Just a little bit brief history, I promise not to go through every single project on this. But when you think about hyperledger, very often people think of hyperledger as one thing, as one singular thing, maybe one project that they might be familiar with. But over the last seven years, we're really matured into a portfolio of projects. Even I would say a portfolio of communities that come together to build these open source code bases and communities as well. Starting in 2016, we were formed in 2015, but the first code contribution 2016, in March of 2016 was Hyperledger Fabric, which today Hyperledger Fabric is one of the most adopted permissioned DLTs in the marketplace when it comes to enterprise use cases as well. After that, we saw Hyperledger Sawtooth come in, Hyperledger Eroha came in at the end of 2016, and that one is actually being used in central bank digital currencies with the digital currency in Cambodia. I can go on, there's a lot of great stories within our community in digital identity, Hyperledger Aries and Indy, and in the newer projects coming through from 2020, addressing really the use cases and the need for how blockchain is used in the enterprise, things like interoperability with Hyperledger Cactus, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a second, Hyperledger Firefly, and our new recent project, Hyperledger Solang. So a couple of things, just as a community I said, we continue to be growing, we're very strong, we have over 40,000 contributors with over 1.27 million contributions over the last five years, and we continue to just being a place where not only developers, but innovators want to come to. A couple of news items that we put out today, and as well as yesterday. First, we welcome some new members into the Hyperledger Foundation, we are a membership organization to participate, to use the code, everything is open, but we do have members. We welcome the Banque de France and the Bank of Nigeria, two central banks that want to participate and contribute into our ecosystem. They join the Bank of England, the Boston Fed and MIS, who have been members of the Hyperledger Foundation for many years as well. We also welcome the Digital Identity Laboratory of Canada, the work that Canada is doing around digital identity and verifiable credentials, and one of our speakers, Nancy Morris will be able to talk about this work, is really, really ahead of the game in regards to global adoption. And a couple of other members, BCW out of Hong Kong, Casper Labs as we start thinking about hybrid interoperability, DSR Corporation really doing a lot of work in digital identity and Rialto doing some real estate tokenization projects using Hyperledger. We also released Hyperledger Firefly, the 1.1 release, and we have Hart Montgomery, who's our chief technical officer here in the room, and will be available for any questions that come up specific from a technology perspective as well. And we're very happy to announce that Hyperledger Cactus, a project that has been in our ecosystem since March of 2020, and is now going to be known as Hyperledger Cacti. This is a first for Hyperledger Foundation where we had a project Hyperledger Cactus over the last two years, contributions by Accenture and Fujitsu and others, really leading the space around interoperability between blockchains, joining with Weaver, which is a lab that was contributed by IBM in June, and those two projects have come together, it's actually two very large code bases, and you'll be hearing more about those details soon as well, and we are now calling it Cacti because multiple cactuses become a cacti, so very appropriate. And then Hyperledger Solang as well, which is a Solidity compiler that can be used across multiple blockchains. We also just announced a little bit of information around the Bezu Klein Incentive Program, and we'll be here to talk about that as well, and the edX course where self-sovereign identity is just completely, completely important for us to get right as we move forward. So one of the things that Hyperledger has been funding and investing in is our climate action and accounting special interest group and a lot of the work that's happening there, supporting individuals and companies that come together. Proud to say that we just got some community recognition for a prototype to reduce methane emissions and supply chain tokens by our SIG, and it's a great way to really understand the technology. This use case uses Hyperledger cactus as well as an Ethereum-based centralized application. So great work that's happening in our special interest groups and for anybody who's interested, they should show up. But I would like to introduce the panelists, please, and if you can all come up and actually sit and... As I was saying, climate action and climate accounting, special interest group has been doing a lot of work within our community as well, and many of our members and our community members do as well. So we invited three guests who can really talk to the topic that we're talking today. So let's go ahead and just have everybody introduce themselves. So Nancy, since you sat next to me first, you get to go first. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you're working on, and then we'll go to Melanie. Hi, I'm Nancy Norris. I work for the government of British Columbia in Canada, and specifically my ministry is energy, minds, and low-carbon innovation. We are working on a pilot project and have been for the past two years, which is allowing operators and natural resource producers in British Columbia to share information about their sustainability performance. It's called the energy and minds digital trust, and we're using hyper-ledger Indian Aries as the base technology to allow for verified credentials. So in BC we have strong climate legislation, we have our economy is based on natural resource production in a large part, and we also have an advanced in terms of digital technology for individuals. So this pilot is taking that technology for individuals and applying it for businesses, specifically natural resource operators. It's allowing them to, as issue, there's three components to the pilot that we're working on. There's an issuer of a credential, a holder of the credential, and then the verifier of the credential. Those are the three parties in the exchange of information. For this pilot that we're working on, the issuer is a carbon auditor. So in this case, it's PWC. The holder of the credential is a mine within British Columbia called Copper Mountain Mine, and the verifier is actually the provincial regulator for carbon emissions. In British Columbia, carbon emissions, if you emit over a certain level, you have to provide that emissions data to the government on an annual basis. So the pilot that we're working on has these three components to it, and we are building on this for also for natural gas operators in the future. Well, that's a lot to follow. That's fantastic, thank you. I'm Melanie Cutland and I'm a managing director and I lead our blockchain and XR capabilities at Accenture, and we've got a broad suite of capabilities within that, and so supply chain, transparency, track and trace, as it leads to sustainability, it continues to be a continuous evolution of priorities of where is everything coming from? How do I understand the providence of my goods? As well as a team focused on carbon markets and rethinking how do we take all the momentum that we're seeing in exchanges and applying that to carbon markets as well. Thanks, so hello together. Andreas Kind is my name, I'm in charge of cybersecurity and trust in Siemens. Siemens is by now 175 year old company, really has a lot of products and solutions in the industries that really touch into the real world, like train systems, like energy networks, factories, city systems and so on. And in this situation we touch of course a lot with climate change and we noticed this very prominently in one of our leader flagship factories where our customers ask us about the products coming out, what the product carbon footprint would be. And being sort of at that point in a supply chain is typically that 80% is determined in the supply chain, so in the supply, and that created really the problem statement for us to come up with a solution, not just for us but for other companies as well, to solve this data transparency issue around emission data but also broader any kind of ESG data. So that's why here the community really brings us the technology to solve this issue. So it's a community that really believes in the decentralization as the key element for solving a trust problem and with climate we do have indeed a trust problem because we have multiple participants in ecosystems that need to be trusted. And there was a fourth panelist that also was gonna be participating, unfortunately he was unable to travel to Dublin, Doug with Circular, Doug Pellson. And one of the things that we've been talking about and across a lot of use cases when it comes to innovative or emerging technology is that when regulations start being formed and coming down from different governments