Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jean-Marc Slim and joining me today is Marc Seymour, CTO of Future Facilities. And Marc, it's a pleasure to speak to you after such a long time. Before we jump into what you do and the notion of digital twins, which is quite interesting, especially in the data center space. Tell us how did you get involved with the data center marketplace in the first instance? Okay, well, I'm a simulation professional, I guess. I studied numerical mathematics and soon found that simulation was a great way of understanding physical behaviors that we otherwise had no idea about. And I was using that initially in the defense industry and then I moved out into using it for the built environment when people started realizing that we could do things with simulation that would otherwise always have been done by experiments, part scale models, full scale models of buildings for prestigious buildings and things like that. And it became obvious that we needed tools that were specialized to these particular applications. And I was using general purpose software in the building industry that was commercially available, but it was really difficult to use. And we realized that to model buildings, we needed something specific. And in talking to the people that were providing that software, we came to the conclusion we need these specialist tools and it turned out that they were setting up a new company to focus on specific tools. So I got involved with specifying their new tools for the building industry, but they also had a major line for electronics cooling. And that electronics cooling was an important connection because we started realizing as we developed the tools that the electronics problem was breaking out into the data center. So what I mean by the electronics problem is that basically, if you don't manage the thermal performance, you don't have an electronics box, your phone catches fire or whatever. Small detail. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously that's an extreme example, but the same, it's kind of like a fire for a data center, because if your equipment overheats, even if it doesn't shut down, which it may do, it will probably slow down. And if your transactions disappear, then you haven't got business and data centers are the heart of the business. And so it became obvious that this heat problem was bursting out into the data center. And so we realized that we should apply the technologies of predicting the future when you have no data center to the data center. And importantly, the difference between what we were seeing compared with the traditional use of simulation was that data centers were unusual in that they offered a lifecycle opportunity. Most predictive simulation is used for design cycle and design cycle alone. But for the data center, the one thing you know about it is that what you think it's going to be like in design is something you'll never see in practice. Because the electronics box you designed for 20 years and the components that go in at the computers are changing all the while, and over that lifetime, there'll have to be many cycles. So what you actually implement is completely different. So data centers seemed obvious and an important subject for this thing that I get a great kick out of which is being able to predict that, you know, something that's complex and understand what's going to happen when you can, you know, it's pretty hard to imagine how that complex process works in detail, but but computers can do that. I mean, it's extraordinary. And I love the full cycle journey of where you started and how you've got involved with data centers. And I mean, what you do is still very unique. I don't actually remember when you start to future facilities, but it's been seven, eight years. And it's pretty much longer than that. We formed future facilities in 2004. 2004. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I was, I didn't even know what it was by then. So we were our problem was that our vision was good. We're still on the same vision today that we had back in 2004. But we were just way ahead of the market. The market understood the concept of using simulation for design, operation. No, no clue at all. And it's it took us a long, long while, which is why you've got the perception of seven or eight years. It took us a long, long while to get from just offering devices and simulation software for point solution in design to simulation for operation, which is now, you know, a really big, big thing because, you know, the size of these data centers and the difficulty of managing them is, is severe. And you need tools to be able to understand what will actually happen because you're making changes on big scales and you can't undo them. So once you've set that data center going, you can't stop it. You can't turn it off too much hangs on it. Oh yeah, we can we can go through that question that what you just said it can be a podcast on its own. If we're going through what you can miss. If something bad happens, but that's interesting what you said because I remember visiting Stuttgart in Germany in 2015. And the company called PTC and they were doing digital twins. So only those only then those guys were starting to look into digital twins. So if an industry like that is starting at that point, I can imagine the data center space to be maybe slightly a little bit behind around that time. So I guess, yeah, so it's like the last seven, eight years. They have really kicked in. But before we go into more of what future does. Let's maybe talk about the notion of digital twin I mean for people that don't know they're watching us. What is digital twin and what are the benefits for the data center space, especially around sustainability because there's such a big topic. So a digital twin really simple concept. Actually, it sounds, it sounds like something that maybe is complicated or something but actually, it's not really the concept of digital twin is simply that you use a model to be able to reflect the behavior of the system. So you know the obvious digital twins were like jet aircraft engines understanding when there was likely to be failure of turbine blades or anything like that. But but the principle of the digital twin can be applied to anything. And the good thing about it is that people understand the concept of a twin is really as simple as that what you're trying to do is get something that will behave exactly like it's, it's physical. instantiation it's physical brother or sister. And in this case, a digital twin is a digital twin of the behavior of the data center as you try and build it out. So it offers a great opportunity because I made the comment earlier that the one thing you know about a date center is that the design will probably never be seen in practice. And that presents right from the beginning of the lifecycle, the, the designer, a problem, because how do they try and account for the fact that the data sense can be used in a way that's a little different to the way that they imagine in their concept design. And in a digital twin you can try different things and see what happens, and therefore be able to try and avoid scenarios that are going to undermine the data center. But the beauty of it is once you've got that twin, it can grow it can involve it can, it can mimic all the changes that occur in the data center so the challenge becomes, how do you get your workflows to be reflected continuously in the digital twin so it remains a twin and doesn't become the ugly sibling.  But it's a very interesting technology I mean, I actually I saw your technology a few years ago so about 780 years ago. And it was the first time I actually put a VR sets on as well. It was with you. And it's it's very interesting because you can see all the air flows you can see cooling you can see everything you can see the real thing at the real time. What's being waited and what isn't. So there's a massive play into sustainability front. Are you seeing a lot of customers really making big improvements by using digital twins and simulation software. The whole reason for doing this is to make data centers efficient and sustainable that there's, there's, there's really no point in doing that because that plays into the environmental issue which has become so politically important and for each one of us very very important for our whole being in the future, but it underpins the ability to be able to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the business. So the business that's operating. If they want to be sustainable, which everybody does nowadays, you need to be able to make sure that you're using efficiency you're using water, you're using all these things really effectively. And a digital twin enables you to understand exactly the consequences of any changes that you might make all the design you you create. In terms of not only will the computer overheat, but how much energy am I going to use how much water am I going to use to be able to keep this system up and running. So, yeah, huge impacts, even prior to the current round of data sense and when we first started, you could be talking about a saving of, well, not even just a saving, but there's a capacity limit so you design a data for say 10, 10 megawatts. And when you get to five or six megawatts, you start to see hotspots that are preventing you deploying equipment. So if you don't manage that, then you've wasted a lot of that investment which is material again it's sustainability because you put a lot of material into that data center you're expecting this level of productivity, but you can only get 60% of it. And so people then build another data center. That's terrible use of the earth resources. And it's obviously wasting energy because you're having to over cool it almost certainly to avoid the problems that you're, you're, you're facing. So, even in the early days, when people were just thinking about it from the design point of view we do troubleshooting for existing operators, and they'd be stuck at this 60 70% glass ceiling of not being able to and they'd say we just want to, we just want to get that capacity back. And what you'd find is that what they would do is they would not only go for the energy efficiency that they go for increasing the capacity and then just put more equipment in there. So enabled much better use of the investment we've made of the world's resources in those data centers. And if you look at that over the period of time that we're talking about, you know, the power usage effectiveness has gone from, you know, the actual values might be 2.2.0 2.5. Right. But now we're talking about best in class data centers of only being say 1.1. So 10% of the energy used is used for the infrastructure and the, the one the 100% out of the 110% is going to the it and actually doing work. It's a massive improvement so instead of previously it was like 40% of the total now it's nearly, you know, it's 90% plus of the total. That's what advanced in technology, plus the ability to understand how to put these things together using digital systems and how to continue to operate them has delivered in terms of the environment so data centers have have been incredibly effective at learning how to be a responsible player in the world environment. In some aspects we are leading by example, and kind of setting a scene as well for the industries around sustainability but that's the day is very interesting I mean I haven't really heard of a 2.5 PUE data center before. So I guess it's this well past my time. Yeah, yeah. I remember 1.6 and that was already quite bad at the time so yeah 1.1 is what we want now even less than that if possible. Talk us through the future facilities itself though because the company has grown a lot even since the last time I went to office. It's it's