Silicon Valley Squares
A send up of Hollywood Squares where Cloudflare experts fill the celebrity squares and answer high and low-level Cloudflare questions to help two guest stars (customers, AEs or new hires) get a a tic-tac-toe, or possibly the Silicon Valley equivalent - a TCP handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK)
Transcript (Beta)
Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to yet another episode of Silicon Valley Squares. I'm your host on the West Coast, Dan Hollinger, and I'm joined today by a lovely crowd of Cloudflare employees.
Would you mind saying hello, Squares? Hello, hello.
Hi. All right. And so for those joining us either via the live stream or via recording, welcome.
We're going to hopefully be a little bit silly with you today and we're going to play tic -tac-toe.
What that means is my two guests here, Sylvia and Nitin, are going to try to get three across, three diagonal, or three down, or first to five.
And so with that, I'd love to kick things off. Sylvia, would you mind introducing yourself to our lovely audience?
Hello, I'm very excited to be here tonight.
My name is Sylvia. I am a former Cloudflare employee, spent almost five years at Cloudflare, and just excited to be back.
All right. Well, welcome.
Thank you for joining us. And Nitin, would you mind introducing yourself?
Hi, I'm Nitin. I'm on the infrastructure team, and we all miss Sylvia.
And Sylvia promised us a Munster sighting, so I figured I had to come see Munster.
He's coming. Hold on. He's right here. We still have to beat the two cat episode.
So I think we should win by default. All right.
So we got the puppies going. If anyone else wants to bring in their animal, we'll be all set.
Oh, we got a dog. Perfect. I'll bring in my little animals, but they're hopefully finally asleep.
So we'll see. All right. With that, Sylvia, the board is yours.
Let me bring that back up for you. Where would you like to begin?
Okay. Tough choices. I am going to start with Aliza. Aliza, welcome.
Would you mind introducing yourself for our lovely audience and the non-Cloudflare employees?
Hi, I'm Aliza Knox. I run APAC for Cloudflare, and I am excited to be here from Singapore.
Awesome. And how's Singapore these days? Still one degree off the equator and very warm.
Mostly out of lockdown on the island, but it's a small island and we can't go anywhere.
So good and bad. I mean, I'd be a little surprised if it had moved farther away from the equator.
Exactly.
But I just wanted to make sure that it was clear. But it would be good for us.
We could maybe tow it somewhere and get some variety. That's a good thought.
So with that in mind, your question to kick us off is, where was Cloudflare's first office located?
In the clouds.
A blimp? An airplane? Okay. That probably won't work. So I believe it was in downtown Palo Alto from something I've read.
So I'll go with that. All right.
Downtown Palo Alto. Sylvia, do you agree or disagree? Oh, shoot. I think Aliza's probably right.
I remember our second office, but there was definitely one before that.
So I will say yes, correct. All right. Sylvia agrees. And that is correct.
It was Palo Alto. So Sylvia gets center square, as you can see with these amazing production values.
And with that, Nitin, the board is yours. Where would you like to play?
I'm going with James Ball. James Ball, now almost a Cloudflare TV celebrity and second time here on the squares.
Would you mind introducing yourself?
Hi. Yeah. My name's James Ball, and I'm a solutions engineer in the Singapore office, the Cloudflare APAC.
And still one degree off the equator?
Well, actually, when it's not locked down, it moves a little bit. It's only because it's locked down, but it's not moving.
Well, I mean, I know solutions engineers have to be agile.
You know, they have to... Creative and come up with new approaches.
Exactly. All right, James. Well, thank you for coming back. Your question is, one of the first electronic computers built in Philadelphia and weighing roughly 27 tons was named this.
Shoot. I guess it was built by IBM.
I'm thinking Colossus or Goliath or something like that, but I'll be guessing.
All right.
What's your guess then? Goliath. Goliath. All right. One of the first computers was named Goliath.
Nitin, do you agree or disagree? Well, that's a tough one.
I don't know my servers. I'm going to go with disagree. All right. Disagree is correct.