and globally even as well. So things like the EU battery regulation and the German battery pass and the US Implation Reduction Act that have very specific climate goals in regards to sustainability and manufacturing and EVs, et cetera. So maybe you can tell us, Nancy you mentioned it a bit as well on Canada. Tell us a little bit about what you're seeing from a regulatory perspective and how these technologies can address some of those regulatory requirements. So for our pilot, it's been going on for a couple of years and we have really found that the best way to test the technology is to build on an existing process that is a result of legislation and legislative requirements. So in BC we have these climate legislation particularly for industry and the process that we're mapping using this digital technology, it already exists except that people are emailing PDFs of their audited carbon emissions data or they're filling out web forms for every single mine in BC or every single natural gas operating facility or any large emissions, so cement suppliers, any one who emits over a certain level. So what we're testing, but through this pilot is the opportunity for these credentials that we're designing with carbon emissions data not only to be submitted to the government but also then the holder of that credential the operator, the mining operator in this case can also use that credential to access emerging markets for sustainably sourced goods. They could send it to investors, to buyers. They could also use it for reputational gain reasons like sending it to voluntary carbon reporting platforms that are using the same sort of technology. Do you want to? Yeah, from the regulatory side, there are growing demands coming up so we see it in our side really from the big initiatives that for instance in Europe but other countries as well are coming up now, the Green Deal for instance in Europe which is very much around taxation or charging for carbon emissions so either when they cross the border when coming into the European area but in future we see more and more really with respect to having the need to really understand the emissions of a particular product. So we have it today in the reporting on a corporate level but it will come more and more towards sites like the mining sites example but then really also to the individual products and that's much harder than because the granularity is very different. So here we expect really more and more regulatory frameworks coming up and the companies see this in advance and want to be prepared for this. So one of the things that it reminds me of is kind of like the diamond industry. Six years ago with the Kimberly process and Everledger and the work that they did it was a process that needed to be digitized and it's really about the data and tracking the data and having the trust in the data. Andreas you talked about that before. So maybe talk a little bit about share the increasing role of sustainability data tracking and how is that important to the solutions and the kind of the data, the actual technology that you need to use in order to achieve that. Thanks, Daniela. I think it all comes down to what data do you have so you know how many carbon offsets do you need. So if you can't verify what is in your supply chain and in your products as you mentioned. And so even just in an indirect company like Accenture which is a knowledge company we have to measure what is the impact from what we purchase. So we built a true supplier marketplace actually on Hyperledger Fabric a few years ago and continued the moment it's turned into our sustainability hub where we now hold our ESG questionnaires and we continue to engage with who is in our supplier base. As we pivot into the food industry it's really interesting most companies I talked to don't actually know what farmer grows the food that goes into their products. They don't know all the way back down the chain because it gets aggregated along the way. And so these provenance solutions continue to have an even more important point in this industry now because now to get the data and to make it verifiable and accurate and using the whole framework that you talked about is becoming the farm to fork model all the way through a supply chain or all the pieces and parts of an ingredient. So and the sustainability angle seemed to be the tipping point that really took a project that had a value proposition in a case into its table stakes now, right? Because if I get this data wrong we're kind of missing the point and blockchain just fits so perfectly around both the transparency of what's in your product as well as your ability to have verifiable steps along the way as to what were the impact of each of the products. Yeah maybe to add to this, there are sort of ways of tracking data in the blockchain context where people say oh it's blockchain acts like a notary in a way. So it could be public, it helps to achieve transparency but we should also address the need for confidentiality that we also have in the supply chain. So in production for instance, a manufacturer would not want to reveal anything about the specifics how a product is actually created in terms of sourcing of the components, the suppliers. Also the own logistics is very confidential and both determines the product carbon footprint or whatever sustainable metrics would be associated with the product. So we have to in this data challenge address the transparency in one way but also the fact that not everybody wants to share everything. And again I think this community or the Hyperledger Foundation has technology to address exactly these two things that when they come together. And it was mentioned verifiable credentials. We from our side also believe very much into this technology because here we have the possibility to follow the traditional relationship that companies would have with their suppliers and with their customers. So credential is passed along these peer-to-peer relationships and blockchain underneath then helps to do the actual verification in terms of the public keys, the schemers that are made available. But the actual data is not then sitting in decentralized ledger and people are not really worried about who's actually seeing them as it really protected because it's my confidential data. Well I think the privacy and also the security of the data becomes a very important aspect. But the concept of verifiable credentials. We in the industry speak about it because we're in it on a day in, day out basis. I think it is getting to self sovereign identity, digital identity, verifiable credentials. These are all terms that I think in the next few years if not sooner are gonna be part of the business and technical vernacular when people are talking about data projects and trust and collaboration and consortiums and networks and networks of networks. We've always said it's not gonna be one network to rule them all. These supply chain use cases have to go across various networks. So it becomes more and more important that government agencies that the private sector and the service providers understand verifiable credentials but also very importantly the consumer themselves. So we are about to launch a course, a free edX course around self sovereign identity. It's for business and technical leaders much like we did in 2016 when we launched the enterprise blockchain and got the market interested in and over 200,000 people have taken that course. We really believe that the time is now to educate the users and the builders as well. So Nancy maybe some of your thoughts as a government representative of why verifiable and credentials and also why governments should get involved in the actual development of the code and the standards that are happening currently. Sure. So from our government's perspective, we have found that verified credentials have all of these attributes associated with the technology that we think can create business efficiencies for companies within BC. We also think that the interoperability of verified credentials and open source technology is something that governments should be involved with and being able to understand and have our own knowledge based on pilots such as the one that we're working on I think is invaluable for governments in order to understand how to participate and enable blockchain within digital government systems. How do we explain verifiable credentials? It's funny early days in blockchain, right? We started every process flow with get registered and then get started with who you're doing business with, know your supplier, know your customer and whatever industry or regulation you're in and this concept of being able to have a credential that I have and I share with those components that I wanna share back to your privacy point is critical to it and some of these can be, I loved your examples of like regulatory and actually government credentials but some are self-attested credentials. So it's just as important what information you're sharing about your organization that you actually write down that it's accurate and you certify it, information