Russell Morse: 00:12 Greetings all and welcome to Margin Call the podcast and editorial meeting for Kwest On Media. I’m your host: Russell Morse. Tonight is a special episode for a lot of different reasons. First of all, we have many blasts from the past, first time guests, old friends, returning, people in foreign countries. I’ll introduce everybody in a second, but I want to start off by explaining our technocracy episode. Technocracy, of course, is vertical on Kwest On Media for our tech stories, tech-related stories, so we wanted to set aside some time on the podcast to have an editorial meeting and develop some story ideas to develop that vertical. Our old friend Tom Turpel, had a pitch and we kind of built the show around that, but if anyone hasn’t seen it, go ahead and check out the technocracy vertical on the site. Obviously, pitches are welcome and we’re going to start.
Russell Morse: 01:02 Let me just introduce everybody. First of all, Sarah (Tyler), our social media manager has managed to come back on. She’s been on a couple of episodes. We always love to have Sarah on here. Silvano, I think counts as a special guest because this is one his first time here and to his very presence makes this another international edition of the show because he’s calling in from Germany, always very exciting and Sundown Hazen, I think counts as the furthest blast from the past, at least for me, because you’ve been a part of the New America Media family for many years, just through your involvement with Debug and you and I first met, of course, you know almost exactly 17 years ago when we hosted a panel soon after September 11th. Tom, we know you. We love you. You were on one of the very first episodes and this is your brainchild, but it’s very nice to welcome you back and Eming of course, as always, our venerable, patient producer making everything work, so thanks to everybody for being here.
Russell Morse: 02:03 I want to give you just a very brief intro, Tom because I think you’ll do a better job than I will be giving an overview. You pitched at the very least a story about Blockchain and Bitcoin. I know that this is a topic that gets covered over and over again, like every other podcast that feels like people trying to explain like, what is Blockchain? Every other article, people trying to understand what this new potential form of currency is. I have a friend who’s working on a documentary who’s very well versed. I don’t want to put you on the spot and say like, you know, we need a 30-second explanation of what this is. I think people have a very rough introduction and we don’t have to kind of get lost in the weeds, but just tell us a little bit about why it was interesting to you, why you thought it was worth developing a story for Technocracy and kind of like what place Blockchain hold s right now in your mind and your consciousness and why you brought it to the show.
Tom Turpel: 03:00 Thanks, Russell. Um, for me, just being in Silicon Valley, I think one of the biggest trends in the network or Internet business today is security. And one of the major terms you’re hearing about a lot is Blockchain. And it’s been catching a lot of buzz in the last year, you know, just in the course of the last year, Google search requests for the keyword Blockchain have increased 250 percent. But there still is a lot of a question about really what Blockchain is. So on a high level, you know, blockchain can be viewed, it’s like it’s a way, it’s a method of security. It can be looked at almost like as an online ledger that can be updated in real time and is completely decentralized. So it’s not just information is going into one cluster, it’s going into like multiple servers and verified over a period of time and you know, the information can be updated and edited and it’s stored in what’s called blocks that cannot be changed at all.
Tom Turpel: 03:58 So it keeps a record of everything going on. And one example of this would be like how Google uses Google sheets and Google docs, you know, basically, you have the opportunity for, you know, different users to be working on the same document together, you know, without having to obstruct what they’re doing. But also being able to record their changes, you’re basically having the two different computers working together on the same solution and that’s sort of the best analogy to me. Like when I think of like how Blockchain works, that’s how it comes together, but the most fascinating way that the technology has been used as with cryptocurrency and the fact that you know, you have these computers that are completing these online ledgers of monetary transaction, has led to a whole new form of delivering goods and services not only in between individuals but between nations.
Tom Turpel: 04:54 And what this has also done that I found fascinating is that it’s also brought in a way for individuals to kind of use their own technology, use their computers at home, use like multiple servers to kind of generate their own form, their own business in their own money just by like having their computers run. And that was one of the things I found fascinating with my good friend Sundown here that you know, he created Bitcoin mining machine with using the Blockchain technology and sundown. That was really, really interesting what you were able to do, and I’d like you to be able to share that with everyone today.
