A very good evening to all our friends and welcome to the Hindu News Analysis of Shankar IAS Academy for the date 20th September 2020. Before we begin our news analysis, we have an important announcement to make. As all of you know that Shankar IAS Academy is conducting two all India free online MOOC tests. And today we will be having our first free MOOC test. And all the aspirants who have already registered for the same are requested to take part in the test. And the second test will be conducted on 27th September 2020. The link for the registration is given in the description section and also in the comment section. And we request all the aspirants to make use of this opportunity for your upcoming problems 2020. With this we will start our news analysis for today. Here is the list of the news articles taken up for today's discussion along with the page numbers of five different editions. Let us take up our first news. Here is our first news article which says that a depth recovery tribunal in Chennai has set aside an auction which was held in 2018 for recovery of loans. As it was not in compliance with the provisions of surfecy act. Here the details of this case is not important for us. In this context, let us have a discussion on the important provisions of surfecy act 2002. Then the recovery procedure and about the depth recovery tribunals. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. See surfecy stands for Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act of 2002. It allows banks and financial institutions to recover their dues exceeding 1 lakh rupees. And this is done by proceeding against the secured assets of the borrower or guarantor without the intervention of courts or tribunals at the first stage. In other words, banks use this act as an effective tool for non-performing assets recovery. But this is possible only when the non-performing assets or NPS are backed by the securities charged to the bank by a mortgage or assignment. Now let us see how this works. Assume that an individual has mortgaged a property and availed loan from bank and assume that this loan has become an NPA. See an asset or a loan is considered as non-performing if any amount of interest principal instalments remains overdue for more than 90 days in respect of term loans. And upon default, banks can seize the securities without the intervention of the court at first stage. And for this, banks have to give a notice in writing to the defaulting borrower requiring it to discharge its liabilities within 60 days. And if the borrower fails to comply with the notice, then the bank may take recourse to one or more of the following measures. First one, it can take possession of the security for the loan. Second one, it can sell or release or assign the right over the security or manage the same or appoint any person to manage the same. The surfacing act also provides for the establishment of asset reconstruction companies regulated by RBA to acquire assets. Here asset reconstruction means acquisition by any securitisation or reconstruction company of any right or interest of any bank or financial institution to any financial assistance for the purpose of realisation of such financial assistance. Now coming to the valuation of the property, an authorized officer of the secured creditor that is bank or financial institution obtain the valuation of the property from an approved valuer in consultation with the secured creditor. Know that the surfacing act provides for a right to appear. Any agreed person, including the debtor or borrower, can appeal in the debt recovery tribunal or DRT. And if not satisfied, they can appeal against the DRT's decision in the debt recovery appellate tribunal. And it is very important to know that the provisions of the surfacing act does not apply in certain cases. Examples are if any security interest for securing repayment of any financial assets does not exceed 1 lakh rupees or when any security interest is created in agricultural land. Another example is a case in which the amount due is less than 20% of the principal amount and interest thereon. Now let us discuss in brief about the debt recovery tribunal or DRT. Know that the recovery of debts due to banks and financial institutions act of 1993 that is RDDBFI Act provides speedy redressal to lenders and borrowers through filing of original applications in the debt recovery tribunals. And if not satisfied, DRT's decision can be appealed in the debt recovery appellate tribunals or DRT's. And know that there are 39 debt recovery tribunals and five debt recovery appellate tribunals, which are single member tribunals. The five debt recovery appellate tribunals are located in Ilhabad, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. And in this discussion, we saw some of the important provisions of Surfacing Act of 2002, then the debt recovery procedure and also about the debt recovery tribunals. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now let us take up this news article which talks about the sovereign debt and external debt. The news article says that India's total external debt is increased by 2.8% to 558.5 billion US dollars from 543 billion a year earlier. Now before trying to understand why this debt increased, let us see the basics of sovereign debt and external debt. So then what is sovereign debt? See, it is the central government's debt. It is the debt received by the national government in foreign currency to finance the country's growth and development. Here, all kinds of libraries of the government to foreign individuals and institutions are counted. In India's sovereign debt, the top two constituents are external assistance and foreign institutional investments in government securities. Here external assistance means the loans raised by the government from bilateral and multilateral institutions. It denotes multilateral and bilateral loans received under the agreements between government of India and other governments or international institutions and also the repayments of such loans by India. Here examples include loans from IMF, then Asian Development Bank etc. Now in this case, the foreign institutional investments in government securities are not counted. Now what is foreign institutional investment or FIA? See, it is a portfolio investment by foreign investors in shares and debentures. When this investment is made into the government's bonds or securities, the government is liable to pay back to the foreign investors at the time of maturity. So we should know that foreign institutional investments which are made into the government securities and bonds are counted in sovereign debt. Now talking about foreign institutional investments in government securities, they are dependent on the stability of the issuing government. The stability is assessed through the country's sovereign credit ratings. When the credit rating are good for a country, it means the loans given to that government are safe. Now today's news article says that the sovereign debt shank by 3% and the external assistance raised by 4.9%. Now foreign