about yourself and so the ability to have a suite of credentials and say I can share this with you for a period of time and not always and forever and that data is not getting replicated around the world is so important and as we become those network and networks as you talked about, right? That we are able to engage much more efficiently and I've seen this open source movement just start to accelerate the, oh, that's a utility. I can grab that, I can do that and I can build upon it in my context and in my framework versus constantly going back to trying to think through, I have to create a data profile and I need to, like, we're doing that all the time, right? Like sourcing organizations have been solving this problem forever and it's fantastic we're seeing that network continue. You can address it from the people process and what about the machines? Yeah, yeah, true. Typically identity, we think about people and sometimes we think about organizations as well but then we have the things as well and sort of prominent example is a car goes to a charging station, maybe it's an autonomous car in the future and there is a transaction going on which involves payment potentially as well and there we have two things that supposed to trust each other because they are not necessarily come from the same trust domain. If it's a Tesla and a Tesla network, okay, they trust each other because they come from the same trust domain but this is not always the case and we complain very often that there's so many networks and where we come it's the wrong network. I don't have the membership with this particular network for charging but also further in other cases. So here in the future the more we digitize the things around us, the more they are connected, we will have more of these use cases where things need to interact with each other and need to trust each other. One example we drive currently more as a research project but seriously drive with the Deutsche Bahn, Siemens and some other partners as well is how components within a train communicate with each other. It's a highly safety critical environment, a train passing with high speed people inside and it's for recording purposes. There's a need for a jurisdictional recording by law but the railway law tells this to have a recording that could always go back what actually happened and you have to then really understand which component did what in what millisecond but also for maintenance cases or less critical things but operational things maintenance topics. We need this interaction and trust relationship between things and that is a technology thing that you need a root of trust in the things because it's not a person, not a wallet that nobody presses a button but you have to be sure that the communication really comes from this device so the crypto means the schemes we actually have but they have to be implemented then on these devices. I have one more question and we'll go around and then we'll get some questions from the media that would be great. So we're here at the Hyperledger Foundation. We're an open source project under the Linux Foundation and why is open source important to all of this? Why do companies like Siemens and Accenture and the government of British Columbia show up, bring developers, contribute? Why is open source important and collaboration when we're talking about climate action requirements? For our government, we find that open source is a really important component because what we're trying to build is something that's interoperable with as many different systems as possible. We need to be agnostic, we can't pick and choose any particular system so open source community is wonderful in that we are able to build something, a technology that works for our purposes but then it also has contributions from developers around the world and also is something that can be scaled because the ecosystem that we're developing it can only be useful if there's multiple different parties that have adopted it and are using it. So open source is what we have found is the way for trying to encourage the broadest adoption possible. The open source is at the heart of this, right? Because we have to create, and Hyperledger is really at the heart of this, creating standards that we can all adopt as we started early on in much of this trying to track and trace our sustainability and understand what were the needs of a custom project after a custom project and where could we find those reference architectures and the frameworks that actually then got us to speed to adoption through being able to build on utilities and the projects across the Hyperledger suite that really help you to accelerate movement to get to the outcomes you want because business leaders are buying outcomes, right? Like I want to confirm that the data I have around my sustainability is accurate and I'm reporting it correctly and it's an obvious, yep, there's a ledger behind that. There is paper or PDFs or in a system and now moving to blockchains it's needed everywhere and so I think that ability to just drive that open source to say I'm contributing, I'm adding on, if we put this through a standard product backlog, everyone would be fighting of my industry or my application or my customization is waiting first, right? And this ability to really engage the network to say let's add on to these frameworks and build on is getting us a feature in function list that allows us to really accelerate adoption. Yeah, I would say pretty much the same thing, particularly in the sustainability context carbon emissions, we see currently really the big need to have a common way of collecting data. So there are initiatives from the World Economic Forum, from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Pathfinder Project to actually converge on data formats, how to collect data and that cannot be, a single company would never be able to come up with this kind of agreement because everybody else would say no, it's coming from this company. And the same is then when this gets implemented. So I think it needs this convergence, sometimes it's also convergence through a meta level that we understand there's greenhouse gas protocol, way of collecting data, there's an ISO standard and you need a meta level to let people understand the data so that we don't end up with different data sets that are completely sort of independent from each other and this naturally leads then to technology that is driven in the open space so in the open and that we're very much supporting this and use Hyperledger and whatever the Linux foundation. And I just want to point that, how old is Siemens? How many years? 175. 175, right? Government of British Columbia, right? And these mines are not going to go away. I mean these are solutions that are being built that are going to be long term. And so when you think about what kind of technologies do you want to do that with, doing it with proprietary software that is attached to one vendor or even one vendor business community becomes very difficult. So we love the support of Siemens, they have developers coming on board and the Government of British Columbia and certainly Accenture. But I think just doing this in the open helps us build these systems that are going to basically power the systems that are children, their children's children are going to use. So that's my say on why open source is important here as well. I'll go ahead and pause. And if there's any questions, we're happy to answer any questions from either the Zoom or in the room. My question is just the urgency, like this is my, me as a consumer, but how much pressure are you guys getting from your customers, from stakeholders to really solve this problem? Is it my imagination or is there a huge amount of urgency or a growing amount of urgency? My question, there's a huge amount of urgency for sure. We see it that customers asking for information about sustainable products or the sustainability of a product and we cannot answer it. And that means potentially there's a deal being lost. Also, with our own customers, we see how much they really want to have solutions in this space. So that there's a huge urgency and it's coming, I think, from the consumer side because you go to the supermarket and you see a neutral product, you would rather pick this one because somehow you feel responsible for climate change. But also from the investor side, there are these goals that big companies like Black Seamants and others have on science-based targets. There are also, there's pressure from the regulatory side, we spoke about this before. So from various sides, there's more and more pressure coming and so the urgency is really there, yeah. Just everything and. Yes, I totally agree. It's not just urgency, it's table stakes, right? We've all made commitments to bettering the environment. Every company has internalized it to different roles and goals. And now what I find as interesting is the business case had efficiencies you talked about it in the middle of it, but it's also now it's table stakes because it's the right way to do business and we're able to