Sundown Hazen: 05:33 Yeah, sure. I’m really a novice. First off when it comes to all this stuff, but I’m doing it so, you know, I saw Bitcoin as a billboard on Lawrence Expressway and Sunnyvale like at least 10 years ago when it was still in the single digits and just thought, okay, great, you know, some Internet scam. Well here we are 10 years later and at the end of last year, it hit $27,000 per coin. The idea being that they’re not making any more of these coins so they hold value just like gold, gold holds value. You can’t print more gold out of the Federal Reserve. And I’m going into this probably a little deeper than necessary. So I got into it last year, uh, just spiked my interest that I could participate in it for a couple of reasons. One, as I like the idea of the decentralization of one of the most central forces in our lives, which is the economy. So the ability to take a transaction out of the hands of a third party, like a bank and just say, “Hey, I can transact between somebody I’m interested in to buy a house, to buy a car, to buy a cup of coffee.” That to me is interesting. I think that’s very disruptive in itself.
Russell Morse: 06:45 So the way I heard it explained to me very early on, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure I’m on the right track here because someone, in fact, it was the same person who was working on a documentary film about Blockchain and cryptocurrency who said that he kind of saw the direction that the economy was going, the global economy was going where the possibilities for the global economy when he was traveling in Africa and he saw that people often like used cell phone minutes, right. You have like minutes on your phone, but you can transfer them among phones. Right. He said, yeah, people use those to like get like to bum a cigarette off somebody they like send them three minutes. Which was kind of revolutionary for me at least. It helped me to understand as a complete outsider what it meant to have a decentralized banking system. It’s a lot more like bartering now, obviously, they’re like cell phone companies involved and they’re not protected by the same levels of security. But that like small example tried to kind of helped me to understand the value or at least the potential for an economy that’s not tied through central banks. I don’t know if that’s a helpful analogy, but it was for me.
Sundown Hazen: 07:56 Yeah, I think that’s very helpful. And it also points to another trend which ties into this, which is the taking away of physical currency. So even, you know, people that use Venmo or Square cash or Apple cash and you send cash to each other. It’s still tied to a bank though. Uh, so where the Blockchain would come in is that it becomes your identity. So the other part, which I don’t hear a lot of people talking about but it’s something that’s very interesting to me is that the idea of the authentication part. So I imagine most of you who are listening have probably authenticated some website or service using their Facebook credentials and, or Google credentials or some other email that you have like Yahoo becomes your identity.
Russell Morse: 08:43 Hotmail. I’m a big Hotmail guy.
Sundown Hazen: 08:46 Really? I heard that it was on fire.
Russell Morse: 08:50 They’re coming back. It’s retro.
Sundown Hazen: 08:52 Totally got my AOL account ready to go.
Russell Morse: 08:56 But that kind of like your, that’s like your ID basically rather than, you know, they’re like, are you legit human? Yeah. You check out essentially that’s your ID or online ID.
Sundown Hazen: 09:09 It’s necessary we have online lives, uh, and so, but how do we authenticate it and who’s in control of that? So we know Facebook has had a number of issues over the last year, especially in regards to safety and privacy and security. And to think that they now basically are your online identity when you go deal with these other services and stores as you travel through the interweb. That’s concerning to me. Right. And I think that’s one of the pieces of Blockchain which hasn’t been realized in the shadow of the cryptocurrency, which is that somehow we have to not only be able to transact but authenticate that I am the actual person, even though you can’t see me or feel me or touch me or smell me, but I am this person on the Internet and I’m giving you this transaction because I have this actual amount of wealth value or value, if you will.
Sundown Hazen: 10:04 And so by doing that, the Blockchain, what happens is I say, okay Russell, I’m going to give you five bucks because you know, you bummed me a cigarette even though I stopped smoking, but it looks cool in my ear so I’ll have it anyways. And now what has to happen is that goes out on the Internet, which is already a collection of computers and servers that are interconnected. And each of those numbers of computers has to solve this problem. Some complex math problem that would take decades for a human to solve. And they do it in an instant and mostly off of a graphics card. Those are much more powerful processors than your regular CPU, uh, for the nerds in the room or send nerds. So that’s where I got started is I bought some graphics cards.
Russell Morse: 10:44 Is that mining then?
Sundown Hazen: 10:48 Yeah. So yeah, I set up my set of miners. So I have one machine that I built and I bought a motherboard, that’s built to hold 12 graphics cards for mining purposes. I built the cage around it. I got my pieces together. The processor, I got three graphics cards now. That was as much as I wanted to invest in that particular project. And then what I signed up for though is these problems are becoming so complex that one little computer is not gonna produce me anything on my own. So you sign up for what’s called a pool or mining pool. And in my case, this one I signed up for Nice Hash. It’s the easiest one to do. You basically set up your account, you download a little application, you fire it up and you say start. And so it starts to download various algorithms and currencies. It’s not just Bitcoin, it’s doing a lot of the little ones, the lesser ones, and then it automatically, the service has an exchange where they then are selling your mining power to whoever, companies buying it, and then they pay me. My Minor’s in Bitcoin so slowly I’m racking up and that little each graphics card meant pulls in a little over a dollar right now about a dollar. Maybe it depends on the price of the actual Bitcoin. So that got going. I thought that was exciting.