grown a lot there's been an acquisition, there's been quite a lot of things happening in the middle. Give us a rundown of where future is today. So, future facilities was set up really to look at this, this problem of the life cycle of the data center and understand how to manage it from an efficiency and sustainability point of view. That that goal is still very much our primary goal. But what's changing is that the vision of supply chain integration has has become much more of a reality. And what you see now is that problems in managing a data center for example might be that if equipment gets a bit hot, it has its own control system and it will demand more air or more water if it's liquid cooled perhaps. But you may not have that availability for the entire facility and so that might actually be negative in terms of your performance rather than positive. So future facilities is much broader now it covers the supply chain from the IT equipment and the design of that right through to the outside world and how the external environment impacts the performance of the data center. Be it an array of chillers on the roof, or be it IECs in direct evaporative cooling units, providing air from using air from outside to create the the cooling without mechanical cooling. So we cover that whole chain and that was the vision but we started off really in just the white space in the data center, and we're expanding out to a greater and greater part of that supply chain. And as you mentioned, the acquisition, having been acquired by Keynes design systems in July, it's opened up a huge opportunity for future facilities to do many of the things we wanted to do, but much more effectively, not just because we're part of a big company but because that big company is already heavily present in the equipment design which is so intimately linked to data center performance, but also because some of the technologies that they have in the sense of machine learning. So creating reduced automobiles etc will make decision making much faster for people within the industry and we can really connect the whole supply chain from an even tinier scale that Keynes are right down inside the chips right through to the outside world so that the whole space can be optimized. Much made in heaven. I was going to ask just like housekeeping, how big is the workforce now? Okay, so future facilities was just under 100 people, about 90 plus people. So we're a reasonable company but we've joined an organization which is near 10,000 people. So you can see the opportunity now to really scale up and be able to deliver the big vision that the data center have seen us for but they know we're just a small company in this, playing with huge multinationals and hyperscalers and the like. Yeah, because it's the thing, I mean, being up on future rather than the whole group but even close to 100 people, it's a very big company but the way the market has changed 100 people, it probably doesn't answer the needs of global markets. We always knew we had to be a global company. And hence, hence why we had offices in London and in the US and in Japan because we had to be out there as well as obviously the distribution channels. Yeah, we had to be a global market but no it doesn't. And that was the one of the reasons for the need to find a partner is that to be able to meet the demands of these huge companies that you know how fast they're moving some of these big companies in terms of constructing data sense and filling them up. We just need it need to be able to grow faster than a small company can realistically do. The speed for data power. It's never fading. I was actually going to ask, and I think you've already sort of answered the question I was going to ask, what are your strongest geographies and what are the new geographies are going to go into, especially being part of a new new group. Okay. Well, geographies are really dictated to some extent by where where the active markets are so from the data center point of view, clearly we operate in areas where there are strong data center markets. So, you know, it, we have bases in the US for example in in on the West Coast in San Jose and on the East Coast in New York so the West Coast is giving us the supply chain part of it and the East Coast is giving us the, the end user market, the large end user market and the financial markets. So anywhere that you see that sort of opportunity is a great opportunity for for future facilities. Obviously, we have much more presence and business now in the Far East, because of where I'd wear manufacturing is and all that sort of sort of thing so that's driving our growth in in in the Far East. And it's going to continue that, you know, so I, I think we will become truly global in the way we operate and that that's, again, is a reason for the need for that position to be able to operate in territories directly. They're very interesting and I can't wait to see the proper expansion across Southern Europe, Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere is where we have to focus to expand because we have less presence in the Southern Hemisphere. That's a good point. Yeah, that'll be very interesting to watch. And then Mark, so if people want to find out more about future facilities and getting touch, where could they go? Well, it's really simple. I just go to futurefacilities.com and that will give you all the links that you need to be able to find out about what we do with the digital twin and at both the data center scale and the electronic scale. Okay, very simple and very interesting technology. Mark, so thank you so much for your time for speaking to me and it's been it's been a very long time. So it's nice to see you and see that the business is doing well and the acquisition was very exciting to get the press release about it. When it happened, it was, okay, this is good. Yeah, we're really excited. We did it. You said it match made in heaven. I think we were very fortunate to find such a good partner. Yeah, and it carries the interest in a nice place at the moment where these businesses are having around from the mid 2000s and even early 2010s and are finding a new home and there's just the market dynamics and that's very interesting and nice to watch as an outsider. Thank you. But Mark, thank you so much for your time. As for our viewers, thank you for tuning into JSA TV and JSA podcasts and don't forget to check out social channels for more content. Until next time, happy networking.


Hey traders, this is Tosh I go by T Bradley 90 in the my investing club chat a general reminder for you guys for those Who don't know MIC is having a one-year anniversary event. It's coming up where bow is going to be trading live in front of members August 17th mark your calendars as an added benefit for our members The event is 100% free for annual and lifetime members And it's only access to them as there is limited seating while lifetime members on top of that get extra Coaching before the event in front row seating while most charged for these events We show our support by making it free for annual and lifetime members if you are interested in signing up and attending this event DMT Bradley 90 in slack and Or email myself at Tosh at my investing club calm now Today we have a very special video for you guys one of our head moderators Austin who goes by a loha trader in chat does a trade recap on the big cap ticker symbol ROKU or Roku while this is just a sample of the full-length video if you want to watch the full length or any of our exclusive content that We come in MIC member Hey everybody Austin here Back for another trade recap, but before I do I want to say I'm not licensed. I'm not registered I'm not a financial advisor and none of this should be taken as investment advice even if it sounds like it Okay, so I just want to do a quick video this time about a go a couple of a couple of trades that I made This week because it was a really slow week for me And I didn't get much exciting trades off, you know, there was Berg and workhorse and I kind of I kind of already went over those and This is kind of more along the large cap segment of like my experimentation of my trading I've been trading a lot more large caps lately in rel in relation to how I used to trade And so I kind of want to go over my journey and this is part of the journey So this is what like a Roku is one I had on my watch list that I went over in the webinar The first webinar that I did and anyway, so this was my trade on it actually so You can kind of see like I had to do this at another time so You know, so right it around here is when the Rather, oh, sorry read it around here I I shorted it because it we just kind of double top broke a lower low broke the wall broke 85 This this is that I feel like there's gonna be some profit taking and I can get a quick scalp out of this This is also if you look at the time here Right around here. What time is this like where I scalp it right around here at 10 o'clock This is when like the spies started to tank, right? This is when we got the big candle on the spy They write right around here. I restarted to really tank here On these big red volume candles and I was like and you know, it was a breakdown from the spy So I'm like, okay, maybe this is gonna follow spy I can get a quick scalp on the follow-up through momentum on that so the 285 is now my level and It's full my trade. I think I missed that I miss like I think I missed that entry Yeah, what time did I get in around one? Oh No, I did get that cool So when we when we pushed the 285 I let it test and see if it was gonna make higher lows and around like one o'clock when we were going strong here When we were holding this strong on the spy. I decided to get short With the attempt that it might push to green again. They're the same kind of idea like green is around 287s area Is it can I get a prior close? Yeah, or 288 So when we're holding strong here, and I'm expecting like a push to the green I'm trading that like because it's holding 285 again like we might get some push into the green territory. So That's when I trade down here I get a nice another little scalp out of it or right around here and I'm trying to work better on my patience with these like I showed it around here at 40s and got the 38s like It's very tough like I noticed like my patience is very like I'm getting Sometimes I'm getting rewarded for not having patience. That's kind of conditioning me to be a piker There are big moves to be made. I guess I just need to get a little bit more familiar with these kinds of ETFs Hey traders, this is Tosh I go by T Bradley 90 in the my investing club chat Just wanted to reach out and say if you have any questions about M. I see joining M. I see maybe you're a member already You have three ways to contact myself personally and through M. I see you can hit our social media You can hit me through pms in chat or you can contact us through my email at Tosh at my investing club calm That's TOS H at my investing club calm I will get back to you in a timely manner And I'm saying this because I'm here to help and I don't want anybody to be afraid to reach out and ask Any question that they have we are here for you guys. All right. See you guys


Hello and welcome to this session. Let us understand the following problem today. Find the value of the following tan inverse 2 cos of 2 sin inverse 1 by 2. Now let us write the solution. We know tan inverse 1 by 2 is equal to pi by 6. Therefore tan inverse of 2 cos of 2 into pi by 6 is equal to tan inverse of 2 cos pi by 3, which is equal to tan inverse of 2 into 1 by 2 because cos pi by 3 is equal to 1 by 2. This gets cancelled so which is equal to tan inverse of 1 which is equal to pi by 4. Therefore the required answer is pi by 4. I hope you understood the problem. Bye and have a nice day.


Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the No Silicast podcast, hosted at podfeed.com. A technology geek podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, April 23rd, 2023, and this is show number 937. This week, our guest on Chitchat Across the Pond is your favorite psychological scientist, Dr. Marianne Gary of the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Dr. Gary and four of her colleagues published a paper recently in the Royal Society Open Science, and it was entitled Trivially Information Semantic Context Inflates People's Confidence They Can Perform a Highly Complex Skill. It's a big fancy title, but the experiment builds on previous studies where people have demonstrated that people have highly inflated beliefs of their capabilities doing highly complex tasks for which they are entirely unqualified. In particular, a high percentage of people have high confidence that they could land a commercial plane with no help from the tower if there was an emergency and the pilot was incapacitated. In the study that Marianne and her co-workers did, they tested whether watching a short, trivially informative video of two pilots landing a plane would influence that confidence level. Would it make them more confident if they saw a video that gave them no instruction whatsoever? Would that change their confidence level? As always with Dr. Gary, you'll learn a lot, you'll laugh along with us, and your dreams will be crushed as only she can. You can find chit chat across the pond light in your podcatcher of choice. Of course, there's a link in the show notes. When I was 12 years old, my family had a collie puppy named Charlie who was in sore need of some training, so my parents signed me and Charlie up for obedience classes. But it came time for the final graduation ceremony, which involved the incredibly complex procedure of walking around a circular track. Charlie stopped halfway through and he pooped on the track. For that, Charlie was awarded the most improved trophy. And I actually still have that trophy. There's a picture of it in the show notes, but it's actually right behind me as I'm recording for the live audience.  For those who haven't been following along, about a year ago, Steve and I were both able to get into his full self-driving beta program by competing against a rating system in the car and achieving 98% or higher on the test over the course of a couple of weeks. Full self-driving beta means actually driving itself on city streets, not just freeways. Now, after testing full self-driving for a few weeks way back then, my assessment of its driving skills was that of a student driver who was also drunk. Seriously, it was bad. But full speed through dips when it made left turns into roads with a median separator, it would just drive right at the median forcing us to rest control from the car. It was super tentative turning into intersections and it kind of would go, oh, it's terrible, terrible turning. It came to a stop at lights way too quickly and then it accelerated way too slowly. So you're basically sure somebody's going to be honking at you because it was so slow getting away from lights. One time halfway through a turn, it actually just gave up and gave control of the car back to Steve and that was really nerve-wracking to do it partway through an intersection. One of the many things I enjoy about owning a Tesla, though, is that they send out regular software updates even if you're not on the beta. Makes the car feel new when it happens. A great example was when they added camera views from the side of the car to the display. Now when we engage the turn signal, we get a rearward view to see the lane beside us. It's a much safer way to see the lane you want to change into rather than turning your head around and speeding traffic. Now, Tesla often moves things around on the display, which can be a little annoying. They move the garage door opening button pretty much every time they do an update. I think they do it just to keep our minds sharp. Anyway, when Steve and I tested full self-driving beta, it was FSD version 10 and they've been sending out minor updates for the past year or so, which made very slight improvements in the full self-driving experience. I'd say the student driver maybe stopped drinking hard liquor and instead was only drinking high alcohol content IPA beer. Better, but still terrifying. Just recently though, Tesla shipped out FSD version 11 and it's definitely a marked improvement. I'm ready to declare that while it still feels like a student driver, it's like a good student driver who is actually completely sober. It's that much better than FSD 10. I'll still call it a student driver because it doesn't drive quite like an experienced driver and I'll get into some details of what I mean. I decided to take a drive and I'm going to illustrate these improvements by describing this recent trip where I let the car drive me to the Apple Store. First, it drove west down my block and it gently stopped at the four-way stop sign. A pretty good stop. Now, Tesla got in trouble recently for letting the car do a rolling stop, it was only less than five miles per hour while driving, so now the Tesla comes to a sarcastically complete stop. In any case, it waited till the cars who had gotten there first took their turns and then with no hesitation, it accelerated appropriately into that right turn. None of that ear, ear, ear that it used to do before. Now, after a couple of other turns, it drove up to a stop light and it waited for the light to change. Now, you have to really pay attention even when waiting at a light and absolutely go as soon as the light turns green and as soon as the cross-traffic clears. My car and I wanted to turn left, but there was a car straight across from us and my car pulled a little bit into the intersection as a driver should and waited to see what the other car opposing us was going to do. The driver had their left turn signal on, but they did not move into the intersection. The Tesla waited and didn't make a move. At this point, I took over and I executed the turn myself. I'm not going to count that against the car as a mistake because how many times have you seen someone with a turn signal on who makes a completely different move? You can't count on that car to be turning, so I'm not going to count that as a mistake, but I was a little worried that people would be impatient behind me and I made the turn myself. I re-engaged full self-driving and then we traveled down a very wide road that has a fair amount of traffic on it. It's pretty busy. In the middle of the block, a pedestrian dashed out into the street and the car gently slowed down well in advance and when the pedestrian had finished crossing appropriately accelerated back up to the speed limit. I was particularly pleased with this maneuver. Not only did it not kill the pedestrian, that's table stakes right, but it also didn't panic. In FSD 10, it would often set up an audible alarm and slow down quite violently at the slightest provocation. It was quite a nerving when as a human you could tell the situation was not a crisis well before your arrival. So it was really great to see FSD 11 treat this potentially dangerous situation cautiously, but not overly so. Another bothersome thing with FSD 10 was that it was truly terrible when making a right turn into traffic. When the intersection was clear, it would do that thing of inching out in little jerks, much like a student driver, eventually starting to make the turn but then over-correcting to the right and then back to the left to accelerate. In my test drive, the car needed to turn right onto a very busy two-lane road. It was also tricky because to our left, the cars were coming over a hill which reduced the time to react. I'm happy to say that it did admirably. It inched into the intersection just enough and when it had the visibility it needed and saw that the road was clear, it accelerated quite rapidly into the correct lane. It was very comforting for it to do it quickly. You know what I mean? You could just go and it did. In Tesla's, I think even without full self-driving, you can enable a feature where it sends a little bong sound when the light turns green. It's pretty accurate if you're going straight ahead and the light turns but it wasn't very accurate on the left turn arrows. Might tell you to go, send you the bong when you're in the left turn lane but it was the straight-through light that had actually turned green. We, the Tesla and I, drove up to a red left turn arrow. Until the left turn arrow turned green and then it accelerated very smoothly into the correct lane. Now remember I said earlier that FSD10 had trouble recognizing medians on left turns. I was very relieved not to have to rest control my car as it cleared the physical median with plenty of space.  Not only that, he opened the driver's side door all the way up and got out of the car and stood there in the lane. At this point he was blocking easily a third of the lane that I was currently driving in or I should say the Tesla was driving in. The Tesla did not panic. Notice that the lane was blocked well before it would require a hard stop and instead rolled to a stop a good 10 feet before this silly man. Now this man continued to partially block our lane so the Tesla started trying to edge to the left and it didn't seem super confident about the maneuver. There was also a line of cars coming up along on the left of me so I decided I'd give it a hand and I took over. Again it didn't make any mistakes but I just got a little bit anxious and took over. Now remember I said that FSD-11 is like a student driver even a good student driver but it doesn't drive as a seasoned driver would. A good example of that was when we turned onto Sepulveda Boulevard which is a major thoroughfare of three lanes. The left and middle lanes travel along pretty nicely but the right lane is problematic. You can see it has lots of dips for rain gutters. We had rain this year so don't make fun of us but we do have rain gutters just in case so it has lots of these dips at every intersection and Sepulveda has lots of business entrances and intersections where cars slow down and make turns. It is easily the worst lane to be in. Nobody wants to drive in this lane. Well, the Tesla really liked that far right lane. I signaled to move to the center lane and it obeyed me. It made a very smooth lane change. As soon as I driven about a block in that center lane it said yeah I'm going back into that right lane again. Now it wasn't technically wrong but no human drivers were choosing that lane for obvious reasons because it was an annoying lane. I let it drive that way for the rest of the ride and it made no errors. While I still find it stressful to drive it self, overall I wouldn't say it made any outright mistakes on this particular drive. I did find that it drove faster than I'm comfortable with at certain times. However, every time it seemed too fast I checked and it was driving at or under the posted speed limit. I think I might be a little old lady driver so take that for what you will. Later, Steve and I took a drive together in my car where he was in the driver's seat driving in control. In this drive we experienced more of those I wouldn't have done it that way events. For example, there were a couple of areas where we know the traffic backs up so if we were driving we would get into the correct lane a mile or more before an upcoming turn but the Tesla would toodle along in the wrong lane until it was actually necessary to change lanes. Again, not technically a mistake but it wasn't what a human driver would have done that was familiar with the roads. I guess it isn't familiar with the roads, right? It's figuring it out as it goes. Now perhaps the most obvious example of student driver feel is on curvy roads. Experienced drivers will hug the inside of a turn but the Tesla always goes for the middle of the lane no matter what. So this isn't dangerous per se but it feels like loss of control as though the car is going to slide out of the curve like it's not going to stay tight, you know normal human drivers that we tug the inside of that lane so it was again just not the way we would have done it. Now it also has trouble when lanes get super wide. On the particular drive where Steve was behind the wheel there's a park that lets out onto a busy two lane road. At the park exit they widen the lane to allow drivers to merge in more easily. Well all the Tesla knows though is that the lane it's driving in is normal width it's going along normal normal normal and then suddenly it grows to almost twice wide as normal and then narrows back down. The only thing the Tesla knows to do is drive right down the middle so it's to the left because it's in the narrower lane as it got wider it's going farther and farther to the right and then it has to come back in and to the left again. So this could mislead drivers behind it into thinking the car was moving to the right to make a right turn because that's what a human driver would be doing. As it starts to narrow though the Tesla continues straight while still staying in the middle of the lane. Again, not the way a human would drive it. It also made the same mistake it has made on this drive since we started testing FSD. One of the left turns is onto a road with a painted not physical median and the US painted medians are designated by a double double yellow line while it appears to have learned not to drive over the physical medians it ran right over the end of that painted median just like it did on FSD 10. I briefly let the car drive me on the freeway well. With full self-driving working with navigation the car got itself onto the freeway and then tried to move into the car pool lane. That makes sense since Model 3 Tesla electric vehicle is eligible for car pool access but what it didn't know is I never put the car pool access cars stickers on my car. Now you probably mocked me for this but they were purple. My car is red it would have just looked terrible plus I never driving that car by myself when I'm in a lot of traffic so it's not a big deal. Anyway the car didn't know it wasn't allowed in that lane. Now it did do a couple of other lane changes on the freeway and I wasn't completely happy with how it performed. As with FSD 10 it still moved into lanes where it was impolitely close to the driver coming up from behind.  