institutional investments to government securities which is the second largest constituent reduced by 23.3% and as a net, the sovereign debt reduced by 3%. On the other hand, the non-sovereign debt which means the debt of non-government entities raised by 4.2%. This is mainly due to an increase in the commercial borrowings. Now the top two constituents of non-sovereign debt are ECBs that is external commercial borrowings and outstanding NRA deposits. So what are external commercial borrowings? Know that they are the loans raised by the commercial enterprises. It refers to commercial loans in the form of bank loans, buyer's credits, supplier's credit etc. And they have a maturity more than three years. The external loans with maturity period less than three years are classified under short-term debts. Now according to the news, the non-resident deposits which is the second largest constituent under the non-sovereign debt didn't change much. The deposits received from non-resident Indians come under this head. So as of now NRAs can deposit money under different deposit schemes. Here it is important to know that NRAs can deposit either in Indian rupees or in foreign currencies. Here the total external debts which include both sovereign and non-sovereign debt increased by 2.8% by the end of March 2020. India's foreign debt is primarily denoted in US dollars as US dollars share in debt is more than 50%. To be precise it is 53.7%. So appreciation of US dollar in March 2020 is also a major reason for increase in foreign debt. So in our discussion of this news article we saw what are sovereign debts and external debts. With this we will move on to the next news. Now this FAQ article talks about the agreements that govern India and China's actions especially along the line of actual control or LAC. And these agreements are in spotlight since the India-China standoff in May 2020. And recently the Indian Defence Minister has told the parliament that China has mobilized large number of troops and armaments along several points of LAC. And in such instances since May we are usually saying that China is violating the agreements. So in today's discussion let us see what these agreements are and what are their important provisions. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. The first agreement of importance is the 1993 agreement on the maintenance of peace and tranquility along LAC in the India-China border areas. See the article one of this agreement clearly states that the two sides that is India and China should resolve all the boundary questions through peaceful and friendly consultations. Until then they have to strictly respect and observe the line of actual control. And more importantly both the sides agreed not to use or threatened to use force against the other by any means. Then article two states that each side has to keep its military forces to a minimum level along LAC. So this article is what is particularly violated by China. It has assembled large number of troops along the LAC. And this agreement also called for developing effective confidence building measures in the areas of LAC. And also both sides cannot undertake specified levels of military exercises in mutually identified zones. And even if such exercises have to be carried out by one country near the LAC, then prior notification has to be given to the other country. But India did not receive such notifications from China. So China cannot argue that the large number of troops is for military exercises. And the same condition is also applicable for the air intrusions. See you can see it here. The two sides agreed to take adequate measures to ensure that air intrusions across the line of actual control do not take place and shall undertake mutual consultations should intrusions occur. Both sides shall also consult on possible restrictions on air exercises in areas to be mutually agreed near the line of actual control. And also based on the article four of this agreement, we are holding the diplomatic consultations between the border person of both the countries. Article four is given here for your reference. So simply it means through this agreement both sides agreed to maintain peace and tranquility in the areas of LAC, which is being currently breached by China. Now the second important agreement is the 1996 agreement on confidence building measures in the military field along line of actual control in the India-China border areas. So it is an elaborate agreement. It bars or prohibits the use of military capability against one another. Further, it bars using armed forces deployed in the border areas along LAC to attack the other side or to engage in military activities that threaten other side or to undermine the peace, tranquility and stability in the border areas. It was also agreed that the two sides will reduce or limit the number of field army, border defense forces, paramilitary forces etc. which are deployed in mutually agreed geographical zones along the LAC. Further, the major categories of armaments are also to be reduced or limited. This includes compact tanks, infantry combat vehicles, guns with 75 mm or bigger calibre, then motors with 120 mm or bigger calibre, surface-to-surface missiles, surface-to-air missiles and any other weapon system mutually agreed by both countries. Additionally, it also bars flying of combat aircrafts within 10 kilometers of line of actual control. But if this is required, then the country has to give these informations in advance to the other side. See the information include the type and number of combat aircrafts, height of the proposed flights in meters, then proposed duration of flights, proposed timing of flights and also areas of operations defined in latitude and longitude. Now this agreement gains importance because it prohibits certain activities along LAC for preventing dangerous military activities also, such as both sides shall not open fire, cause biodegradation, then use hazardous chemicals, conduct blast operations or hunt with guns or explosives within 2 kilometers of line of actual control. Like we already saw, even if such activities have to be conducted, the other side shall be informed through diplomatic channels or by convening a border personal meeting. So the agreement prohibits almost all activities which could lead to another war between the countries. But the recent massive mobilization of troops, tanks, armored carriers and also air defenses very close to the line of actual control has definitely violated the agreements. Even though the agreement demands both sides to strictly respect the LAC, still they could not be effective because the agreements depend on both sides arriving at a common understanding of the alignment of LAC in the India-China border areas. The agreements also call to agree for exchanging maps which indicates the respective perceptions of the entire alignments of LAC as soon as possible. And as we know, this did not happen yet. And there is different perceptions about the line of actual control by both the countries. According to the author of this FAQ, this