Silicon Valley Squares

Hello, hello. Welcome everyone to a very special episode of Silicon Valley Squares. I'm your host from the West Coast, Dan Hollinger, and we are here to celebrate Halloween, the spookiest season on the Internet. And with me, I have an amazing assortment of ghouls, goblins, um, Mario's, um, I don't know what Adam is doing up there, but we got some freaks, frights, trivia, and we're hoping to bring it to you and have some fun here on the squares. If you've never caught this show, it's rather straightforward. We're trying to play tic-tac-toe with my two contestants here, Wills and Zaydoun. They are going, I'm going to ask our guest square some trivia questions as we try to get a tic-tac-toe, um, answering questions about Halloween, Halloween movies, ghouls, and frights. So with that, are you guys ready? Let's do it. That was enough excitement. Come on. Yeah. Let's go. I'm the only one awake early, you know, and I'm wearing, I don't know if it's like an insurance, I'm between insurance salesman or more like mortician. Mortician. Maybe I would need like a black tie, but all right. Mortician is a pretty good combination deal, actually. Well, yeah, that's, you're just adding more value, you know, makes sense. Now, do you sell them the insurance before their loved one dies or after? It would be a conflict of interests if you did it off, if you did it right. Probably. All right. If you put a late day sign, you could be death of a salesman. Good. Death of a game show host. All right. So with that, we'll, we'll get the show started. Uh, Wills, would you mind giving a quick introduction? Yep. Hi, my name's Wills. I'm a senior product manager at a company called iTrade Network, and we're working on helping out the supply chain for perishables and food waste. Awesome. Glad to have you. And Zeydoun, would you mind giving a quick introduction? Sure. I'm Zeydoun. I'm a systems engineer on the casting team at Cloudstaff. Awesome. And Wills, game one is yours. Where, who would you like to start with? I'm gonna think about Gabriela Pavicino. All right. Gabriela, welcome to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick introduction? Yes. Hi everyone. I'm Gabby and I work on Cartoon TV. Um, yeah. And I'm Princess Peach today. All right. So hopefully you can help get the question right for Mario here. Yeah, we'll try. All right. No pressure. No pressure. Your question for kickoff game one. The term jack-o'-lantern originates from a folk tale in this country. Which country? Um, I feel like, I feel like pumpkins are like a very, like we don't really have pumpkins back home in Chile. So I feel like it's very U.S. thing. Um, and I feel like, yeah, I feel like I'm going to have to say the U.S. probably because I know the U.S. is very big on Halloween. So from the U.S., I think. All right. Wills, the U .S., do you agree or disagree? Um, I'm from the U.S. I don't actually know, but I'm gonna trust her. I agree. All right. Well, that, that was a mistake, obviously. Um, it, it originated from Ireland. It is an Irish folk tale about a character named Stingy Jack who made a deal with the devil. So with that, um, Zaydun gets the square and control of the board. So let me bring that up. And I'm curious, now I'm curious what the deal was. Ah, probably. Depending when it was, you know, Stingy Jack, hopefully it wasn't during the famine. Could have just been for food. Pot of gold. All right. Speaking of starvation, Zaydun, where do you want to play next? Starvation. Okay. Uh, let's do Alonzo middle square. All right. Alonzo, our guest center square. Welcome to the squares. Hello. How are you doing? Doing well. We're trying to get you on for a while. You know, you've been elusive. I have. And also I am the protest, the protest square today, because I'm not a huge Halloween guy. It's probably my, uh, get up shows. Oh, the protest square. I've never had a protest square. Always a first. We should do a protest show. Everyone just like protest something. All right. Leave the Zoom now. Whoa. Well, this is mean. All right. Well, Alonzo, can you give a quick introduction for all of your Cloudflare fans, Cloudflare TV fans out there? Of course. Alonzo Bustamante, originally from Mexico. Been with Cloudflare for a few years now, based out of our London office. And I'm part of our special projects team. Awesome. Well, happy to have you here. Your question, question two of game one. 35 million pounds of this candy are made every year. Almost 9 billion pieces. I'm going to go with, I don't know, some, some sort of skull flavored or, I mean, skull shaped candy, some skull shaped chocolate or something like that. Some skull shaped chocolate. Zeydoun, do you agree or disagree? I don't know about that. Alonzo seemed like he hesitated a bit. I'm going to have to disagree. I mean, he already admitted he hates Halloween. That's right. I mean, I don't know about it, though. I think it's candy corn. All right. Well, the disagree is correct. It is candy corn. That is, that is a lot of candy corn. If anything, I'm a little surprised they have to keep making so much because you think there'd always be the stuff left over from the previous Halloween. Yeah, it's gross. I respectfully disagree. I love, I love it. I'm pro candy corn. Oh no, I am candy corn slander all day. Yeah. We got the pro candy corn lobby. I don't even think candy corn is a thing in the UK. Because it's nasty. Halloween. It's definitely the best thing about Halloween. It's not a thing in Portugal either. I had to bring some back so my husband could try it because he's never had it before. America has to suffer through it. It's hard. All right, Wills, the board is yours. Where do you want to play next? Um, I'm going to go on a limb and say Adam. All right, Adam for the block. Adam, welcome to the squares. Hello. It's a pleasure to be here in the spooky, spooky squares game. Yeah. Are you summoning something? Are you, is the power go out? Like, do you need help? This is just what my house looks like. I don't understand what you're, what you're saying. All right. I'm not gonna, you know, interior decorate shame. