Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to welcome you to this IIEA webinar entitled The European Data Act, Harnessing the Value of Europe's Data. I'm Eric O'Donovan, head of digital economy policy with the business group IVEC, and I'm delighted to have been invited to chair today's event. In February 2020, the European Commission published its communication on a European strategy for data. It's understood that the Commission's belief is that the potential of data is currently underutilized in Europe and it's objective to enable data to be harnessed for further economic and societal benefits. A single market for data, as it were. And the strategy committed to a Data Governance Act and a Data Act, and the Data Governance Act has been jointly agreed by the Parliament and the Council on the 30th of November. And that Data Governance Act introduces rules for data marketplaces and establish rules for intermediates. We're delighted to be joined today by Christian Dukuna from the Data Policy and Innovation Unit in DG Connect, who has been generous enough to take time out of his busy schedule to speak to us today about the Data Act. Christian will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so and then we'll go to Q&A with our audience. This event is scheduled to run until 10 to 2 today. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen, and please free to send us on any questions you have throughout this session as they occur to you. And we'll be able to come back once Christian has finished his presentation. A reminder that today's presentation and the Q&A are both on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. I'll formally introduce Christian now and then hand over to him. So Christian Dukuna works in the Data Policy and Innovation Unit of DG Connect in the European Commission. He's been involved in devising the EU cybersecurity strategy and in coordinating EU interoperable COVID-19 contact tracing apps. Previously served as head of the private office of the European Data Protection Supervisor. Before joining the EDPS, Mr Dukuna was involved in leading the review of the Data Retention Directive in negotiations on the EU internal security strategy. Christian, you're very, very welcome. And we very much look forward to hearing your keynote address. I'm just going to hand over to you now. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric, for the introduction and thank you to the IAEA for the kind invitation to speak to you. It really is a pleasure to take time out of the day to talk to this event, which I've had dealings within the past and great respect for the events that you organise. So when you invited us, when you invited the Commission to present the Data Act, you were probably expecting to be the first of the mark to get a presentation on the Commission's latest proposal on the Data Act where actually we haven't adopted it yet. As Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. So suffice it to say we still have a plan, but the plan is to conclude the proposal of the Data Act on the 23rd of February next year, rather than the 1st of December this year. And I'll get into some more detail shortly, but just to cut to the chase. The Data Act will be addressing how data can be used and reused in the interests of a sustainable and competitive economy in the interest of empowered consumers and democratic society. And this is going to mean intervention in four main areas. First of all, between businesses. Second, between businesses and consumers. Third, between businesses and government. And fourth, between providers and users of cloud services, cloud being the essential infrastructure for getting value from your data and your digital assets. And the Data Act is the last major legislative initiative envisaged under the data strategy of February 2020 as Eric just mentioned. And it follows on from the Data Governance Act, the Digital Markets Act, and related initiatives like the Digital Services Act, the Artificial Intelligence Act, and the European Health Data Space, which is also on the horizon. First I'll try to explain the draw the broad policy context for the Data Act. Then I'll try to explain why we think this act yet another act on digital and data is needed. And lastly, I'll indicate what levers the proposal will aim to pull to achieve its objectives. So the biggest challenge that we face. Once we get to the end of the pandemic is obviously the climate and environmental crisis. And the implementation is essential to move to a sustainable growth model. And that can only be achieved through the efficient use of data. The data economy represents an estimated 2.6% of the GDP of the EU 27 member states. In preparing the Data Act, we have with our colleagues across the Commission, it's a joint effort involving a number of different services of the Commission, not only DG Connect. But we've reviewed all economic sectors of the European economy. The conclusions are remarkably consistent, despite the diversity of different sectors. All companies have data to a greater or lesser extent, but only a very few of them are actually doing something valuable with that data. And generally, the smaller the company, the less likely they are to get value from data. And we do and so we do not yet have an internal markets for data, the internal market for data that Eric mentioned. Anyway, well, most data collected is not actually used for anything, as much as 80% of it is just sitting there on servers consuming energy. And only 8% of companies, according to a 2018 report by McKinsey, have been able to embed data analytics across the whole organization. And the PhD research indicates that these companies which invest in data analytics grow as much as 10% faster than others. And that's why the Commission has proposed a target for 2030 a series of targets that 75% of businesses will be taking up cloud computing services using big data and AI. And that's against the 2020 baseline of well under 25%. Now the urgency for the data act now is for businesses and consumers stems from the fact that we are now on the cusp of an enormous wave of data generation with the entry onto the market of billions of connected things. This will generate an estimated 175 zettabytes of data by 2025. And for those of you, those of you who want to wear one zettabyte is equivalent to all the grains of sand on all of the world's beaches. These are products known as the Internet of Things, which have physical components like sensors microphones cameras radar gyroscopes. And they result in a continual stream of data which is sent, received and analyzed in real time by humans or artificial intelligence and machine learning. We have predicted that reversing the current tendency, the data will be processed close to the device on the edge, rather than being sent to remote cloud servers. And this will result in lower latency and save bandwidth. In other words, faster response times for people analyzing the data. The CDPR and rules on intellectual property and trade secrets already provide safe safeguards that information will not be misused or unlawfully acquired. And with the few exceptions of the automotive industry with the type approval regulation from 2018 banking with PST to and electricity, the electricity directive, the law is generally silent on what economic actors, businesses and consumers can actually do with data. And we hear from stakeholders that users of connected machinery cannot easily obtain data on the equipment performance and efficiency. And manufacturers often have a de facto monopoly of control on the data from those machines. And once back smaller companies who think that they could innovate innovate and compete and provide valuable services to customers, if only they could see the data. And the most obvious example of such aftermarket services is repair