I find a little less luck in… I don’t want my stack to be a little bit of everything. I think there’s some technical death there that I don’t always want to swallow.

Drew: Mm (affirmative).

Chris: But it’s possible to do. I think the most quoted one is… let’s say I have a site that has an eCommerce element to it, which means… and let’s say large scale eCommerce, so 10,000 products or something, that this JAMstack architecture hasn’t gotten to the point where that’s always particularly efficient to rebuild that statically. So, the thinking goes, “Then don’t.” Let that part kind of hydrate naturally with… hit serverless functions and get the data that it needs, and do all that. But the rest of the site, which isn’t… there’s not as many pages, there’s not as much data, you could kind of pre-render or whatever. So a little bit of both.

Drew: Of course, plenty of people are dealing with legacy systems that… some old database thing that was built in the 2000s that they may be able to stick a sort of JSON API layer on top of…

Chris: Yeah.

Drew: … and build something more modern, and perhaps serverless, and then still interact with those legacy systems by sort of gluing it altogether in a weird way.

Chris: Yeah. I like that though, isn’t it? Aren’t… most websites already exist. How many of us are totally green-fielding websites? Most of us work on some crap that already exists that needs to be dragged into the future for some reason, because I don’t know, developers want to work faster, or you can’t hire anybody in COBOL anymore, or whatever the story is. You know?

Drew: So terminology wise, we’re talking about JAMstack which is this methodology of running a code pretty much in the browser, serving it from a CDN. So, not having anything dynamic on the server. And then when we talk about serverless, we’re talking about those small bits of functionality that run on their server somewhere else. Is that right? That we were talking about these cloud function kind of-

Chris: Yeah, I mean, they just happen to be both kind of hot ideas right now. So it’s kind of easy to talk about one and talk about the other. But they don’t necessarily need to be together. You could run a JAMstack site that has nothing to do with serverless anything. You’re just doing it, you just pre-build the site and run it, and you can use serverless without having to care about JAMstack. In fact, CodePen does nothing JAMstack at all. Not that we want to talk about CodePen necessarily, but it’s a Ruby on Rails app. It runs on a whole bunch of AWS EC2 instances and a variety of other architecture to make it happen. But we use serverless stuff whenever we can for whatever we can, because it’s cheap and secure, and just a nice way to work. So, no JAMstack in use at all but serverless all over the place.

Drew: That’s quite interesting. What sort of tasks are you putting serverless to on CodePen?

Chris: Well, there’s a whole bunch of things. One of them is, I think, hopefully fairly obvious is, I need… the point of CodePen is that you write each HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the browser and it renders it in front of you, right? But you can pick pre-processor languages as well. Let’s say you like Sass. You turn Sass on in the CSS, and you write Sass. Well, something has to process the Sass. These days, Sass is written in Dart or something.

Chris: Theoretically, you could do that in the client. But these libraries that do pre-processing are pretty big. I don’t think I want to ship the entire Sass library to you, just to run that thing. I don’t want to… it’s just not, that’s not the right architecture for this necessarily. Maybe it is down the road, I mean, we could talk about offline crap, yada, yada, Web Workers. There’s a million architectural things we could do. But here’s how it does work now, is there’s a lambda. It processes Sass. It has one tiny, tiny, tiny, little job.

Chris: You send it this blob of Sass and it sends you stuff back, which is the processed CSS, maybe a site map, whatever. It has one tiny little job and we probably pay for that lambda, like four cents or something. Because lambdas are just incredibly cheap and you can hammer it too. You don’t have to worry about scale. You just hit that thing as much as you want and your bill will be astonishingly cheap. There is moments where serverless starts to cross that line of being too expensive. I don’t know what that is, I’m not that master of stuff like that. But generally, any serverless stuff we do, we basically… all nearly count as free, because it’s that cheap. But there’s one for Sass. There’s one for Less. There’s one for Babbel. There’s one for TypeScript. There’s one for… All those are individual lambdas that we run. Here’s some code, give it to the lambda, it comes back, and we do whatever we’re going to do with it. But we use it for a lot more than that, even recently.

Chris: Here’s an example. Every single Pen on CodePen has a screenshot. That’s kind of cool, right? So, the people make a thing and then we need a PNG or a JPEG, or something of it, so that we can… that way when you tweet it, you get the little preview of it. If you share it in Slack, you get the little preview of it. We use it on the website itself to render… instead of an iframe, if we could detect that the Pen isn’t animated, because an iframe’s image is much lighter, so why not use the image? It’s not animated anyway. Just performance gains like that. So each of those screenshots has a URL to it, obviously. And we’ve architected it so that that URL is actually a serverless function. It’s a worker. And so, if that URL gets hit, we can really quickly check if we’ve already taken that screenshot or not.

Chris: That’s actually enabled by CloudFlare Workers, because CloudFlare Workers are not just a serverless function, but they have a data store too. They have this thing called key-value store, so the ID of that, we can just check really quick and it’ll be, “True or false, do you have it or not?” If it’s got it, it serves it. And it serves it over CloudFlare, which is super fast to begin with. And then gives you all this ability too. Because it’s an image CDN, you can say, “Well, serve it in the optimal format. Serve it as these dimensions.” I don’t have to make the image in those dimensions. You just put the dimensions in the URL and it comes back as that size, magically. So that’s really nice. If it doesn’t have it, it asks another serverless function to make it really quick. So it’ll make it and then it’ll put it in a bucket somewhere… because you have to have a origin for the image, right? You have to actually host it somewhere usually. So we put it in an S3 bucket real quick and then serve it.

Chris: So there’s no queuing server, there’s no nothing. It’s like serverless functions manage the creation, storage and serving of these images. And there’s like 50 million or 80 million of them or something. It’s a lot, so it handles that as scale pretty nicely. We just don’t even touch it. It just happens. It all happens super fast. Super nice.

Drew: I guess it… well, a serverless function is ideally going to suit a task that needs very little knowledge of state of things. I mean, you mentioned CloudFlare’s ability to store key-value pairs to see if you’ve got something cached already or not.

Chris: Yeah. That’s what they’re trying to solve, though, with those. Those key-value pairs, is that… I think that traditionally was true. They’re like, “Avoid state in the thing,” because you just can’t count on it. And CloudFlare Workers are being like, “Yeah, actually, you can deal with state, to some degree.” It’s not as fancy as a… I don’t know, it’s key values, so it’s a key in a value. It’s not like a nested, relational fancy thing. So there’s probably some limits to that. But this is baby days for this. I think that stuff’s going to evolve to be more powerful, so you do have some ability to do some state-like stuff.

Drew: And sometimes the limitation, that sort of limited ability to maintain state, or the fact that you have no… you want to maintain no state at all, kind of pushes you into an architecture that gives you this sort of… Well, when we talk about the software philosophy of “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”, don’t we?

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: Where each little component does one thing and does it well. And doesn’t really know about the rest of the ecosystem around it. And it seems that really applies to this concept of serverless functions. Do you agree?

Chris: Yeah. I think you could have a philosophical debate whether that’s a good idea or not. You know? I think some people like the monolith, as it were. I think there’s possible… there’s ways to overdo this and to make too many small parts that are too hard to test altogether. It’s nice to have a test that’s like, “Oh, I wonder if my Sass function is working. Well, let’s just write a little test for it and make sure that it is.” But let’s say, what matters to the user is some string of seven of those. How do you test all seven of them together? I think that story gets a little more complicated. I don’t know how to speak super intelligently to all that stuff, but I know that it’s not necessarily that, if you roll with all serverless functions that’s automatically a better architecture than any other architecture. I like it. It reasons out to me nicely, but I don’t know that it’s the end-all be-all of all architectures. You know?

Drew: To me, it feels extremely web-like, in that… this is exactly how HTML works, isn’t it? You deliver some HTML and the browser will then go and fetch your images and fetch your JavaScript and fetch your CSS. It seems like it’s an expansion of that –

Chris: It’s nice.

Drew: … sort of idea. But, one thing we know about the web, is it’s designed to be resilient because network’s fragile.

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: How robust is the sort of serverless approach? What happens if something… if one of those small pieces goes away?

Chris: That would be very bad. You know? It would be a disaster. Your site would go down just like any other server, if it happens to go down, I guess.

Drew: Are there ways to mitigate that, that are particularly –

Chris: I don’t know.

Drew: … suited to this sort of approach, that you’ve come across?

Chris: Maybe. I mean, like I said, a really super fancy robust thing might be like… let’s say you visit CodePen and let’s say that there’s a JavaScript implementation of Sass and we noticed that you’re on a fairly fast network and that you’re idle right now. Maybe we’ll go grab that JavaScript and we’ll throw it in a service worker. Then, if we detect that the lambda fails, or something, or that you have this thing installed already, then we’ll hit the service worker instead of the lambda, and service workers are able to work offline. So, that’s kind of nice too. That’s interesting. I mean, they are the same language-ish. Service workers are JavaScript and a lot of Cloud functions are JavaScript, so there’s some… I think that’s a possibility, although that… it’s just, that’s some serious technical that… It just scares me to have this chunk of JavaScript that you’ve delivered to how many thousands of user, that you don’t necessarily know what they have, and what version of it they have. Eww, but that’s just my own scarediness. I’m sure some people have done a good job with that type of thing.

Chris: I actually don’t know. Maybe you know some strategies that I don’t, on resiliency of serverless.

Drew: I guess there’s a failure mode, a style of failure, that could happen with serverless functions, where you run a function once and it fails, and you can run it a second time immediately afterwards and it would succeed, because it might hit a completely different server. Or whatever the problem was, when that run may not exist on a second request. The issues of an entire host being down is one thing, but maybe there are… you have individual problems with the machine. You have a particular server where its memory has gone bad, and it’s throwing a load of errors, and the first time you hit it, it’s going to fail. Second time, that problem might have been rooted around.

Chris: Companies that tend to offer this technology, you have to trust them, but they also happen to be the type of companies that… this is their pride. This is the reason why people use them is because they’re reliable. I’m sure people could point to some AWS outages of the past, but they tend to be a little rare, and not super common. If you were hosting your own crap, I bet they got you beat from an SLA percentage kind of level. You know? So it’s not like, “Don’t build in a resilient way,” but generally the type of companies that offer these things are pretty damn reliable. The chances of you going down because you screwed up that function are a lot higher than because their architecture is failing.