measure that consumer demand is shifting and changing and being able to actually verify that that data is behind the scenes gives you an even leg up faster, right? So faster speed to market of being able to verify versus make a broad claim, right? Kind of starts to differentiate you in a crowded shelf space as well. So it's not just urgency, I think it's just kind of the way we're going, going forward. I would say for the government of BC, it's maybe not about urgency, it's about opportunity. We have this legislation, we have very strong environmental legislation, climate legislation. We're already asking all of the companies and operators within British Columbia to meet these goals. So if we can provide them with a solution that allows them to use that data to access markets that privilege or are looking for responsibly sourced goods, if we can allow them to use that data to build reputation for themselves. And also if we can assist them with climate reporting, not just to the government of British Columbia, but to the government of Canada and other regulators that they are dealing with, then that's an opportunity for them. And it's also a way for us to learn about the technology and understand how government can adopt it. Just one of the other things that's interesting is people are investing in tech in this space. This isn't I had a legacy tool to measure this stuff and now I need to go replace the legacy stuff. We're building something from scratch, so why not use the toolkit of new tools out there, which is an interesting differentiator across the board and why I think it's getting a lot of blockchain. Any other questions? Great, thanks very much. So from what you were saying, it sounds a bit like the problem shifting from the technology in terms of multi-enterprise networks to kind of process standardization. I mean, you mentioned verifiable supply details, for example, and that could be a game changer for payment fraud, for example, if multiple enterprise were involved. But presumably, if suppliers have been asked for nine different sorts of questionnaires, that becomes far more complicated. So I wonder if that's something you were seeing, and maybe on the Siemens side, for example, you're having to train out your suppliers, for example, to use these platforms or change the way your processes work to account for them? So the idea is really that we have a start where one company says, okay, I really want to find out what is the PCF protocol footprint of this product. So in order to do this, I can scope one, scope two, I can do my own, but scope three is difficult. So I reach out to my suppliers, and the idea is not to necessarily force them, but to tell them, here is a link. If you click on it, you can go through this form, and it takes you by the hand and leads you to the sort of complicated path of how to come up with a carbon footprint for your, again, level two and level three. And then they find out, oh, I have exactly the same issue because I have components. So again, they could choose the very same system, and this is completely free. So there's no commercial interest in basically helping the companies to acquire the information. And they can, but they don't have to, use a certifier to issue the credentials then. They could self-certify it as well. If it's a small company, that's completely okay because it would be, anyway, too expensive for a smaller company. And then the hope is that it is like an avalanche, that the standard that is driven through an association, actually, the stadium association, it's not Siemens driven anyway, it's really an ecosystem thing, would propagate and people would, through the fact that we also are in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, WEF, and the other initiatives, that there's really this convergence on the data format, but also on the protocol, the way data is exchanged. So it's not that we demand anybody to follow, but we feel they re-welcome this kind of digitalization of collecting particular, the scope three emissions, because 90% or 80% is in there. If you ask any Chief Procurement Officer, Chief Sourcing Officer and such, they'll all say portal fatigue kills opportunities and things, right? The theme this year in our supply chain business is the network effect, and it is because we are so integrated and connected as any value chain and any organization participates in multiple value chains, right? So then it's, I need to share in your portal, I need to share in your portal, and this is happening today, right? And so the idea and why we're, I think, excited about credentials being a changing piece of this is because if you can actually create a credential pack and say build this network effect, I can share it with you, then you can use it and share it with him, right? And we start to build this where we actually then have some standards across the board and can share the same, we're all gathering the same information from each other, right? And our parts go into other people's parts and goods and final products, and we are all interconnected and we have a whole piece on the one connected supply chain because we are not just one value chain at a time. And so the more you can take this data, standardize it and bring it between areas, you're actually going to see the utility of value, not just the one business case at a time where we'll start to see a change. And also making sure that you can revoke the data and it goes down the chain as well. Very important part of it. Do you have a follow up on that, Andrew? And it? Yeah. All right. Any other questions? No? All right. Wonderful. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Melanie. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Andreas. As usual, all of you and I get to go home and tell my daughter that I am making a difference when it comes to climate. So thank you.


I'm John Russo. I'm the salutatorian for the DCL STEM Academy. I'm currently enrolled in the engineering pathway. I chose engineering because it sounded the most fun, building stuff, making stuff. It's a big honor to be named salutatorian. I enjoy going to the gym almost every day after school, and I enjoy playing Magic the Gathering with my friends. I'm planning to go to Rutgers Arts & Science Honors College, and I am majoring in physics. I'm hoping to become a particle physicist, specializing in nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. A fun fact about me is I self-studied AP Physics C ENM as well as Calculus III by myself. I'd like to thank my parents, especially my mom, for pushing me forward in my education from such a young age, as well as all my teachers, especially my physics teachers, for inspiring my passion for physics.


Welcome back to another episode of Wrapped Up. This is gonna be the most chaotic one yet. This is gonna be the most chaotic one. I hope you can forgive me. Sweet chat anyway.   Oh my goodness, I'm so embarrassed. So embarrassed, they love you. I was hoping, when I thought of the idea for this series, I was hoping I wouldn't be busy. But I'm still busy. We've got two days. It's Sunday night. This goes up Tuesday night. I've got to edit the video. I haven't unwrapped anything yet. And tomorrow I need to write 1,000, 1,500, at least, words of an essay that I've got. I've got like a 4,000 words, 3,500 word essay. But I've got to do... I'm sorry, it just hit me just now. Do it, it's fine. Before we get into it, I'm saying this at the start because I want your advice. Do we think we should make this a regular series once a month in the new year? I wanna do it because I'm having a lot of fun doing it. And also, I know a lot of you really enjoy them. However, number one, I was gonna do an All My Unread Books video or my own Unread TBR video. I won't be able to do that if we decide to do the series in the new year. And number two, I don't want it to lose its specialness. I don't want it to become repetitive. And so part of me wants to keep it as like just something we do at Christmas. So let me know down below. Would you be okay with me not doing an All My Unread Books video in return for like doing an episode of this a month alongside all my other reading vlogs? Or do you think we should just keep it as something special for Christmas? So again, we want a short book. I'm gonna buy the audio book for whatever I pick just because that's self care and I need it. Treat yourself 2011. What should we pick? Do you know what I'm gonna do because like self love is an important thing? I think I'm gonna let myself unwrap too and then decide out of those two. I think I deserve that. So this is really short.  