alignment process has made only little progress since 2003 and both sides have only exchanged the maps in the central sector. But there are overlapping claims at several points of the LAC due to differences in the perception and this led to not commonly delineated line of actual control. And another reason for this ineffectiveness of agreements is that they do not define what is the minimum level of troops to be deployed along line of actual control. And this also led to face-offs. Thus, what is the way forward? Here the author tells that the agreements have to be reviewed. Until then, both the sides have to abide by the existing boundary agreements as agreed in the recent Five Point consensus agreement. And by this, peace and tranquility can be maintained in the border areas. So, this is all about the discussion of this news article. With this, we will move on to the next news. Now, this news article talks about the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code Second Amendment Bill of 2020. Know that it amends the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of 2016. And the bill was passed in Raj Sabha yesterday. We have explained in detail about the IBC and the procedures involved on our 16th November 2019 The Hindu Analysis. Now, before going to the important changes made by the amendment, let us understand some basics about the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 or IBC. First, what is insolvency? It is a financial state when the value of total liabilities of an individual or a group exceeds its total assets. Insolvency leads to a state of default which can happen due to financial failure or business failure. So, a person facing insolvency needs to take corrective actions to rectify the situation to avoid possible bankruptcy. So, bankruptcy is the next state of insolvency. Here, an individual is declared as incapable of paying his debts or bills at any time in present as well as in the foreseeable future. Generally, the failure of resolution process leads to bankruptcy. Here, resolution refers to a plan proposed by any authorized person or entity for enabling the overdue payments of a corporate debtor. And this will be through restructuring of the entity or even through partial payments of the debts. And it will be done while allowing the corporate debtor to continue his business. Under the IBC, the educating authority in relation to insolvency resolution and also the liquidation is the National Company Law Tribunal that is NCLT. NCLT then appoints a resolution professional or RP. See, the resolution professional has the duty to preserve and protect the assets of the corporate debtor including the continued business operations of the corporate debtor. RP also has to invite the prospective lenders, investors and any other persons to put forward resolution plans for the debtor company. With this, let us come to the bill. See, the bill seeks to temporarily suspend initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process or CIRP for certain types of defaults. Normally, the creditors of the company approach the NCLT or National Company Law Tribunal to initiate the corporate insolvency resolution process in case of a default. And the bill provides that for defaults arising during the six months from March 25, 2020, corporate insolvency resolution process can never be initiated by either company or its creditors. The central government may extend this period to one year through notification. And during this period, the CIRP can still be initiated for any defaults arising before March 25, 2020. The bill provides that no application shall be filed by a resolution professional in respect of a default against which initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process is suspended. Earlier, the creditor can initiate insolvency proceedings on a default of just more than 1 lakh. And this threshold was increased to 1 crore up to April 30. So, the proceedings will not be affecting MSMEs. The question which is related to this topic will be discussed in the practice questions discussion. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now, this news article is with reference to the recent findings about MOON by a research study. The findings are based on images and data sent by ISROS Chandrayaan-1. Now, the finding is that MOON may be resting along the poles. And this is because researchers have found spectral signature of hematite. Now, what is hematite? See, hematite mineral is a form of iron oxide or you can call it rust, which is produced when iron is exposed to oxygen and water. And this has puzzled the scientists because the surface of the MOON is known to have iron-rich rocks. But MOON is not known for the presence of water and oxygen. And water and oxygen are needed to interact with iron in order to create rust. Here, the mystery starts with the solar wind which is a stream of charged particles that flow out from the sun. And it bombards earth and MOON with hydrogen. And hydrogen makes it harder for hematite to form. Because here, hydrogen is a reducer or reducing agent. And this means hydrogen adds electrons to the materials it interacts with. That's the exact opposite of what is needed to make hematite. For iron to rust, it requires an oxidizer or an oxidizing agent which removes electrons. Now here, the earth is shielded from this hydrogen by its magnetic field. Whereas the MOON is not shielded. So, logically it means hematite should not have been formed in MOON. Now, scientists have given reasons for formation of hematite on MOON. So, one of the reasons for this according to the NASA scientists is that Earth's own atmosphere is lending a helping hand. That is, Earth's atmosphere could be protecting MOON as well. So, the oxygen present in Earth's atmosphere might have caused the rusting on MOON. From this finding and based on the Chandrayaan-1's MOON data, another major inference is that MOON's poles are home to water. Actually, Chandrayaan-1's orbiter had discovered water ice on MOON, and it also mapped out a variety of minerals while surveying the MOON's surface in 2008 itself. The researcher has studied the presence of water extensively in data from Chandrayaan-1's MOON mineralogy mapper instrument that is M-Cube. And know that M-Cube was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Here, remember that Chandrayaan-1 is India's first mission to MOON, and it was launched successfully by India's Paula satellite launch vehicle that is PSLV C-11 in 2008. The spacecraft was orbiting around the MOON at a height of 100 kilometers from the lunar surface, and it was looking for chemical, mineralogical, and photogeologic mapping of the MOON. And for this purpose, the spacecraft carried 11 scientific instruments built by India, USA, UK, Germany, Sweden, and Bulgaria. Now, the hope is that NASA's Artemis mission can bring some hematite samples so that detailed chemical studies can confirm if the lunar hematite was actually oxidized by Earth's oxygen or not. Here, Artemis is a lunar exploration program of NASA under which NASA is committed to land American astronauts, including