We later learned that there are several different settings for full self-driving in FSD 11. You can choose chill, average or assertive. I change it from average down to chill and now it says in this profile your Model 3 will have a larger follow difference sorry a larger follow distance and perform fewer speed changes. I haven't had the nerve to try to get on the freeway but perhaps it will drive a little bit more like an old lady like me with this change in settings. I really hate to think what assertive would be like. The bottom line is that full self-driving 11 is a huge improvement over full self-driving 10. I was beginning to doubt our driverless future but this update renews that hope. A couple of weeks ago a darling six-year-old boy we knew named Caden was killed in a car accident. This is why I believe so strongly in supporting efforts to bring us true self-driving cars as soon as possible. Well I'm kneeling on the floor with Helena Harrison from a company called Glean. She suggested kneeling and I thought that was a lot of fun so we're going to do this interview in a little bit more casual style. Glean is a company that helps people take notes and if you're in school or you go to a lot of teams meetings and you need to be able to take notes but you find yourself distracted because you're taking notes and you miss the point Glean is designed to kind of help you do that is that a good description of it? Yes absolutely yes it will cause all of your audio and then you can add your notes as you go along and you'll be able to come back to your notes later to expand when you've got more time. It takes that pressure away of you having to sort of write everything down during your meeting or during your lecture or your class. So I've seen applications like Notability is a note taking app that also does audio so you can grab a section of your text and then find out what they said right then. This is sort of the other way around the primary focus is the audio but you're putting in short notes to say go look at this is that a good way to describe it? Yes I would actually think that the primary focus is really more your notes because that's what you want. You want to sort of have a really nice summary of your class or your meeting afterwards but the audio is there to really help you expand your notes afterwards. Afterwards but during while I'm in there I can just click a button that says important or follow up or I could just type in confused was one of the buttons that you had in there which I really liked. I could have used that back and listen to that two or three more times. Yes absolutely yes so you can add your notes during yes and it's just recording in the background there. Now where does it do the recording? It does a recording on the cloud so it's a cloud based software but the nice thing about being on the cloud it means that you can access it anywhere so not just on your own laptop but you could access it on your friend's laptop or you could access it on your iPad or your phone. What is the security around that? We have Amazon Web Services is what we use and everything is encrypted at rest and we obviously made sure that everything was as secure as it could possibly could be. Okay that is the right answer to the question. So I'm looking at the interface right now and she's imported the slides into note taking. She's got let's see I'm going to actually press buttons here on the right hand side there's kind of an interesting little interface that shows the audio with little highlights for each section where she took some notes about what was going on in there but it also does let me see if I get it right, speech to text is that right? It does do speech to text yes so after you've actually done your audio recorded once you've stopped your recording you can then click a little button that says convert to text and that will convert all of your audio into a text format. So this is cool because there's a column where the notes that you've taken are so let's see there's a note I'm looking at it says ISS and if I click on that I can see where in the audio that that was spoken and then can I there's a play button I'm going to I'm just guessing the interface I can hit play and I could be able to hear what was said about the international space. So that's pretty cool so you can kind of go back and forth now you did one other thing with the text can you explain that you started in the text transcription and you were able to do something with that too? Yes of course so I can also go through my notes and click on a note and it will take me straight to that part of the transcript and if I think that part of transcript is really important or I want to sort of take it out of my transcript and pop it into my notes I can I can just copy and paste it across so it saves me having to write it all down and then of course once it's in there if it's a quote I'm going to leave it exactly as it is or it might be that I want to go and edit it and sort of reword it and make it my own so. So then do you export your notes from this what do you do afterwards? Yes you can export it to anywhere so basically you copy you copy there's a reading view in here that sort of takes all of the audio away and you're just left with your slides if you've got them you don't have to have slides it's left with your slides and your headings and your notes and then you copy that across and because you're copying it you can pop it anywhere so it's not restricted to Google Docs or Word you can pop it into a nursing journal or a media diary basically anywhere you like that accepts text. This is very cool so what does it cost to use Glean and again this is for business it's for school wherever you need to be taking notes what does it cost? It's $129 a year or you can do a monthly subscription instead which is 12 pounds $12 a year. That actually sounds like a pretty good price I could have used that in a lot of classes I took in college. Thank you very much Helena this was really cool. My pleasure and thank you thank you it's very nice of you to come and talk to me at my stand. Oh and the name of the company is Glean and what is the website? Glean. Oh hang on a minute Glean.co. Glean.co that's the website isn't it? Yeah just Glean.co nice and easy very cool thank you very much thank you thank you very much nice to meet you. Last week after Terry Austin made me by hush for $50 I conveniently mentioned that in my plug for folks to support the show guess what happened? Both John Murray and Bill Reveal went over podfeed.com slash PayPal and they donated collectively more than enough money to cover hush their generosity and show of support is overwhelming. Now I should mention this isn't even the first time the two of them have donated. If you'd like to be awesome like John and Bill please consider giving a one-time donation or donations on a schedule of your choosing to show your support of the work that we do at the podfeed podcast remember you can do it at podfeed.com slash PayPal Remember a few months ago when I spent a stupid amount of time automating the incredibly complex procedure of unchecking a box and previews export window to remove the alpha channel from PNG files? Well the problem to be solved is that images with an alpha channel have transparency and if they're dark images they're impossible to see if the viewer is using dark mode on their device so when I would tweet out or toot out on mastodon a link to one of the shows and if it had transparency in it, if it had an alpha channel it would be impossible for those using dark mode to actually see what I'd posted. Now I've told you about a couple of solutions but this week I solved that problem and a bigger problem using an amazing tool called retro batch boy that's hard to say retro batch pro from flying meat software Now the problem to be solved this week separate from the alpha channel problem is creating effective featured images for my blog post. You know how if someone posts a link on social media expands to show the title and an image? Well people have figured out that posts with featured images are much more likely to cause the reader on social media to follow through and look at the link. If you create your blog post properly in your content management system such as WordPress you get to control what images shown when that link is posted Now technically I can slap any old image I like as the featured image in WordPress but whether it looks good when you see it is a whole other thing. For example if my image is in at least 400 pixels tall Facebook won't render anything at all and if it's the wrong aspect ratio WordPress in cohoots with my theme I'm really not sure who to blame here will crop the image. In spite of spending a lot of time trying to create a repeatable process to make uncropped good looking featured images I have not succeeded until now What I do know from talking to my theme vendor is that if I don't have a sidebar on my theme which I don't then my theme will crop images to 1040x650 Now that means there is no need for me to upload anything bigger than that Now that aspect ratio is a little bit wonky and I prefer 2 to 1 so my goal was to create featured images at 1040x520 Now let's say I find a company's logo for the featured image so they get some visual juice from the review Last week for example, Sandy reviewed a product from Anchor and I ran into the problem that I always run into. The logo file was very high resolution but it was the wrong aspect ratio. At 3357x800 it was more than 4 to 1 Now if I plop that very high resolution image into WordPress as the featured image it gets crops so all you see is NKI Now think about that There isn't even an I in the name Anchor. It's truncated the E so I'm seeing the middle NK and part of the capital E While the process to make the featured image look nice is unpredictable tedious and error prone After literally years of attempts to make it a reliable process about a week ago I came up with a less terrible than the other methods process. Using Affinity Photo I created a 2 to 1 1040x520 rectangle in white and I saved it as a preset So when I open Affinity Photo if I then open the preset I can drag my image onto the new image file and start dragging it around on that white rectangle so there's a white rectangle underneath the image file If my image file is too big like say the anchor logo I have to resize it until it fits either in width or height and then get it centered properly. When I think it looks good enough I have to export the file and save it with a new name and either save this Affinity Photo file or delete it. It's still annoying and it's still time consuming but it's not as bad as all of the other methods I had tried. You might ask why I chose a white