Yeah, that can be one of the choices. And then let's pick like a short paper bag. Which one's shorter out of these two? I think this one. Okay, let's do the white one first. I don't know what this is. Oh! Oh, okay. This could be a good one. So this is You Must Not Miss by Katrina Leno. I don't know much about this. I just picked it up because it's something I know a lot of people enjoy. Oh my God, it's under 300 pages. I'm already feeling good about this. I might just, should I just read this? Do I even want to unwrap this? Part of me just wants to read this. Like, I feel like this is exactly what I need right now. Do you know what? I'm not even unwrapping this one. I don't need it. I don't need it. We're gonna read this. Aha! Because I haven't hauled this yet, I completely forgot I even owned this. I'm so excited now. This is, this is, I love good news. Love good news. I just love good news. Like I've been reading a lot of like kind of general fiction, like general adult fiction for the Mariah Carey vlog. I just want something a bit simpler, a bit like faster paced. So I feel good about this. Can you believe I didn't unwrap the second one? I think we're just gonna find out what this is about together as the reading vlog goes on. I'm so happy. Okay, let's go read this. That was such a good opening. That was such a good opening for pages to a book. I love it. I love it. Guys, could I have another five star read before the year is over? I'm just so lucky to be a part of this history. I'm really loving this. Basically, we're following Magpie. As six months ago, she walked in on her father cheating on her mom with her arm, messy. And that's kind of torn her family apart. Her mother has become an alcoholic, her sister left. And obviously her dad is not in the picture. And so she's really struggling and something happened also on the night that her sister left that meant that she fell out with her best friend of all her life. She writes about this place called Nir in this notebook that she has that is supposed to be this place that is magical and wonderful and she is safe in it. I'm 88, 89 pages in by the way. So like Nir's like her dream place and she's always writing about what's brilliant about it. And then now it seems like she may be able to travel there. So that's kind of like our fabulism element to it. I'm really loving this. I think Magpie is such an interesting character. I think this is like young adult set in high school but it's exploring it in a really, really interesting way. It reminds me a lot of AS King in how that fabulism element is handed so well. I am obsessed with the writing. I'm obsessed with all the characters. I think all of her friends, her new friends that she has feel so vivid even if I barely know them. Like there's a few of them I barely know but we've just been given the perfect information on them. The perfect like view of them. And suddenly I know everything. Katrina Leno be like. I'm a genius.  It reads so fast. I was flying through it and I'm really, really interested to see where it's gonna go. Like I don't know where it's gonna go and that really excites me. I haven't even read the blurb like I wanted to go into it completely blind. There's just something about the writing. You know when you find a writer and you're like, this is it. This is it. Like this is the writer for me. Like this is it. You just find a writer who's writing you just completely gel with and love. That's what I feel when I'm so happy. It's really not shying away from so many difficult topics and I really, really appreciate that. I wanted to go a really weird direction. I really wanted to. I haven't even got the audiobook because I'm just flying through it. I don't think I'll need it. It's really interesting how Megapile is having to fend for herself now and just the psychology of that. You know, she's really, really alone. And suddenly there's this place that it seems to be everything that she has dreamed of. So I'm really excited. I think this could be like a new favorite. Obviously it's very early days but I'm gonna go read like another 90 pages and then I'll check in with you again when I'm about two thirds of the way through. We've just been learning more about this world called near. I don't want to spoil anything obviously but I don't feel like much has actually happened to spoil because it is quite a simple plot but I am still loving it. I need to move these books. No one says that, but yes. Okay, work. I'm still obsessed. I really, really love the writing style. I like straight away last night went and added Katrina Lennon's other books to my like want to read on Goodreads. I have a feeling stuff's about to go wrong though. Like I feel like we've been lured into this full sense of security for a good chunk of the book and suddenly shit is about to hit the fan. So I'm really, really nervous for that. Honey, you've got a big storm coming.  Like, oh, no, no. You know what I said before? I think Magpie is such an interesting character and I just love the weirdness of this. Like I think a good comparison is AS King. Like it definitely reminds me of stuff like Dig by AS King. So if you like that weirdness, this is it. Like I want to read more stuff like this going into next year, like contemporary with fabulism.    I don't want to say what the weird stuff is because I feel like it's a bit of a spoiler. I would rather you go into it and find that out when reading it. This book is killing it so far. This video is going up tonight. I've edited up until now, but I need to kind of go back and forth between reading this and writing my essay today. I'm going to finish off my essay and so stressed out about it. So once that's out of my life, I can like calm down and everything will get a lot easier in my brain. So I know I just want to finish the essay today, but I obviously need to read the last 90-ish pages so I can read this, so I can upload this video. So I'm just going to kind of switch back and forth between everything and I will check back in with you when I have finished it. I'm nervous. Oh my God. One piece of advice, don't read anything. If you don't read it, it can't harm you. So shook. I love the direction this went in. I can't say what because I don't want to spoil it, but like when I finish this, I genuinely feel like I aged 10 years.  Me at the book. Are you on drugs?  This was like gruelling. I feel like I'm 50 years old. So if you can't guess, I loved it. I'm going to give it five stars. I filmed my top 10 of the year already, but this could be up there in that. So like when you see that video, this may have been in there if I'd read it earlier. This, I looked on Goodreads and there's only 1,400 ratings, which really isn't that many. So I feel like I'm going to be recommending this book forever to everyone because not enough people are reading it. Like it was so good. It deals with what happens to a girl and the result of being alone and being ignored and shitty things happening to you over and over again. Major trick warnings in this for sexual assault, alcohol addiction, suicide, depression, maybe I would say as well. This was like badass. It felt but sick reading it. There was a very drastic jump. Literally the drastic jump started from when I last checked in with you. And I feel like maybe it just needed a bit more in that kind of section towards the end to bring us to the events of what actually ends up happening. I understand without spoiling anything. I understand why it happened like that because that is in its own way realistic. However, I feel like as a reader, we just needed like even just only 40 more pages exploring some of that. But I do understand why it was like zero to 100. I loved it. Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique. This is weird. This is like so weird. If you love weird books, if you love like A.S. King, kind of reminds me of like K. Ankram as well. Definitely more A.S. King, but that kind of like fabulism kind of thing with like a really dark side to it. This is so good. I can't emphasize to you enough how good it is. The writing is incredible. It's witty. It's full of dark humor. It's clever writing. Let me stand by the window, honey dear, honey dear. And I loved it. I loved how it explored the issues that it covered in a really unique way. And I love a book that doesn't A, give you any ending. This doesn't have any ending. You don't. It reminds me a lot of the ending of Wilder Girls. Like not as abrupt as the ending of Wilder Girls, but definitely a lot of unanswered questions. Also the end, you don't know how you feel. And I love that. I love endings that leave you feeling conflicted about the events and about the characters. This is amazing. I cannot wait to read the rest of Katrina Leno's stuff. I need to stop sleeping on her and I need to read Horrid. I need to read what's her other really one-in-one, it's Summer of Salt, isn't it?  This bitch, here she go again. But it feels like a beautiful knife.  It's like meh. Cause the writing is so beautiful and clever, but it's like, like it cuts straight to the core. I was gagged. It was amazing. It was so good. I'm so glad that I unwrapped this. It would have taken me ages to get to this. Had I not unwrapped it now. Covering dark topics, amazing writing. Just pick it up. Just pick it up. It's so good. I hope you're enjoying this series. If we've got to the end, comment, comment the spider emoji, cause I feel like similar vibes. Let me know if you're enjoying this series. I can't believe how close it is to Christmas. Like we're like three days away. Yeah, thank you so much for watching. I will see you very, very soon. Bye.