and maintenance services. Connected objects that cannot be easily repaired will be used inefficiently and probably thrown away. And these these objects often contain dangerous substances, which have a considerable impact on the environment. Think for instance of lithium ion batteries powering most IOT devices that have to be carefully replaced by specialists that know how to avoid the loss of data. I'm going to give you a couple of examples from from industry of why we think that the data act is needed right now. First of all in agriculture, farmers by lots of agri-tech equipment, things like tractors with soil detection sensors or fertilizer machines which track how much fertilizer has been used. Data use is basically dictated in this in this area by large manufacturers and producers of fertilizers and seeds. But you have to have access to the data in order to get the machines repaired and maintained and to decide when to sell it. And also in order to combine data from other sources on for example the weather or the quality of the soil. And this is basically precision farming, which is vital for meeting our goals for carbon emission reduction and stopping the biodiversity loss. But small farms and this is this is an area of the economy which is characterized in the across the EU by small and medium enterprises. Small farms usually don't have in-house data scientists, so they would need to turn to specialist apps and service providers, but that of course means that they need to have access to the data. The second example is cards and here recently the Netherlands Forensic Institute examined the physical memory storage cards in Tesla vehicles. And they found that the company was collecting much more data than it makes available to drivers. Data on vehicle speed, angle of the steering wheel, use of the throttle. Now what does this mean? This means that users are in effect locked into aftermarket services offered by the manufacturer or by the providers approved by the manufacturer. For consumers, from a consumer point of view, unfortunately data portability is still not a reality in the case of these IoT objects. Now let's take the example of voice assistance. The preliminary report of the commission's sector inquiry into consumer IoT devices showed that voice assistant providers accumulate and hoard voice queries, including queries about the use of third party consumer IoT products. Users cannot access and cannot direct the providers to give the data to third companies of the users choosing. That means that they are, they're not able to make best use of potential services, which will give them either valuable analytics information or help them replay the objects themselves. Now let's look at the standard developer services agreement offered by one well known voice assistant provider. It states, we have sole ownership and control over all sales and other data we obtain from end users in connection with the program, the program being the voice assistant. So this basically covers how users buy and download games and other digital products and services through the voice assistant service. In other words, when data is generated by your product, whoever, whoever holds the data can do anything with it, but you as a user cannot get the data on your own products lifespan and repair options. The commission reported in 2019 on how most people are unsatisfied with the information that's made available to them regarding their own gadgets and devices. And this indicates that the GDPR is very important, but it's not sufficient. The third area of interest for the data act is when governments can lawfully seek to reuse data, which is held by commercial entities in exceptional circumstances, and two examples may serve to explain this. First of all, there was there was an attempt last year for mobility data to be reused in order to assess the effectiveness of lockdown measures, which obviously had an enormous impact on GDP. And what public bodies found across the EU was that it was very difficult to to to reach agreements with mobile operators on how this data should be safely anonymized and provided. And also it was frustrating for for companies that there was no consistent approach to requesting this data. A second example is concerns disaster loss data which is held by insurance companies access to this data to prepare for it can be essential for preparing for climate change extreme weather climate change related extreme weather events, which has cost come at an enormous cost both to human lives, but also to to the economy. And therefore this data is essential to adaptation strategies and you can see that in the commissions, the commissions paper and adaptation published earlier this year. There are examples of agreements between public bodies and and and the insurance industry for accessing this data. There's one example in the city of Oslo. But again, these these agreements take many years in order to be finalized and for the data to be made available. So in other words, there is no clear predictable framework for for doing this across the EU, even though some member states are trying to move in this direction. There are also internal risks fragmentation and legal uncertainty in the internal markets. And then finally, turning briefly to check to cloud users of certain types of cloud services have great difficulty switching between infrastructures. We've suddenly confronted, for example, with charges to switch providers. A multi vendor multi vendor cloud environment was a key aim for the free flow of data regulation in 2018, which envisaged self regulatory codes of practice. So what we see from talking to stakeholders is that there are unbalanced contracts, and that users find themselves locked into specific vendors, when they could perhaps get better or more appropriate services elsewhere. So just to conclude what what areas are we looking to intervene in the aim of the data act overall is to open up opportunities for using data, but at the same time to preserve the incentive on manufacturers and other data holders to invest in getting value from data. So is indicated in our public consultation on the data act in the summer. We're looking at a number of different policy levers. First of all, how can rights to data and access rights to access and reuse data be clarified for consumers were building on and not affecting existing rights regarding personal data under the GDPR and consumer protection rules like the unfair commercial terms directive. So there's more control over the over the data that their their own connected products generate. We're also looking at the database directive, which gives a sui generous rights to those who who have invested in the creation of a database rather than the creativity itself. And whether such exclusive rights are appropriate for IOT data, where the data are themselves a byproduct of the operation of the device. Second, we look, we recognize that most data sharing is done through contracts and in principle any any businesses free to enter into a data sharing agreement with another business. And that will remain for us a guiding principle. But we're looking at the same time at how to ensure that imbalances in negotiating power are not abused. The clear message from stakeholders that we've received, especially from smaller players is that in effect, they do not enjoy contractual freedom. They have a they they have taken or leave it terms presented to them. And the result is that they do not get the data that they believe they need in order to compete and innovate. The third area is is is we're looking at developing a framework for reuse of public sector data in in a set of very very limited circumstances with clear safeguards and predictability for businesses, minimizing the burden on them and and minimizing also the data, which which if any needs to be