the first woman and the next man on the MOON by 2024. The mission will also use innovative technologies to further explore the lunar surface. So, this is all about this news article. With this, we'll move on to the practice questions discussion based on today's news analysis. Here, we have our first question. With reference to insolvency and bankruptcy code, consider the following statements. It is a two statements question. Insolvency is a financial state where the liabilities of an individual or an organization exceeds its assets, and they are unable to raise enough cash to pay its debt. Now, the second statement reads, bankruptcy is the next state of insolvency when an individual is declared as incapable of paying up his debts at any time in present as well as in the foreseeable future. See, this statement is also correct. Here, we have to identify the correct statement or statements from the given statements. So, both statements are correct. The correct answer is option C. Now, see the second question, which among the following statements is not correct with reference to the hematite recently seen in news. It is also a two statements question. The first statement reads, it is a type of iron oxide and most abundant iron ore mineral in India. See, statement one is correct. Hematite is one of the principal ores of iron and about 79% of hematite ore deposits are found in eastern sectors, that is, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jhagan, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh. Hematite is considered superior because of its higher grade and it is the most abundant iron ore mineral in India. So, statement one is correct. Now, second statement reads, it is found in moon and Mars. See, the second statement is also correct. Recently, it is found in moon, which we have discussed in today's news. And very long ago, gray colored hematite was found in Mars. And red and gray iron oxides on Mars are really just different forms of the same mineral. Here, we should know that gray hematite has the same chemical formula that is Fe2O3 as its red-stea-red-casin. But it has a different crystalline structure. Here, the red rust is fine and powdery and gray hematite is crystal and larger. And some say that the reddish brown color of Mars is because of the reddish, that is, hematite only. So, in this question, we are supposed to identify the incorrect statement or statements. Both the statements are correct here. So, the correct answer is option D, neither one nor two. Now, we have this question. Consider the following statements. External assistants and the foreign institutional investments in government securities are the top two constituents of non-sovereign debt. And the second statement reads, external commercial borrowings and the outstanding NRA deposits are the top two constituents of sovereign debt. See, both these statements look correct, but be careful. The sovereign and non-sovereign are interchanged here. External assistants and FII, that is, foreign institutional investments in government securities are the constituents of sovereign debt, while external commercial borrowings and the outstanding NRA deposits are the constituents of non-sovereign debt. So, here both the statements are incorrect. Here we have to identify the correct statement or statements. So, both are incorrect. So, the correct answer is option D, neither one nor two. Now, see this question with reference to securitization and reconstruction of financial assets and enforcement of Security Interest Act of 2002. Consider the following statements. Here also, we have two statements. The first statement reads, it allows banks and financial institutions to recover their dues even if the security interest is created in agricultural land. See, this statement is incorrect. The provisions of the Surfacy Act does not apply when security interest for securing repayments of any financial asset does not exceed 1 lakh rupees or when any security interest is created in agricultural land. Now, the second statement reads, the Act provides for right to appeal, where an aggrieved person, including the borrower, can appeal in the debt recovery tribunal. See, this statement is correct. Also, the debt recovery tribunal's decision can be appealed in debt recovery appellate tribunals or DRATs. Here, we have to identify the incorrect statement. So, here statement one is incorrect and statement two is correct. So, the correct answer is option A. Now, we have this main question. Please write your answers and post it in the comment section. Our feedback will be given in a reasonable time frame. And with this, we'll come to the end of analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the practice questions discussion. If you like this video, press the like button, comment and share and do subscribe to Shankar IIS Academy YouTube channel for latest videos and updates relating to civil service preparation. Thank you.


Hey y'all, my name is Summer from Cal TV Entertainment and today we are at Oakland's First Friday, which happens every First Friday of each month. Alright, so we have a mic here, the Marketing and Communication Director of First Friday. So, can you tell me a little bit about First Friday? Yeah, First Friday started in 2004 as a spontaneous neighborhood thing, and it quickly grew into a large guerrilla street festival. It's open to all the artists and makers of Oakland. Performers come out, we keep our vendor prices really low to support entrepreneurs and small artists, and all the food trucks that make Oakland great. Alright y'all, so when you go to Oakland's First Friday, you better be prepared for the bomb cuisines, the food trucks, and just all the great cultural food that they have to offer. He's donating a taco to me. All this exploring has made me hungry. How much right there? I got six tacos for 15 bucks. This is good to be out with people, you know, enjoying. 10 First Friday, you can also find some dope art and artists. I really feel like I get to show my work in a genuine kind of a way where I get to play my music, I get to have my life, I get to have my stuff the way I like it, as opposed to like if I was in a gallery or something. You can also participate in the making of the art. You can also find a free hug. What does First Friday mean to you? First Fridays to me is a place that gives anyone who's traveling an example of the Bay Area and the culture, the style, the art, you know, the beauty of the Bay. Just a lot of cool people coming through and they've been coming out through the years. So I think this is a cool place to show myself genuinely. Now I'm just eating food, listening to music, drinking, smoking, feeling good. And this is still a cheap night out for a family or a place you can go and sell cheap, buy cheap, have a really good time and everybody comes out. It's as open as it gets, I think. Enjoy yourself, have a good time, share, celebrate your community because we're all out here to hang out with them. My name is Summer from Cal TV and thank you for joining me on this journey exploring First Friday.


