 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And our show this time will take the time to review the most recent top five Think Tech talk shows and the staff pick. We'll check out the elements of the best of the best and get a handle on the public issues and the guests involved. Think Tech produces more than 30 talk shows every week in our downtown high-tech green screen studio. Here's a list of all our incredible Think Tech talk shows and hosts. As you can see they're very diverse and their coverage is also kaleidoscopically diverse showing you things you might never have otherwise known. Every week Think Tech chooses its top five Think Tech talk shows from the week before based on the number of views each of them has had on the internet. For this past week the winning shows were as follows. Number one from the series Young Talents Making Way hosted by Andrea Gabrielli. It's called Mixing and Unmixing Stars exploring the physics of time reversal with guests Aiden Chun and Kimberly Kothen-Budel. It's on our Young Talents Making Way playlist. How many simulations did you run? How many times the two galaxies collided? I think if we take a look at the results. Yeah let's have a look. Okay so here so we define the sets of experiments with single precision as well as double precision. Yes. So here we're looking at results from the single precision. What did you find about this? So for single precision you could see that by the time you wait 20 time units which are just arbitrary. You could think of them almost as the amount of time for the sun to orbit around the core of the Milky Way. Yeah that's right because the question I was going to ask you is simulations are run basically on a computer so they go fast I suppose but in the real universe a galaxy two galaxies to collide it takes a long time. How long does it take? Millions of years. Millions of years. And our galaxy the Milky Way is actually going is set on a collision route with the Andromeda galaxy isn't it? Yes and if you don't want it to be that way if you figure out how to reverse every star every atom within the galactic group maybe you could pull it off. That's fascinating but how could you do you have any ideas how you could actually do this or? I have no answers. I guess it might deal more with quantum mechanics and atoms as well yeah there are some studies from physicists in the world were trying to work with quantums and other tiny particles. I think there's even like research with like protons for X-rays and then you know how they have their spin yeah they actually like reverse it I guess to a certain degree that's like reversing their motion. Wow here we're talking about really advanced physics yes yeah so what about your so you carried out the simulations with single and double precision as part of this computer work what about the double maybe let's see our next slide so we can see yeah okay so what's the difference between the single and the double precision in these experiments? Well the double precision you can actually wait way longer than the single precision as you can see with you know more rows of data. Number two from the series Think Tech Asia hosted by Jay Fidel it's called playing the trump card banning Chinese technology investments in the US with guest Russell Liu it's on our Think Tech Asia playlist. He wants to stop investment by China I guess that includes everybody in China every man woman child and and and well everybody in China from investing in American technology what is that about? I think we have to look at what he's what is how you do that. I think we have to look in a broader picture what he's doing because when he says we're going to stop Chinese investments coming to the US technology well you have many companies where Chinese that will do maybe join research centers with American companies and we learned from them just as what they learned from us and again with that remember it builds a safer world because then and to some extent we them you know I won't say them but other people in the world. I certainly agree but how does investment by China into the United States into American tech companies hurt us what is Trump concerned about what is the problem here that he's trying to solve by stopping it isn't it a good thing to have foreign investment offshore investment coming into your jurisdiction isn't that what everybody likes they want that they go out worldwide and and scour every every place on earth to find foreign investment now he says he I don't understand well you know Jay what I'm more troubled about and to be honest with you it's not only just the proposed ban on foreign investment from China but it means this of the last show we talked about there's some very very very concerned signals that we we see we have the head of the FBI saying that the Chinese people are threat to our society and so the one of the other proposal is to to now to restrict the Chinese students from coming to the US to our colleges and you know there are a lot of Chinese students who come to the US to do their phd work or their master's work and so that's part of it because a lot of them are in the area of technology doing master's work and so there's a China phobia there's a China phobia that everything not only just technology but education we're going to stop the flow it's it's scary he's also does he also want to stop the flow of talent from China into the United States yes that's what they're we're part of the same initiative it's part of the same initiative to to to restrict the Chinese students from coming to the US just isolate keep them away keep them out we're going back to like out of our economy out of our schools all that it's it's almost like the uh 1950s that scare you know the red scare we're going to keep everybody out you know i don't know what this is going to accomplish you know because it's a global world no matter what happened jay number three from the series navigating the journey hosted by marsha joiner it's called kawai after the historic storm with guest kawai mayor bernard carvalho it's on our navigating the journey playlist some have chosen to remain uh in this area and others of course have made the decision to evacuate so we're trying to encourage everybody to if they can to evacuate the area uh i get to a safer place for now until we can do a better assessment of the entire area and working closely on that there are multi agency relief efforts from my visitors and and and our our national guard like i said the america red cross we have a solid team here at the eoc trying their very best to uh address the entire situation now uh our last conversation with you you told us about the fact that you had all of this in place ready just in case because you had learned so much from the last two hurricanes you know right but unlike the hurricane we have is almost a little different well majorly different kinds of disasters so yes we have a checklist in place if you will we know what we need to do we've gone through something like this we assembled the team we've done numerous mock type of trainings prior to this with our kima team which is a kawaii emergency management team that has been doing so you know now it's a real situation and i'm so happy with the support from the federal state and county levels of people wanting to help support we've got people in here from maway from oahu different members helping alleviate or or or transition some of our team members to stay