Russell Morse: 12:06 Now is mining the metaphor, earlier you made a comparison to gold, right? Which is like a finite resource. There’s only so much of it you can’t make more of it. Is that why people are using the word mining essentially because you know, this is a gold rush of sorts. You know, there’s a way to access this finite material.
Sundown Hazen: 12:25 That would seem to be the case. That would seem to be the case. I think the mining also would be considered the banker because, in essence, you’re the one helping keep the ledger going. But I think because Bitcoin and the gold-based currencies and that idea, uh, is where the mining came from. So yeah, you get paid.
Russell Morse: 12:46 So on a personal note, I’m curious, I know you have a family, you have kids. How big a part of this is, you’re kind of like future planning for yourself and for your family. You’re thinking about my retirement and college funds and all that kind of stuff. Does this figure into that? Do you have projections about how valuable, or are you just thinking of it now is like I’m interested in getting involved in this world and it might end up being something profitable or it might not.
Sundown Hazen: 13:13 I got a lot going on to tell you the truth Russell and it’s not all technology related, but where it fits in is that it’s a hobby for sure… Now I’m just hoping to get my investment back. So in addition to that one, I went and bought one of those processors that are built for mining and these things, you know, there’s just this metal box and it’s got three processors, powerful processors in it. It runs at like 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s got this loud fan, so it’s tucked away in my garage, which helps keep my garage warm in the winter. Um, so at this point, between those two, you know, I’ve almost got that one paid for, it’s about 75 percent paid for today’s current prices. And then my other machine that I built was twice as much as that one.
Sundown Hazen: 13:59 So, you know, I’ve got a year still and about six months. I started heavily in April right when we were moving and you know, about a year and a half I’ll get my investment back and then after that it’s all gravy and you know, I’m working on getting some solar on my house so that’ll even cut down my cost further because the electricity that goes into it is significant. And that’s one of the concerns on the large scale is that right now the amount of bitcoin mining is equal to some small countries as far as the electricity that’s being used.
Russell Morse: 14:30 Wow. Well I’m impressed for one and then I think I’m much more up to speed conceptually, you know, metaphors are helpful for me and analogies are helpful for me. So this helps me to get a further grasp on this. I think you used the example of Venmo and other services, you know, we’re, we’re exchanging value is still going through a central bank, but I’ve started to notice that like if you have certain relationships, if you’re like going out to eat with the same people regularly, eventually you’re just exchanging like through Venmo and you’re not ever like transferring that out to your bank. You’re kind of just like trading Venmo value back and forth. Which, you know it’s not decentralized of course because it’s still pulling that initial value out of a bank. But it occurred to me, I was like, well, if it never comes out of there, like what? I mean, if we really go down the rabbit hole, it’s like, what’s money, you know, I don’t want to have that conversation because I know that’s all just made up anyway and we can have enough people on here who want to end the Fed and talk about how they just print money and that’s why we have inflation, but in some ways this seems like a solution to some of that because it really is a fixed resource.
Sundown Hazen: 15:38 Made me think of another aspect of this, which is the immutability meaning you to change it. You can’t change it. You can’t change. So you think of like Google plus they just shut down. So all, all your whatever profile and your Eunice on Google plus is literally gone. Just delete it because the company decided for X, Y, and Z reasons that they’re done. But because this is decentralized, on lots of computers, both in huge warehouses and lots of servers and little houses like mine in my garage, they would have to shut down all of them for that record to go away.
Russell Morse: 16:10 Yeah. That’s impressive. It’s fascinating. I’m in, thank you to both of you for bringing this on. So I think it’s a good starting point for us. I do want to make sure we get a chance to talk to Silvano. I know Silvano that you didn’t volunteer to come onto our Technocracy episode necessarily. So I don’t want to like put you on blast and I’m sorry that we shamed you by putting you on mute earlier, but I think it really is just because you’re in a foreign country and your connection isn’t as strong. I’m curious if any of this kind of resonates with you just because, similar to the example I used earlier, economies in different countries are different, right? The way that people are using currency and I know you’re working with a lot of people. You’ve mentioned you work with a lot of people who are migrants, people who have come to Germany from Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Africa. Are you encountering anything interesting like that about the economy, the way that people are using technology, or anything relevant? I imagine you feel like you’ve mentioned before but go ahead.