Next up, we have our next guest is Scott Shanley, the director of technical marketing, S-T-E-C. Hey, come on in. So I brought show toys just in case. Ooh, I like show toys. Hard drives. Oh, okay. This is Scott Shanley. You're the director technical marketing, right? It's Scott Shadley. Oh, no worries. Sorry. Everybody pronounces it wrong, so it's not a problem. Just slap me. Not on camera, though. That'll probably go a little upset. Yeah, it'll be a big show. It's interesting. My last name and the company name both have the same thing in common. Most times, nobody knows how to say you don't want to. Oh, no. Is it STEC or S-T-E-C? There you go. There's the question. Yeah, exactly. STEC, S-T-E-C, S-TEC. Officially, it's S-T-E-C, which stands for nothing but our stock ticker, so. I got it right. So it's always entertaining that way. So describe your job a little bit and kind of go into detail. So my job, I'm a director of technical marketing. My job is to go out to the world and educate the customer base on what a solid-state drive is and what S-T-E-C does differently than the other companies in the marketplace today, so. Do you feel still fine that people don't know what solid-state does? It's interesting. There's quite a few people in the industry still that don't know what a solid-state drive is, let alone what it does. So that's why, for example, I brought in a show twice, so I could say, here's what an actual solid-state drive is. Nowadays, we're getting to the point, finally, this year, probably into next year, where it'll be more of, well, which solid-state drive do I want? Why is yours better? What are you doing to make something more unique than the other people? That's really where the innovation of the solid-state technology is going today, so. So you guys are a lot younger than I am, but when I first started in this business, these things were like refrigerators, so I was filled with solid-state and they plugged into a mainframe and they were really, really expensive, really fast, but really expensive. But the big thing is they weren't non-volatile. I mean, they kind of were. You had this big battery backup that you could put in, but they weren't persistent. Exactly. And that's a big change, isn't it? Yeah, and it's interesting because non-volatile memory is in the way that it started out as a NOR-based product and it went to a NAND-based product. They're different internal architectures of the media, but it allowed for the growth of the gigabytes while keeping the size fairly small, so. But it's also a misnomer that it's truly non-volatile because there are wear-out characteristics of SSDs and that's what everybody gets really worried about in the industry. Oh, I hear they're going to wear out too quick and so those are things that we try to do our best as far as the education front goes today. I tell people they do have a finite life to them, but we have ways to predict it, ways to make it manageable, and we've even got technology now where these things are rock solid for five years, so we've eliminated those concerns for a lot of our customers.  Go ahead. Yes, exactly. Well, I was just going to say before we get too far into it, why don't you go ahead and do a little demo and describe and use the toys. Use the toys. So for most people in the marketplace today, I don't know if I can see where they're at. This is what we'd call a traditional two and a half inch hard drive form factor. Normally you'd see it anywhere from a 9.5 millimeter. Hold it right up there and Mark will catch you. 9.5 millimeter drive versus a 15 millimeter drive, SAS versus SATA, those kinds of things. There's different interfaces involved, but we did these little guys to kind of show through of what the, there we go. See how the complexity of building these things are. There's multiple PCB layers, there's controllers, there's memory, there's flash. One thing that we do uniquely is we build everything internally. So I don't know if you can get a good shot on this one, but yeah, this, this way. This guy right here is actually our controller device. We manufactured ourselves and that's what sets our parts up different from other SSDs in the markets. We design and manufacture our own controller, the PCB and all of the hardware that goes with it, the only part of the SSD we don't physically own is the NAND devices. And we have specific partnerships with our customers to status. So what does that do for you guys other than help your margins be better? What does it do for your customers? What's the value in you designing your own controller? So the controller is really the key to the solid state technology. It's like the controller is the key to the compelling architecture, the ecological architecture. How you manage the media is really what's important. It's the brains. It's the brains. And so by doing the brains ourselves we can add layers of complexity or sophistication that help benefit the customers and be able to give them these long term lifetimes. Another unique device we have out, I don't know, you can see this one. This is a huge beast. This is a traditional three and a half inch drive. So you can see the progression from three and a half to two and a half. And now we've even got a little guy the 1.8 inch in comparison. But this guy is actually made of DRAM. So most people say, well, why would you put DRAM in a solid state drive? Because DRAM is not non-volatile. We've designed this one so that it runs on DRAM during the operation of the device. But when power goes away, whether planned or unplanned, it backs itself up to flash. So it becomes a non-volatile DRAM cache. And it works really good for metadata. What's the ratio of this? Is it one to one? It's really one to one, yeah. So this, because of the density differences between DRAM and flash, even though it's this big, it's still only holding gigabytes. But it gives you a lot of ability to get really fast access data and absolutely nowhere out. So what are you learning? When you guys, I actually wrote a piece when you guys sort of announced your first OEM.  All right, because it surprised everybody. Yeah. And it's like, whoa, you know, solid state's back. And so what have you learned since then?  