transferred. And fourthly, we're looking at how to facilitate cloud switching, how to lower entry barriers for new and innovative service providers. These barriers could be contractual, or they could be technical. So that's, that's, that's a that's a brief overview of where we are with the data act. It is coming. The, the European Council twice this year, most recently, at the end of, at the end of October. All of the, the governments, the EU issued a statement and included within that statement was, was a clear instruction for, for the Commission to get on with proposing a comprehensive framework for data sharing, specifically improving data portability and fairness and interoperability in the interests of innovation and growth. So we're working on this. Watch this space early in the new year it should be out and in parallel to all of this. We were pleased that there is good progress on on the other legislative initiatives in the under the data strategy. So I think the, the data, the data governance act reached political agreement between the Parliament and the Council. I think today there's a vote on the, on the digital services act in Parliament. And there was a, there was a resounding vote in favor of the digital markets act in in Parliament a few weeks ago. So those things are coming along the track, more or less. So I think it's time and the last piece in this particular jigsaw will be will be the data act there'll be some specific sectoral interventions as well probably I mentioned health. Those rules are also being being worked on by colleagues elsewhere in the Commission. Thank you for your attention and I hope that was helpful when I look forward to the, to the discussion.


Academics are the foundation of any school choice, but an active social life is a concern for young students as well. Here's how students at Elizabeth City State University enjoy themselves away from the classroom. We have a ballroom alley, a weight room, basketball gym if you want to play basketball. We have a theater room. There's plenty of stuff to do, but I say school is just like being at home. If you just stay in your room all day and don't do anything, you're going to be bored. Just like if you were at home and you just stayed in the house all day, you'd be bored. So you got to get out, make friends and find things to do, you can make your own point. The band, of course. I was in the band in high school, so whenever the band does their thing, I get excited. They play band songs that I recognize and I get really hyped and excited. I'm also in a dance crew, so we dance on campus whenever we get together. That's my outlet, dancing. Even with my friends, I have a theater background, so we get together. We do some improvisations, things like that. Just walking around campus, just having a good time, just laughing. There's a place for everyone to fit in at ECSU with over 65 clubs and organizations on campus. You got all the different Greek organizations and they're constantly having forums, social events. We're always having parties, always going to the gym, watching people play basketball. It's a lot of fun stuff to do, even though it's not necessarily a big city life. True Fun has best served alongside responsibility and good judgment, something that's not lost on the ECSU staff. All incoming students, when they come onto the University, they go through a program called HAVEN, which teaches you about sexual related crimes, alcoholism, that type of thing. So they all have to take that, boys and girls, take it, freshmen entering, and then your Greek organizations also have to undergo this training, and it's annual. It's just done over and over again. That's done at admission time. It's done through Student Affairs. Of course, we continue to do seminars in diverse dorms throughout the semester on various topics. It could be crime prevention, it could be related to dating, it could be related to burglaries that may be going on. Anything that we feel that can help a person not only feel safe, but be safe on this campus, we try to provide that. I can say it's like home away from home because it's like everyone is small, but it's like family here. I don't have any sisters, I just have an older brother, but ever since freshman year, I've had some friends and I call them sisters now. And I can say that our school is just so much fun, like I'm waiting to come back after the breaks. Come back to school and start the next semester.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to talk about the issue of obesity with Dr. Amit Sian Gupta, who is the convener of people's health movement in India. So India is still facing this problem of malnutrition and stunting in children to a huge extent. But now we're seeing that obesity has also doubled in the past decade. World Over as well, World Health Organization just published a report that there will be more obese children than under-nourished children in the next five years. But sir, obesity is still seen, there's still this huge misconception around it that it is a sign of prosperity. It's not seen or addressed as a health issue. So how accurate is this viewpoint? First of all, it is important to understand that obesity is also a manifestation of malnutrition. So there is nothing like over-nutrition. There is good nutrition and there is bad nutrition which is malnutrition. So if you really look at the spectrum of malnutrition then, we have which is an abiding problem in India, extreme prevalence of under-nutrition where an estimated anything between 30 to 50 percent of the Indian children receive nutrition that is not enough. They don't basically they're hungry. Then you have a rising tide of people, both children as well as adults and adolescents who are eating the wrong kinds of food leading to obesity and a third, which is called the micronutrient deficiency, which is related to both the first and second, where because you're not eating enough or eating the wrong kinds of foods, there are elements that are necessary for good nutrition that you're not receiving, though you may seem to be eating enough. So it's been called the double or the triple burden of malnutrition in common parlance today. Global food practices, they are largely shaped by say world trade organization and free trade agreements. Even in India, we had the 1991 economic reforms. Then we had World Trade Organization's agreement on agriculture. Then there was the World Bank's country assistance, the loan India got from World Bank. Now, all of these resulted on this pressure on India to basically diversify its agriculture, it reduce the import taxes. So all of that impacted agricultural practices in India. How did that impact basically change nutrition? Just to remember that we started from a base, you're talking about the 1990s, but we started from a base where already you had a very high prevalence of under nutrition in the country. In fact, it has been called the South Asian enigma that if you, for example, compare India or other South Asian countries to even countries in sub-Saharan Africa, you'll see that economically, apparently this region is doing much better relative to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but the levels of under nutrition in India and other South Asian countries are something like double or three times what you'll see in even in the poorest regions of the world in sub-Saharan Africa. So we already started from a situation where we had very high levels of under nutrition. Now, on top of that, we had the agreement on agriculture, which is perhaps the most fraudulent agreement among all those that constitute the World Trade Organization agreements. Because essentially, to put it simply, what it allowed is that it allowed the northern countries, the rich capitalist countries, to continue with their subsidies to domestic agriculture and it put