The answer is ENIAC. So ENIAC was first developed and by the U .S.
Army for the purpose of calculating ballistic firing tables. That was the one question I would have got right.
You went with James for that one. All right. Nitin gets the square.
Where is James? There's James. Yeah, I don't, you know, there's not a fair approach to how I split up questions.
So do the best we can.
All right. Let's bring the board back up. And Sylvia, the choice is yours.
Where would you like to play? All right. I'll go with Kate. Kate, welcome to Silicon Valley Squares.
Would you mind giving an introduction? Yeah, it's my pleasure, Dan.
My name is Kate Fleming. I'm also one degree up the equator.
And if you were watching two minutes ago, you'd know where that was. I'm part of the customer success team here in Singapore for Cloud Player.
And Sylvia was one of the first people I spoke with when I started at the company.
And she got me super excited.
I think during the interview, we talked about everything but work.
I still remember that conversation to this day. So thank you. I mean, arguably, that's the point of this show, as we're talking about everything but work here.
So ask me a good question. Ask me something about food. I'm sorry, this one's not food related.
Your question is, what general term refers to all kinds of harmful software, like viruses and spyware?
I could say malware.
I could say badware. I'm gonna go with malware.
All right, malware. Sylvia, do you agree or disagree? I'll go with agree.
Mal equals bad. So Kate, I will say you're right. All right, malware is correct.
So X gets the square. It's a shortening of malicious. So malicious software.
So we got two Xs. And Nitin, the board is yours. Where would you like to play?
Floor. Floor. Welcome to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick introduction?
Hi, my name is Floor. I'm based in Singapore. I'm also part of the customer success team.
And what I do is to make sure that my customer stays happy, and they get adopted to the Cloudflare culture.
Awesome. Welcome. We just have a very successful board today.
Between success, solutions, we got quite a crowd. All right, Floor, your question is, what was the name of the first computer virus released into the wild?
And you have four choices. Was it Windveer, Creeper, Melissa, or Brain?
Hmm. In the middle of this pandemic, we're talking about virus. I thought you're going to ask about coronavirus.
That's too timely. I got to pick the old question.
And you know, the name sounds like they're meant for ex -wives.
I would name, I mean, Jen's not watching, so we're good. Okay, let me pick one.
So the choices were Windveer, Creeper, Melissa, or Brain. I'll go for Creeper.
All right. Creeper is the, oh, I'm not saying nothing. Would you agree or disagree?
Well, I was going to say one thing, but I think now I'm going to agree.
What would you like to say?
Pretend, man, I've just been like, every episode, it's just been more and more on my side.
So do you agree or disagree with Creeper? Agree. All right, that is correct.
And so Nitin gets the square and the block, and we're off to a very competitive game.
Good one, Nitin. You know, Dan, now you are Sylvia's slip of the tongue.
I might. All right, we'll see how close it gets. Sylvia, the board is yours.
Oh, man. I just have to say my nickname for my mom is Creeper, very lovingly.
So I'm glad that was the right answer. Okay, here we go. Let's go with Usman.
All right. All right, Usman, would you mind introducing yourself to our lovely viewers?
Sure. I'm Usman Muzaffar. I lead the engineering team at Cloudflare. And I am 37 degrees north.
I looked it up while you guys were talking. So I'm not one degree north.
The rest of this board is all hanging out in Singapore, and I'm not on the success team on the engineering team.
So there, take that. Whoa, I'm not hanging out on the equator.
That's true. Good point. Sorry. I mean, we're not going to hold it against you.
And also, don't forget Mick. He's Antipodean. Mostly, I'm just battling the overload of success team members here.
All right, go ahead.
Hit me with a question. I got this. All right, your question. The coding language COBOL is an acronym.
What are the words of the acronym COBOL? COBOL, it's about bowling.
It's a bowling language. It's used originally designing for the control panels of a bowling alley.
No, I'm pretty sure it stands for Common Business Oriented Language.