So take us through sort of what your learnings and your initial launch. So interesting enough, I joined the company right about the time that that major launch occurred. So I was actually, You were excited. Well, that was fun, yeah. I sat through the last four years of it. But really the idea is people need data faster. The data transformation they've been talking about here at the show for the last couple of days. Flash Media gives you an opportunity to get really fast access to information, but it's not gonna keep up with the capacity rates of three terabyte drives. It's not gonna keep up with the cost points. There's never gonna be a true crossover of flash to spinning disk. So it really becomes, you have to figure out the best way to do the hybrid architectures and make sure that flash mirrors and maps in well with the spinning media. We've never had a play in our market portfolio that we're gonna say we're kicking spinning disk completely out of the market. It's always been, here's how we're gonna help augment, make things better.  And we make it in every interface, every capacity you can imagine for that purpose because everybody's architectures are unique and different. So you say that and you're not gonna kick in. And I understand that's not your strategic plan, but isn't that inevitable in certain segments is like, you know, the iPod? Yeah. Right? You used to have a disk in it. I still have one. I do have a disk in it. So slow to get going at the shake at some times, which is not a good thing to do with disk. Yeah, I find it a little surprising that you said that. Well, so there's different aspects of the model, of the space, right? So the consumer space. Sure. And there's an even an article posted earlier today about disk is dead in the consumer market spot. Well, for the iPod, the iPad, for even desktop computers, it's very, very viable. Because you can get enough memory locally into the system with the flash-based media and get it at a cheap enough price point now with MLC media to make it viable. But in the grand scheme of the large storage arrays where we're getting Zeta bytes and Peta bytes and Geopytes or whatever you put up on Geopytes, that he put up on the screen there. That's a new one. You still have to have something that's a larger capacity device to make that really work. And so solid state drive will always be there. It will always increment up with it. It'll grow in the amount of it that you have in a system. But it's never going to be a 100% replacement for it. There are systems that can utilize it that way. And there are industry markets that need to do nothing but solid state like that. The heavy duty stuff, the industrial stuff.  It is. Today it's very small. Less than 1%, is that true? And if you look at all, yeah, pretty much.  So everybody, one of the first questions we usually get asked by a lot of the analyst market is, well, you've got a lot of competition on your shirt tails. And it's like, well, number one, it's nice to have them with the target on my back. I'm not shooting at someone else. Competition is good. Competition is good. And having the competition that's viable, having two sources in a spot means there's more bites for everybody to get at. So we've done the numbers, we've looked at the market, and yes, there's a continued huge spike to take place, bring in some other guys to help bolster the market, give everybody more confidence that we are knowing what we are doing with the technology, and we'll continue to grow together. So do you think wherever that point is not of, let's say it's 1%, just for the sake of argument, do you see that growing, that percentage of the total bit bucket, or is it more of play, it's going to stay 1%, but the whole market's going to grow because of the zettabytes and the better it goes beyond that. I think it really is going to be a little of both. So you're going to have, the continued market growth is going to be huge, but the amount of SSD that you're putting in the system is going to continue to grow. So slowly creeping away. Yeah, whether it be by sheer capacity versus number of drives, or whether it be by the shrinking technology, the geometries of the flash, we shipped today in the Dell Compellent System and 146 gigabytes. We're working with them on their next platform right now. It's a larger capacity. So the bit go up, even though maybe the drive count doesn't, the physical capacity's still increasing in the system. And are you able to increase the capacities at the same rate as spinning disk?  So if you look at it, even four years ago, we were talking four, eight, 16-gigabyte drives, right? You know, you're talking to huge monsters. But even in this form factor, we're getting them at 40 gigabytes. We're up to 800 gigabytes today of user space capacity in the drive. And three terabyte spinning disks just came out. So we've made a very large jump to catch up to it. I don't know that we're going to see that, again, that capacity pairing of the devices, but because the geometry shrink and the technologies improve, we can get much closer to high capacity drives very quickly. So as an example of encroaching, why would anybody, you know, in the next, let's say two, three years out buy a high spin speed fiber channel device that's, you know, I don't know what they are today. I think 300 is the max today. Why would anybody buy one of these? I mean, at some point, your price is going to get down there. It doesn't need, does it have to cross over? In other words, does it have to be cheaper? No, actually, if it just gets close enough, I don't know what that is, 10, 15%, people say, I'll take that. Because there are benefits to it, so they absolutely would. The same decisions we're making with laptops. So I should like the MacBook Air. It's a little bit more expensive. I don't get as much capacity. Okay, I'll go for it. Yeah, exactly. I bought the Air over the Pro myself, so. But, yeah, exactly. It's nice, you have to look at it. Yeah, exactly, this is true. But you have to look at the concepts also of where you're going with the market space. So yes, you could get closer on capacity, you're going to get dollar per gigabyte equivalency. Again, you're not likely ever going to get dollar per gigabyte equivalent, but look at the overall picture, the TCO model, the ROI, whatever you want to call it. The value. The value of it, right? So over here on the Solutions Expo, we've got a demo setup, one drive against 24 HDDs. I get just as much capacity out of it because they're all short stroke to give them their performance play, just like they do everywhere else in all the systems. And it's faster. It's 5X faster. So if you put one versus 24 and you do a couple of those, you know, you get to very easily come to the point where the dollar value makes perfect sense. The dollar per IOP, the dollar per watt, or even like OLTP transactions, the dollar per transaction goes from dollars per transaction to pennies per transaction. So we've got a whole bunch of success stories with many different people. One of them in a compelent hometown of Minnesota, the Wild, the Accelerina there, put just two drives into their existing compelent architecture when the SSDs first launched and made it so that their concession stands, the slowest part of the concession stand was now the beer tap, not the cash registers. Because their whole back-end architecture was able to be improved that much just by adding a couple of SSDs. So that's the real value out of these products is we love to displace the entire array. I mean, you want to give me a purchase order for 7,000 drives, I'll take it. Just three or four drives just to give the customer what they really need and making sure that we give them the right amount. So you don't want to oversell it, you don't need to undersell it. I want to go back a second.  