Drew: I suppose, I mean, just like anything where you’re using an API or something that can fail, is just making sure you structure your code to cope with that failure mode, and to know what happens next, rather than just throwing up an error to the user, or just dying, or what have you. It’s being aware of that and asking the user to try again. Or trying again yourself, or something.

Chris: Yeah, I like that idea of trying more than once, rather than just being, “Oh no. Fail. Abort.” “I don’t know, why don’t you try again there, buddy?”

Drew: So I mean, when it comes to testing and development of serverless functions, sort of cloud functions, is that something that can be done locally? Does it have to be done in the cloud? Are there ways to manage that?

Chris: I think there are some ways. I don’t know if the story is as awesome. It’s still a relatively new concept, so I think that that gets better and better. But from what I know, for one thing, you’re writing a fairly normal Node function. Assuming you’re using JavaScript to do this, and I know that on Lambda specifically, they support all kinds of stuff. You can write a fricking PHP Cloud Function. You can write a Ruby Cloud Function. So, I know I’m specifically talking about JavaScript, because I have a feeling that most of these things are JavaScript. Even no matter what language it is, I mean, you can go to your command line locally and execute the thing. Some of that testing is… you just test it like you would any other code. You just call the function locally and see if it works.

Chris: It’s a little different story when you’re talking about an HTTP request to it, that’s the thing that you’re trying to test. Does it respond to the request properly? And does it return the stuff properly? I don’t know. The network might get involved there. So you might want to write tests at that level. That’s fine. I don’t know. What is the normal story there? You spin up some kind of local server or something that serves it. Use Postman, I don’t know. But there’s… Frameworks try to help too. I know that the serverless “.com”, which is just terribly confusing, but there’s literally a company called Serverless and they make a framework for writing the serverless functions that helps you deploy them.

Chris: So if you like NPM install serverless, you get their framework. And it’s widely regarded as very good, because it’s just very helpful, but they don’t have their own cloud or whatever. You write these and then it helps you get them to a real lambda. Or it might work with multiple cloud providers. I don’t even know these days, but their purpose of existing is to make the deployment story easier. I don’t know what… AWS is not renowned for their simplicity. You know? There’s all this world of tooling to help you use AWS and they’re one of them.

Chris: They have some kind of paid product. I don’t even know what it is exactly. I think one of the things they do is… the purpose of using them is for testing, is to have a dev environment that’s for testing your serverless function.

Drew: Yeah, because I guess, that is quite a big part of the workflow, isn’t it? If you’ve written your JavaScript function, you’ve tested it locally, you know it’s going to do the job. How do you actually pick which provider it’s going to go into and how do you get it onto that service? Now, I mean, that’s a minefield, isn’t it?

Chris: Yeah. I mean, if you want to use no tooling at all, I think they have a really… like AWS, specifically, has a really rudimentary GUI for the thing. You can paste the code in there and hit save and be like, “Okay, I guess it’s live now.” That’s not the best dev story, but I think you could do it that way. I know CloudFlare workers have this thing called Wrangler that you install locally. You spin it up and it spins up a fake browser on the top and then dev tools below. Then you can visit the URL and it somehow intercepts that and runs your local cloud function against it. Because one of the interesting things about workers is… you know how I described how it… you don’t hit a URL and then it returns stuff. It just automatically runs when you… when it intercepts the URL, like CDN style.

Chris: So, one of the things it can do is manipulate the HTML on the way through. The worker, it has access to the complete HTML document. They have a jQuery-esque thing that’s like, “Look for this selector. Get the content from it. Replace it with this content. And then continue the request.” So you can mess with code on the way through it. To test that locally, you’re using their little Wrangler tool thing to do that. Also, I think the way we did it was… it’s also a little dangerous. The second you put it live, it’s affecting all your web traffic. It’s kind of a big deal. You don’t want to screw up a worker. You know? You can spin up a dev worker that’s at a fake subdomain, and because it’s CloudFlare, you can… CloudFlare can just make a subdomain anyway. I don’t know. It’s just kind of a nice way to do a… as you’re only affecting sub-domain traffic, not your main traffic yet. But the subdomain’s just a mirror of a production anyway, so that’s kind of a… that’s a testing story there.

Chris: It brings up an interesting thing, though, to me. It’s like… imagine you have two websites. One of them is… for us it’s like a Ruby on Rails app. Whatever. It’s a thing. But we don’t have a CMS for that. That’s just like… it’s not a CMS, really. I think there’s probably Ruby CMSs, but there’s not any renowned ones. You know? It seems like all the good CMSs are PHP, for some reason. So, you want a quality CMS. Drew, you’ve lived in the CMS market for a long time –

Drew: Absolutely.

Chris: … so you know how this goes. Let’s say you want to manage your sites in Perch or whatever, because it’s a good CMS and that’s the proper thing to use to build the kind of pages you want to build. But you don’t want to run them on the same server. Unless you want to manage the pages on one site, but show them on another site. Well, I don’t know, there’s any number of ways to do that. But one JavaScript way could be, “Okay, load the page. There’s an empty div there. Run some JavaScript. Ask the other site for the content of that page and then plunk it out on the new page.” That’s fine, I guess, but now you’re in a client side rendered page. It’s going to be slow. It’s going to have bad SEO Company, because… Google will see it eventually, but it takes 10 days or something. It’s just a bad story for SEO Company. It’s not very resilient, because who knows what’s going to happen in the network. It’s not the greatest way to do this kind of “content elsewhere, content on site B, show page of site A”, situation.

Chris: You could also do it on the server side, though. Let’s say you had… Ruby is capable of granting a network request too, but that’s even scarier because then if something fails on the network, the whole page could die or something. It’s like a nervous thing. I don’t love doing that either. But we did this just recently with a worker, in that we… because the worker’s JavaScript, it can make a fetch request. So, it fetches site A, it finds this div on the page, and then it goes and asks site B for the content. Gets the content. Plugs it into that div, and serves the page before it gets anything. So it looks like a server rendered page, but it wasn’t. It all happened at the… on the edge, at the worker level, at the serverless level.

Chris: So it’s kind of cool. I think you can imagine a fetch request on the browser probably takes, I don’t know, a second and a half or something. It probably takes a minute to do it. But because these are… site B is hosted on some nice hosting and Cloudflare has some… who knows what kind of super computers they use to do it. They do. Those are just two servers talking to each other, and that fetch request happens just so super duper, duper fast. It’s not limited to the internet connection speed of the user, so that little request takes like two milliseconds to get that data. So it’s kind of this cool way to stitch together a site from multiple sources and have it feel like, and behave like, a server rendered page. I think there’s a cool future to that.

Drew: Are there any sort of conventions that are sort of springing up around serverless stuff. I’m sort of thinking about how to architect things. Say I’ve got something where I want to do two sort of requests to different APIs. I want to take in a postal address and geocode it against one, and then take those coordinates and send that to a florist who’s going to flower bomb my front yard or something. How would you build that? Would you do two separate things? Or would you turn that into one function and just make the request once from the browser?

Chris: Mm (affirmative). That’s a fascinating question. I’d probably have an architect function or something. One function would be the one that’s in charge of orchestrating the rest of them. It doesn’t have to be, your website is the hub and it only communicates to this array of single sources. Serverless functions can talk to other serverless functions. So I think that’s somewhat common to have kind of an orchestrator function that makes the different calls and stitches them together, and returns them as one. I think that is probably smart and faster, because you want servers talking to servers, not the client talking to a whole bunch of servers. If it can make one request and get everything that it needs, I think that’s probably generally a good idea-

Drew: Yeah, that sounds smart. Yep.

Chris: But I think that’s the ultimate thing. You get a bunch of server nerds talking, they’ll talk about the different approaches to that exact idea in 10 different ways.

Drew: Yeah. No, that sounds pretty smart. I mean, you mentioned as well that this approach is ideal if you’re using APIs where you’ve got secret information. You’ve got API keys or something that you don’t want to live in the client. Because I don’t know, maybe this florist API charges you $100 dollars every time flower bomb someone.

Chris: Easily.

Drew: You can basically use those functions to almost proxy the request and add in the secret information as it goes, and keep it secret. That’s a viable way to work?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think so. I mean, secrets are, I don’t know, they’re interesting. They’re a form of buy in I think to whatever provider you go with, because… I think largely because of source control. It’s kind of like, you could just put your API key right in the serverless function, because it’s just going to a server, right? You don’t even have to abstract it, really. The client will never see that code that executes, but in order for it to get there, there’s probably a source control along the way. It’s probably like you commit to master, and then master… then some kind of deployment happens that makes that thing go to the serverless function. Then you can’t put your API key in there, because then it’s in the repo, and you don’t put your API keys in repos. That’s good advice. Now there’s stuff. We’ve just done… at CodePen recently, we started using this git-crypt thing, which is an interesting way to put keys safely into your repos, because it’s encrypted by the time anybody’s looking at that file.

Chris: But only locally they’re decrypted, so they’re useful. So it’s just kind of an interesting idea. I don’t know if that helps in this case, but usually, cloud providers of these things have a web interface that’s, “Put your API keys here, and we’ll make them available at runtime of that function.” Then it kind of locks… it doesn’t lock you in forever but it kind of is… it’s not as easy to move, because all your keys are… you put in some input field and some admin interface somewhere.

Drew: Yeah, I think that’s the way that Netlify manage it.

Chris: They all do, you know?

Drew: Yeah. You have the secret environment variables that you can set from the web interface. That seems to work quite nicely.

Chris: Yeah, right. But then you got to leave… I don’t know, it’s not that big of a deal. I’m not saying they’re doing anything nefarious or anything. How do you deal with those secrets? Well, it’s a hard problem. So they kind of booted it to, I don’t know, “Just put them in this input field and we’ll take care of it for you, don’t worry about it.”

Drew: Is there anything that you’ve seen that stands out as an obvious case for things that you can do with serverless, that you just couldn’t do with a traditional kind of serverfull approach? Or is it just taking that code and sort of almost deploying it in a different way?

Chris: It’s probably mostly that. I don’t know that it unlocks any possibility that you just absolutely couldn’t run it any other way. Yeah, I think that’s a fair answer, but it does kind of commoditize it in an interesting way. Like, if somebody writes a really nice serverless function… I don’t know that this exists quite yet, but there could kind of a marketplace, almost, for these functions. Like, I want a really good serverless function that can take a screenshot. That could be an open source project that lots of eyeballs around, that does a tremendously good job of doing it and solves all these weird edge cases. That’s the one I want to use. I think that’s kind of cool. You know? That you can kind of benefit from other people’s experience in that way. I think that will happen more and more.