Silvano Pontoniere: 17:14 Well, the first thing that came to mind is that most people use cash in Germany. You’re expected to have cash for everything.
Russell Morse: 17:24 The way every coffee shop you go to the United States like you can just use your debit card like that’s not what’s going on in Germany.
Silvano Pontoniere: 17:32 Yeah, absolutely not like you’re expected to have cash and you can, you should not expect to be able to use your card wherever you go. You should expect cash maybe like big supermarkets and gas stations and that’s about it for a credit card. And then also the Germans actually kind of like, they’re very, very wary of all of these new developments in media and technology. Like especially social media I would say like they’re super like, or at least in my personal experience, like a lot of them don’t have or very careful and wary with things like Facebook and Instagram or whatever, you know.
Russell Morse: 18:11 So you can’t make a person at a bar and be like, oh, what’s up? I’ll add you on Instagram.
Silvano Pontoniee: 18:17 Yeah, well you can’t necessarily know. I mean like the way that you can expect it to be completely standard somewhere like California, New York where basically wherever in the United States like it’s definitely not the case over here. No.
Russell Morse: 18:29 So how do you compare yourself to how well you’re doing in your life versus other people? How do you maintain the feeling of being inadequate all the time? How do you like stunt on people you know? How do you like, you can’t like pose with a bunch of euros in a photo.
Silvano Pontoniere: 18:48 Well I guess I guess that’s the idea, right? Is that it’s like, it’s a lot healthier.
Russell Morse: 18:55 It sounds like a real gift. I’m kind of in the middle of a little bit of a social media fast and I think my mental health has improved vastly. So maybe they’re onto something. What do you think the, where is it? Is it that people don’t want to get on or it’s just like not fully incorporated into the culture the way that it is in the US?
Silvano Pontonierethat like several years ago it was a lot more incorporated and then it became kind of unincorporated. Germans are really, really conscious of these kinds of things. They’re also really, really ecologically minded. You know what I mean? Like it’s it’s that kind of thing. Like they’re also like crazy about like recycling and separating all of their recycling and fucking bio… Sorry. Was that.. am I not suppose to use profanities?
Russell Morse: 19:37 You could say the F-word if you want. I just don’t know why you want to use it in reference to recycling. I feel like recycling is like a pretty cool thing to do.
Silvano Pontoniere: 19:46 It was just like a knee-jerk reaction to it. I dunno, I guess I haven’t really figured it out yet, but I think it’s more like a, it’s more, yeah, the more leans toward, like a logical decision and like what’s healthy for yourself and the environment in the world we live in. You know what I mean?
Russell Morse: 20:09 Right. It’s very, I mean it’s a good comparison between the German mindset and the American mindset that German mindset might be like, oh, this thing isn’t good for me, so I’m not going to do it.
Silvano Pontoniere: 20:19 That’s exactly right. And they’re all about that following rules and shit. You know what I mean? Like it’s, it’s actually kind of ridiculous.
Russell Morse: 20:31 We’re fully immersed in instant gratification, which is fine. Yeah. But I’m surprised to hear that. I guess only because a lot of the times we think of the European Union and you’re being like people in Europe being or at least a progressive society, right? They’re a step ahead of us and it’s a little, it feels like a little bit of a throwback. People aren’t fulling incorporating social media into their lives.
Silvano Pontoniere: 20:56 in some ways. I mean you could say they’re a step ahead or you could say that they’re like allowing themselves to grow more slowly at a pace that maybe ensures that they’re not misstepping as much.
Russell Morse: 21:13 Also very, Un-American. Grow, grow, grow bigger is better.
Silvano Pontoniere: 21:19 Yeah, exactly. It’s not about a step ahead, they’re just like, in fact there, it’s definitely more old world and a lot of ways like a washing machine isn’t standard. I have to hang my clothes to dry no matter where I am. Like, they’re not a step ahead dude. They’re just like, they’re just growing at a pace that works for them, you know, things ended up being a lot more reasonable. Like when a change does happen, it tends to make more sense.