Something like that. I'm going to go with that. All right, Common Business Oriented Language.
Sylvia, would you agree or disagree? I mean, he was super confident.
The only thing I think he missed is that if it's bowling, it should be like cooperative.
Oh, yeah, you got to get the CO in there. But I'll say his serious answer sounds great.
All right. So, is Usman not known to be a liar?
That is correct. It is Common Business Oriented Language. It's a ridiculous name, but yes.
Yeah, the C and the O. They merged the C and the O to get the COBOL.
Now, you really owe me breakfast, Sylvia. All right. So, here's the state of the board with game one.
Nitin, the choice is yours. Where would you like to play?
Gonna say hi to Mick. All right, Mick, would you mind introducing yourself?
Oh, he's frozen.
He's pretending to be in the meeting, but he's actually just gone off to make coffee.
Sorry. Sorry, folks. It's pouring with rain here, so the connection is not great.
Mick from Sydney, Australia. I have no idea what degrees we are from Singapore, but we're certainly not one.
It's probably one degree outside in terms of the temperature.
But look after the channel for ANZ. And I'm excited to be here.
Just please don't ask me anything like that last question. All right. This question is kind of like that last question, unfortunately.
So, your question, what does the term SSL stand for?
Is it secure socket layer or link or something like that?
Socket secure. You want to go secure socket layer or secure socket link?
The former. All right. I think it's silly, slippery locations. Probably correct, too.
All right. Nitin, what do you think? Which one's agreeing? Which one's disagreeing?
What's the final answer? It's final answer with secure socket layer.
I'm going to go with yes. All right. That is correct. It is secure socket layer.
You guys are being way too nice to these contestants. So, Nitin gets the block.
And let me make sure the board is up for you guys. And here's the state of the board.
Very competitive. Sylvia, the choice is yours. Oh, no. Nitin played better than me.
Nitin's got the double win, yeah. It's okay. I think he's going to slip up soon.
Let's go with David. All right, David. Welcome to the squares. Would you give a quick introduction?
Yeah, sure. My name is David Tuber. You can call me Tubes.
I am based out of Seattle. So, nowhere near the equator. And I'm the product manager for Cloudflare's network.
So, I'm really happy to be here. And yeah, happy to be here.
Awesome. And is it raining in Seattle? It's Seattle. Of course, it's raining.
Just checking. There's hope. All right. Your question is, what is the difference between a hub and a switch?
Hub and a switch. Well, 13-year -olds playing Fortnite don't yell at me on a hub.
So, that's one for starters. But if I had to answer seriously, I'd say that a hub sends data out to all hosts connected to it.
And a switch reflects it back to the sender. All right, Sylvia. Does that sound reasonable?
Does that sound unreasonable? Very reasonable. Well said.
All right. So, do you agree? Agree. All right. That is correct. So, let me bring up that X for you.
There we go. It's a busy board. All right. Nitin, can you bring home game one?
Niku, you could lose this for Nitin. I was going to say, there's like a nice way.
There is some incentives involved here, you know, work -wise.
The engineering team always wins. All right, Niku. All right, Niku. Would you mind giving an introduction for us?
So, I'm based in Singapore, which is not in the US.
And I work with the great partners we have in APAC. And I see your poolside.
That looks very pleasant. Yeah, it's very good. It's actually from Phuket. It's a great place with amazing sunsets.
And one day we'll get to travel again. All right.
We're all looking forward to that. Your question, Niku, is there are two categories of network operating system.
One is point-to-point, and the other one is this.
So, I'm curious if Nitin knows, and if Niku doesn't.
Point-to-point, and the other one is this.
If the squares want to do Jeopardy music or anything, we can lay it on thick.
Can I comment on your tie, maybe?
We can see if people agree or disagree. Oh, are you allowed to get help from the aliens or whatever?
No, no. Dog friend. You should phone David.
All right.
I got to have an answer.
Centralized hub-and-spoke.
All right. Hub -and-spoke. Nitin, do you agree or disagree?
Disagree.