background when dark mode folks are people too it's because I had to pick something ok I'm not going to modify the background for every single image Anyway this image size problem is triply aggravating because it shows up just often enough and it always rears its ugly head right when I'm finally done with an article and that makes it even more frustrating. So imagine I spend hours and hours crafting a story and adding screenshots entering alt tags or screen reader friends can enjoy the images. I make sure the grammar and spelling are correct I'm double checking links to sources I publish I push it up to WordPress I throw in the featured image and then I have to stop because the featured image looks poopy. I scream out in despair every single time. Well after the most recent problem with the anchor logo I went to mastodon and I asked my followers is there some way to automate a solution to this. The wonderful Greg Skown responded you might know that name he's the co-founder of Smile the people who make the most awesome text expander software he suggested I take a look at Acorn as it supports Apple script I don't know much about Apple script but I know people who do so I thought maybe it was worth a shot Acorn is an image editor by the way that you probably have already heard of I trotted off to the flying meat website to take a fresh look at Acorn the last version I paid for was version 3 and it appears the developer Gus Mueller has been very busy since I last used Acorn as he's on version 7 now. Anyway as I started looking at Acorn I realized Gus has another app and it's called Retrobatch when I was on the automators podcast back in February Mary brought up the app Retrobatch for automating image manipulation you know me someone says this is fun for automation it's an immediate download for me I didn't have time to play with it right back then in February so I put play with Retrobatch Rosemary on my to-do list I'd remember who told me about it and remember to do it just like the other 24 items languishing on my to-do list it never got done now I did some reading and I learned that Retrobatch allows you to automate complex image manipulation according to rules you provide that's unlike it might be the right tool to solve my problem with featured images I tuted back to Greg they need to help me go in the right direction and I tagged the flying meat mastodon account with my response imagine my delight when Gus responded with a screenshot of exactly how Retrobatch would help me solve my problem I bought the pro version of Retrobatch because the particular task I wanted to perform was going to require the use of rules so some if then else kind of conditions it was also going to require a wee bit of JavaScript by wee bit I mean microscopic bit Retrobatch is $20 while Retrobatch pro is $40 you can do an upgrade from regular Retrobatch up to the pro version if you want we'll get into the differences towards the end of this article but I want to start by walking you through the Retrobatch interface as I describe how it solved my problem the Retrobatch interface reminds me a lot of audio hijack in that you drag nodes little rounded squares onto a canvas and then connection lines appear between them indicating the direction and path of your workflow down the left sidebar are groups of nodes to choose from in the center of the canvas where you build the workflow on the right side is a contextual inspector palette and below that is an image preview window I'll get into the details as we go through the example before I could start automating my solution I had to figure out exactly what I wanted the solution to provide now images that need to be modified fall into four different buckets based on their sizes and the modifications are different for each of these four scenarios that's why I was going to have to write these rules of course being a nerd I drew it up as a truth table now you can't see the truth table because you're listening so I'll describe it to you in words instead the four conditions are number one the images bigger in both dimensions than my targeted size 1040 by 520 in that case I need to scale down once in each direction until both dimensions are no larger than that target dimension the the second scenario is the images wider than 1040 but shorter than 520 I want to scale the width down to 1040 what if the images narrower than 1040 but it's taller than 520 those images I want to scale the height down to 520 finally what if the images smaller in both dimensions than the desired 1040 by 520 in that case I don't want to apply any scaling at all all right with my truth table set aside that gets us the image scale properly but we need to do something to add width or height to the dimension that it where it's deficient and Gus's response amassed it on he explained that the command is to add margin so before diving into these four scenarios at once to follow my truth table I started with one test case the anchor logo that I talked about was both wider and taller than my target dimensions I knew that it was more than a 2 to 1 aspect ratio so I knew that if I scaled the width to 1040 it wouldn't be tall enough so the margin would have to be added to the top and bottom on the left sidebar I flipped up in the group of nodes for read images and I dragged in the read individual files node with this node selected the inspector palette over on the right change to show an area where I could add some representative files to be tested is a great way to run tests repeatedly a multiple test files this is where I would eventually drag in all four different options but for now I just drag the anchor logo over into the inspector palette in the little read individual files node it now says one file that tells you that one file was matched for that node that little indicator can be very important as you're debugging your workflows in retro batch if a node isn't doing what you expect it might say zero files which means it doesn't have a match so it won't function properly for you after I dragged my one file in at the top of the window retro batch showed the warning add a right node to save your file somewhere good to have that reminder but I'll get to that in a minute my next step was to scale the image down until the width was 1040 under transform I found the scale node dragged it into the read individual files right next to the read individual files node when I drop the scale node to the right of the read node an arrow line that flowed it's got little arrows it connected the two nodes together very nicely so I could tell that was going from reading in to doing scaling now with the scale node selected that inspector palette changed to show my options to control how to do the scale I use the drop down to change the scaling for percentage to fix with an entered 1040 okay we're doing pretty good here also in the inspector palette I check the box to tell it only to scale smaller now the last thing I wanted it to ever do is upscale my images if it's too small in any direction or even both I'll add the margin to make it big enough in both directions so far I've been opening up these little groups on the left sidebar like opening transform to find scale but you don't actually have to do that if that seems a little bit tedious you can add a node of your choosing by right-clicking on an existing node and choosing from the pop-up menu I added the adjust margins node right after the scale node doing just that now this is where the wee bit of javascript comes in and I don't think I would have ever figured this out if Gus hadn't spoon fed me through the solution through mastodon adjust margin selected by default the inspector palette lets you define the number of pixels you want to add to the left bottom right and top of the image well that makes perfect sense but when this automation runs I won't know how many pixels to add and I don't know even know which edge is going to require some margin I need retro batch to figure that out on its own so adjust margin also allows you to add a percentage of width height short side or long side or use javascript expression turns out we're going to use javascript expression but don't be intimidated it's super easy the javascriptness of it is actually hidden from us it's really more like simple algebra in the left and right margin boxes we simply type 1040 minus W collectively divided by 2 that means we want the width to be 1040 pixels when we're done so we subtract the width of the image from 1040 and divide it by 2 simple right then we add that value as a margin on the left and right likewise if we want to add half the difference between the height and 520 to the top and bottom we can just enter the top and bottom margins of 520 minus H all that divided by 2 there you've written a javascript expression I promised it was easy didn't I finally I selected the color white again for the margin to be added the final step is to add a right images node to the end of our workflow just like the warning told us to because we read in the image we did a bunch of manipulation we need to write it back out as you might have figured out we have some fun options in the inspector palette for right images we can have the automation ask for an output folder when run we can have the output folder open when the export finishes and we can overwrite existing images if we want we can add a suffix or prefix to the file name as well I was going to add a suffix with something brilliant and witty like modified while you certainly could do that there's a drop down with a massive number of other options remember retro batch is really for image manipulation not modifying silly logos because of that retro batch offers you options for the suffix and prefix to include a suffix or prefix to include things like capture date author copyright keywords bits per channel pixel depth and more in that long list of options to add to the file name I also found image height and image width this is perfect for my needs since it knows H&W we've been using it in our equation I can have my exported images suffered suffixed with H what like the 1040 by 520 so I can clearly tell them apart from my originals now there's really one more important part of the interface for retro bad I want you to know about if you select an image node such as that initial read node or the ending write node in the bottom right you'll see the image preview window for that stage of your workflow so let's say you just have the read node selected I can see the anchor logo with this very wide aspect ratio and it's got no white space up over below it there's a zoom slider to help you see the image at a reasonable magnification for its size in the very bottom right is a little info button that'll pop up what looks like some of the exit data for the image in all that nerdy goodness photographers care about it also in there shows the dimensions of this input file and I was able to see that the anchor logo is 33 57 by 800 pixels so that's my unmodified original item by the way I did zoom down to 22% to see it in that viewing box now if I click on the right node instead in that image preview I can see that now the images around two to one aspect ratio and it has a nice white margin on the top and bottom so if I click on the info button I can see the resulting image will now be 1040 by 520 and we'll have that information tacked on to the file name this is a great way to see your workflow is doing exactly what you want before you even bother having it execute I mentioned upfront that you can drag a pile of images in to test the workflow you've created if you do that you'll see them all lined up in that image preview window and you can tap through them to verify that each will be modified to your desires now it is time for the moment of truth at the top of the window is a play button run your automation or you can use command enter to make it go I was delighted to see my 1040 by 520 image squirt out to the folder I had requested with the suffix that I wanted now my workflow at this point takes an image scales it to the correct width and adds the margin to the top and bottom but this workflow doesn't know anything about my truth table yet so it doesn't know how to do different things depending on the dimensions of the image adding rules was crucial to my workflow because I needed retro batch to figure out whether the images are taller or wider than the desired aspect ratio and only then scale the images and finally add those margins now rules in retro batch look a lot like the rules were familiar with making smart folders and finder or smart albums