various restrictions on the ability of countries of the South to actually give support to their own agricultural sector. What this meant was on one hand, it meant that immediately agriculture in the South, including in India, became uncompetitive in the global market, allowing imports of agricultural commodities into the Indian market one. Second, it promoted what is called export-led agriculture. So what happened was that India or Indian farmers were encouraged to grow what are called cash crops for the global export market. And this meant shifting cultivation practices away from needed grain production, especially coarse grain production, millets. Now millets have traditionally been the main source of good nutrition among the poor, jawar, bajra and a range of millets that you find in different parts of the country. Now you can see now that much of that land is now shifted either to producing poor quality rice and wheat or to producing cash crops such as tobacco, cotton, etc. Leading to actually the poor being denied some of the important sources of good nutrition, including proteins and other minerals. But over and above that, what we are also seeing is a persistence of hunger, which is basically under nutrition. So the promise of the trade regime that everybody will benefit, that the peasants in India who constitute the majority of the population still will have money in their hands and because of that they will get good nutrition, has not actually happened. And India continues to be the most undernourished region in the world. From the agrarian distress that you read about everywhere today is largely a manifestation of the unequal terms of trade that you have on one hand in the global food system and on the other of course domestic policies which have sort of rolled back welfare measures which were designed to provide nutritional support in the form of public distribution systems, etc. So not only are these farmers not able to grow healthier food for themselves, there is also this, we are seeing this aggressive marketing of processed and ultra processed foods and beverages. So yeah, so basically I mean of course that has a huge impact on obesity. But then how can we reduce the consumption of such foods and how much will that impact obesity? So there is this interesting comparison that you can actually see now emerging that all over the world now wherever obesity is emerging is a big problem. Contrary to believe that this is a manifestation of people becoming richer, you see that obesity actually is being seen in populations who are poorer. So for example in the US where obesity is a huge problem, it is the African-American population where you see a higher incidence of obesity than the better of white population. Now all this is because the way people consume food and procure food is changing towards a situation where more and more food is being marketed by mega corporations and agribusiness corporations. And these foods are notoriously poor in nutritional content and have very high levels of sugars which basically lend to obesity. So actually if you look at the food and beverages industry they use three kinds of enticements. High sugar, high fat, high trans fat and high salt. Now all these three actually sugar you need to a very small degree. I mean actually you don't need sugar in the form of refined sugar. You should actually be getting carbohydrates from more complex sugars. So you don't really need sugar in the pure form. You don't actually need salt at least in the amounts that you have in processed foods. And trans fats you don't need. But all these three are enticements. So it has, for example, research has showed that the craving for sugar actually comes from the same part of the brain where you get the craving for cocaine. So sugar is actually addictive. And children, very small children, they don't have a prediction to actually demanding sugar. But because they are fed from childhood or early childhood, they are fed high sugar food, including biscuits, which is ubiquitous. They get into the habit of consuming sugar. And this is what actually the agribusiness companies and the food and beverages companies depend upon. The entire addictive capacity of these so-called soft drinks or beverages is based on the addictive capacity of sugar. And that's what keeps you hooked. And this is having a major impact on obesity, and now especially among the poor or the not so well of. And second, which you are starting to see in India. You don't have it to the extent that you have in the US or even in countries such as Thailand, in Asia, et cetera, where it's cheaper, it's cheaper for the poor to buy ultra-processed food of the kind that we were talking about rather than to buy from the market fresh food and cook it at home. Till now no country has reversed its obesity epidemic. What needs to be done? Does the government need to step in with some regulations and basically reduce the penetration these beverages and food companies have? What should the government now be doing to at least try to start reducing this? First, it's important to understand that virtually the same factors which lead to the poor being undernourished are also the factors which lead to the poor becoming victims of obesity. Second, the same social determinants, the societal reasons which lead to undernourishment, also lead to obesity in the sense that, for example, the rich today can afford to go to gyms to exercise. The poor can't. Public spaces are contracting. So the poor don't have any more access to the poor children, don't have access unless you go to a fancy school. You can't play football these days in most cities in India. It is conditions of living which determine whether people are obese today. Now the penetration of the ultra-processed food industry in India is still relatively low. Among poor households, I don't think it's more than, say, 5% or something like that, but it's growing and it's growing rapidly. And if you really look at the situation in other countries, it's likely to grow in the coming years quite sharply. So the kind of things that you need to put in place in India, because India is currently at the tail end of the obesity epidemic. It's not yet at the level at which many countries, even developing countries such as South Africa is in. So one, make provision for good food, fresh food, to be available. Create the conditions for that to be available. So for example, the public distribution system is something that needs to be strengthened. Second, you need to curtail the ability of the food and beverages corporations to enter the market in the way that they've entered. They're advertising campaigns. Unfortunately, we see many government programs now collaborating with food and beverages companies, with companies such as Nestle and Britannia, et cetera. This should be an absolute no-no, that government programs should separate themselves from food and beverages company. You need to have regulations of labeling of what kind of nutrients are available or are in the packaged foods that are sold in the market. You need to have regulations, for example. In many countries in the North, including the United States, of not allowing some kinds of packaged foods and beverages into schools. So now, the exhortations are victim blaming, asking people to eat better and exercise more. That's the sum total. If you see even on the obesity day, this is what the government kept doing and this is what the WHO does, walk more, eat better. There's no point in blaming the poor. You have to create the conditions in which people can eat better and exercise more. We can basically conclude that the government needs to really step into this issue and take some huge steps to reduce the strength that we're seeing. That's all the time we have. Thank you, Dr. Sian Gupta. Thank you for watching this clip.