Drew: I guess it’s the benefit that we talked about, right at the top, of enabling people who write JavaScript and may have written JavaScript only for the front-end, to expand and use those skills on the back-end as well.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think so, I think that’s… because there’s moments like… you don’t have to be tremendously skilled to know what’s appropriate and what’s not for a website. Like, I did a little tutorial the other week, where there was this glitch uses these… when you save a glitch, they give you a slug for your thing that you built, that’s, “Whiskey, tango, foxtrot. 1,000.” It’s like a clever little thing. The chances of it being unique are super high, because I think they even append a number to it or something too. But they end up being these fun little things. They open source their library that has all those words in it, but it’s like a hundred, thousands of words. The file is huge. You know? It’s megabytes large of just a dictionary of words. You probably learn in your first year of development, “Don’t ship a JavaScript file that’s megabytes of a dictionary.” That’s not a good thing to ship. You know? But Node doesn’t care. You can ship hundreds of them. It’s irrelevant to the speed on a server.

Drew: Yeah.

Chris: It doesn’t matter on a server. So, I could be like, “Hmm, well, I’ll just do it in Node then.” I’ll have a statement that says, “Words equal require words,” or whatever, and a note at the top, “Have it randomize a number. Pull it out of the array and return it.” So that serverless function is eight lines of code with a packaged@JSON that pulls in this open source library. And then my front-end code, there’s a URL to the serverless function. It hits that URL. The URL returns one word or a group of words or whatever. You build your own little API for it. And now, I have a really kind of nice, efficient thing. What was nice about that is, it’s so simple. I’m not worried about the security of it. I don’t… you know?

Chris: It’s just… a very average or beginner JavaScript developer, I think, can pull that off, which is cool. That’s an enabling thing that they didn’t have before. Before, they were like, “Well, here’s a 2MB array of words.” “Oh, I can’t ship that to the client.” “Oh, you’ll just shut down then.” You might hit this wall that’s like, “I just can’t do that part then. I need to ask somebody else to help me with that or just not do it or pick more boring slugs or some…” It’s just, you have to go some other way that is a wall to you, because you couldn’t do it. And now, you’re, “Oh, well, I’ll just…” Instead of having that in my script slash, or in my source slash scripts folder, I’ll put it in my functions folder instead.

Chris: You kind of like moved the script from one folder to the other. And that one happens to get deployed as a serverless function instead. How cool is that? You know? You’re using the same exact skill set, almost. There’s still some rough edges to it, but it’s pretty close.

Drew: It’s super cool. You’ve put together a sort of little micro site all about these ideas, haven’t you?

Chris: Yeah. I was a little early to the game. I was just working on it today, though, because… it gets pull requests. The idea… well, it’s at serverless.css-tricks.com and… there’s a dash in CSS-Tricks, by the way. So it’s a subdomain of CSS-Tricks, and I built it serverlessly too, so this is… CSS-Tricks is like a WordPress site, but this is a static site generator site. All the content of it is in the GitHub repo, which is open-source. So if you want to change the content of the site, you can just submit a poll request, which is nice because there’s been a hundred or so of those over time. But I built all the original content.

Drew: It’s a super useful place, because it lists… If you’re thinking, “Right, I want to get started with serverless functions,” it lists all the providers who you could try it and…

Chris: That’s all it is, pretty much, is lists of technology. Yeah.

Drew: Which is great, because otherwise, you’re just Googling for whatever and you don’t know what you’re finding. Yeah, it’s lists of API providers that help you do these sorts of things.

Chris: Forms is one example of that, because… so the minute that you choose to… let’s say, you’re going to go JAMstack, which I know that’s not necessarily the point of this, but you see how hand in hand they are. All of a sudden, you don’t have a PHP file or whatever to process that form with. How do you do forms on a JAMstack site? Well, there’s any number of ways to do it. Everybody and their sister wants to help you solve that problem, apparently. So I think if I was the inventor of the word JAMstack, so they try to help you naturally, but you don’t have to use them.

Chris: In fact, I was so surprised putting this site together. Let’s see. There’s six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty one, twenty two services out there, that want to help you serverlessly process your forms on this site right now. If you want to be the 23rd, you’re welcome to it, but you have some competition out there. So the idea behind this is that you write a form in HTML, like literally a form element. And then the action attribute of the form, it can’t point anywhere internally, because there’s nothing to point to. You can’t process, so it points externally. It points to whatever they want you to point it to. They’ll process the form and then they tend to do things that you’d expect them to, like send an email notification. Or send a Slack thing. Or then send it to Zapier and Zapier will send it somewhere else. They all have slightly different feature sets and pricing and things, but they’re all trying to solve that problem for you, like, “You don’t want to process your own forms? No problem. We’ll process it for you.”

Drew: Yeah, it’s a super useful resource. I’d really recommend everyone check it out. It’s serverless.css-tricks.com. So, I’ve been learning all about serverless. What have you been learning about lately, Chris?

Chris: Well, I’m still very much in this world too and learning about serverless stuff. I had an idea to… I used to play this online role playing game ages ago. I just recently discovered that it’s still alive. It’s a text based medieval fantasy kind of game. I played it when AOL was a thing, because AOL wanted to have these games that you had to be logged on to play it, because they wanted you to spend hours and hours on AOL, so they could send you these huge bills, which was, I’m sure, why they did so well at some point.

Drew: So billing by the second. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. So games was big for them. If they could get you playing games with other people on there. So this game kind of… it didn’t debut there, but it moved to AOL, because I’m sure they got a juicy deal for it, but it was so… I mean, it’s just, couldn’t possibly be nerdier. You’re a dwarven mage and you get rune staff from your leather sheath. And you type commands into it like a terminal. Then the game responds to you. I played that game for a very long time. I was very into it. I got into the community of it and the spirit of it. It was kind of a… it was like I was just alone by myself at my computer, but yet I look back on that time in my life, and be like, “That was a wonderful time in my life.” I was really… I just liked the people and the game and all that. But then I grew up and stopped playing it, because life happens to you.

Chris: I only found out recently, because somebody started doing a podcast about it again… I don’t know how I came across it, but I just did. I was like, “This game is alive and well in today’s world, are you kidding me? This text based thing.” And I was more than happy to reactivate and get my old characters back and play it. But only to find out that the clients that they have you download for this game, haven’t evolved at all. They are awful. They almost assume that you’re using Windows. There’s just these terribly cheesy poorly rendering… and it’s text based, you think it’d at least have nice typography. No. So I’m like, “I could be involved. I could write a client for this game. Put beautiful typography in it.” Just modernize the thing, and I think the players of the game would appreciate it, but it felt overwhelming to me. “How can I do it?” But I find some open source projects. One of them is like… you can play the game through an actual terminal window, and it uses some open source libs to kind of make a GUI out of a terminal window.

Drew: Really?

Chris: I don’t know. So that was kind of cool. I was like, “If they wrote that, there must be code in there to how to connect to the game and get it all going and stuff. So at least I have some starter code.” I was trying to go along the app, “Maybe I’ll do it in Flutter or something,” so the final product app would work on mobile phones and, “I could really modernize this thing.” But then I got overwhelmed. I was like, “Ah, this is too big a… I can’t. I’m busy.” But I found another person who had the same idea and they were way further along with it, so I could just contribute on a design level. And it’s been really fun to work on, but I’ve been learning a lot too, because it’s rare for me to jump into a project that’s somebody else’s baby, and I’m just contributing to a little bit, and that has totally different technology choices than I would have ever picked.

Chris: It’s an Electron app. They picked that, which is also kind of a cool way to go too, because it’s my web skills… so I’m not learning anything too weird, and it’s cross-platform, which is great. So, I’ve been learning a lot about Electron. I think it’s fun.

Drew: That’s fascinating. It’s always amazing how little side projects and things that we do for fun, end up being the place where we sometimes learn the most. And learn skills that can then feed back into our sort of daily work.

Chris: That’s the only way I learn things. I’m dragged into something that… I was like, “They’re not…” It’s rendered with a JavaScript library called Mithril, which is… I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but it’s weird. It’s not… it’s almost like writing React without JSX. You have to “create element” and do all these… but it’s supposed to benchmark way better than it… And it actually kind of matters because in this text based game, the text is just flying. There’s a lot of data manipulation, which is like… you’d think this text based game would be so easy for a browser window to run, but it’s actually kind of not. There’s so much data manipulation happening, that you really have to be really… we have to be conscientious about the speed of the rendering. You know?

Drew: That’s fascinating-

Chris: Pretty cool.

Drew: Yeah. If you, dear listener, would like to hear more from Chris, you can find him on Twitter, where he’s @chriscoyier. Of course, CSS-Tricks can be found at css-tricks.com and CodePen at codepen.io. But most of all, I recommend that you subscribe to the ShopTalk Show podcast if you haven’t already done so, at shoptalkshow.com. Thanks for joining us today, Chris. Do you have any parting words?

Chris: Smashingpodcast.com. I hope that’s the real URL.

(il)

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Smashing Podcast Episode 22 With Chris Coyier: What Is Serverless?

We’re talking about Serverless architectures. What does that mean, and how does it differ from how we might build sites currently? Drew McLellan talks to Chris Coyier to find out.

Today, we’re talking about Serverless architectures. What does that mean, and how does it differ from how we might build sites currently? I spoke to Chris Coyier to find out.

Show Notes

Weekly Update

Transcript

Drew McLellan: He’s a web designer and developer who you may know from CSS-Tricks, a website he started more than 10 years ago and that remains a fantastic learning resource for those building websites. He’s the co-founder of CodePen, the browser based coding playground and community used by front-enders all around the world to share what they make and find inspiration from those they follow. Alongside Dave Rupert is the co-host of ShopTalk Show, a podcast all about making websites. So we know he knows a lot about web development, but did you know he once won a hot dog eating competition using only his charm? My smashing friends, please welcome Chris Coyier. Hello Chris, how are you?

Chris Coyier: Hey, I’m smashing.

Drew: I wanted to talk to you today not about CodePen, and I don’t necessarily want to talk to you about CSS-Tricks, which is one of those amazing resources that I’m sure everyone knows appears right at the top of Google Search results when looking for answers about any web dev question. Up pops your face and there’s a useful blog post written by you or one of your guest contributors.