Welcome back fellow horror lovers. Have you ever dreamt of creating your own retro style characters? Or wondered what the polygon counts of your favourite PlayStation 1 characters were? Well then, this video might be right up your alley. Today, we're delving back into the eerie world of my PlayStation 1-inspired horror game. I am thrilled to be able to introduce you to Liam, the protagonist and player character of my game. Join me as I continue my game development journey from unlocking the secrets of designing and creating an authentic PS1 character to making the character playable in Unreal Engine 5. So, what exactly makes a PS1 character? To find the answer, I began by researching characters from the PS1 era. I wanted to get a good feel for the aesthetics as well as the technical constraints involved with creating 3D characters in the 90s. I noticed from mood boards I created that even though the characters tended to be very blocky and lacking in detail, the characters that we saw on screen actually represented much more detailed designs in the eyes of the character artists that created them, and this can be seen in the much more detailed concept art. I looked at the polygon counts for the same characters and found that the sweet spot for PS1 games seemed to be between 500 and 700 triangles. I also found that a lot of the characters featured limbs that were broken into parts to remove the need for skinning and to keep the triangle count low. Armed with this knowledge, I set about designing my own character. I already had a good idea of who he was and how he looked, so I created some concept art as a starting point before I even considered any 3D modelling. I wanted to make sure that there was a better, more detailed character design behind the low poly, low resolution one that we'll feature in the game, in the same way as with the original PS1 characters that I'd looked at. Once it was time to move on to the modelling, I made the decision to get a ready-made base mesh for a low poly character to get me started. I could have created this myself, but I wouldn't have been able to create anything better than this mesh by Decodigo, and the triangle count of 508 also fits perfectly with the technical constraints of the PlayStation 1, so I downloaded the mesh and imported it into Maya to work on it. The first thing I noticed is that Maya read the triangle count as 964, and I have no idea why that differs from the count on Sketchfab. If anyone knows why this is, please let me know in the comments. Anyway, I spent a little time adjusting the character mesh to match the character concept I created. I reshaped the head a little and then spent some time creating the mesh for the hair. I added some extra geometry for the turn-ups on his sleeves and also for the collar on his shirt. Once I felt happy with the mesh, I UV mapped everything, but instead of keeping the textual density consistent, I made the UV shell for the face bigger than everything else, so that I'd have more texture resolution to work with there. Next, I used Substance 3D Painter to create most of the textures. I just used the default skin, funnel and denim materials. I decided to keep the red and black colour for the shirt, as I really liked the way it looks, and I chose to leave out some details such as buttons on the shirt and pockets on the jeans, as I don't think they were needed, but I might add them later if I changed my mind. I couldn't get the face looking right in Substance 3D Painter, so I exported the texture into Photoshop and added the eyes, nose, ears and other details in there. And although it looks like nightmare fuel in this form, it does look pretty good once it's applied back onto the model. I also made the eyes larger than they would ordinarily be, as this seems to be a convention of PS1 characters, and it makes the face easier to read at lower resolutions. Next, I reduced the texture resolution to 256x256 and reduced the number of colours in the texture and then put the model into the game so I could see how it looked when viewed through the post-process effects and the lowered resolution. I was really happy with the result, which meant I could then turn my attention to the rigging and animation. It was all ready to rig the character manually, but then I remembered that last year, one of my students used the auto-rigging on Mixamo for their character, and the results were really good, so I decided to take a punt and give this a try with Liam. To my surprise, the process was really quick and easy. I just uploaded the character, told Mixamo where the chin, wrists, elbows, knees and wiggy were, and then I could also choose how complex I wanted the rig to be. Again, I was surprised that I could choose a rig that had bones for reduced joints in the hands with the thumb, index finger and then the rest of the fingers all combined together, which is exactly how Liam's mesh is built. So I chose that option and then let the auto-rigger work its magic. After only a few seconds, Liam was rigged and I was able to download the character rig in a T-pose and then find and download some animations for him. I chose an idle, walk and run, as these are all he needs right now. I'll add more throughout development if and when the need arises. Now that I had everything I needed, the final step was to get Liam set up in Unreal Engine 5. I brought in his character mesh, texture and animations. I then checked everything looked as I expected it to and then set about creating the character blueprint. I did this by duplicating the default third-person character blueprint and substituting the Quinn character with Liam. I did also test it at this point, which gives some pretty amusing results. So next I set up the animation blueprint which handles which animations should play depending on what Liam is doing. I made one final change which was to make Liam move at a walk by default and to only run when a button is pressed, as I think this will work better in the game where he'll be spending a lot of time in claustrophobic feeling spooky houses so he'll probably spend more time walking than running, just like in Resident Evil. He's currently set up for dual analog movement or mouse and keyboard movement but I am considering giving him tank movement controls to make the game feel more authentic to the PS1 era. Let me know in the comments if you think I should keep the more modern control scheme or if I should implement tank controls. And that is everything I did to create the first character for my PlayStation 1 style horror game. I'm having a lot of fun with this project and I'm also really enjoying sharing my game development journey with the devlog videos. If you're also enjoying the devlog videos then make sure you let me know by hitting the like button and by telling me if there's anything else you'd like to see me document in a devlog by leaving a comment below the video. If you'd like to support my work here at Game Dev Academy, which includes creating detailed game development tutorials as well as the devlog series then please check out my Patreon, the link is in the video description. I've been Shane for Game Dev Academy, thanks so much for watching and I hope I'll see you again for devlog number 4.