and apple photos you'll be very familiar with how they look I do want to mention rules again are only available in the pro version of retro batch I do have trouble pronouncing that don't I anyway I created four rules to parse the images into the four scenarios of my truth table using image pixel width and height and whether they were greater than my desired dimensions when I was done with the final design of my featured image workflow I tested it with a bunch of representative files now by a stroke of luck I just happened to include one image that had that pesky alpha channel so it looked really silly after going through the bet retro batch workflow it was the right dimensions it had the white margin just as appropriate but in the middle of the image you can see right through it because it was transparent I created a new retro batch workflow completely separate from the first one to see whether it might be a better way to solve my pesky alpha channel problem than all the other methods I created in the discussion forms for retro batch I found out that to remove the alpha channel you can simply add a mat node my test workflow was very simple with only four nodes read in the image set a rule to check to see if it had transparent pixels if they were present and then slap on a mat if they are and then write out the image easy peasy I saved out my workflow and called it no-alpha.retro batch then I discovered retro batch allows you to export it as a droplet I exported as a droplet and suddenly I had an app I dragged the transparent PNG on my droplet and boom the transparency was gone now I knew this droplet was a keeper so I held down the command key and I dragged the app into my finder windows toolbar now if I ever have a transparent image I want to use on the web I can simply drag it onto the app in the toolbar and boom I am done so freaking easy I am just so excited this is so much easier than all of the other 28 ways I tried to do this alright now that I knew how to fix the alpha channel problem I just added that same set of steps to my featured image workflow so now if it finds that transparent images it just slaps on the mat right before it squirts it out now the workflow is pretty cool looking and it's very readable it starts with the read file nodes then it branches into the four rules of my truth table the first rule goes through the two scaling nodes since those images are too big in both directions the two rules that grab images are too big in one or the other dimensions those only go through one scale node finally the last rule has no scaling at all because it's too small in both directions after going through that process all four rules converge to just one just margins node one mat node and then to the final right images node now the only thing I wish it had was some indication of what the nodes are doing without having to select each node and look at the inspector palette for example every rule node just says rules it would be nifty if I could enter a name for each node like too big in W and H I ask us whether there was a way to name the rule nodes or add some kind of text to them so you could see which rule did what at a glance without opening the nodes I was delighted with his response he wrote back you know that's a good idea I hadn't considered and nobody has asked for it yet I'll see what I can do about it in a future release how cool is that anyway after I run all my tests I exported my featured image workflow as a droplet and it also earned a treasured spot in my computer toolbar I am so excited about this workflow and I couldn't wait to use it I went back to the post about hush by Terry Austin because the hush logo looked really poopy on my featured images the logo is an 850 pixel rounded square which is super high res but my theme and wordpress crop the top and bottom of it I drag the hush logo onto my featured image droplet and drag the resulting image into wordpress and now it looks fantastic all right now that I've told you about how I used retro batch to solve my problem let's chat just a little bit about what else it can do to kind of trigger whether you'd be interested in it I mentioned that there's a pro and regular version of retro batch if using the regular version of retro batch you can see the nodes you would have access to if you had the pro version they're clearly marked so Gus isn't trying to trick you but he lets you play with them to see how they would work if you had the pro version and the pro version and the pro version and the pro version and the pro version now retro batch is really well documented and in the documentation I found a listing of which features are available in both pro and regular and what's available just in pro there are 56 nodes available and for both versions and 23 more are available in the pro version I highly recommend going to this link for retro batch is excellent if you write documentation yourself you might actually be interested in checking out the tools Gus uses to create his the docs for retro batch are written in MK docs which is an open source static site generator and the theme is open source and the site on which he hosts the theme is also free you can find all of the links about these documentation tools in his docs at flyingmeat.com all right back to using the tool as you lay out nodes I said that these connection lines automatically appear but sometimes it's a little hard to move a node so that the connection lines between nodes are exactly what you wanted it to do if you require more granular control retro batch allows you to draw the connection lines by hand in preferences there's a checkbox on the general tab to allow manual connections with a control drag I found that toggling this on and off while I was working allowed me to get the connection lines exactly where I needed them now when I was working on retro batch on my laptop I had to shrink the window width to fit my smaller screen my workflow was partially hidden under the right sidebar section and I couldn't scroll to see it I was going to mention here that it was a problem you might run into but first I wrote to Gus about it he responded immediately and he said I done covered a bug but before I could even respond to his email he sent me a second email telling me he fixed it and sent me an updated version of my laptop this guy is amazing I mentioned twice already how well documented retro batch is I was searching for the right terminology to describe the inspector palette and I discovered that just about anything you want to do has multiple ways to do it for example I said earlier that to add a read node I use the left sidebar and I dragged it in and then I dragged images into the inspector palette turns out you can just drag an image or a selection of images or even a folder containing images right onto the canvas and retro batch will automatically create that read node and populate the inspector palette it's a way easier way to do it if that's not the way you want to do it you could also use edit add node if you like the sidebar you can even double click a node to add it to the canvas by the way if you want to duplicate a node you can hold down the option key while dragging on a node I use that last trick once to actually copy a node from one workflow to another and it worked if you don't like one way of doing things in retro batch there's probably another way now I want to tell you I did run my usual elementary level test of voiceover with retro batch and I was able to pull in an image with a write node add an adjustment and write the file out to a known location I was able to interact with the inspector palette as well I'm sure there are ways that the interface could be improved for voiceover but a fundamental level I didn't run in any showstoppers the fact that Gus gives you multiple ways to add nodes means that when one method didn't work the menu method did work with voiceover if you're a voiceover user I definitely try it yourself before taking my word for it that it will work for you now the bottom line is I know my particular problem to be solved probably isn't a problem any of you have but if you do any kind of image manipulation that you do repeatedly or need to do on a series of images retro batch might help you automate your workflow and apply your changes consistently whether it's blur effects color adjustments sharpening transforming adding color effects manipulating metadata or adding a watermark retro batch can help you with your work I am astonished at how responsive and skilled Gus Mueller is and I'm a huge fan of well documented tools check out the free 14-day trial of retro batch at flyingmeat.com well that's going to wind us up for this week did you know you can email me at alison at podfeed.com anytime you like and I will probably answer if you have a question or a suggestion just send it on over you can follow me on mastodon at podfeed at chaos.social remember everything good starts with podfeed.com if you want to join in the fun of the conversation you can join our Slack community over at podfeed.com slash Slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely no-cello cast ways even bark from time to time you can support the show at podfeed.com slash patreon or with a one-time donation like John and Bill did over at podfeed.com slash PayPal and if you want to join in the fun of the live show head on over to podfeed.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic no-cello castaways thanks for listening and stay subscribed


Welcome to the Hindu news analysis by Shankar Ayes Akademi. These are the news articles chosen for today's discussion. They are given along with the page number of different traditions. Link for the handwritten notes in PDF format and the time stamping for the discussed articles are given in the description box as well as the comment section for the benefit of the mobile viewers. Now let us start with the first article. This FAQ article is about the recent developments related to Afghanistan. See these new developments seem to change the course of intra-Afghan negotiations on the US Taliban peace deal. So in this discussion, let us see what are these new developments, its possible implications and India's stand. The syllabus relevant for this article is displayed on the screen as friends can go through it. In February 2020, a peace deal was signed to end the 18-year war in Afghanistan. This was signed between USA and Taliban. See after the twin towers attack USA launched airstrikes against Afghanistan. USA believed Afghanistan was protecting Osama bin Laden and it has to be punished. Osama bin Laden was the head of Al Qaeda which was responsible for the 9-11 terrorist attack. See this topic was also covered on 9th and 24th March in the news analysis. Aspirants can have a look at it for better understanding. Now coming back to the article. So the war came to an end after the 2020 peace deal. See during the war, USA had approximately 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. US troops served alongside the troops from NATO allies and partners. So one of the major resolutions agreed in the deal was to withdraw these troops in a phased manner. Here you should note that the deal was a comprehensive peace agreement that is made of four parts. Under the first part, only USA is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all the military forces of USA, its allies and coalition partners. This also includes the withdrawal of all non diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors and supporting service personnel from Afghanistan and they will be withdrawn within 14 months after announcement of this agreement. This period ends in 1st May 2021. That is where newspapers are mentioning may one as deadline. But the complete withdrawal of all remaining forces from Afghanistan, including the forces from the military bases will be done only if Taliban adheres and acts according to the Part 2 of this agreement. Part 2 has many conditions. The important one is Taliban should not allow any of its members to threaten the security of USA and its allies. So what happened after this deal? The previous US administration under Mr. Trump made withdrawing troops from Afghanistan a priority and gradually troops were withdrawn. Now according to USA, currently it has some 2500 troops still stationed in Afghanistan. At the same time, even after peace deal, Taliban continued its attack. But as agreed, it did not attack US troops, rather it targeted Afghan nationals. There were many targeted killing of journalists, activists, judges and other civil society figures. So in 