I went to an all boys grade school and one of the toughest guys in my year level was named Huko. Out of hundreds of kids, this guy was considered to be top dog. These are the hukos of the air-cooling world. Noctuas NHD 15, Be Quiet's Dark Rock Pro 4. Massive coolers, massive performance. But today, a scrawny kid has beaten all of the tough guys. This is Deep Cool's AS500+, and it's smaller and cheaper than the big boys, but it gives the same, if not better, performance. Wala pa isang minuto, finished. May legit working CDK ka na sa software na pinili mo. Gamitin ang aming promo code para makakahuha pa ng extra 20% discount sa purchase mo. Kung naghanap ka ng mura, legit, and original software, check out CDKoffers.com. There is a subtle RGB strip on the top of the cooler for those of you who need your RGB bling-bling, and it does come with a physical ARGB controller for systems that have motherboards that don't have ARGB headers. Assetically, I really like this thing. It looks professional, it looks like it means business, but there are nice design flourishes that give an element of fun to it. What I really like though are the fans. There's a subtle crisscross radial design around the fans, which are reminiscent of the threads that you would see on a car's tire.   The problem with the big boy coolers is that once they're installed, you might have a problem with your RAM. A lot of the big boy coolers protrude over the RAM slot, so either the RAM will hit the fan or you'll have to shift the fan around to accommodate the height of the RAM.  That's not a problem with the AS500+, which is quite slim. We've installed it on an M80X MOBO, which is smaller than a regular-sized 80X, and yet the cooler fits quite snugly, it doesn't overhang the RAM slots at all. The tower itself, not including the fans, is only 48mm wide, so very slim.  It stands at 164mm. The DarkRock Pro 4 is at 163mm and Noctua's NH-D15 is 165mm. So it's right up there in terms of height. You'll need to check if your case can fit such a tall cooler. Although our test bench is using an M80X case also from Deepcool, it's the Machube 110, and we had no problem fitting the AS500+, in it. But again, best to double check your case that it can fit this cooler. In our testing, we used a Ryzen 3, 3100, the same setup we used for our thermal-paced video. We ran it at 100% fan speed on the stock cooler at 100% load for 30 minutes. And to make it fun, we overclocked it from the base clock of 3.6GHz to 4.2GHz. After 30 minutes of that setup, the max temperature we hit was 74 degrees. We installed the AS500+, ran the same setup, and the max temp we hit was 57 degrees. That's a 70-degree difference from the stock cooler. How does the AS500+, compared to the big boys? Unfortunately, we're out of stock of the NH-D15. However, Kit Guru does report that the AS500+, actually outperformed the NH-D15 by 2 degrees. We used the same setup for the DarkRock Pro 4, and the max temp it reached was 66 degrees, which is 9 degrees warmer than the AS500+. Now, we did run the test on separate days with the ambient temperature during the DarkRock test a bit higher than when we ran the AS500+, test. So take it with a grain of salt, but at the same time, the general trend is clear that the AS500+, can compete or even give better performance than the big boys. So there you have it, this is a very capable cooler, cheaper than the big boys and yet delivering the same performance. You just don't know when to give up, do you? I'm going to do this all day. Plus, you don't need to worry about whether it's compatible with your RAM. No joke that RAM compatibility or just physically assessing whether the cooler will hit your RAM slots can be a big headache. And so it really simplifies your build when you know that you can get quality air cooling without having to worry about the RAM problem. To be honest, the big boys have been getting a bit old. They should graduate out of their grade level already. I think both the NHD-15 and the DRP-4 have been around for at least two years. So it's nice to see innovation in the air cooling space, especially from a company that isn't as marquee level as Noctua or Be Quiet. The AS500+, proves that size isn't everything, that even if you're scrawny, you can still be tough. This guy is the new king of the hill. If you're interested in CPU cooler performance, you have a video tackling six different kinds of thermal paste. We'll link that in the video box below. Thanks for watching.