What's going on guys, it's your boy DPJ here today with another Destiny video and today I want to talk about loot and also the level you are stuck at and ways to get higher but before we get into the video if you guys do enjoy hitting that like button is very much appreciated. Let's aim for 4000 likes, that would be absolutely insane. Ok so we are at level and how do you get more? Now I get questions from me day in day out of how to reach a higher light level so let's start with Guardians below that 365 light. For you guys it's kind of simple, grind heroic strikes as the blues buses drop should elevate your light, they drop between 2 and up to 8 blues at a time. Each one of these blues should drop gear sitting just above light score wise you are currently equipped gear and this will for sure help you rank up. I wish I could say it was quick but it really ain't. Bungie patched the only real quick way and that was the unnoggle grind.  Then patching unnoggle has done nothing but put a stop to people who can't grind the game as much reaching a 365 but allowed everyone who does grind the game to abuse this grind and reach a 365 in a matter of hours. The same amount of hours some people struggle to put in over the course of a week due to work and school, leaving them way behind struggling to find light and this is a problem many are having and there ain't a real quick way of gaining up higher in that light score. So yeah, heroic strikes do drop blues which will help you reach a 365, also legendary engrams as well. When decrypted with the cryptarch they drop up to a 365 light score gear. Ark and Forge is also a good way of reaching a higher light with armour and weapons dropping up to a 365 but class items dropping way beyond that up to a 385 but remember though with the progressive light system in the game loot will only drop near your current light score so don't expect 385 drops when your current light score is a 355 as it just won't happen. Besides strikes, Ark and Forge and legendary engrams you can also grind faction packages and also the gunsmith as they do drop gear which will help. Crucible too but that means you have to play crucible and not many people want to do that. I would say as well grind exotic engrams using three coins but in all honesty I'd say save these engrams for when you reach a higher light than a 365 as in theory you'll be wasting them. Another problem with hitting that 365 light is a ghost and an artifact. Now ghost shells can drop from faction packages and ain't really hard to come across. The artifact slot can hold you back. There are a few ways to get them. The first is from skeleton key chests. Skeleton key chests spawn at the end of each strike, dropping exclusive loot as well as a possible artifact drop. Skeleton keys also drop at random from strikes. You can stack them up to five keys I believe but what I'd do if I were you, if you only have one of these keys I'd wait until the rest of your gear is at a 365 or thereabouts due to the fact that artifact could drop below a 365 if the rest of your gear is below that level. So if I were you I'd save that one last key. Get your gear that being weapons and armor as close to a point of 365 as you possibly can before using that skeleton key. If you have more than one skeleton key then that's fine as these chests can also drop decent light level loot and can help you in your process of reaching a 365. Another way of getting an artifact is by ranking up Erismon. You can do this by grinding a quart of Oryx and if you get an Erismon bounty and complete it you can almost gain over half a rank with Erismon so it isn't even that bad. Another way you can get an artifact is if you are lucky and a rare or legendary engrabbed eclipse into a legendary artifact. This has happened to me a few times as well and that is basically it for hitting a 365 light score. Now once you are here which in my opinion it's easier to get to a 385 then it is to get from a 355 to a 365. There are numerous things you can do the main one being the raid. This drops full 385 armor and a full set of 385 weapons, artifacts and even gold shells and much more and also with the opportunity to get the 390 attack exotic pulse rifle that at break prime. So yes grinding the raid weak and weak out on all 3 of your characters surely will get you a super high light score pushing that 385 light but beyond the raid there are also a lot of other things you can do and like the previous tips to reach a light score of 365 also helping your gold target of 385 things like faction packages these help a shit ton for the simple fact that you can pick between armor and weapons. What I do here is I save as many strange coins as I can within a week and just blow them all on there spending 80% of them on heavy ammo packs and the rest on three of coins now 100 strange coins will allow you to buy 300 heavy ammo packs now 100 heavy ammo packs gives you one faction rank so 100 strange coins will get you three faction ranks so if you spend 300 strange coins you can get nine faction ranks all dropping loot which will help you three of coins as well and grinding the exotics also help a shit ton here in my opinion the best place to use this is at the end of the iron 2 mission strap on them three of coins kill the first two buses and simply kill yourself rinse you repeat until you've had enough or you've got enough exotics simple as that also arch and forge for class items are great crucible for weapons and I believe class items to strike exclusive loot from skeleton chests also helps and under weekend if you enjoy PVP you can always do trials of a source and it ain't really about getting to the lighthouse it's about completing brother lancestrials bounties which ain't that hard to do also end of game loot from trials win or lose can be helpful just do the things I've mentioned and eventually we'll get to that 385 light score now which you are here this is where things get real hard and I believe it's Brunch's plan as they don't want people above this point as it means they will walk over the hard-mold raid like they did the normal version so once you are a 385 there is a limit of things you can do which drop that higher light scored gear the raid doesn't drop anything besides the unlucky exotic from a chest as all gear from buses maxes out a 385 light score but we have ways arch and forge class items drop at a higher light score than 385 so this is a direct place for class items artifacts can come as mentioned earlier from skeleton chests from strikes weapons and armors can drop from faction packages up to what I've seen a 387 ain't seen anything higher though but that could be due to the fact of me being a 386 at the time of opening them I don't see why they wouldn't keep going up to a max of 400 lights but I guess like I said earlier bungee may have kept it also trials of a size as mentioned earlier does drop higher than 385 gear as I do believe PvP does as well in the form of weapons now I have had real high gear drop I've had two 388s and one 389 and they've all come from this week's nightfall the absolute crazy thing is though the highest piece of gear came from my lowest character that being a 389 helmet which dropped on my 386 warlock now all three pieces have been infused into my hunter that being my main character and I'm now sitting just below a 388 light level which is absolute crazy so yes guys you want 389 gear or maybe even higher do them nightfalls and as you guys who do watch me on a regular basis no normally nightfalls are tall as for me but this week really paid off big time but yes guys I hope this video helps out now I know a lot of the information in this video is known by a certain few but if even helps 10% of the people watching it's been worth my time doing it but guys I hope you enjoyed the video do hit that like button I do appreciate the support subscribe for daily destiny turn on the notification so you don't miss a video and I'll catch you guys on that next one