Chris: Oh, I used to actually do that. There was a… I don’t know, it probably was during the time of when Google had that weird social network. What was that? Google Plus?

Drew: Oh, Plus, yeah.

Chris: Yeah, where they would associate a website with a Plus account, and so my Plus account had an avatar, and the avatar was me, so it would show up in search results. I think those days are gone. I think if you…

Drew: I think so, yeah-

Chris: Yeah.

Drew: But I kind of wanted to talk to you about something that has been a little bit more of a sort of side interest of yours, and that’s this concept of serverless architectures.

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: This is something you’ve been learning sort of more about for a little while. Is that right?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I’m just a fan. It seems like a natural fit to the evolution of front-end development, which is where I feel like I have, at least, some expertise. I consider myself much more of a… much more useful on the front-end than the back-end, not that I… I do it all these days. I’ve been around long enough that I’m not afraid of looking at a little Ruby code, that’s for sure. But I prefer the front-end. I’ve studied it more. I’ve participated in projects more at that level, and then along comes this little kind of a new paradigm that says, “You can use your JavaScript skills on the server,” and it’s interesting. You know? That’s how I think of it. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s why I care, is because I feel it’s like front-end developers have dug so deep into JavaScript. And now we can use that same skill set elsewhere. Mm, pretty cool.

Drew: Seems like a whole new world has opened up, whereas if you were just a front-end coder… I say, just a front-end coder, I shouldn’t. If you’re a front-end coder, and you’re used to working with a colleague or a friend to help you with the back-end implementation, suddenly that’s opened up. And it’s something that you can manage more of the whole stack yourself.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. That’s it.

Drew: Addressing the elephant in the room, right at the top. We’re talking about serverless, and obviously, naming things is hard. We all know that. Serverless architecture doesn’t mean there are no servers, does it?

Chris: I think it’s mandatory, like if this is the first podcast you’re hearing of it, or in the first… you’re only hearing the word “serverless” in the first dozen times you ever heard it, it’s mandatory that you have a visceral reaction and have this kind of, “Oh, but there are still servers.” That’s okay. If that’s happening to you right now, just know that, that’s a required step in this. It’s just like anything else in life. There’s stages to understanding. The first time you hear something, you’re required to kind of reject it a little bit, and then only after a dozen times or so, or after it’s proven its worth a little bit to you, do you get to enter the further stages of understanding here. But the word has won, so if you’re still fighting against the word “serverless”, I hate to tell you, that the train has left the station there. The word is already successful. You’re not going to win this one. So, sorry.

Chris: But I do think it’s interesting that… it’s starting to be like, maybe there actually aren’t servers involved sometimes. I would think one of the things that locked serverless in as a concept was AWS Lambda. They were kind of the first on the scene. A lambda is like a function that you give to AWS and it puts it in the magical sky and then… it has a URL, and you can hit it and it will run that function and return something if you want it to. You know? That’s just HTTP or whatever. That’s how it works, which… the first time you hear that, you’re like, “Why? I don’t care.” But then, there’s some obvious things to it. It could know my API keys that nobody else has access to. That’s why you run back-end to begin with, is that it knows secret stuff that doesn’t have to be in the JavaScript on the client side. So if it needs to talk to a database, it can do that. It can do that securely without having to expose API keys elsewhere. Or even where that data is or how it gets it, it’s…

Chris: So that’s pretty cool. I can write a function that talks to a database, get some data, returns that. Cool. So, Lambda is that, but AWS works. You have to pick a region. You’re like, “I don’t know. Where it should be, Virginia? Oregon? Should I pick the Australia one? I don’t know.” They have 20, 30. I don’t even know how many they have these days, but even lambdas had regions. They, I think, these days have Lambda@Edge, which means it’s all of the regions, which is kind of cool. But they were first, and now everybody’s got something like Lambda. All the cloud services. They want some kind of service in this world. One of them is CloudFlare. CloudFlare has workers. They have way more locations than AWS has, but they executed it kind of at a different time too… the way a CloudFlare worker… it’s similar to a lambda in that you can run Node. You can run JavaScript. You can run a number of other languages too, but… I think of this stuff largely, the most interesting language is JavaScript, just because of the prevalence of it.

Chris: It happens just at the CDN level, which I guess is a server, but I tend to not think of CDNs as a server. Not as obviously as something else. It’s starting to feel even more serverless-y lately. Is a CDN a server? I mean, I guess it’s a computer somewhere, but it feels like even less server-y.

Drew: It feels like, yes, a CDN may be a server, but it’s the most sort of minimal version of a server. It’s like a thin server, if you like.

Chris: Yeah. Sure.

Drew: All right. I’ve heard it said… I can’t remember the source to credit, unfortunately, but I’ve heard serverless described as being “like using a ride-sharing service like Uber or Lyft” or whatever. You can be carless and not own a car, but that doesn’t mean you never use a car.

Chris: Yeah, it doesn’t mean cars don’t exist. Mm, that’s nice.

Drew: You just summon one when you need it, but at the same time, you’re not paying the upfront purchase cost of a car. You’re not paying maintenance or fuel or-

Chris: Right, and the pricing makes sense, too, right? That’s nice. That’s a nice analogy, I think. And then, because it’s at the CDN level too, it just intercepts HTTP requests that are already happening, which means you don’t ask it… you don’t send a request to it and it sends a request back. It’s just happening during the request naturally, which also makes it feel less server-y. I don’t know, it’s interesting. It’s interesting for sure. So that’s a big deal, though, that you brought up the pricing thing. That you only pay for what you use. That’s significant too, because… let’s say, you’re a back-end dev, who’s used to spinning up servers their whole life. And they run the costs, “I need this kind of server with this kind of memory and this kind of CPU and these kind of specs. And this is how much it’s going to cost.” Serverless comes along and chops the head off of that pricing.

Chris: So, even if you’re a back-end dev who just doesn’t like this that much, that they’re just not into it, like your skill set is just what it is over the years, you compare the price and you’re like, “What? I could be paying 1% of what I was paying before?” You are not allowed to not care about that, right? If you’re this back-end dev that’s paying a hundred times more for their service than they need to be paying, you’re just kind of bad at your job then. Sorry to say. This has come along and this has shattered pricing in a lot of ways. You have to care about that. And it’s kind of cool that somebody else is… It’s not like you don’t have to worry about security at all, but it’s not your server. You don’t have… your lambda or cloud function, or your worker, or whatever, isn’t sitting on a server that’s right next to some really sensitive data on your own network. It’s not right next to your database.

Chris: If somebody writes code that somehow tries to eject itself from the worker or the lambda, or whatever, and try to get access to other things in their way, there’s nothing there to get. So the security’s a big deal too, so again, if that’s your job as the server admin, is to deal with the security of this thing. Running it, running certain things in Lambda, you just get some natural security from it, which is great. So, it’s way cheaper. It’s way more secure. It encourages these small modular architecture, which can be a good idea. It seems to be domino after domino of good ideas here. That’s why it’s notable. You know?

Drew: Yeah, I mean, traditionally with a server based architecture that we’ve been running for decades on the web, you have a web server that you run yourself. It holds your front-end code, your back-end code, your database and everything. Then you need to maintain that and keep it running and pay the bills, and even if it’s not being used, it’s there clocking up bills. The user would make a request and it would build all that HTML query stuff from the database, send it all down the line to the browser. That process works. It’s how loads of things are built. It’s probably the majority of how the web is built. It’s how things like WordPress work. Is this really a problem that we need to solve? I mean, we’ve talked about costs a little bit. What are the other sort of problems with that, that we’re… that we need to address, and that serverless might help us with?

Chris: Yeah, the problems with the old school approach. Yeah, I don’t know, maybe there isn’t any. I mean, I’m not saying the whole web needs to change their whole… the whole thing overnight. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t really, but I think it opens up doors. It just seems like, when good ideas arrive like this, they just slowly change how the web operates at all. So, if there’s some CMS that is built in some way that expects a database to be there, it means that maybe the hosts of the future will start leveraging this in interesting ways. Maybe it feels to you like it’s still just a traditional server, but the hosts themselves have farmed it out, how they operate, to serverless architectures. So you don’t even really know that that’s happening, but they’ve found a way to slash their costs by hosting the stuff that you need in serverless ways. Maybe yeah don’t even need to care as a developer, but at a meta level, that’s what’s happening. Maybe. I don’t know.

Chris: It also doesn’t mean that… Databases are still there. If it turns out that architecturally having a relational database is the correct way to store that data, great. I mention that because this world of Serverless is kind of growing up at the same time that JAMstack is. And JAMstack is this architecture that’s, “You should be serving your website off of static hosts, that run nothing at all except for…” They’re like little CDNs. They’re like, “I can do nothing. I don’t run PHP. I don’t run Ruby. I run nothing. I run on a tiny little web server that’s just designed to serve static files only.”

Chris: “And then, if you need to do more than that, if you need to pull data from a relational database, then please do it at some other time, not at the server time. You can either do it in a build process ahead of time, and pull that stuff out of the database, pre-build static files and I’ll serve those, or do it at runtime.” Meaning you get this shell of a document, and then it makes a JavaScript request to get some data and prefills it then. So you do it ahead of time or after time, but it doesn’t mean, “Don’t use a relational database.” It just means, “Don’t have the server generate it at the time of the request of the document,” which is a… I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a paradigm shift.

Chris: It’s not just JAMstack either. We’re also living in the time of JavaScript frameworks. We’re living in a time where it’s starting to be a little more expected that the way that a JavaScript application boots up, is that it mounts some components, and as those components mount, it asks for the data that it needs. And so, it can be kind of a natural fit for something like a React website to be like, “Well, I’ll just hit a serverless function to cough up the data that it needs. It hits some JSON API essentially. I get the JSON data that I need and I construct myself out of that data, and then I render onto the page.” Now, whether that’s good or bad for the web, it’s like, “I don’t know. Too bad. Ship has sailed. That’s how a lot of people are building sites.” It’s just client rendered things. So, serverless and modern JavaScript kind of go hand in hand.

Drew: I suppose you don’t have to wholesale… be looking at one architecture or another. There’s an area in the middle where parts of an infrastructure might be more traditional and parts could be serverless, I’m guessing?

Chris: Yeah. Well, they’re trying to tell you that anyway. Anybody that wants to sell you any part of their architecture is like, “You don’t have to buy in all right now. Just do it a little bit.” Because of course, they want you to dip your toe into whatever they’re selling, because once you dip the toe, the chances that you splash yourself into the pool is a lot higher. So, I think that… it’s not a lie, though, necessarily, although I find a little less luck in… I don’t want my stack to be a little bit of everything. I think there’s some technical death there that I don’t always want to swallow.