here 24 hours sometime overnight you know for the next day as we transition in the mornings at six o'clock and so we're asking for support from our neighboring islands as well from our political um uh leaders to help support what we can in relief efforts or funding so there's a lot of stuff happening but the main part right now is to address an isolated area boots on the ground do an assessment of all the damages in other areas and then come up with a checklist so we can submit that for relief efforts and support number four from the series research in minoa hosted by jay fidel it's called preparing for the 2018 hurricane season with guest denis wong it's on our research in minoa playlist but this is a single wall house and these are the houses that are the oldest ones in hawaii okay and they're most vulnerable to uh hurricane impact so you could see on the picture on the upper left um that's a house that's been retrofitted on the right a lot of single wall houses are called what's on post and pier structures they're very weak from a hurricane force winds or an earthquake because they don't they don't sit on um they're not attached or just sit on the term i pan by friction but in this picture we actually retrofitted that to make the connection stronger i see and and this is one of these retro yes one more picture i guess and that should do let me see can we go okay there we go so here we go so those are the individual posts and piers this single wall house in pearl city is actually each post has been retrofitted to tie down the post to the concrete block and it's very easy you could come back here it's very easy to uh put these posts in and then you put the hole down there and with the screw you just drill a hole if this is a five eight and screw you drill a five eight inch hole into the concrete and use an impact driver it goes right in and it holds okay the post and of course there's no guarantees that any of this will prevent all of the damage right but at least in terms of wind damage and knowing what the drainage system is around the house as well presumably is really important right right yes so um this is one of the main activities that seagrant does as i understand it that you try and inform the general public what would an interested layperson how would they learn more about this you've got the manual how do they even get a copy of this okay well um they could best to uh just google university of hawaii seagrant and it'll get to their uh to their website and their um their they have a publication library and this is the hawaii seagrant college program yes number five from the series the cyber underground hosted by rachel menselugen it's called how to start a career in cyber security part two with guest nathaniel weeks it's on our cyber underground playlist you and i have done a little bit of that when we're at kcc when we did um pin testing for companies it was really you know more like email phishing and testing the employees to see if they were following best practices with their emails because that's what the way so many companies get hacked is is through email so i did that i've done an internship with high tech hui with the national oceanic and atmospheric administration and they're all great people and then like i said now i'm with the uh cyber security coordination center at west wahu and i have another internship lined up that i'm going to be starting soon and all right yeah i'm super excited about all this is there's so many opportunities out there yes um so if you show that you're you know aggressive about these degrees about these certifications about your career there's so many doors that will open up you have to pick and choose and so i've found myself saying no a lot more than saying yes to i have to learn how to do that and nathaniel always because i have a lot on my plate and i say yes to everything for every opportunity but right we've taken different yes we do so we'll talk about that a little bit later my the routes that i did as well but what can you talk a little bit more what you actually do at the cyber center do sure so like a blog or um so there is um something like a blog that we maintain there um so we have the vulnerability research we have best practices we have global and we have forensics and so those people all invest a lot of time in their area expertise and they they develop these great articles based on open source intelligence now i've i've written a few myself but i am i spend more time uh working with hardware and developing labs for students right and in fact i actually taught a class at west wahu we also have a staff pick this time it's from the series the global report by lili ang it's called what america may look like to overseas americans with guest glenn benzoopin it's on our global report playlist but this one particular driver um he had been a businessman for many years he lost his job so he started driving a taxi very smart very educated and he just um after saying hello and you know where you want to go and all that he looked in the mirror he said no where are you from i said oh the us he goes um he goes can i ask you a question you know he looks in the mirror at me right i'm looking out in the mirror he goes what happened to your country like just like that and i'm like oh my gosh that just you know it was almost like a knife you know just straight up what you know what happened what is happening with your country what is going on and well i think you know i i appreciate that there's a large you know make america great again contingency in the us you know singaporeans here when they see that they they really wonder and some of the issues around it they really wonder what has happened to us ideals now don't forget i mean americans have been coming to singapore since probably about the 1840s or 1850s us warships called on singapore in the mid 1800s right so we have a long our whaling ships came from the east coast of the us and spent time here on their way um you know uh looking for whales around trade all that sort of stuff um the first ice in singapore came from lakes in new hampshire and main and it was put in the bottom of the clipper ships the sailing ships and then packed with sawdust and sailed all the way around south america into singapore you know two three months later the ship arrived and that was the first ice that came to singapore so you know we have a hugely um long and deep connection uh to singapore so when singaporeans see things happen you know they they know america they know americans many of them have studied there have friends there maybe a partner a spouse from there so they really want to know what's going on you know where why have we gotten to this place you can always find the links to these shows in our daily email advisories if you don't already get our daily email advisories you can sign up to get them on thinktecawaii.com these are only samplings from the top five and the staff pick from across our 30 plus weekly talk shows there are of course many more to see these shows in their entirety go to thinktecawaii.com or youtube.com slash think tech hawaii great diversity great community great content at think tech and now let's check out our think tech schedule of events going forward think tech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 10 a.m to 5 p.m on weekdays then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends and some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends if you miss the show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows they're all archived on demand on thinktecawaii.com and youtube for our audio stream go to thinktecawaii.com slash audio and repost all our shows as podcasts on iTunes visit thinktecawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and youtube links or better yet sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories think tech has a high tech green screen studio at pioneer plaza if you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our shows contact shows at thinktecawaii.com if you want to pose a question or make a comment during a show call 808-374-2014 and help us raise public awareness on think tech and we're always looking for new shows most recently we've added outside the lines hosted by Rusty Kamori which covers leadership issues and advice in Hawaii it plays at 10 a.m mondays and you can find the episodes on the outside the lines playlist go ahead give us a thumbs up on youtube or send us a tweet at think tech hi we'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country we want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us let's think together and now here's this week's think tech commentary aloha i'm keely akina president of the grassroot institute and although i'm an elected public official the views in this commentary are purely my own and do not reflect those of any organization or agency in theory the legislative session is a time when complex issues can be hashed out in full view of the public citizens are free to testify and offer feedback to legislators about proposed bills legislators can research the complex variables involved and debate the bill's possible impact hearings are held compromises are found in theory the process helps protect us all from hastily composed legislation with secret agendas and unintended consequences now all of that is in theory but then comes the end of the session when that care compromise and concern are occasionally thrown out the window now if you ever doubted that the proverbial smoke filled room still exists you only need to look at how transparency goes by the wayside at the end of the session consider the budget bill we know that governor david egay asked for an extra 50 million dollars to help meet payments for the state's unfunded liabilities what was less clear until recently is that the state is also sitting on a multi-year surplus what's completely unclear is how legislators are planning to spend that surplus now part of the issue is that it's an unofficial surplus because it wasn't submitted as part of the governor's financial plan but let's not get mired by the semantics of bureaucracy the money is either there or it's not if it is what's the legislature planning to do with it the hawaii constitution says excess revenues can only be given back as a tax refund credit or deposited into an emergency fund or used to pay down state obligations you'd think that the question of how to allocate the unofficial surplus would be a public matter but it is surprisingly difficult for the public to get any information about budget proceedings at this stage they are neither broadcast nor recorded and the process itself is opaque in essence the way the public learns what is in the budget bill is for the legislature to pass it and then read it now even worse is the notorious practice of gut and replace every year legislators take advantage of a vaguely titled bill to swap out its contents with an entirely different measure they want to see advance thus a bill that has passed one house going through debate and public testimony can end up being amended in the other house until it's an entirely different bill that amended bill now moves along to conference committee and passage immune from the need for more hearings or public comment at all and gut and replace isn't unusual it can happen more than a dozen times every session for example take this year hb 1985 began as a bill about zoning land use and affordable housing then it went to the senate where it was transformed into a bill about the mount okea management authority now hb 2304 started as a bill about industrial hemp now it's an appropriation for capital improvements in east mawi take hb 2471 it received attention as a proposal to regulate video games then it became a licensing bill about small dollar lenders which are payday loans the practice of gut and replace is a repudiation of transparency and citizen involvement it allows legislators to advance pet projects and dead bills without subjecting them to fair scrutiny or the full legislative process and yet it's so common that the league of women voters and common cause hawaii created what we call the rusty scalpel award for the bill that makes the greatest leap in subject without constitutionally required legislative review in 2017 the award went to a bill that started as a lower income tax rate bill for the poor and turned into a one million dollar appropriation for the hawaii tourism authority the real damage here isn't to the budget or hawaii's taxes though they're questionably suffering as well the larger question is how these practices destroy public trust and government the purpose of transparency and legislative review is to promote an active and educated citizenry by shutting the public out of the process through secretive budget hearings and gut and replace tactics the legislature fosters the notion that they don't need to play by the rules this in turn leads to greater public frustration and distrust of government what we need is a show of integrity and restraint from our policy makers refrain from indulging in the practice of gut and replace demand more transparency in the legislative process consider passing rules that would prevent gut and replace tactics this isn't just about getting more sunlight in those smoke-filled rooms it's about protecting the democratic process we'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of think tech but first we want to thank our underwriters the atherton family foundation castlin cook hawaii the center for microbial oceanography research and education collateral analytics the cook foundation the hawaii council of associations of apartment owners hawaii energy the hawaii energy policy forum the hawaii institute of geophysics and planetology hawaii electric companies the high tech development corporation galin ho of b ae systems integrated security technologies kameha meha schools dwayne koreesu kawamon lee and the friends of think tech mw group limited the shiler family foundation the sydney stern memorial trust the volo foundation urico j suki mora okay synthia that wraps up this week's edition of think tech remember you can watch think tech on spectrum oc 16 several times every week can't get enough of it just like synthia does for additional times check out oc 16 dot tv for lots more think tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on think tech visit think tech hawaii dot com be a guest or a host a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on hawaii thanks so much for being part of our think tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech energy diversification and global awareness in hawaii and of course the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it you can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next sunday evening for our next important weekly episode i'm jay fidel and i'm synthia sinclair aloha everyone