Somebody wrap on a glass of this, or we will not be having a press in Beijing, if there's anything. Yes. You can get right out. Ben Seymour been moving in Central America, and there's been Bob McHugh, who says there's a lot of the recent outfit of the conference, the efforts of the Honduras along with the U.S. Army's emergency deployment readiness exercise forced the Sandinistas to pull out the Honduras short of their military objective, but meanwhile the Nicaraguan resistance in the Sandinista regime signed a true agreement last week in which the Sandinistas promised, again, to democratize the resistance, it's critically short of two other items among the ex-pranker which he did, to tell you briefly about the U.S. exercise in Honduras and their calling for a review and update on the resistance. Thank you, Mr. President. Yesterday we started to move our troops out of Honduras, and seven C-141s, 751 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne returned, actually bailed out, lack of their home base, and the remaining troops were returned and poached in Travis by 0500 out of 31 statistics on the exercise. The total time from the presidential decision to deploy to Honduras to the point where the first troops arrived was 14 and a half hours. From the first soldier on the ground of the last- Thank you, Mr. President. Well, thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President. I think we better do it over here on the side. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, you all have to come around behind them, out of silence, since we're squeezing in so close. All right, we'll bring the stove at the top. I think the teaching to the babbage of levees have as much relevance today as they ever have, the values upon which the movement is based. The reverence are not just desirable, but necessary to the very survival of civilization. We shall proclaim this day educated. The rabbi sends his regards to you, Mr. President, as he expresses his wishes, as he always did, that you should be able to carry out the extraordinary role that the Almighty has assigned to you, as you have until now, with health and happiness together with many, many years to come. In whatever position you'll be filling, we all look forward to you to continue the great work, historical work that you have started on behalf of education, specifically by returning the traditional values which have been the bedrock of civilization ever since beginning, and these are the seven no-wide laws contained and given by Moses as it is reflected here in this scroll. We thank you very much on behalf of all our colleagues, the entire Jewish people, especially with the approach of the Passover holiday throughout the world. Thank you very much. God bless you, Mr. President. Have a safe trip back home. Thank you all. Thank you. God bless you and you should just continue to succeed in it.  Thank you. God bless you. Yes, thank you. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for the U.S.A. again, and Jim will get his, Josh Spade was the man who really does the things that we want to do. That's great. Isn't that great? Mr. President, I appreciate your time very much. All of us are either on a budget committee or appropriations or both. And we're interested in space. And your budget request is certainly adequate. Our problem is defending it for the situation we got into last year, namely the 302B allocation. We were fine with the budget committee bid for us last year, and I expect that we'll do fairly well this year. But it's those allocations that are in the appropriations that are critical to us being remaining a viable space for a while. Well, I know that we knew when you think we asked it too much. Oh, no. Not too much. No, and your request is fine. It's that we are able to maintain your request. Well, I think, first of all, it wasn't as incredible as I know it would be. The thing that I feel is that here, because of our accident, we've gathered in us in the Soviet Union. I don't think we've done that.


I apologize to him after the race for this, but the reason for this move was because alarm bells were going off in my head. We were losing ground on the front group, and if I waited even two more seconds to start pulling, we may never see them again. Welcome back to the channel. This video is fueled by the feed. If there were such a thing as monuments in US gravel racing, Mid-South would certainly be on that list. The race has been going on for 12 years, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that is very old by gravel race standards, and even though it's not a lifetime Grand Prix race, it usually attracts many of the biggest names in US gravel, and this year was no exception. In fact, and I know I say this all the time on this channel, this year had one of the most stacked and deepest pro fields in the history of the race. Look, at least when I do a race, I try to come up with different excuses for why I lost instead of just using the same one over and over again. The course is a lot like Unbound, with constant rolling hills on straight, wide-open farm roads. Only it's half the distance at 100 miles instead of 200 miles. The course is almost entirely off-road, with the exception of the start, finish, and midpoint aid station, and the gravel you get on this course is a mix of everything from very smooth and fast to chunky, to rutted out, and even potentially mud, depending on the weather. But this year was looking to be an exceptionally dry year with mild temperatures and perhaps most surprising, very mild wind. In Oklahoma and the surrounding states, the wind can be brutal, which obviously changes the dynamics of the race, but we weren't going to see much of that on race day. This meant the conditions really couldn't be better for making this one of the fastest additions of the race. And yes, that is what we call foreshadowing. There are a couple key sections of the course where you can easily lose the race by not being in a good position. The first of those comes at mile 12 with a creek crossing that has just one good line in the grass on the left side. You could just send it through the creek like Payson does here, but you risk hitting a deep spot, and of course your bike will be squeaky for the rest of the race after you just basically submerged it in mud water. Then there's this very rough double track section at mile 40 that is more like mountain biking than gravel riding. And finally, perhaps the most decisive section of the race, the two mile tight single track section at mile 90 with plenty of corners and minimal passing. With just 10 miles left to go, this is where the selection for the final group was made last year, and I knew going in it would likely be the same this year. So I made sure I had this section absolutely dialed leading into the race. Before we get into the race itself, I think I've got to address the bike setup that I was using for this race. For those of you who don't know, Felt is my new bike sponsor for 2024. And the bike that I'll be doing most of