All right. Disagree is correct. The answer is client-server. So, point-to -point and client-server is what I was looking for.
So, Nitin takes game one. All right.
Let's put that on the board. $10 on chat, yeah, as we discussed. Yeah, I don't want any backroom deals in Silicon Valley Squares.
We got to keep this pure as I pivot to an ad.
So, game one of Silicon Valley Squares was brought to you by the Cloudflare Partner Network.
Why? Because I'm part of the partner team. So, if you'd like to learn more about becoming a partner, feel free to check out portal .Cloudflarepartners.com.
We can help you with enablement and training and give you an amazing account team like you've seen on the squares today and some joint account planning.
All right. And with that, we'll shift to game two. We got a clear board.
We got all the same squares. And Nitin, you can kick us off. Where would you like to play?
Let's go with Vikash.
All right, Vikash, the lone square. Would you mind giving us a quick introduction?
Yeah. Hi, I'm Vikash Mishra. I'm part of the channels team for APAC.
And this is my son who just came in because I'm using his desk. Awesome. Yeah, you have help.
So, you got two minds to answer the question. All right. All right. And with that, your question.
Who laid out the basic concept of the modern computer as a computing machine that uses algorithms to produce results?
Okay. That definitely is not any politician.
So, not Donald Trump, I guess, but Alan Turing. Alan Turing.
All right. And do you agree or disagree? Say the question once again. Who laid out the basic concept of the modern computer as a computing machine that uses algorithms to produce results?
Agree. All right. It is Alan Turing. All right.
Let me bring up the board and award you the square. And Sylvia, where would you like to be playing next?
You still there, Sylvia?
Oh, yeah, I'm here. Brought to you from a live studio audience.
Just tic-tac-toe, Sylvia. I feel like Nitin studied up on his tic-tac-toe strategy.
No, I didn't start with the Gunners. Let's see.
I will go with Floor. All right, Floor. All right. No more virus questions.
No more virus questions, right? Okay, no more virus questions. This one's a nice question.
So what term refers to good conduct in electronic communications? What?
Good conduct? Trolling? Oh, I think you're trolling us there with that one. Okay, okay.
Seriously. Because there's a lot of trolls out there on social media. Let me guess.
Uh, netiquette?
Netiquette. All right, Sylvia, do you agree or disagree? I mean, I think it could be a new term for sure, but I'm gonna go with disagree for this.
All right.
It was actually netiquette. Nice job, Floor.
Yeah, we have our first miss, and since it's not a game-winning miss, Nitin actually gets the square.
So here's the state of the board. Nitin, where would you like to play?
Let's go with Eliza.
Eliza, you can set him up with a very solid win. Downtown Palo Alto.
It served me well last time. It might not work, this one. All right, your question, still Cloudflare-related, is approximately what percent of the Fortune 1000 are paying Cloudflare customers?
Should have heard the earnings call today.
I know. This is before or after. Yes, the earnings call was, you know, speaking of Singapore, yet again, referring to our nice little island, the earnings call is in the middle of the night.
So before the earnings call, as far as I recall, it was 13%.
All right, lucky 13. Would you agree or disagree with that?
Agree.
All right, it is 13. So Nitin gets center square and potentially an unlosable board.
But, you know, we don't know. This is Silicon Valley Squares. Sylvia, where would you like to play?
I know, this is tragic. I'm going to go with Niku. All right, Niku can provide the block.
13%, sorry. All right, Niku, your question. What is the seventh or top layer of the OSI network model?
The OSI, I would go with the application.
All right, application. Do you agree or disagree, Sylvia?
Agree. We got all the squares nodding. This is, it's almost like cheating.
All right, it is application. So you did get the one block. Nitin, where would you like to play?
Well, how many minutes do we have?
Oh, don't worry, we can kill the time. We're good at killing time.
Otherwise, Dan's going to do another ad for the partner team.
No, no, I switch up the ads. Each of the games are brought by different things. Let's go with Kate.