Drew: Mm (affirmative).

Chris: But it’s possible to do. I think the most quoted one is… let’s say I have a site that has an eCommerce element to it, which means… and let’s say large scale eCommerce, so 10,000 products or something, that this JAMstack architecture hasn’t gotten to the point where that’s always particularly efficient to rebuild that statically. So, the thinking goes, “Then don’t.” Let that part kind of hydrate naturally with… hit serverless functions and get the data that it needs, and do all that. But the rest of the site, which isn’t… there’s not as many pages, there’s not as much data, you could kind of pre-render or whatever. So a little bit of both.

Drew: Of course, plenty of people are dealing with legacy systems that… some old database thing that was built in the 2000s that they may be able to stick a sort of JSON API layer on top of…

Chris: Yeah.

Drew: … and build something more modern, and perhaps serverless, and then still interact with those legacy systems by sort of gluing it altogether in a weird way.

Chris: Yeah. I like that though, isn’t it? Aren’t… most websites already exist. How many of us are totally green-fielding websites? Most of us work on some crap that already exists that needs to be dragged into the future for some reason, because I don’t know, developers want to work faster, or you can’t hire anybody in COBOL anymore, or whatever the story is. You know?

Drew: So terminology wise, we’re talking about JAMstack which is this methodology of running a code pretty much in the browser, serving it from a CDN. So, not having anything dynamic on the server. And then when we talk about serverless, we’re talking about those small bits of functionality that run on their server somewhere else. Is that right? That we were talking about these cloud function kind of-

Chris: Yeah, I mean, they just happen to be both kind of hot ideas right now. So it’s kind of easy to talk about one and talk about the other. But they don’t necessarily need to be together. You could run a JAMstack site that has nothing to do with serverless anything. You’re just doing it, you just pre-build the site and run it, and you can use serverless without having to care about JAMstack. In fact, CodePen does nothing JAMstack at all. Not that we want to talk about CodePen necessarily, but it’s a Ruby on Rails app. It runs on a whole bunch of AWS EC2 instances and a variety of other architecture to make it happen. But we use serverless stuff whenever we can for whatever we can, because it’s cheap and secure, and just a nice way to work. So, no JAMstack in use at all but serverless all over the place.

Drew: That’s quite interesting. What sort of tasks are you putting serverless to on CodePen?

Chris: Well, there’s a whole bunch of things. One of them is, I think, hopefully fairly obvious is, I need… the point of CodePen is that you write each HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the browser and it renders it in front of you, right? But you can pick pre-processor languages as well. Let’s say you like Sass. You turn Sass on in the CSS, and you write Sass. Well, something has to process the Sass. These days, Sass is written in Dart or something.

Chris: Theoretically, you could do that in the client. But these libraries that do pre-processing are pretty big. I don’t think I want to ship the entire Sass library to you, just to run that thing. I don’t want to… it’s just not, that’s not the right architecture for this necessarily. Maybe it is down the road, I mean, we could talk about offline crap, yada, yada, Web Workers. There’s a million architectural things we could do. But here’s how it does work now, is there’s a lambda. It processes Sass. It has one tiny, tiny, tiny, little job.

Chris: You send it this blob of Sass and it sends you stuff back, which is the processed CSS, maybe a site map, whatever. It has one tiny little job and we probably pay for that lambda, like four cents or something. Because lambdas are just incredibly cheap and you can hammer it too. You don’t have to worry about scale. You just hit that thing as much as you want and your bill will be astonishingly cheap. There is moments where serverless starts to cross that line of being too expensive. I don’t know what that is, I’m not that master of stuff like that. But generally, any serverless stuff we do, we basically… all nearly count as free, because it’s that cheap. But there’s one for Sass. There’s one for Less. There’s one for Babbel. There’s one for TypeScript. There’s one for… All those are individual lambdas that we run. Here’s some code, give it to the lambda, it comes back, and we do whatever we’re going to do with it. But we use it for a lot more than that, even recently.

Chris: Here’s an example. Every single Pen on CodePen has a screenshot. That’s kind of cool, right? So, the people make a thing and then we need a PNG or a JPEG, or something of it, so that we can… that way when you tweet it, you get the little preview of it. If you share it in Slack, you get the little preview of it. We use it on the website itself to render… instead of an iframe, if we could detect that the Pen isn’t animated, because an iframe’s image is much lighter, so why not use the image? It’s not animated anyway. Just performance gains like that. So each of those screenshots has a URL to it, obviously. And we’ve architected it so that that URL is actually a serverless function. It’s a worker. And so, if that URL gets hit, we can really quickly check if we’ve already taken that screenshot or not.

Chris: That’s actually enabled by CloudFlare Workers, because CloudFlare Workers are not just a serverless function, but they have a data store too. They have this thing called key-value store, so the ID of that, we can just check really quick and it’ll be, “True or false, do you have it or not?” If it’s got it, it serves it. And it serves it over CloudFlare, which is super fast to begin with. And then gives you all this ability too. Because it’s an image CDN, you can say, “Well, serve it in the optimal format. Serve it as these dimensions.” I don’t have to make the image in those dimensions. You just put the dimensions in the URL and it comes back as that size, magically. So that’s really nice. If it doesn’t have it, it asks another serverless function to make it really quick. So it’ll make it and then it’ll put it in a bucket somewhere… because you have to have a origin for the image, right? You have to actually host it somewhere usually. So we put it in an S3 bucket real quick and then serve it.

Chris: So there’s no queuing server, there’s no nothing. It’s like serverless functions manage the creation, storage and serving of these images. And there’s like 50 million or 80 million of them or something. It’s a lot, so it handles that as scale pretty nicely. We just don’t even touch it. It just happens. It all happens super fast. Super nice.

Drew: I guess it… well, a serverless function is ideally going to suit a task that needs very little knowledge of state of things. I mean, you mentioned CloudFlare’s ability to store key-value pairs to see if you’ve got something cached already or not.

Chris: Yeah. That’s what they’re trying to solve, though, with those. Those key-value pairs, is that… I think that traditionally was true. They’re like, “Avoid state in the thing,” because you just can’t count on it. And CloudFlare Workers are being like, “Yeah, actually, you can deal with state, to some degree.” It’s not as fancy as a… I don’t know, it’s key values, so it’s a key in a value. It’s not like a nested, relational fancy thing. So there’s probably some limits to that. But this is baby days for this. I think that stuff’s going to evolve to be more powerful, so you do have some ability to do some state-like stuff.

Drew: And sometimes the limitation, that sort of limited ability to maintain state, or the fact that you have no… you want to maintain no state at all, kind of pushes you into an architecture that gives you this sort of… Well, when we talk about the software philosophy of “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”, don’t we?

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: Where each little component does one thing and does it well. And doesn’t really know about the rest of the ecosystem around it. And it seems that really applies to this concept of serverless functions. Do you agree?

Chris: Yeah. I think you could have a philosophical debate whether that’s a good idea or not. You know? I think some people like the monolith, as it were. I think there’s possible… there’s ways to overdo this and to make too many small parts that are too hard to test altogether. It’s nice to have a test that’s like, “Oh, I wonder if my Sass function is working. Well, let’s just write a little test for it and make sure that it is.” But let’s say, what matters to the user is some string of seven of those. How do you test all seven of them together? I think that story gets a little more complicated. I don’t know how to speak super intelligently to all that stuff, but I know that it’s not necessarily that, if you roll with all serverless functions that’s automatically a better architecture than any other architecture. I like it. It reasons out to me nicely, but I don’t know that it’s the end-all be-all of all architectures. You know?

Drew: To me, it feels extremely web-like, in that… this is exactly how HTML works, isn’t it? You deliver some HTML and the browser will then go and fetch your images and fetch your JavaScript and fetch your CSS. It seems like it’s an expansion of that –

Chris: It’s nice.

Drew: … sort of idea. But, one thing we know about the web, is it’s designed to be resilient because network’s fragile.

Chris: Mm (affirmative).

Drew: How robust is the sort of serverless approach? What happens if something… if one of those small pieces goes away?

Chris: That would be very bad. You know? It would be a disaster. Your site would go down just like any other server, if it happens to go down, I guess.

Drew: Are there ways to mitigate that, that are particularly –

Chris: I don’t know.

Drew: … suited to this sort of approach, that you’ve come across?

Chris: Maybe. I mean, like I said, a really super fancy robust thing might be like… let’s say you visit CodePen and let’s say that there’s a JavaScript implementation of Sass and we noticed that you’re on a fairly fast network and that you’re idle right now. Maybe we’ll go grab that JavaScript and we’ll throw it in a service worker. Then, if we detect that the lambda fails, or something, or that you have this thing installed already, then we’ll hit the service worker instead of the lambda, and service workers are able to work offline. So, that’s kind of nice too. That’s interesting. I mean, they are the same language-ish. Service workers are JavaScript and a lot of Cloud functions are JavaScript, so there’s some… I think that’s a possibility, although that… it’s just, that’s some serious technical that… It just scares me to have this chunk of JavaScript that you’ve delivered to how many thousands of user, that you don’t necessarily know what they have, and what version of it they have. Eww, but that’s just my own scarediness. I’m sure some people have done a good job with that type of thing.

Chris: I actually don’t know. Maybe you know some strategies that I don’t, on resiliency of serverless.

Drew: I guess there’s a failure mode, a style of failure, that could happen with serverless functions, where you run a function once and it fails, and you can run it a second time immediately afterwards and it would succeed, because it might hit a completely different server. Or whatever the problem was, when that run may not exist on a second request. The issues of an entire host being down is one thing, but maybe there are… you have individual problems with the machine. You have a particular server where its memory has gone bad, and it’s throwing a load of errors, and the first time you hit it, it’s going to fail. Second time, that problem might have been rooted around.

Chris: Companies that tend to offer this technology, you have to trust them, but they also happen to be the type of companies that… this is their pride. This is the reason why people use them is because they’re reliable. I’m sure people could point to some AWS outages of the past, but they tend to be a little rare, and not super common. If you were hosting your own crap, I bet they got you beat from an SLA percentage kind of level. You know? So it’s not like, “Don’t build in a resilient way,” but generally the type of companies that offer these things are pretty damn reliable. The chances of you going down because you screwed up that function are a lot higher than because their architecture is failing.