Russell Morse: 21:44 You know. Now I know this isn’t necessarily a tech-related question, but I haven’t, I’ve been curious for a long time. So there’s a lot going on politically in Germany, but what’s, what’s it looks like on the ground? You know, there’s a lot of rumblings about big change, you know, at least like American media is saying like, oh, there’s this backlash, you know, Angela Merkel and her coalition are in danger partly because of their open policy toward migrants. That might backfire, but that’s whatever. That’s like American media, that’s me just reading the editorial pages, and whatever the New York Times. Is anybody talking about that there? Is this a real issue on the ground for you and your world and in your work life in Germany?
Silvano Pontoniere: 22:29 I’m definitely not coming into contact with that very much and I, yeah, I can’t give you too much perspective on that. Unfortunately. Most of what I do, like I’m usually just tucked away in some like big dark production warehouse in some little village in the corner of Germany for like, you know, that that produces for some big Ex-Nazi company made Panthers or something like that back in the day and now they just produce truck parts.
Russell Morse: 23:04 If anything, honestly I say this all the time, but we used to do this when, you know, when I was covering like John Kerry’s election in 2004, I was like, I’m going to get to the, you know, they sent me to find out the youth vote, you know, talk to the young people and that was like a contrivance of media, you know, like a lot. It’s a lot more realistic that people are either like tuned out or a lot more invested in their everyday lives, right when people are thinking, you know, when you think about survival thinking, I work in a factory in a hole in the corner of Germany and maybe the people were, there are not the people who are a part of the national political conversation or maybe the ones that should be probably some put some Marxism in there,
Silvano Pontoniere: 23:45 But that being said, um, there is, there’s definitely obviously talk about the immigration because Germany has been taking in a bunch of immigrants. I mean they’ve been doing that for a long time, but in recent years they’ve been taking a lot, like an unusually large amount of immigrants.
Russell Morse: 24:02 Including you!
Silvano Pontoniere: 24:02 Well actually I’m a European citizen, so I don’t count as an immigrant. I’m Italian, right. So I’ve just like, I just decided to like, you know, hop on over, but yeah, that’s like a grey area, you know what I mean? Yeah, I was, but I’m technically already like a, not a citizen, but I have rights, blah, blah, blah. Anyway.
Russell Morse: 24:26 I like that. I like that’s in the constitution. I have rights blah, blah blah. I’m getting say it next time I’m getting arrested. I have rights, blah blah blah!
Sarah Tyler: 24:48 The next time?
Russell Morse: 24:48 The next time. Yes, Sarah, I’m always preparing the script for the next time I’m getting arrested. Silvano, I’d like to have you back on another episode where we can kind of talk more in-depth because I’m really interested in your life and just like German industry and how there’s room for you to work there. Just this whole kind of adventure of yours I think is intriguing and I kind of want to mind your experience. So hopefully now that we’ve figured out before we get out of here, I want to give an opportunity to Sarah. Uh, I know we had a couple of stories that went out in the email, but Sarah really quickly not to put you on the spot, but I’m going to put you on the spot since you are our social media manager. I was curious whether you had anything that you feel like, uh, we should feature on technocracy, on our tech vertical. What are we missing out on?
Eming Piansay: 25:40 She’s also in tech too just FYI.
Russell Morse: I’m always learning things about you, Sarah. You’re so humble. So yeah, please share your working in tech, you’re our social media manager.
Sarah Tyler: 25:52 I work with a lot of clients who are international and there are different privacy laws that affect the way that we can distribute content. I’m actually having a challenging time with a German client, pieces of business right now where we do our standard America, I think you should buy this. We can’t even populate the emails with content. They have to all come straight from the individual that’s referring to the other person. So I think that’s really interesting and how Americans…
Russell Morse: 26:27 I know that there was a law that was passed recently…
Sarah Tyler: 26:29 That’s GDPR. GDPR rolled out in August and that affected our lot of our English and Irish and like that kind of area clients.
Russell Morse: 26:48 Can you tell us what GDPR is really quickly?
Sarah Tyler: 26:58 It is a privacy law that doesn’t allow as to… I’m going to butcher this. I don’t really want to say what it is. All I know is that it’s privacy laws that changed the way that you can communicate and the disclaimers that are associated with it.