2020, the level of violence in Afghanistan remained very high. In this backdrop, there are some recent developments at the political level. First, two important documents were leaked, which dictated the course of Afghan's future. In this, the first one was an apparent draft of new peace agreement. This agreement was from the Office of US Peace Envoy in Afghanistan. Mr. Zalmay Khalisar is the US Peace Envoy in Afghanistan who is parading the current intra-Afghan peace process. See, the draft outlined a power sharing government. According to sources, it includes guiding principles for Afghanistan's constitution and the future of Afghan state. Then it also proposed a transitional peace government of Afghanistan. This will be based on agreed terms to govern the country, including a roadmap to a durable and just settlement. After this period, the draft proposes national elections for Afghanistan. And finally, it also includes a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire and its implementation. Second, a letter from US Secretary of State, Mr. Anthony Blinken to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was leaked. This letter revealed that USA is considering the full withdrawal of forces by May 1. That means no decision has been made whether USA will stick to its plan or not. The letter also urges the Afghan government and Taliban to move urgently towards peace. For this, it has outlined certain ways which seems like an expansion of the current agreement and talks. Let us see some of the outlines. The first one is ministerial level talks led by UN to discuss a unified approach. This is to be done by bringing representatives from Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and India together with USA. The next one is a senior level meeting between Taliban and Afghan government which is to be hosted by Turkey. In addition to that, Blinken also proposed that transitional peace government followed by national elections. The next important outline is a proposal to implement a 90-day reduction in violence. This measure is intent to prevent any attacks by the Taliban, taking advantage of withdrawal of troops and making rapid territorial gains. But there was no mention about Taliban fulfillment of conditions. Now, second recent development is the response of Afghan government to this leaks. They seem to have a separate plan. See, Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh has condemned USA's bossy letter and stated that US cannot make decision for Afghan people. Even Mr Ghani also refused to consider an interim government as proposed by the letter. Rather, he is insisting transfer of power only through elections. He even called Taliban to participate in early elections and carry out a full ceasefire. So, both the Afghan government and Taliban did not agree to the proposed process. Therefore, there is fear that whatever peace is existing will also be disturbed due to this. In this regard, Afghan officials also insist that without India's involvement, no regional talks could be successful because India is a development partner and a stakeholder in Afghanistan. What do experts think? They see these documents as an effort to step up pressure on the Afghan government and Taliban to arrive at peace. Further, they know that Mr Ghani might have no choice other than to agree to this transition plan, otherwise Taliban will recover its lost ground. And based on the above, author of this FAQ has outlined two possibilities that USA may consider. One, USA could negotiate with Taliban for an extension of 2020 agreement. This might include more incentives like the release of more prisoners and the delisting of sanctioned Taliban terrorists. Second, USA will discard the 2020 agreement and will back the Afghan government to continue towards a negotiated settlement by making US troops to remain in Afghanistan to stabilize the security situation. Now, let us come to India. See, the major point to be noted from the above discussion is that both Afghan government and USA want India's involvement. In this regard, it is critical to know India's stand. So far, India's stand has been to support the Afghan-owned, Afghan-led, Afghan-controlled peace process. That is, India supports the democratically elected government of Afghanistan and has refused direct talks with Taliban. This was the scenario when Afghan government and Taliban remained on opposite side. But author predicts if this changes and if Taliban agrees for an inclusive and transitional government along with the current Afghan government, then India might actively involve in intra-Afghan peace talks. So the conclusion is Afghan political structure is important for India's strategic and security concerns because both India and Pakistan want to have an upper hand in the Afghan issue. They are trying to establish a leader of the region. Now, let us move on to the next article. Now, let us take up this news article. This article is about a survivor-led network. This network was formed by over under tuberculosis survivors from Tamil Nadu. The initiative was a first of its kind network in the state. It was also in line with the National Strategic Plan for Tuberculosis, NSPT for 2017 to 2025. See, NSPT calls for affected communities to no longer be passive recipients of care. NSPT wants the survivors to become active and motivated stakeholders in the country's response to TB. In this context, let us have a brief understanding about TB. Tuberculosis or TB is caused by the bacteria called mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB often affects the lungs. It is spread from person to person through the air. When people who have lung TB cough, sneeze or spit, they propel the TB germs into the air. If a person inhales even only few of these germs, the person will be affected with TB. Now, know that tuberculosis is curable and preventable. So, to cure TB, anti-TB medicines have been used for decades. They are called as first-line drugs. Here, first-line drugs means it is the first choice for treating a particular condition. The most common first-line medications are isoniazid, rifampin, ethanbutol and pyrazenamide. But it is to be noted that some of the bacteria strains become resistant to one or more of these medicines. This drug-resistant emerges when anti-TB medicines are used inappropriately, like through incorrect prescription by the health care providers and the drug is of poor quality and even when patients stop the treatment prematurely. So, this has given rise to two types of drug-resistant TB. One is the multi-drug resistant TB which is MDR TB. It is a form of TB that is caused by bacteria which do not respond to first-line drugs. So, the MDR TB is treatable and curable by using second-line drugs. They include levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, bedaquilin, telaminate, lionzolid and pretomanate. Pretomanate was recommended in the year 2019. But second-line treatment options are limited. They require extensive chemotherapy for up to two years along with these medicines. This process is expensive and toxic. See, chemotherapy is the use of any drug to treat any disease. It not only means cancer. However, in some cases, more severe drug resistance can develop. This is the second type drug-resistant TB. It is known as extensively drug-resistant TB or in short, XDR TB. It is a more serious form of MDR TB. It is caused by bacteria that do not respond to the most effective second-line anti-TB drugs. XDR TB patients can be cured. But with the current drugs available, the likelihood of success is much smaller. So, this is in short about TB. Let us move on to the next article. This news article is about the recent development made by researchers from the LHCB experiment at CERN. Here, the LHCB stands for Large Adron Collider Beauty Experiment. According to this article, there is a chance that a new physical process such as new fundamental particles or interactions may exist. See, Baryons is one of the types of elementary particles. It includes protons, neutrons, and their antiparticles, for example, antiprotons. Then, there are medium-sized mesons, leptons, and tiny particles called quarks and gluons. Until now, it is believed that particles like electron, muon, and tahon and their antiparticles behave similarly in particle interactions. The recent developments might discover a new set of interactions. Here, we need to understand in brief about the CERN, LHC, and LHCB from Prillim's perspective. See, science and technology is a very important topic. It plays a huge role in maximizing our scope. With this in mind, let us go into the topic. The syllabus for reference is displayed on the screen. Aspirants can go through it. First, let us see the origin of CERN. In 1951, at an intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris, the first resolution concerning the establishment of a European Council for Nuclear Research was adopted. Later, an agreement was signed establishing the Provisional Council, thus the acronym CERN was born. Know that CERN's main area of research is particle physics. Because of this, the laboratory operated by CERN is often referred to as European Laboratory for Particle Physics. Today's CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world's largest and most respected centers for scientific research. Now, let us see about the Large Adron Collider. See, LHC is the world's largest and the most powerful particle accelerator. Started in 2008, LHC remains the latest addition to CERN's accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27 kilometer ring of superconducting magnets with the number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. So, why it is called the Large Adron Collider? Large simply refers to its size, which is approximately 27 kilometer in circumference. Adron, because it accelerates protons or ions, which belongs to the group of particles called Adrons. Collider, because the particles form two beams traveling in opposite directions, which are made to collide at four points around the mission. So, in this accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. They are guided around the accelerator by a strong magnetic field maintained by superconducting electromagnets. We have to know that there are thousands of magnets of different varieties and sizes are used to direct the beam around the accelerator. Just prior to the collision, another type of magnet is used to squeeze the particles closer together to increase the chance of collision. As the particles are so tiny that the task of making them collide is very difficult. All the controls for the accelerator, its services and technical infrastructure are housed at CERN Control Center. See, the beams inside the LHC are made to collide at four locations around the accelerator. They are Atlas, CMS, Alice and LHCB. They function as particle detectors. Now, let us come to Large Adron Collider Beauty Experiment, LHCB. LHCB specializes in investigating the slight difference between matter and antimatter by studying a type of particle called beauty quark or beak quark. See, quark is one type of elementary subatomic particles that interacts by means of the strong force. Quarks are believed to be the fundamental constituents of matter. When it comes to beauty quark, a beauty quark is a quark with a charge of minus one by three and a mass approximately 10,000 times that of an electron. The above process is illustrated in this image. Have a look at it to understand about the CERN accelerator complex. Now, let us move on to the next article. This article says that India has delivered two lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccines for the United Nation peacekeeping force. In this context, let us discuss in brief about UNPKF, COVAX and GAVI. See, UN peacekeeping helps countries navigate the difficult path from conflict to peace. So, during a peacekeeping mission, the UN sends its peacekeeping force along with civilian peacekeepers to aid the peace process. They also address a range of mandates set by the United Security Council and General Assembly. The three basic principles of UN peacekeeping operations are consent of the parties, impartiality and non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate. So, note that peacekeeping operations are deployed with the consent of the main parties to the conflict. Also, impartiality is crucial to maintaining the consent and cooperation of the main parties. See, UN peacekeeping operations are not an enforcement tool. However, they may use force with the authorization of the Security Council if acting in self-defense and