Drew: I suppose, I mean, just like anything where you’re using an API or something that can fail, is just making sure you structure your code to cope with that failure mode, and to know what happens next, rather than just throwing up an error to the user, or just dying, or what have you. It’s being aware of that and asking the user to try again. Or trying again yourself, or something.

Chris: Yeah, I like that idea of trying more than once, rather than just being, “Oh no. Fail. Abort.” “I don’t know, why don’t you try again there, buddy?”

Drew: So I mean, when it comes to testing and development of serverless functions, sort of cloud functions, is that something that can be done locally? Does it have to be done in the cloud? Are there ways to manage that?

Chris: I think there are some ways. I don’t know if the story is as awesome. It’s still a relatively new concept, so I think that that gets better and better. But from what I know, for one thing, you’re writing a fairly normal Node function. Assuming you’re using JavaScript to do this, and I know that on Lambda specifically, they support all kinds of stuff. You can write a fricking PHP Cloud Function. You can write a Ruby Cloud Function. So, I know I’m specifically talking about JavaScript, because I have a feeling that most of these things are JavaScript. Even no matter what language it is, I mean, you can go to your command line locally and execute the thing. Some of that testing is… you just test it like you would any other code. You just call the function locally and see if it works.

Chris: It’s a little different story when you’re talking about an HTTP request to it, that’s the thing that you’re trying to test. Does it respond to the request properly? And does it return the stuff properly? I don’t know. The network might get involved there. So you might want to write tests at that level. That’s fine. I don’t know. What is the normal story there? You spin up some kind of local server or something that serves it. Use Postman, I don’t know. But there’s… Frameworks try to help too. I know that the serverless “.com”, which is just terribly confusing, but there’s literally a company called Serverless and they make a framework for writing the serverless functions that helps you deploy them.

Chris: So if you like NPM install serverless, you get their framework. And it’s widely regarded as very good, because it’s just very helpful, but they don’t have their own cloud or whatever. You write these and then it helps you get them to a real lambda. Or it might work with multiple cloud providers. I don’t even know these days, but their purpose of existing is to make the deployment story easier. I don’t know what… AWS is not renowned for their simplicity. You know? There’s all this world of tooling to help you use AWS and they’re one of them.

Chris: They have some kind of paid product. I don’t even know what it is exactly. I think one of the things they do is… the purpose of using them is for testing, is to have a dev environment that’s for testing your serverless function.

Drew: Yeah, because I guess, that is quite a big part of the workflow, isn’t it? If you’ve written your JavaScript function, you’ve tested it locally, you know it’s going to do the job. How do you actually pick which provider it’s going to go into and how do you get it onto that service? Now, I mean, that’s a minefield, isn’t it?

Chris: Yeah. I mean, if you want to use no tooling at all, I think they have a really… like AWS, specifically, has a really rudimentary GUI for the thing. You can paste the code in there and hit save and be like, “Okay, I guess it’s live now.” That’s not the best dev story, but I think you could do it that way. I know CloudFlare workers have this thing called Wrangler that you install locally. You spin it up and it spins up a fake browser on the top and then dev tools below. Then you can visit the URL and it somehow intercepts that and runs your local cloud function against it. Because one of the interesting things about workers is… you know how I described how it… you don’t hit a URL and then it returns stuff. It just automatically runs when you… when it intercepts the URL, like CDN style.

Chris: So, one of the things it can do is manipulate the HTML on the way through. The worker, it has access to the complete HTML document. They have a jQuery-esque thing that’s like, “Look for this selector. Get the content from it. Replace it with this content. And then continue the request.” So you can mess with code on the way through it. To test that locally, you’re using their little Wrangler tool thing to do that. Also, I think the way we did it was… it’s also a little dangerous. The second you put it live, it’s affecting all your web traffic. It’s kind of a big deal. You don’t want to screw up a worker. You know? You can spin up a dev worker that’s at a fake subdomain, and because it’s CloudFlare, you can… CloudFlare can just make a subdomain anyway. I don’t know. It’s just kind of a nice way to do a… as you’re only affecting sub-domain traffic, not your main traffic yet. But the subdomain’s just a mirror of a production anyway, so that’s kind of a… that’s a testing story there.

Chris: It brings up an interesting thing, though, to me. It’s like… imagine you have two websites. One of them is… for us it’s like a Ruby on Rails app. Whatever. It’s a thing. But we don’t have a CMS for that. That’s just like… it’s not a CMS, really. I think there’s probably Ruby CMSs, but there’s not any renowned ones. You know? It seems like all the good CMSs are PHP, for some reason. So, you want a quality CMS. Drew, you’ve lived in the CMS market for a long time –

Drew: Absolutely.

Chris: … so you know how this goes. Let’s say you want to manage your sites in Perch or whatever, because it’s a good CMS and that’s the proper thing to use to build the kind of pages you want to build. But you don’t want to run them on the same server. Unless you want to manage the pages on one site, but show them on another site. Well, I don’t know, there’s any number of ways to do that. But one JavaScript way could be, “Okay, load the page. There’s an empty div there. Run some JavaScript. Ask the other site for the content of that page and then plunk it out on the new page.” That’s fine, I guess, but now you’re in a client side rendered page. It’s going to be slow. It’s going to have bad SEO Company, because… Google will see it eventually, but it takes 10 days or something. It’s just a bad story for SEO Company. It’s not very resilient, because who knows what’s going to happen in the network. It’s not the greatest way to do this kind of “content elsewhere, content on site B, show page of site A”, situation.

Chris: You could also do it on the server side, though. Let’s say you had… Ruby is capable of granting a network request too, but that’s even scarier because then if something fails on the network, the whole page could die or something. It’s like a nervous thing. I don’t love doing that either. But we did this just recently with a worker, in that we… because the worker’s JavaScript, it can make a fetch request. So, it fetches site A, it finds this div on the page, and then it goes and asks site B for the content. Gets the content. Plugs it into that div, and serves the page before it gets anything. So it looks like a server rendered page, but it wasn’t. It all happened at the… on the edge, at the worker level, at the serverless level.

Chris: So it’s kind of cool. I think you can imagine a fetch request on the browser probably takes, I don’t know, a second and a half or something. It probably takes a minute to do it. But because these are… site B is hosted on some nice hosting and Cloudflare has some… who knows what kind of super computers they use to do it. They do. Those are just two servers talking to each other, and that fetch request happens just so super duper, duper fast. It’s not limited to the internet connection speed of the user, so that little request takes like two milliseconds to get that data. So it’s kind of this cool way to stitch together a site from multiple sources and have it feel like, and behave like, a server rendered page. I think there’s a cool future to that.

Drew: Are there any sort of conventions that are sort of springing up around serverless stuff. I’m sort of thinking about how to architect things. Say I’ve got something where I want to do two sort of requests to different APIs. I want to take in a postal address and geocode it against one, and then take those coordinates and send that to a florist who’s going to flower bomb my front yard or something. How would you build that? Would you do two separate things? Or would you turn that into one function and just make the request once from the browser?

Chris: Mm (affirmative). That’s a fascinating question. I’d probably have an architect function or something. One function would be the one that’s in charge of orchestrating the rest of them. It doesn’t have to be, your website is the hub and it only communicates to this array of single sources. Serverless functions can talk to other serverless functions. So I think that’s somewhat common to have kind of an orchestrator function that makes the different calls and stitches them together, and returns them as one. I think that is probably smart and faster, because you want servers talking to servers, not the client talking to a whole bunch of servers. If it can make one request and get everything that it needs, I think that’s probably generally a good idea-

Drew: Yeah, that sounds smart. Yep.

Chris: But I think that’s the ultimate thing. You get a bunch of server nerds talking, they’ll talk about the different approaches to that exact idea in 10 different ways.

Drew: Yeah. No, that sounds pretty smart. I mean, you mentioned as well that this approach is ideal if you’re using APIs where you’ve got secret information. You’ve got API keys or something that you don’t want to live in the client. Because I don’t know, maybe this florist API charges you $100 dollars every time flower bomb someone.

Chris: Easily.

Drew: You can basically use those functions to almost proxy the request and add in the secret information as it goes, and keep it secret. That’s a viable way to work?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think so. I mean, secrets are, I don’t know, they’re interesting. They’re a form of buy in I think to whatever provider you go with, because… I think largely because of source control. It’s kind of like, you could just put your API key right in the serverless function, because it’s just going to a server, right? You don’t even have to abstract it, really. The client will never see that code that executes, but in order for it to get there, there’s probably a source control along the way. It’s probably like you commit to master, and then master… then some kind of deployment happens that makes that thing go to the serverless function. Then you can’t put your API key in there, because then it’s in the repo, and you don’t put your API keys in repos. That’s good advice. Now there’s stuff. We’ve just done… at CodePen recently, we started using this git-crypt thing, which is an interesting way to put keys safely into your repos, because it’s encrypted by the time anybody’s looking at that file.

Chris: But only locally they’re decrypted, so they’re useful. So it’s just kind of an interesting idea. I don’t know if that helps in this case, but usually, cloud providers of these things have a web interface that’s, “Put your API keys here, and we’ll make them available at runtime of that function.” Then it kind of locks… it doesn’t lock you in forever but it kind of is… it’s not as easy to move, because all your keys are… you put in some input field and some admin interface somewhere.

Drew: Yeah, I think that’s the way that Netlify manage it.

Chris: They all do, you know?

Drew: Yeah. You have the secret environment variables that you can set from the web interface. That seems to work quite nicely.

Chris: Yeah, right. But then you got to leave… I don’t know, it’s not that big of a deal. I’m not saying they’re doing anything nefarious or anything. How do you deal with those secrets? Well, it’s a hard problem. So they kind of booted it to, I don’t know, “Just put them in this input field and we’ll take care of it for you, don’t worry about it.”

Drew: Is there anything that you’ve seen that stands out as an obvious case for things that you can do with serverless, that you just couldn’t do with a traditional kind of serverfull approach? Or is it just taking that code and sort of almost deploying it in a different way?

Chris: It’s probably mostly that. I don’t know that it unlocks any possibility that you just absolutely couldn’t run it any other way. Yeah, I think that’s a fair answer, but it does kind of commoditize it in an interesting way. Like, if somebody writes a really nice serverless function… I don’t know that this exists quite yet, but there could kind of a marketplace, almost, for these functions. Like, I want a really good serverless function that can take a screenshot. That could be an open source project that lots of eyeballs around, that does a tremendously good job of doing it and solves all these weird edge cases. That’s the one I want to use. I think that’s kind of cool. You know? That you can kind of benefit from other people’s experience in that way. I think that will happen more and more.