Tom Turpel: 27:13 I can talk about GDPR, it’s impacted a lot of businesses. Even the United States, even if you look at websites that you look at the domestically, typically you’ll see a pop-up window that says, will you please accept our cookies? In order for us to create a better user experience? And you see that on almost every website now because a lot of the content that’s being distributed even domestically is going to international. So they’re covering themselves by, applying that GDRT is even in the United States. And it’s almost like you’re getting this tedious pop-up windowing saying: please let us download your content to your computer so that way we can con consistently spam you. The most you’ll see is like in order to give you a better user experience, please download our cookies. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that like a lot of marketing techniques that are done for businesses to reach prospects involve acquiring a list of names like data.com, which I think is like a salesforce subsidiary. You know, they’re responsible. You go subscribe to data.com and they’ll say, oh yeah, you’re looking for businesses with you know, emails that are in this like manufacturing vertical. Well, here you go. Now with GDPR, you can’t use those names without their permission. So it’s almost like if you’re trying to find people to sell to, you really are between a rock and a hard place. Especially in the European Union.
Russell Morse: 28:45 Sarah, you’re saying this is what you’re coming up against is like you’re doing your online marketing and there are new restrictions that didn’t use to.
Sarah Tyler: 28:55 Yeah. It’s even affecting our product person to person. It’s not actually really spamming so much as it’s kind of spamming a little. It’s basically saying: Hey Russell, I really liked this X, Y, Z product, whether its shoes, software, identity, a lot of apps and software, and then because I shared with you, you would either get a promotion or a discount or something in line with that and it’s to help grow the customer base organically through that referral.
Sarah Tyler: 29:24 So that’s what I do, but the interesting thing is we’ve had to add like little tiny features, so it’s actually costing us a lot of money from the engineering perspective to implement opt-ins and things of that nature and developing a new different ways of delivering content because of that. So it’s definitely interesting. But what’s different is the American clients that don’t have an international piece of business don’t really care as much, but also Americans just opt into everything. I have not read the terms and conditions (that I didn’t click). I am very, very happy to just make sure that my online identity is associated with my Apple ID, my facebook ID, my Gmail, and I can log into everything on my phone without remembering and password.
Russell Morse: 30:15 For the most part. I’m aware of what Tom is saying, which is like when they say like, “Hey, we want to give you a better experience!” I know that they’re using all of my data, but I still am just like, “How do I know what I want? If you don’t tell me Internet?” I’m like, okay, fine, whatever. Just click. Yes, yes, yes, I agree. As you were saying, a big part of the problem.
Sarah Tyler: 30:38 So I think the fact that just general privacy is so different across the world and how Americans are so easy to buy into things. Like my mom won’t click on anything unless I tell her to. And that’s because you know, she’s English. So like they’re just like, no, we don’t give away stuff for free. And I’m like just do it. It’s easier.
Russell Morse: 30:59 Well it’s also probably generational right? People who are a little older, just think like everything is a scam. Don’t trust anything, you know. And there’s some kind of middle ground. Well at least hopefully there’s a middle ground. Maybe it’s the older people are the only ones that are going to save themselves from all this. Not to be a doomsayer, but you know, the other shoe may drop one day. Let me thank everybody for being here. This was great for a lot of different reasons. Like I said, a lot of fresh faces and fresh voices, but you know, old friends, Silvano, and Sundown in the same room. Who Knew? And Sarah and Silvano already knew each other. Who knew I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know. And this is a very quick shot out. Sundown I wasn’t sure that you were a Debug person.
Russell Morse: 31:43 I know you came to that. I must’ve, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m aware, but all of us should take a minute to acknowledge the fact that Debug has been in the news a lot lately because of Raj Jayadev, the founder of Debug who got a MacArthur Genius grant and now it’s official. Like we used to say like, but like now it’s official. Like now, now he has the title. I mean that’s something, you know, people used to points to like… Sandy Close. That was the first line in her bio was that she was a MacArthur “Genius” grant. Even though they put, always put genius in quotation marks, I feel like come on guys, like you know, you don’t have to put it in quotation marks, but a big shout out to Raj for that, you know, finally being acknowledged on that level for the work he’s been doing for a very long time. Very cool dude, as we can all attest to a really happy for him, so thanks to Sarah. Thanks for being here Silvano. Thanks for calling in from German. Sundown, it’s great to see you. Please come to any future show everybody who’s here for the first time or whatever sundown. We’re going to put you on the email, so feel free to come back anytime you like. It’s great to have you here. Tom, thanks for bringing up this topic and Eming as always, thanks for getting us here and making it happen and making it sound good. Thanks a lot, everybody. Thanks to our listeners. Until next time, quest on everybody.
Eming Piansay: 33:04 This episode of Kwest On Media’s Margin Call was produced in Richmond, California.