Can you go into a little bit of detail on that, even on the technical side? Sure, so here's what I'll geek out a little bit because I am the techie guy. Let's go for it. So ECC is known, you have to have ECC to correct for data errors. It corrects up to a certain number of bits of error. We can do 32, 64, whatever you want to call it. But going beyond that, NAND has an inherent wear out characteristic, so it has program array cycles. There's device physics involved where you're actually wearing down the oxide layers, the silicon layers inside the chips. So they can last today, an SLC device lasts 100,000 program array cycles per bit. And MLC lasts 10,000 program array cycles per bit. What you do is you have the ability to know exactly when that 10,000th cycle is going to occur. So you can tell the end user, hey look, my drive's coming close to its end of life. The real potential there is what you can do with that. Can you extend the number of cycles by using proper controller technology? Can you move the data around within the SSD to extend the life of the product? And we have technology we've built into our controllers. One of them is a proprietary algorithm called CellCare. Cell because they're individual NAND cells, where we can take an MLC drive at any given capacity and make it last five years. So you can beat on it all you want. You can rewrite the capacity of the drive 10 times. So if you have a 200 gig drive, two terabytes a day can go in and out of that drive and it'll last for five years. And that's something that we can do with our unique algorithms in the back end of these devices to help promote customer use. So they come up and say, well, I hear it only has 3,000 program array cycles. Well, the raw flash, the way it shipped, has 3,000 program array cycles. Our brains, our controller, can take that 3,000 program array cycles and make it disappear. You can go 50, 60,000 times that to give you those five-year lifetimes. And so yes, they have predictable failure rates, but we make the predictable failure rates so far out, nobody's going to care about it. Well, the key there is you do it with software so you don't have to throw a bunch of flash at it. Yeah, so there's, exactly. Too expensive to do it that way. Yeah, so there's all kinds of interesting things. I mean, we've been lucky enough to get about 83 patents towards technology inside these devices. Three is good enough. For example, the 146 gig drive had overprovisioned down from a couple 100 gigabytes. The 200 gig drive we have today is 256 gigabytes. We do hide a little bit. There's about 50 gig there that we call a, it's been compressing. It's been termed overprovisioning in the industry. Everybody's really doing it now. Any device that comes out that's an enterprise-class product has some form of a provisioned space, and that also helps add to the speed capabilities of the devices. Oh, sorry, I thought you had a follow-up, but... Sorry, I was drinking some water. And I wanted to talk to Scott about the whole storage hierarchy.  Right. Do you guys subscribe to that, or what are your thoughts on that? We actually, the tiering model is very sound. We've got products that fit into every aspect of the tiering model, and we figure out how to work with our customers about what plan they have for the system. So if you're doing a system data that's 15K is your high performance tier, 10K, and then, you know, saddest spinners for your whole storage, we can either replace the 15K tier, or we can augment the 15K tier. I've actually got a breakout session tomorrow where I'll be actually putting up an ROI model and showing the actual cost difference. By putting the more expensive SSD in the box, the overall cost of the IT user is still less, and the value add and the performance. Yeah, I believe that. And so, but your answer was very politically correct, as you're saying, basically. Yeah. Whatever the OEM wants to do, it'll be support, right? With multiple tiers. But so, or are you saying, no, we see that it's going to be multiple layers, that there's value. It's going to be multiple layers.  But the controllers, the back end of the overall system can't manage the performance that you're going to get from that many drives. One of the early problems we ran into with the first launch of the products was the controllers that were running the RAID groups or the expanders, they couldn't handle the bandwidth we were pushing out to, because they never expected to see that level of IO come off of a J-Bot or any kind of architecture. So, personally, I think you're probably right, because you can't just replace all those tiers overnight. But the follow-up I had to that is, there's granularity now in the IO stack where you're seeing you guys generally connect into an array. You're seeing people do PCIe and you're seeing stuff in between, flash on controller and you're seeing all kinds of software. So, what do you see happening there and is that an opportunity for STC? Absolutely, that's one reason why even today we have so many options available to our customers, is interface choice, how much you want, where you want to put it, how fast you want it to be, flash technology, do you want it to be moving forward? Because we now can support SLC and MLC in enterprise-class environments. So, by doing that, yeah, you can put it where you would like to put it. We've got solutions that work as from the hot, pluggable front end to the mount in the back.   You can now cram in more controllers and cram in more DRAM when you need to on that smaller chassis, or go for the big box and put one of these guys in and get your bulk storage and your performance. So, the former was still emulating a spinning device? Yeah, they're all emulating. And then you have the move to things like PCIe architectures where you can get the PCIe interface, but there's so caveats there. We are in the process of getting something there. It was announced by our CEO during our last earnings call that a PCIe project is in the works. But there's trouble there, too. So, there's already players in the market. They do things very uniquely.  