Drew: I guess it’s the benefit that we talked about, right at the top, of enabling people who write JavaScript and may have written JavaScript only for the front-end, to expand and use those skills on the back-end as well.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think so, I think that’s… because there’s moments like… you don’t have to be tremendously skilled to know what’s appropriate and what’s not for a website. Like, I did a little tutorial the other week, where there was this glitch uses these… when you save a glitch, they give you a slug for your thing that you built, that’s, “Whiskey, tango, foxtrot. 1,000.” It’s like a clever little thing. The chances of it being unique are super high, because I think they even append a number to it or something too. But they end up being these fun little things. They open source their library that has all those words in it, but it’s like a hundred, thousands of words. The file is huge. You know? It’s megabytes large of just a dictionary of words. You probably learn in your first year of development, “Don’t ship a JavaScript file that’s megabytes of a dictionary.” That’s not a good thing to ship. You know? But Node doesn’t care. You can ship hundreds of them. It’s irrelevant to the speed on a server.

Drew: Yeah.

Chris: It doesn’t matter on a server. So, I could be like, “Hmm, well, I’ll just do it in Node then.” I’ll have a statement that says, “Words equal require words,” or whatever, and a note at the top, “Have it randomize a number. Pull it out of the array and return it.” So that serverless function is eight lines of code with a packaged@JSON that pulls in this open source library. And then my front-end code, there’s a URL to the serverless function. It hits that URL. The URL returns one word or a group of words or whatever. You build your own little API for it. And now, I have a really kind of nice, efficient thing. What was nice about that is, it’s so simple. I’m not worried about the security of it. I don’t… you know?

Chris: It’s just… a very average or beginner JavaScript developer, I think, can pull that off, which is cool. That’s an enabling thing that they didn’t have before. Before, they were like, “Well, here’s a 2MB array of words.” “Oh, I can’t ship that to the client.” “Oh, you’ll just shut down then.” You might hit this wall that’s like, “I just can’t do that part then. I need to ask somebody else to help me with that or just not do it or pick more boring slugs or some…” It’s just, you have to go some other way that is a wall to you, because you couldn’t do it. And now, you’re, “Oh, well, I’ll just…” Instead of having that in my script slash, or in my source slash scripts folder, I’ll put it in my functions folder instead.

Chris: You kind of like moved the script from one folder to the other. And that one happens to get deployed as a serverless function instead. How cool is that? You know? You’re using the same exact skill set, almost. There’s still some rough edges to it, but it’s pretty close.

Drew: It’s super cool. You’ve put together a sort of little micro site all about these ideas, haven’t you?

Chris: Yeah. I was a little early to the game. I was just working on it today, though, because… it gets pull requests. The idea… well, it’s at serverless.css-tricks.com and… there’s a dash in CSS-Tricks, by the way. So it’s a subdomain of CSS-Tricks, and I built it serverlessly too, so this is… CSS-Tricks is like a WordPress site, but this is a static site generator site. All the content of it is in the GitHub repo, which is open-source. So if you want to change the content of the site, you can just submit a poll request, which is nice because there’s been a hundred or so of those over time. But I built all the original content.

Drew: It’s a super useful place, because it lists… If you’re thinking, “Right, I want to get started with serverless functions,” it lists all the providers who you could try it and…

Chris: That’s all it is, pretty much, is lists of technology. Yeah.

Drew: Which is great, because otherwise, you’re just Googling for whatever and you don’t know what you’re finding. Yeah, it’s lists of API providers that help you do these sorts of things.

Chris: Forms is one example of that, because… so the minute that you choose to… let’s say, you’re going to go JAMstack, which I know that’s not necessarily the point of this, but you see how hand in hand they are. All of a sudden, you don’t have a PHP file or whatever to process that form with. How do you do forms on a JAMstack site? Well, there’s any number of ways to do it. Everybody and their sister wants to help you solve that problem, apparently. So I think if I was the inventor of the word JAMstack, so they try to help you naturally, but you don’t have to use them.

Chris: In fact, I was so surprised putting this site together. Let’s see. There’s six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty one, twenty two services out there, that want to help you serverlessly process your forms on this site right now. If you want to be the 23rd, you’re welcome to it, but you have some competition out there. So the idea behind this is that you write a form in HTML, like literally a form element. And then the action attribute of the form, it can’t point anywhere internally, because there’s nothing to point to. You can’t process, so it points externally. It points to whatever they want you to point it to. They’ll process the form and then they tend to do things that you’d expect them to, like send an email notification. Or send a Slack thing. Or then send it to Zapier and Zapier will send it somewhere else. They all have slightly different feature sets and pricing and things, but they’re all trying to solve that problem for you, like, “You don’t want to process your own forms? No problem. We’ll process it for you.”

Drew: Yeah, it’s a super useful resource. I’d really recommend everyone check it out. It’s serverless.css-tricks.com. So, I’ve been learning all about serverless. What have you been learning about lately, Chris?

Chris: Well, I’m still very much in this world too and learning about serverless stuff. I had an idea to… I used to play this online role playing game ages ago. I just recently discovered that it’s still alive. It’s a text based medieval fantasy kind of game. I played it when AOL was a thing, because AOL wanted to have these games that you had to be logged on to play it, because they wanted you to spend hours and hours on AOL, so they could send you these huge bills, which was, I’m sure, why they did so well at some point.

Drew: So billing by the second. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. So games was big for them. If they could get you playing games with other people on there. So this game kind of… it didn’t debut there, but it moved to AOL, because I’m sure they got a juicy deal for it, but it was so… I mean, it’s just, couldn’t possibly be nerdier. You’re a dwarven mage and you get rune staff from your leather sheath. And you type commands into it like a terminal. Then the game responds to you. I played that game for a very long time. I was very into it. I got into the community of it and the spirit of it. It was kind of a… it was like I was just alone by myself at my computer, but yet I look back on that time in my life, and be like, “That was a wonderful time in my life.” I was really… I just liked the people and the game and all that. But then I grew up and stopped playing it, because life happens to you.

Chris: I only found out recently, because somebody started doing a podcast about it again… I don’t know how I came across it, but I just did. I was like, “This game is alive and well in today’s world, are you kidding me? This text based thing.” And I was more than happy to reactivate and get my old characters back and play it. But only to find out that the clients that they have you download for this game, haven’t evolved at all. They are awful. They almost assume that you’re using Windows. There’s just these terribly cheesy poorly rendering… and it’s text based, you think it’d at least have nice typography. No. So I’m like, “I could be involved. I could write a client for this game. Put beautiful typography in it.” Just modernize the thing, and I think the players of the game would appreciate it, but it felt overwhelming to me. “How can I do it?” But I find some open source projects. One of them is like… you can play the game through an actual terminal window, and it uses some open source libs to kind of make a GUI out of a terminal window.

Drew: Really?

Chris: I don’t know. So that was kind of cool. I was like, “If they wrote that, there must be code in there to how to connect to the game and get it all going and stuff. So at least I have some starter code.” I was trying to go along the app, “Maybe I’ll do it in Flutter or something,” so the final product app would work on mobile phones and, “I could really modernize this thing.” But then I got overwhelmed. I was like, “Ah, this is too big a… I can’t. I’m busy.” But I found another person who had the same idea and they were way further along with it, so I could just contribute on a design level. And it’s been really fun to work on, but I’ve been learning a lot too, because it’s rare for me to jump into a project that’s somebody else’s baby, and I’m just contributing to a little bit, and that has totally different technology choices than I would have ever picked.

Chris: It’s an Electron app. They picked that, which is also kind of a cool way to go too, because it’s my web skills… so I’m not learning anything too weird, and it’s cross-platform, which is great. So, I’ve been learning a lot about Electron. I think it’s fun.

Drew: That’s fascinating. It’s always amazing how little side projects and things that we do for fun, end up being the place where we sometimes learn the most. And learn skills that can then feed back into our sort of daily work.

Chris: That’s the only way I learn things. I’m dragged into something that… I was like, “They’re not…” It’s rendered with a JavaScript library called Mithril, which is… I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but it’s weird. It’s not… it’s almost like writing React without JSX. You have to “create element” and do all these… but it’s supposed to benchmark way better than it… And it actually kind of matters because in this text based game, the text is just flying. There’s a lot of data manipulation, which is like… you’d think this text based game would be so easy for a browser window to run, but it’s actually kind of not. There’s so much data manipulation happening, that you really have to be really… we have to be conscientious about the speed of the rendering. You know?

Drew: That’s fascinating-

Chris: Pretty cool.

Drew: Yeah. If you, dear listener, would like to hear more from Chris, you can find him on Twitter, where he’s @chriscoyier. Of course, CSS-Tricks can be found at css-tricks.com and CodePen at codepen.io. But most of all, I recommend that you subscribe to the ShopTalk Show podcast if you haven’t already done so, at shoptalkshow.com. Thanks for joining us today, Chris. Do you have any parting words?

Chris: Smashingpodcast.com. I hope that’s the real URL.

(il)

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MarTech Insider Anand Thaker: Marketing Not Aimed at Building Real Relationships with Customers? Cut It.

When the country initially shut down in March due to the COVID-19 outbreak, overnight many companies cut their marketing budgets and activities to zero.  Many of those dollars and organizational efforts went to helping customers and communities deal with the pandemic. And many of those efforts are still going on, and the impact of these efforts have been essential to helping people and small businesses make it through this difficult time.  And another result of these efforts is to more meaningfully connect companies with their customers and surrounding communities, which has created the opportunity for these deeper relationships to be in place long after the pandemic has run its course.

It appears that companies may be learning that traditional marketing models that are more transactional in nature might be less effective in the Post Covid-19 world where relationships may matter more.

Interview with Anand Thaker on COVID-19 Changing Marketing Strategy

And recently I had an interesting LinkedIn Live conversation with marketing technology (MarTech) industry expert Anand Thaker to get his take on how COVID may be changing how companies look at marketing, and what role technology will need to play in order for those Post Covid marketing efforts to be successful.