my racing on this season is their breed carbon gravel bike. I'm not going to go into too much detail on the bike right now, but don't worry because a full bike check video is coming in the near future. For now, I think I'll just address one of the most glaringly obvious differences between my bike setup and what everyone else ran for mid self. No, I'm not talking about the aero chainring cover or the aero front brake rotor or the aero bottle on the down tube or even the cable routing that got so many of you heated on my Instagram. All right, I'll admit there's a lot of glaringly obvious differences between this bike and what most people run for gravel racing. But come on, it's a Dillon Johnson video. What did you expect? Obviously, we're expecting you to talk about the tires. I'm actually talking about the tires, which are Continental Race King 2.2 mountain bike tires, not gravel tires. On these Reynolds 60 black label wheels that have a 21 millimeter internal rim width, these tires come in at 53 millimeters. And as I've discussed in depth on this channel before, there is actually a rolling resistance advantage to running lightweight mountain bike tires over gravel tires because the increased volume means that the tire manufacturers can get away with using a thinner casing. And in general, a thinner casing means less rolling resistance. At the risk of doing too many teasers in this video, there will also be a video coming in the near future about the optimal tire size for gravel racing. So I'm sure that subscribe button is looking awfully tempting right now. Anyway, the ability to run these massive tires is in my mind the biggest advantage of felt's gravel offering. And I hope you all know me well enough to know that that is not the sponsorship talking. There are very few companies that make a race focused gravel bike with this kind of tire clearance. And before this, I was having to resort to using a drop bar mountain bike for certain races in order to fit the tires that I wanted to run. I still do think that a drop bar mountain bike is a good option for some tamer mountain bike courses like Leadville, but for rougher gravel races, this bike has completely killed the need for me to try to turn my hardtail into some sort of makeshift jury rig version of a gravel bike. Well, you all know that I could talk about tires all day, but let's not forget that this is a race report video. So let's go ahead and jump into how the race played out. This race did not take long to get up to speed at all. And that's likely because we all knew that a critical pinch point in the race was coming at mile 12 with the creek crossing. So the battle for position started almost immediately. Unsurprisingly, the opening 30 minutes leading into the creek was the hardest of the race, requiring an NP of 343 watts. This was just to stay in the pack, too. I didn't hit the wind once during this time. And to be honest, positioning going into the creek wasn't even that good as I was probably sitting about 20 riders back. And by the time I hit the grass, riders were already bottlenecked and having to get off and run. After the creek, a gap had formed with a front group of eight strong riders out ahead pushing the pace. And I knew that if we hesitated at all, the group would be gone. And the race for the top spot would essentially be over in the first 15 miles. The next four and some change minutes were a brutal push at nearly 400 watts to regain contact. And when we did, the front group was now up to about 40 or so riders. For the next hour of the race, the group just rolled at a nice steady tempo requiring about 300 watts NP. But then we hit the double track and all hell broke loose again. Given the technical nature of this section, big gaps started to form between riders. I didn't think I was in terrible position, but in hindsight, I should have been at the very front going into the section. Because I did have to do a bit of work with the help of some other riders to catch back on after this section, requiring 323 watts for over 17 minutes. At the halfway point at mile 50, I decided to take off my gloves and shoe covers for some reason. Well, I do know the reason the temperatures were starting to warm up a bit. I was thinking, it should take me 30 seconds total. I'm sure the group won't be drilling it through the feed zone. So I'll probably be fine. I was flat out wrong. As I explained in my last video, the spirit of gravel is fully dead at this point at the pro level in the US. And this is just one more example of that. Dude, if the spirit of gravel is dead, then why am I seeing way too many flashes in the pro field? I think you just want it to be dead because you've got the facial hair game of a middle school boy who just went through puberty. Gone are the days of making sure everybody has everything they need from a feed zone before stepping on the gas again. If anything, I think some riders are now using dropping riders at an aid station as a tactic. Do I fault them for it? Not one bit. I actually enjoy that there's a little bit more strategy to the feed zone stop, kind of like pit stops in motorsports, even if it does make those stops more nervous and hectic. Getting back to the race, though, after stopping to shed clothes at the aid station, I had to burn a few more matches just to catch back onto the group again at 370 watts for the next four and a half minutes. In hindsight, I should have just kept those extra clothes on. It absolutely would have been worth it to be a little overdressed to not have to do this effort, but now I'll know for next time. And the pace simply did not let up in this race. Over the following 45 minutes, I still had to maintain an NP of 300 watts to stay in contact with the group as we hit various sections of the course that kept shelling the group like deep sand or extremely rutted out farm roads. By this point in the race, that group of 40 that had made it past that first creek crossing had shrunk down to about 15. This race, much like most gravel races, was a race of attrition, meaning that instead of a big peloton chasing a breakaway like you often see in road racing, there's just one main front group and riders are constantly being dropped from that group throughout the race. And the win is decided by those riders who survived all the way to the end. There were some riders that tried for some sort of breakaway, but they never got much room. That being said, we were fastly approaching the most decisive section of the course, the single track at mile 90. We all knew that this was a good spot to break the group with minimal passing, so positioning would be key. Unfortunately, my sprint into the single track was not great. And I ended up about 10th wheel sandwiched between Pete Stetna and Drew Dilman. Once you get into the single track, there's simply not an opportunity to pass with the exception of the very end where it turns into two track. So I expected that a big effort was going to be needed to catch back on afterwards. And I mentally prepared myself for