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, I'm Adam. I'm a, I'm an engineer at Cloudflare. I've been here for nearly four years now. Awesome. Glad to have you. I'm glad to have you on the squares. Your question. Pumpkins can come in orange, white, green, and what other color? Um, is it ultraviolet? I haven't seen an ultraviolet. That'd be kind of cool though. Put under some black light. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, maybe infrared. Uh, not really much of a vegetable guy. Uh, first serious answer. I think maybe purple. I know that some, like carrots come in orange and purple, right? So to me, that implies that any vegetable that comes in orange can also come in purple. All right. He thinks purple wills. What are your thoughts? Uh, I'm going to disagree. Um, I think it's, it's blue. Um, I'm from the Midwest originally, and I think I remember a blue pumpkin somewhere. You sure it wasn't just bad? I don't know. I, I, I, a lot of those, uh, there's pumpkin farms. I've repressed the memories of it's a lot of walking when I was a little kid. So you, you are from the Midwest. Did you look me up? No, no. There's a lot in my mind. There's a lot of repression in the Midwest. I am from the Midwest. So it is what I'm hearing. And back to the game. Blue is correct. So, so Wills, you do get the square. We'll psychoanalyze the, you know, geographies on another, another show. All right. So here is the state of the board. We got the block from Adam. Uh, Zaynoon, where would you like to play next? Okay. Let's go for Lindsay. All right. Lindsay, welcome to the squares. I thank you. Would you mind giving a quick introduction and, and what costume are you supporting today? Um, so my costume is what I could throw together last minute with my makeup, which is like a spiderweb on my face. Um, and I work in customer support. Um, I'm in Portugal right now. And, uh, I also do an every other week show on Thursdays, get into tech, uh, with Cloudflare TV. Awesome. I, you know, I think this is our first plug, like first legitimate plug of a, you know, a square with other things that they they're trying to advertise. That's awesome. I also said the name of the show wrong, uh, which is get started in tech, not get into tech. We, we changed it a few times. Well, you can iterate. It's fine. All right, Lindsay, your question for game one, Renfield is the name of this Halloween monsters sidekick. Isn't that where the Cubs play pulling in the whole Midwest thing? Isn't that, isn't that a baseball stadium? Wait, I think I'm thinking of Wrigley field. Yeah, that's Wrigley. Um, no, I was, I was muted accidentally. Sorry. Um, I think he is, I remember him on the Bram Stoker's Dracula. So that's, that's my, my final answer is Dracula. All right. Dracula's sidekick. Do you agree or disagree? Uh, I agree. I'm going to go with Lindsay on this one. All right. Agree is correct. Uh, Renfield is Dracula's sidekick. I kind of wonder, is there like a sidekick convention? Do like Igor and Renfield get together from time to time? Are there other monster sidekicks that people need to worry about? Do they feel unappreciated? Yeah. Is there an HR for, for sidekicks? All right. Wills, here's the state of the board. It's looking a little scary. Where would you, where would you like to play next? Um, do you have any recommendations between Omer or Lucas? Anyone do you think is going to be nice for me? I don't know which one looks less scary. I'm tempted to say Lucas. Uh, I'm going to go with, uh, Omer. All right. Omer, welcome to the squares. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. My ear is a little itchy today. Sorry. All right. Um, so hi everyone. Uh, I'm the, I'm in product and the DDoS team based in London. Uh, and I am the fancy bear, see my Bitcoin sign and everything. So I will ransom and DDoS you. I think he's scarier to be honest. Yeah, I don't know. And I don't know if you can see it, but I also have a bot net, see a bot and the net. Look at that. You need a honey pot. Like where's your honey pot? And it also works with a bear because I like honey. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for that amazing intro. Um, your question. It's my pleasure Dan. It's my pleasure. All right. Oh, this is an American question. In Alabama, it is illegal to dress up as this for Halloween. What costume is illegal in Alabama? So, um, fun fact, I actually lived in Alabama. Um, well, it's fun. You decide if it's fun or not. Uh, it may not be fun. It may be very boring. Uh, but I lived in Alabama for two years when I was younger. Um, so I actually do know this one. Um, so you're not allowed to dress up as a police officer in Alabama. All right. Police officer. Do you agree or disagree? Uh, I'm thinking about it. The way he just sipped the coffee after he said that makes me trust him a little bit less. I'm going to be honest. Um, right after the question, I mean, it looks like you're hiding something. So I'm going to, I'm going to disagree. All right. I, I think it's more of the sunglasses and his willingness to change, you know, all of currency. Um, but you know, trust works different ways for different people. Uh, disagree is the correct choice. Um, we were looking for a priest, nun or rabbi. It is illegal to dress up essentially as a clergy or a religious, um, representative during Halloween. All right. And with, with that, uh, this is the state of the board as they do. And it's, it's up to you where we play next. Okay. Let's go for Lucas. All right. Lucas or the, you know, spirit channeling Lucas right now. How are you doing? Okay. Brilliant. Thanks. Thanks for asking. I've had a good cup of coffee and I'm alive and awake. Awesome. Introduction. Uh, I am Lucas Pardue. I'm an engineer in London working on the protocols team who does things around, uh, HB2, HB3 quick, these kinds of exciting protocols that help make websites perform better on rubbish Internet. Awesome. Are we, we working you too hard? Are you getting enough sleep? You know? Yep. Okay. Hard work, sleep. All right. Well, your question, uh, which hopefully is very fitting or you should know this one, um, the festival of hungry ghosts or Yulon is celebrated in this city. So I don't know many hungry ghosts personally, but the most famous one I could think of is, um, Slimer from Ghostbusters. So, uh, he was in New York city. So I'd, I'd say like New York city is, is the answer here. All right. New York city, the festival of hungry ghosts. Do you agree or disagree? I don't know if I trust that Ghostbusters logic there, but, uh, let's go. I'm going to disagree on this. All right. Uh, disagree is correct. Uh, I was looking for Hong Kong. Okay. So Hong Kong hosts the festival of hungry ghosts where they actually, um, leave some food and treats out for the ghosts on, on the street every year. So with that, uh, we'll bring up the state of the board that wraps up game one, um, Zaydun crats on three down. And as any, uh, everyone knows, uh, game one will have been brought to us by an advertiser. In this case, it's Internet fears. Don't don't don't downtime. You're the game one was brought to us by Gaunta downtime. You want to avoid downtime. You can check out Cloudflares, any cast network and load balancing to keep your application up and running. So let's get past that. And onto game two, we got a clear board. We've got a whole bunch of fresh faces. They do. And you get to pick first, where are we starting off? Okay. Uh, let's go for Harriet. All right, Harriet. Welcome to the squares. Thank you for having me. Would you mind giving a quick introduction? Sure. My name's Harriet. I am based in our London office. I'm the operations manager for a Mia and I've been a Cloudflare for nearly three years. Awesome. Glad to have you on the squares. Your question to kick off game two, uh, Snickers and Milky way. We're the first ever candy to come in this. So the answer to this is hot chocolate. So the first ever candy to come in hot chocolate. Yeah. Chocolate. Yeah. It was the first chocolate to be transformed into a hot chocolate flavor. All right. Is that your final answer? Yep. All right. They do. And do you agree or disagree? I mean, Dan didn't look like he was convinced. So I'm going to have to disagree on this one as well. Are you playing the meta here? Are you just watching like my reaction? Exactly. That's the strategy here. All right. Uh, well, disagree is correct. Um, I was looking for fun size. They are the first candies to come in fun size. So with that, uh, they're doing is on the board and wills your choice is up. Where would you like to play next? Uh, I'll go with Fallon please. All right. Fallon, welcome back to the squares. Hello. I know you need no introduction, but for, for all of your Cloudflare TV fans. I have fans. Oh my God. Um, Fallon's awesome. I run the content, the operations and strategy for Cloudflare TV. And today I'm serving some rainbow bright action. Awesome. Well, glad to have you back. Your question, Transylvania is a region in which country? So if I'm remembering correctly, Transylvania and Dracula somewhere in Eastern Europe. Um, I'm going to go with Romania. You put my faith in you, Fallon. I'm going to agree. Please don't let me down. You should. All right. Romania is correct. I trust you with my life, Fallon. Must be nice. All right. And let's not get into life debts on the like Halloween show. Okay. Trust the rainbow button. Trust the rainbow. Don't worry. I'm Spider-Man. I'm here to save everyone. Everyone gets one, right? Everybody gets one. All right. Here's the state of the board. Is they doing where we're playing next? Okay. Let's go for Malavika. All right. Malavika, welcome to the squares. Thank you for having me, Dan. Thank you for having me. I see it's a little dusty out there. How's the Wi-Fi in the Wild Wild West? It's a little spotty, but it's, we're doing okay. We're doing, I hope you can hear me okay. But you know, if, if the, if it goes out, it's because, because I'm in the virtual Wild West, I'm a cyber cowgirl. Out here. But, but most of the time, I'm Malavika. I'm a product manager in our London office for our emerging technology and incubation team. Awesome. Well, glad to have