Below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation.  To hear the entire conversation click on the embedded SoundCloud player.

smallbiztrends · MarTech Insider Anand Thaker:

Small Business Trends: CRM thought leader Jesus Hoyos was recently on CRM Playaz and he made a point about how marketing automation technology previous to COVID was broken because there is not single point of communication with customers today, and the tech was built with that in mind.  And the pandemic has made the situation even worse.  What are you seeing with marketing during the pandemic, and the roll martech is playing?

Anand Thaker: Technology only magnifies who we are. If we’re bad at what we’re doing, guess what? We’re going to use the technology or misuse it and vice versa. I think what he was talking about with regards to one email address, really resonated with me because there’s another problem, especially in the B2B space, where it’s not only just one person with one email for one person, but then you also have one assumed decision maker per company. In a B2B capacity, if you had five different people at a particular company and they all downloaded your white paper or did different things to end up in your CRM database or marketing automation database, how do you rectify that? That’s one of the biggest challenges behind the scenes that people didn’t really talk about, and probably one of the main reasons that marketing operations became an incredibly thriving profession, is how do you resolve these types of things?

This is part of the reason I think we should probably start looking at databases that connect these different places. I think a lot of people have heard, especially listening in, about customer database or customer data platforms, CDPs. One of the benefits of that is you’re really trying to get a full, what we used to call the 360 view of the customer. This is the opportunity for a brand to own the customer and the customer experience starting from, again having clean data. Part of the reason we don’t have clean data is not necessarily through laziness or challenges with the experience of trying to ingest that data in from third parties, but it’s also we find a big challenge in having that data spread … I mean, we have challenges in terms of data being in the different technologies. How do we centralize that information when we actually need to do it?

This could lead to a conversation on privacy and AI. Let’s say your stack of technologies related to the customers, 18 to 30, some odd pieces of technology,  how do you even respect the customer’s wishes on their privacy, or how do you apply AI in a grander scope of things that would help you navigate what that really respects?

Small Business Trends: The foundation of how we built our customer engagement is spread out. It’s disparate. It’s kind of hard to bring it all together. It’s kind of hard to make sense of whatever the interactions are because they’re coming in from all over the place. Maybe there’s a technology problem, but let’s take the technology problem out of it. There’s still a big issue with a lot of companies, because they’re looking at things from their perspective. They’re looking at how do we get people to buy more stuff and not necessarily looking at it from the customer’s perspective.

Let’s face it. They can have the greatest technology, they can have the greatest platform, they can have all the data coming in, they can have their AI running and finding all these great insights, and if they don’t deliver those insights in a meaningful way, in a way that will be empathetic and will connect the dots to the customer, all that stuff is for naught.

Anand Thaker: Yep.

Small Business Trends: I think that’s where we are. To take it one step further. I’ve talked to a number of companies, and there are a lot of folks who just cut the spigot off when it came to doing any kind of marketing, ad campaigns, marketing campaigns, cut it off completely just because of the uncertainty in the environment. The interesting thing about that is not that they did it, because everybody was kind of scared. You’re starting to see some life coming back to that, but I’ve been having some really interesting conversations, I’m not going to say who, but there are vendors who said, “Yeah, we cut it out, and guess what? We’re doing all right. We are not going to be going back to what we were doing before. We’re not going to be spending that money the way we were spending it before.”

I have a suspicion that the few companies I talked to, they are just representative of what I think is going to be happening on the other side of the pandemic. It seems to me that there’s a movement from a lot of these companies who spent a lot of money and did a lot of this programmatic stuff. They might not be coming back to spend anywhere near what they spent on those activities before COVID-19. Are you hearing anything like that?

Anand Thaker: Yeah, absolutely. We’re seeing it on a couple of fronts. COVID shook a lot of things up. The old models don’t support a lot of those purposeful missions moving forward. Let me roll back a little bit because on the front of talking about programmatic advertising and what that means, in terms of businesses actually cutting off marketing, or just cutting out marketing or cutting out advertising, I think there’s a lot of opportunity to just do things, regardless of whether it’s the highest performing, because you’ve got to do them. You’ve got the spend, you’re going to budget. That’s what everybody else is doing. You have the fear of missing out. “Oh my gosh, if I saw it … ”

Think about it like billboards or TV ads, or let’s say Superbowl commercials. People have this fear of missing out because, “Oh man, my competitor did a Superbowl commercial, therefore we should strive to do something similar.” Well, we don’t live in that kind of world today. There’s not a limited channel of ways to engage with a customer anymore. Those things start to change. Many companies that I’ve talked to or have heard from or learn about as I hear about, they try to take one channel and think that’s the silver bullet rather than trying to diversify into a portfolio. One of the things I’ve been striving for, I’ve been working intensely with companies for the last eight, nine months now trying to navigate them through the COVID or some of those crisis situations.

One of the first things is marketing, yes or no? That’s not the right question to ask. That correct question is, is the marketing efforts or spend that you have, are they engaged in building a relationship with a customer? If it’s not part of the journey or if they’re not responsible for the entire journey back into the business operations of the company, then yeah, maybe need to consider cutting it, because it’s an expensive spend and you’re basically competing … You’re selling against yourself. You spend a dollar, someone spends 105, then you got to spend 110, then they spend more and then you have to spend more, but if your marketing spend is basically driven on developing a deeper relationship, meaning you are training your staff, frontline staff perhaps, at a retail store, on developing better experiences, or you’re working on the digital journey for how people buy, or trying to come up with different ways to help your customers make a decision, or help them, say, like in a fintech world, like you have some sort of financial services option, you’re trying to help them be better financial … financially savvy.

If you’re doing those types of things and the customer feels like you’re helping them through that, whether they buy from you or not, they become those advocates. That’s the part where you can elevate across your other competitors by sitting there and focusing on it. A lot of people say that, but they’re not talking about … They’re talking about limited to the digital spend, but there’s a lot of pieces beyond the digital ad. I think that’s what a lot of companies are doing, Brent, is they’re looking at the grand scope of things and saying, “Wow. Really, ads aren’t bringing the conversion rates we’re looking for, or perhaps aren’t giving us the awareness that we’re really hoping for,” but I think a lot of that will change over time and everyone will evolve. I’m always a believer that people and companies will evolve because either they need to, or they go away.

Small Business Trends: But the whole idea of empathy …

Anand Thaker: That’s right.

Small Business Trends: What I’ve noticed, the programmatic stuff, there is absolutely no empathy involved. That’s just pure, we know data, we know where you’ve been and we’re going to follow you and hound you wherever you go on the web. You see popups and it’s just ridiculous and it makes you not want to buy anything. There’s zero … I mean, they did a lot of work on the analytics. They did a lot of data aggregation. They’ve been looking at the insight, knowing where you’re going to go. That’s great.

Anand Thaker: Right.

Small Business Trends: Zero empathy in the actual activity and the action. I think that is driving people crazy. That’s why I think you’re seeing folks, because in the pandemic, the thing that you need most is empathy in order to show folks, like you said, that they care and that you’re creating an interaction that is based off of not just data, but it’s based off of data and delivered in an empathetic way that lets people understand that you care.

Anand Thaker: Right.

Small Business Trends: That’s where I think there’s an opportunity for a shift in some of this budget away from just pure programmatic, pure analytics, pure re-target, and to have to do a little bit more work, which requires you to really understand, not just know where you’re going or know where they’re going, but to understand why, and then to create an interaction opportunity that takes that into consideration so that you don’t spend all your time and effort and money on pure analytics and understanding without being able to deliver that understanding in an empathetic way.

Anand Thaker: I agree. The reason I tend to hesitate using empathy in some of these conversations is because we don’t define that well. I think that’s one of the problems is we don’t say what it is that we’re doing to be empathetic. For example, I mean, you’re training your frontline staff to be your team members to better serve their customers, or you’re trying to find an easier way for people to pay for their merchandise online, or you’re trying to understand how to elevate someone’s profession. I mean, I think if you’re going to use the word empathy, then you need to say exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, at least one thing that’s more specific than just saying, “Oh yeah, we’re going to be empathetic.”

That’s the kind of crap that gets all these companies in trouble is they go find a lot of these empathy consultants and then guess what they’re asking you to do too? There’s a lot of good ones out there and you know what they’re going to tell you? They’re going to say, “What are you doing that makes you empathetic or more empathetic than someone else?” Empathy is a magic word, but until you actually define what that is for your company specifically, actionable, like what those actionable steps will look like or what’s the goal look like, you’re not going to get anywhere. We’ve seen some matters come up where people are like, “Oh, well you just changed your logo and put out like a press release and you think you’re done,” and it’s not. You have to do more than that to make that magic happen.

Small Business Trends: Yeah, but here’s the thing. They have resources.

Anand Thaker: Right.

Small Business Trends: I don’t want to make light of the amount of effort and finances that it takes to identify where your customers are engaging and integrate into those channels and get that data in and analyze that data and understand that data and try to find insights that will impact at that time, at the right time. That’s a ton of work. That’s a ton of money and it takes a ton of effort, but why go through all that and then fumble when you actually go to address that person if you haven’t spent a little time, a little effort? It doesn’t have to be a 50/50 split here, but it does have to have … You have to spend some time not only understanding, but then, how do we best communicate our understanding? How do we best communicate that insight so that when we do interact with somebody, they’re more likely to understand where we’re coming from and that we’re on their side and we’re trying to deliver some value for them at the time they need it? That’s all I’m saying.

Anand Thaker: Yeah. A measurable way to look at that, this is just back of the napkin kind of thing, is look at retention. How many people are you keeping as customers, if you’re in this subscription-based world? How many people are advocates of yours, like active advocates, not just liking something on one of the social media platforms? I’m talking about they are out there selling on your behalf. They’re proud to be part of your company as a result of things.

Then the third piece would be, how easy has it been to recruit? If a company is doing a great job of having empathy and it’s being well demonstrated, you’ll see people come in that want to work for you. Maybe it’s a little skewed today because COVID is going to cause a lot of shuffle in terms of talent opportunities and opportunities for jobs just period, but still, I mean, how many of the best talent is coming your way, as opposed to you having to pull them in and try to recruit them at the highest price possible because you’re struggling in some capacity? Think about it from a recruiting standpoint, an advocate standpoint and a retention standpoint. Those will give you clues about how well your empathy is working.

This article, “MarTech Insider Anand Thaker: Marketing Not Aimed at Building Real Relationships with Customers? Cut It.” was first published on Small Business Trends

https://smallbiztrends.com/

The post MarTech Insider Anand Thaker: Marketing Not Aimed at Building Real Relationships with Customers? Cut It. appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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