Exactly. So, they have their unique violin box. Fusion IO has a software-centric device, so they have a lot of middleware they put on their systems for it. So, how do you build a solution that makes the most sense for all your customers? And then what interface do you use? Because you can have that PCIe, now that it's PCIe, it's not really talking protocol like a drive would. Do you put a drive protocol in front of it? Do you put a man flash interface protocol? Well, they say it's got the best IO as no IO. So, maybe you don't. But no, to the point, I wanted to have a discussion about the increasing granularity of that side of the IO stack. And so, you're actually seeing the hierarchy become more complicated, not simpler. So, I don't necessarily subscribe to that flash bit bucket because I see it just being very granular for a lot of different use cases. Oh, and it'll fit in a lot of different places. Again, because of its architecture, the way it's built and how you can access it and how small it is compared to what you're used to for traditional rotating media or the cost of DRAM versus the cost of flash, it has a lot more applications and it will see a lot more growth in the more off segments that you call it, like the controller level architectures, the PCIe architectures. So, it's just a matter of how the OEMs choose to use it and utilize it. You can produce a product and ask them to use it your way or you can talk to them and make sure the product does exactly what they need it to. And our goal has always been as the OEM company that we are is to make sure we provide the product, the customer needs, not provide a product and ask them to try to fit it into their square playground hole. So, new form factors, a PCIe statement of direction, what else is on the to-do list or is that going to keep you busy for the next? Well, that'll keep us busy for a while, but what comes next is, okay, geometries are getting smaller, reliability is getting worse. What happens when you hit the theoretical, beyond the theoretical of Moore's Law, what's the next technology? So, you've got all kinds of new architectures that are coming out. Didn't Michael talk about something like that? Yeah, he was at. Some gaseous storage technology, I don't know. Exactly. So, you've got phase change memory, you've got 3D NANDs, you've got all these other things. We've got a whole set of engineers that are already dealing with and working with all those types of devices today, so. Got your best people on it. We do. We've got, I mean, my former experience as a semiconductor guy, I used to design NAND chips, so. Where was that?


Casey says, I thought I had a copy of Office 2019 standalone that I bought in 2020, but suddenly had the Office 365, that's a knockoff product of Office 365. It's not as good. It's one less. But it's Office 365 and it's not activated and pop up and kicked me out of all the Office products. I couldn't find the old key to reactivate it, so ended up having to buy 365 even though I only use Office a couple times a month. My question is, why did my standalone lifetime license get pulled by Microsoft? Also, does 365 work without Internet? I work on a drilling rig and almost never have Internet there. Coincidentally, that is where I use Office. Well, for the latter part of that question, I did drop a link in for extended offline access, how long you can go before you've got to basically refresh everything and check in with Microsoft. But as far as I know, you bought a license. If you've got the key, it doesn't expire. Exactly. And 365 will not replace a 2019 installation, MSI installation. It simply won't do that. It'll sit there and run side by side. What may have happened is he has a 2019 on there. A lot of cases Microsoft will include a little Microsoft Office thing there for each trial is very, very forward in trying to get you to play with it. And he might have gotten involved with that by accident. I don't know. It's kind of fishy because I know for a fact 365 will not replace 2019. It just won't do that. Yeah, I've seen the trial pop up, pal. I've seen it do that where essentially you've installed the application and then Office 365, it is. It's a little bit forward and it aggressively tries to come to make you use it. And then what'll end up happening is you think because it says that that that is actually the same and it's not. You can have both installed at the same time. Exactly. The trial app is the meth of the Office 365 world. It literally opens the trench code on your screen. Exactly. The first place is free. So yeah, to a house point, you can actually uninstall the Office 365 version and only have the client app installed, but you have to have the key, the original 2019 key to make that happen. So if you don't know that, then you're kind of, I mean, you can still buy the standalone license, but you're going to have to manage it and keep track of your key. Well, it sounds like that's the issue here. I mean, it wouldn't be an issue if he had had the key there. He didn't have it. So we had to install the cloud version, which is that's the upgrade the latest version. If you find the key, you want to go back to the other version. Again, you can go into the files or you can go in into the programs and uninstall that. You'll see it's a separate install as you can remove that and then just reinstate with using the key. And another thing to consider is if you happen to have switched computers, your installation of Office 2019 is not going to magically show up on your new computer. You may have seen that trial Office 365 subscription and you think that it came along, but it didn't. So the two separate things. So if you did have a new computer, you can install your lifetime copy of 2019 with the existing key and that should be fine. And if you still have the old computer, if it is that scenario, there are methodologies by which you can find the key. If the installation is still valid, you can find the key that was used to install it. That key, again, should not ever expire. You should be able to copy it and use it on the new computer. We should include a link to that. Somebody asked that question and I said there's got to be a process for that. I'm sure it's documented somewhere. I'll have to go and find that. That would be a useful link. Yeah. I know you can get it out of the registry. I don't know if there's anywhere in the UI that you can mine it out of. All the apps that I've seen that do that do indeed go in and mine out of the registry. Yeah. That'd be, I'm sure it's documented somewhere, a walkthrough of how to do that, how to find that. Yeah. Yeah. A search on the internet should provide that, shouldn't take much of a search either.