defense of the mandate. As we know, the UN has no standing army or police of its own. So, member states are asked to contribute military and police personnel required for each operation. Note that peacekeepers wear their countries uniform and are identified as UN peacekeepers only by a UN blue helmet and a badge. Civilian staff of peace operations are international civil servants recruited and deployed by the UN secretariat. Now, I will look at the figure to know about the top 20 contributors to peacekeeping missions. See, under article 17 of the UN Charter, every member state is legally obligated to pay their respective share towards peacekeeping. The top contributors to peacekeeping operations for 2019 are United States, 27.89%. This is followed by China, 15.21%, then by Japan, 8.56%. This is followed by Germany, 6.09% and United Kingdom, 5.79%. India's contribution is just 0.16% of the peacekeeping budget. Now, coming to COVAX. COVAX is a global initiative aimed at working with vaccine manufacturers. It aims to provide countries worldwide equitable access to safe and effective vaccines. A COVAX facility is being set up for the global procurement of vaccines. This COVAX facility will equitably distribute the doses to help protect the most at risk groups in all participating countries. This initiative will be guided by an allocation framework provided by WHO. GAVI is coordinating the development and implementation of COVAX facility. See, GAVI is a vaccine alliance with a mission to save lives, reduce poverty, and protect the world against the threat of epidemics. Now, let us move on to the next article. Now, look at this article. This article talks about an order passed by the Uttarakhand ICOTE. As per the ICOTE order, the devotees who are coming to Aridwar Kumbh Mela should possess a COVID-19 negative report. And this report should be not more than 72 hours old. Such an initiative is proposed in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus. See, usually 10 lakh people attend Kumbh Mela on regular days. On special days, this number may rise to 50 lakhs. But at present, the number is expected to be less due to the lack of special trains. So, in this context, let us see about Kumbh Mela in brief. Kumbh Mela or Kumbh Mela is known as the festival of the sacred picture. It is associated with the Hindu religion. See, Kumbh Mela is one of the world's largest religious cultural gathering. During this vocation, pilgrims gather to take a bath or Shaisnaan in a sacred river. This ritual bath at a predetermined time and place is the major event of the festival. Kumbh Mela is celebrated four times over a course of 12 years. The site of celebration will keep rotating between four pilgrimage centers on the four sacred rivers. The four pilgrimages are Aridwar on Ganges in Uttarakhand, Ujain on the Shipra in Madhya Pradesh, Nasik on Godavari in Maharashtra, and Pregrach or Alabad at the confluence of Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswathi river in Uttar Pradesh. In addition to that, Arda or the half Kumbh Mela is held at only two places, their Aridwar and Alabad. Whereas, Mahakumbh Mela is held once in every 144 years at Alabad. Each site celebration is based on a distinct set of astrological portions of the sun, moon and the Jupiter. The celebration occurs at the exact moment when these portions are fully occupied. This is considered to be the oldest time in Hinduism. Now let us move on to the next article. This article is about the findings recorded in Botanica Marina. See, Botanica Marina is a journal that publishes contributions from the many disciplines of marine botany. Botanica Marina recently reported the discovery of two new species of seaweeds. So, in this regard, let us discuss the important points mentioned in this article and also discuss about algae in brief. The syllabus relevant for this article is displayed on the screen. Seaweed is the name given to the species of marine algae and plants that grow in rivers, seas and oceans. They range in colors from red, green, brown and black. They also vary in size from microscopic to large underwater forest. As per this article, two new species of seaweed have been discovered by a group of marine biologists from Central University of Punjab. They are Ipnia indica and Ipnia bulata. Further, this article also mentions about Ipnia nidifica, which was for the first time found in Indian coast. See, Ipnia indica is named after India. It was discovered at Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu and at Somnath Patan and Sivrajpur in Gujarat. Similarly, Ipnia bulata was discovered from Kanyakumari and Diu island of Daman and Diu. Ipnia bulata got its name from round swellings like blisters on its body. Usually, the genus Ipnia grows in the intertidal regions of the coast. See, the intertidal regions are seashows which is covered during the eye tide and exposed during the low tide. The seaweeds of genus Ipnia consist of calcareous, erect, branched red structures. There are 61 species of this type. Of the 61, 10 were reported in India. And now, with this discovery of the two new species, the total number has gone up to 63. In order to confirm this discovery, the researchers also carried out comparative studies of morphological and DNA sequence characteristics of the new specimens with the currently accepted 61 species. Now, let's move on to the important part of the discussion. See, the Ipnia genus contains an important biomolecule called caragenin. It is widely used in the food and dairy industry around the world. See, caragenin is a gelatinous substance which can be extracted by boiling these seaweeds. It can also be harvested from shallow water by dredging them with special rigs. Caragenin is also used in immersion stabilizing for body, binding and dispersion. So, caragenin is a highly valuable substance. The seaweeds belonging to the genus Ipnia consist of calcareous structures. These are nothing but structures which are mostly composed of calcium carbonate. This is because of ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is one of the consequence of climate change. This is because the excess carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere gets dissolved in the ocean waters. It causes the seawater to become more acidic. At such situations, algae like Ipnia cannot survive in acidic water. Therefore, the only sustainable option is to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide by adopting sustainable lifestyle choices. Or in simple words, it is a result of survival of the fittest. Now, let's see in brief about algae and its uses in present world. See, algae are aquatic photosynthetic organisms. Algae have many types of life cycles. They range in various sizes from microscopic species to giant species reaching up to 60 meters in length. And algae photosynthetic pigments are different from the plants. Their cells have features that are not found among plants and animals. They are the oxygen producers of aquatic ecosystem. They also form the food base for almost all aquatic life. In addition to that, algae are economically important as they are a source of crude oil. And they are also source of food for humans. They are also used in number of pharmaceutical and industrial products. So algae is highly valuable source in the present world. With this information, let us move on to the next article. This article is about one of the Saturn's moon called Enceladas. First, let us see about Enceladas. It is one of Saturn's moon. See, according to NASA, Saturn has 82 moons. Among these 82, only 53 moons are confirmed unnamed. Some of these moons are larger than the planet Mercury and some of them are as small as a sports arena. As we all know, the largest moon of Saturn is Titan. Now, coming to Enceladas, it is an icy ocean moon. It is small and only 500 kilometers in diameter. It has the whitest, most reflective surface in the solar system. So it reflects so much sunlight. Because of this, its surface temperature is extremely cold. It is about minus 201 degrees Celsius. Enceladas is about 680 times less in mass than Earth's moon. Its portion is between the orbits of two other Saturn's moons, namely Mimas and Tethys. Further, Enceladas is an active moon. It hides a ocean of liquid salty water beneath its crust. Also, it sprays its ocean out into space at about 800 miles per hour. These sprays include icy particles from that ocean that are liaised with water and simple organic chemicals. These are sprayed so far that a spacecraft can sample it. From these samples only, scientists have determined that Enceladas has most of the chemical ingredients that is needed for life. And it also likely has hydrothermal vents that spews out hot mineral-rich water into its ocean. So this records as the first signs of hydrothermal activity beyond Earth. Enceladas also creates a ring of its own as it orbits the Saturn. This ring is created as Enceladas spray icy particles which spreads out into space around its orbit. These discoveries were made by NASA's and ESA's Cassini Eugen's mission. See, Saturn has also been explored by NASA's mission, namely Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and also by Pioneer 11. Now coming back to the article, according to this article, beneath its frozen surface, Enceladas has ocean currents similar to those on the Earth. And the ocean is heated at the ocean core interface and it loses the heat to the floating ice shelf above. This has indicated a vertical convection. Now let us move on to practice question. The first question, consider the following statements with reference to tuberculosis. The first statement, it is an airborne disease. The second statement, MDR-TB is caused by viral strains which do not respond to first line of trucks. Which of the above given statements are correct? As we have discussed in the article, the first statement is correct. TB is an airborne disease. When it comes to the second statement, MDR-TB is caused by bacterial strains, not viral strains. So the second statement is wrong. So the answer is A1 only. Moving to the second question, consider the following statements about Coomela. The first statement, it is celebrated based on a distinct set of astrological positions of the Sun, Moon and Jupiter. Second statement, it is an intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO. Which of the above given statements are correct? As we have discussed in the article, the first statement is correct. Coomela is celebrated based on a distinct set of astrological positions of the Sun, Moon and Jupiter. When it comes to the second statement, it is also correct. In the year 2017, the occasion of Coomela was included to the list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO. So the answer is C, both 1 and 2. Moving on to the third question, the large Adron Collider, LHC, is the world's largest and the most powerful particle accelerator. It is operated by the A, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, B, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, C, Roscosmos, D, European Organization for Nuclear Research. The answer is option D, the large Adron Collider is operated by European Organization for Nuclear Research. Coming to the fourth question, currently, which of the following countries contributes the largest number of troops to the UN peacekeeping mission? Option A, India. Option B, China. Option C, United States of America. Option D, Bangladesh. The answer is option D, Bangladesh. As of January 2021, India stands at fifth portion. China stands at ninth portion in terms of troop contribution. The US is not even in the top 20. Bangladesh tops the list with 6,711 personnel, including 317 females. Now let us come to the fifth question. Consider the following pairs of planets and their largest moons. Ghanimid, Jupiter, Triton, Saturn, Titan, Neptune, Titania, Uranus. Which of the above pairs are correctly matched? See, pair one is correct. Ghanimid is not only the largest moon of Jupiter, but also the largest moon in the solar system. Pair two and pair three are incorrect. It should be interchange. Triton is the largest of Neptune satellites, whereas Titan is Saturn's largest moon. Pair four is correct. Titania is Uranus' largest moon. So the answer is C, one and four only. Main practice questions are displayed here. You can write your answer and post in the comment section below. With this, we have come to the end of the Hindu news analysis. If you like this video, don't forget to click, like, share, and comment. Subscribe to Shankar Iyer's Academy channel for more UPSC updates. Thank you.