you on the squares. Your question, before pumpkins, these vegetables were used instead to carve out jack-o'-lanterns. Which vegetables? Just to clarify on this, I'm talking about vegetables that people use to actually carve the inside of the pumpkin. Like, are we talking about sharp vegetables? Or is this like what the actual jack-o'-lanterns were? These were what the jack-o'-lantern was carved out of prior to pumpkins. Okay. Let's see. I know earlier in the show, we talked about like Ireland being the origin of jack-o' -lanterns. So let's like process of elimination. I think perhaps green is really special in Ireland. So I'm going to have to say like broccoli. I think Irish people find green very lucky. So I think to ward off evil, they used broccoli. All right. People were carving jack-o' -lanterns and broccoli. What do you think about that? Agree or disagree? Again, I'm looking at Dan. Dan does not look like he's convinced. I have all the answers. There's no convincing here. I'm going to have to disagree here. All right. Disagreeing with broccoli. That is the correct choice. I was looking for turnips, potatoes, and apparently some large beets were previously had faces carved in them before pumpkins were around. So nice Halloween history there. And with that, this is the state of the board. Wills, where are we playing next? Yep. Sorry. I'll go with Lindsay. All right. Lindsay, welcome to the squares. All right. Your question, scroll, check my notes. Mary Shelley is the author behind this lumbering monster. So I'm going to say the student debt because that is the specter that's haunting my credit score. Nice. They can't get you if you go to Europe. So I think Frankenstein is the real answer. All right. Frankenstein, do you agree or disagree? I'm going to agree. I think there's really only two. And we already had a lot of Dracula questions. Oh, again, playing the meta. What is with this? All right. Well, that is correct. Mary Shelley was the author of Frankenstein. I think she wrote it at the Algonquin roundtable, too, if I remember that correctly. I will have to take your word on it. I do not have that in my extended answer. All right. Here's the state of the board. Zeydoun, where are we playing next? Let's go for Adam. All right. Adam. Good evening, everyone, all the ghouls and goblins out there. Your question for game two. The real person by this name did not live in Sleepy Hollow, but actually Staten Island. Who are we talking about? The only person I know in Staten Island is my uncle, Shmuel. But I don't think that's the right answer. The only thing I know about Sleepy Hollow is there's a character called Ichabod, I think. So that's that's all I've got, really. All right. Ichabod, do we agree or disagree? I don't know. I'm trying to get a feel for this answer, but I don't think I can tell anything from Dan's face. Adam is... OK, I'm going to have to agree on this one. All right. I think it's pronounced Ichabod, but correct. Ichabod Crane was the character in Sleepy Hollow for the Headless Horseman. He was a real person, but he lived in Staten Island. He was based off of a real person. So you successfully get the block, and here's the state of the board. So it looks like we're coming near the end of game two. Wills, where are we playing next? I'm going to go with O'Meara again. All right, O'Meara for the block. Your question, what was the original name for Candy Corn? So, interestingly enough, in the 1880s, when the candy itself was kind of, you know, invented or produced for the first time, corn was not yet consumed by humans as a regular type of food. So it was initially called, are you ready for this? Pig Feed. All right. Do you agree or disagree? I want to disagree because I just don't want that to be true. It's a protest. It's a protest. I'm going to have to disagree. I don't care if I'm right or wrong. I just, yeah, I'm going to disagree. All right. Have you ever had Pig Feed, though? Not bad. Think about it. All right. Disagree is correct. It was actually Chicken Feed, which makes sense based off of some of its coloring and its, you know, general taste. So here is the state of the board. We have time for one more question. Zeydoun, how would you like to wrap up the game? Okay, let's go for back to Alonso. All right. All right, Alonso, let's wrap this up. Uh, Samhanophobia is an intense fear of this. So my initial Samhanophobia. My initial instinct is that it's an intense fear of our director of product management, Sam Raya, but I'm going to guess that's not it. No, I actually know this one for some weird spelling bee reason in nerdy times in elementary school. It's the fear of witches. Fear of witches. All right. Do we agree or disagree? And witches don't really exist, so. Do you only fear things that exist? That's the way I think about it. I'm going to disagree. All right. Disagree is correct. It is the fear of Halloween. Samhan is one of the original kind of names of some of the earliest Halloween celebrations in Ireland. So with that, we're at the end of our show. I want to thank all the squares. I want to thank all the people tuning in, whether you're catching us live or one of the recordings. You know, thank you for having a good time with us. And with that, I'm happy to show off your kitty. You can get some screen time. We got a nice black cat. Oh, oh, disappear. Protect them this Halloween. Adopt them if you can. Everyone. Happy Halloween from Kleffler TV.