that. Luckily, I had a few riders to work with, including Alex Howes, Pete Stetna, Nicholas Roach and Drew. But most of the work to catch back on was done by me. And you can even see me get a little desperate to get to the front and try to shoot for the middle, but having to go into Stetna's line. I apologize to him after the race for this. But the reason for this move was because alarm bells were going off in my head. We were losing ground on the front group. And if I waited even two more seconds to start pulling, we may never see them again. Catching that front group was a tall order and required 345 watts for 10 minutes at four hours into the race. I was relieved to regain contact. And now we had a group of eight containing Pete Stetna, Griffin Easter, Torbjorn Road, Russell Finsterwald, Nicholas Roach, John Borselman, Payson McKelvin, Drew Delman and me. Torbjorn attacked and Griffin followed soon after this, though, and got clear leaving the rest of us to chase. Well, most of the rest of us. Russell and Torbjorn both ride for the Trek Driftless team, meaning that with a teammate up the road, Russell had a legitimate excuse to sit on the back of the group and not help with the chase. Again, this is something that would not fly back in the spirit of gravel era from about 2018 to 2021. Road racing tactics were seen as ruining the spirit of gravel. Now, with professional teams making their way into gravel racing, this has apparently become part of racing. Fortunately, though, even without Russell's help and Payson getting a flat tire and dropping from the group, it was still five against two. So we did manage to make the catch, which took about 330 watts for 12 minutes. Sure enough, as soon as we made the catch, the counterattack came by Russell, but I managed to latch onto his wheel immediately and shut it down. I looked around and realized that Drew and Nico Roche had been dropped in the chase, meaning that the front group now only contained six riders. And I will admit, I was fully cooked at this point in the race. And being that we were less than three miles from the finish, I was just begging for the attacks to be done with. I was wincing at the thought of having to close more attacks with this much fatigue in my legs. Unfortunately, though, my wish would not be granted. I'm pretty sure that in the last two miles of the race, I was the only one of the six riders remaining to not attempt an attack. But honestly, my memory is a little bit hazy. Being in the red isn't great for processing information. All I know is that somehow I made it onto the final finishing stretch with less than 1000 meters in the race remaining, still attached to the front group and still in the fight to take the win. With about 500 meters to go, knowing that he doesn't have a great sprint, Pete Stetna made one last-ditch effort to try to attack the group and butcher the sprint for the rest of us. But that was quickly closed by John Borstelman and heading into the sprint. I was actually positioned very well right on Borstelman's wheel and with Torbjorn right behind me fighting for that second wheel spot. Despite this, I just didn't have the legs in the sprint after such a brutally hard race and only managed a pretty pathetic 864 watt max. But in the last minute of the race, I was at nearly 500 watts with Stetna's attack. And the last nine minutes were just under 340 watts after over four hours of racing. Torbjorn took the win, Gryffin Easter was second, Borstelman third. And then, according to the results, Russell just nipped me at the line in the photo finish to take fourth, leaving me with fifth.  But maybe you can be the judge of that. Now, I think I actually do know what happened here.  Yeah, given the atrocious aero body condom that you decided to wear, I would say that you took it a little too far well before this point in the race. This race uses chip timing and the chip is on your number plate. Yeah, I did the aero number plate technique of taping my number plate to my frame instead of putting it on my handlebars where it's supposed to be, meaning that it was about five inches back from where it normally would have been. This is an extremely aero solution. And in fact, we actually tested it in the wind tunnel and over the unbound distance, it would probably save around 10 minutes, so around five minutes over the mid-south distance. That's of course, if you were hypothetically doing the course solo, but there is also a substantial watt savings. However, in the event of a sprint finish, your number and therefore your chip is further back on your bike, meaning that if it's this close, you're going to get the short end of the stick. All of that being said, I'm not too upset about it. Whether I got fourth or fifth, both wouldn't have made the podium and both are still a top five. And now I've got another factor to think about for number placement. All right, let's see some numbers for the whole race, shall we? We've got 309 normalized in 264 average power, 1134 watts max power, which was actually hit in the sprint for the single track, not the sprint at the finish, 22.6 miles per hour or 36 kilometers per hour average speed, which for a gravel race is absolutely cooking. And by the way, was the fastest average speed and time ever recorded for this race? And finally, 4,260 kilojoules and 306 TSS. Now, I certainly have placed higher at national level gravel races before. I've gotten second at BWR North Carolina and fourth at BWR Utah, and I have won local level gravel races. But I think that when you take into account the depth of the field here at Mid-South, this may just be the most impressive and biggest result of my career so far. And it comes as a little bit of a surprise to me, if I'm being honest, because it's so early in the year and I was not peaking for this race by any means. And it's not like I just got lucky or played it really smart to get that finish either. The fitness is there and then some with the highest power output I've ever seen for this duration, which happens to be six watts higher than what I did last year. And this really shouldn't hold any weight with anyone because it's just an anecdote. And I get so frustrated when people point out that fast people use a certain equipment, so therefore that equipment must be the fastest. But this result was achieved with mountain bike tires. 2.2 mountain bike tires in a gravel race. As the average person at the race what they're running, and I'd say it would range from 40 to 45 millimeters. The race kings are a good 10 millimeters bigger than that, depending on which rims you pair them with. For now, that's just food for thought, but I should have some more concrete answers on whether or not these tires are in fact faster for gravel racing in the near future. So be sure to stay tuned for that. If you want to stay more up to date on my racing in real time, be sure to check me out on Instagram. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like, subscribe, and share it with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.