All right, Kate. Here's your chance to win. This is nerve -wracking.
Yeah, I know, I know. And I rely on Nitin for a lot of things. So can we just make this really easy?
All right, maybe, maybe. This one's, this one's, this one's got some.
I have to say, I just got an inbound message from the audience saying that actually we'd gone up to 15%.
Oh, okay, that was, hey, someone has to update the wiki.
That's what I'm working from here. I have it in the wiki. So the audience is playing.
We need one of those games where you can go, you know, get help.
Yeah, how wrong was this? All right. So what does that do to the scoreboard though?
Yeah, I'm still going off the answers. We're going off my answers because that's what, that's what I found.
Because you're in charge. I like that. Yep.
All right, Kate, your question. In 2007, this game trailer was used as the very first instance of a Rickrolling.
So for those of you not aware, Rickrolling is when you get inadvertently sent to the YouTube video of Rick Astley, singing and dancing his Never Gonna Give You Up song.
So what was the very first instance of that was a link to a game trailer in 2007?
Which game? Yeah, I have been Rickrolled. Two.
That's not the game. Oh, Nitin, I really want to do this for you. See, success, the success squares care about your outcome.
No, we do. We care. We really care.
The engineers care about the question. We just care about, we want it all to be nice.
It's got to be right. Yeah. I'm going to say World of Warcraft, but I'm guessing.
I'm guessing Assassin's Creed.
I'm just going to say Assassin's Creed and then Nitin can say if it's right or wrong.
All right, Assassin's Creed.
Nitin, do you agree or disagree for the win? Disagree. Oh yeah, that's just a matter of odds there.
So disagree is correct. It was Grand Theft Auto 4.
Oh. Well, well done, Nitin.
This is how the success team works. All right, so Nitin takes game two.
And I forget. Well, I'm going to find out real quick what the advertisement was.
Oh, so that game two was brought to you by Cloudflare Workers. Now with zero cold starts.
Cloudflare's serverless platform to help you with your security posture, handle the scale of the Internet of things, and reduce infrastructure costs.
This show also brought to you by a Cloudflare Worker. All right, with that, we probably don't have time for a third game, but I want to give a shout out to all my squares and my contestants.
And of course, thank the live studio audience, one, for correcting us.
Hosts love when you do that. And two, for being a little bit silly with us over tic -tac-toe.
Any comments, squares? Thank you very much.
It was fun, and you clearly have a second career if you, you know, I know you never will, but if you were to get hired at Cloudflare, you're clearly able to do other things as well.
Very impressive. Very fun. I'm the bearded Ryan Seacrest type, according to James.
I was going to say, wasn't the show brought to us by 11 Cloudflare Workers and one ex -Cloudflare Worker?
Oh. Touché. Now he brings the jokes.
Now he brings the jokes. I noticed when Sylvia was referring to Cloudflare, she said, our first office.
It's still an hour for me. She still bleeds orange, probably a little bit.
All right, any remaining closing thoughts, squares?
I've got one, Dan. I really think that you're going to have to go back and think about what happens in future if there's live audience participating, participation disputing the answers.
Because that could throw a game. It did throw a game, and Cloudflare is all about real-time, fast transparency.
So yeah, I'll need the play along on the right-hand side that I can bring up too and see how people are doing with the questions.
Well, we'll get that in the next version.
I guess, are there prizes, Dan? I was unaware of what happened at the end of this.
I was told whoever you get peering, that's all Nitin wanted. That's all Nitin wanted.
The prize Nitin gets goes back to the engineering team. So I am talking with the finance and marketing team about prizes.
I'm hoping it might start with shirts.
I'm hoping to give the contestants dinner on Cloudflare if we can pull that off, and we'll see.
So this show is always evolving. We're exploring secret squares.
So maybe the live studio audience can play along with us and we can go from there.
And with that, that's our- Can I suggest a Cloudflare onesie for runners -up?
Oh, maybe. All right. Thank you all, everyone. Catch you guys next week. Thank you.
Bye. Thank you.