The Committee for the Difference of Human Rights has condemned the plant reopening of the leki toll gate, threatening a protest if the government continues with the plan. The lamented are victims of leki massacre have not been adequately compensated on the case of Oluwa Bameshe Ayo Wolei, who was kidnapped and killed. Konso to the deceased, Ayo Ademiluwi, appeal to the media to continue to keep the story on the front boner until justice is served. Cominikula Santoni Opei is a survivor of leki massacre who was shot right in the in the chest. The bullet penetrated his arteries to the back and he was alive today by shea by shea grace. Manishaiko does not have the addition of a case like murder and arrest. They are capital offenses. So the proper forum is still the icon. So it was a name of four countries. One, rape, two, the second count is conspiracy to commit felony to wheat murder. The third count is sexual intercourse. Then four is murder. We all know that the main responsibility of every government is the provision of security. When we look at the BRT saga as related to Mr. Bameshe, we can see clearly that the legacy government failed woefully in their responsibility in providing security to the citizens and residents for at least provide the functioning CCTV cameras in the BRT buses. I was one of the big the survivor at the leki to get answers protest on the 20th of October 2020. Although all the promises the legacy government have promised us the victims, they have not fulfilled any. This is where the bullet penetrated and they removed it at the back, at last. So shown them the back, this is where they removed it. It's just someone that God doesn't want to keep. And they now fix a pipe into my belly in the theatre that will be building up bad water and bad blood. Are you feeling very well now? Yeah, I'm feeling a bit well now by his grace. We are still demanding justice. Is the legacy government telling us that life is not important whereas that is number one right according to the Nigerian Constitution chapter 4, according to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights and even in accordance with the universal declaration of human rights. People's life has been terminated and government is not doing anything about it. This issue of Bami Shea, Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, particularly legal state, which has stopped at nothing to ensure that justice is done. In CDHR, Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, if there is one word we are very much after, if there is one word we share it so much and that is word justice. Concerning the leki to get concerning Bami Shea, people have lost confidence in the executive. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Thank you, gentlemen. I now recognize the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin for pardon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank Mr. Buck for that excellent line of questioning and for the upcoming legislation. I look forward to joining that. We want, you know, in the 19th century we had the robber barons in the 21st century. We got the cyber barons and we want to make sure that the extraordinary power and wealth that you've been able to amass is not used against the interests of democracy and human rights around the world and not against the interests of a free market at home. So, Mr. Bezos, let me turn to you. I'm interested in the role that you play as a gatekeeper. A lot of consumers want to know when the HBO Max app will be available on your fire device, and I understand that negotiations are ongoing, but that your company is not only asking for financial terms, but also for content from Warner Media. Is that right and is that a fair way to proceed? In other words, is it fair to use your gatekeeper status role in the streaming device market to promote your position as a competitor in the video streaming market with respect to content? I'm not familiar with the details of those negotiations. As you said, they're underway right now. I predict that the companies will eventually come to an agreement, and I think this is kind of two large companies, negotiation agreements, kind of normal case of commercial. Right, but here's why I pursue it precisely because it is a large company and in a way they stand in for hundreds of thousands of much smaller companies who are even in a more disadvantageous position with respect to negotiating with you. I guess the general proposition then you can speak to if you don't know the details of this, which is is it okay to negotiate not just for financial terms in having someone be part of your fire unit, but also to try to extract in that negotiation leverage with respect to getting content from them. Well, again, I'm not familiar with the details. What I would ask you about that one in general, in general. In general, I think that when two companies are negotiating, you are negotiating not just the amount of money that's going to change hands, but also what you're going to get in exchange for the amount of money. That is a very fundamental way that business works. Do you see at least to outsiders that would look like a structural conflict of interest, like you're using your control of our access to people's living rooms, essentially. You're using that in order to obtain leverage in terms of getting creative content that you want. Are you essentially converting power in one domain into power in another domain where it doesn't belong? I think what I should do is offer to get you information. I'll get it to your office for you, because I'm not familiar enough with this. I could imagine that there would be scenarios if we're just talking in abstract where it would be inappropriate, and I could imagine scenarios where it would be very normal business and very appropriate. I want to talk about in emerging markets, smart homes. I want to start with the hub of the smart home, smart speakers. Does Amazon price the Echo device below cost? Not its list price, but it's often on promotion, and sometimes when it's on promotion, it may be below cost. Yes. Well, several other companies did tell us in fact that Amazon is pricing Echo devices way below cost, making it nearly impossible for them to compete, and aggressively discounting Alexa enabled speakers as a strategy to own the smart home. Like many markets we've heard about today, smart speakers with voice assistants like Alexa, along with the myriad of smart home appliances that Alexa can interact with, make up the next ecosystem or platform for tech companies to lock in customers. Would you say the smart home market for which the Echo Ring security system and other smart devices operate is a winner's take all market? Yes or no? No, I wouldn't, especially if we if we're able to succeed about what we want, which is we would like our vision for this is that smart home speakers should answer to different waycords. Well, you know, when considering the acquisition of case by case basis, and I think in that just because I think it's important if we could achieve that, then I think you would get really good behavior on the part of, you know, okay, competitive voice agents helping you when you when you were looking at a Coir Ring ring, you wrote to your executive team quote, we're buying market position, not technology. And that market position and momentum is very valuable. So if smart homes are not a market with lock in effects, why would a leading market position and momentum be so very valuable? Sir, market position is is valuable in almost any business. And it's one of the primary things that one would look at in an acquisition. There are multiple reasons that we might buy a company. Sometimes we're trying to buy some technology or some IP. Sometimes we're to talent acquisition. But the most common case is market position that the company has traction with customers, they built a service, maybe they were the first mover, there could be any number of reasons why they have that market position. But that's a very common reason to acquire a company. Well, once a company becomes dominant in a market, it can favor its own products and services. Alexa enabled smart speakers make up over 60% of the smart speaker market. Mr. Basis, when I asked Alexa to play my favorite song prime music is the default music player. Is that right? If you're I think that's true.  And New York Times report found that when users say Alexa by batteries, Alexa responds, would you like to buy double way Amazon basic batteries? So has Alexa ever been trained to favor Amazon products when users shop by voice? The time of the gentleman has expired, but the witness may answer the question. I don't know if it's been trained in that way. I'm sure there are cases where we do promote our own products is of course a common practice in business. And you know, so it wouldn't surprise me if Alexa sometimes does promote our own products. Thank you.


Balash, if one again, you beat Irene Secunda. Well, I have to admit that I was a bit lucky in this game because after move 15 I started to feel that tiredness is making its impact, so I strive for simplifications even though I think after the move 10 I was better in this strange anti-marshall because she played both h3 and h4, which I think shouldn't be so good, but then I couldn't find a good plan to increase my advantage if I have some, but I guess I have, so I strive for simplifications and then in this very symmetrical position I think for no reason she gave up bishop pair and after that it was one sided and she made a decisive mistake in I think move 40, but even after that there were some tricks left, but okay once I got the time I could calculate it all. Do you think history could be repeating itself from rounds one and two? Because you're doing well, your colleagues not so well, what do you think? Well in Hungary we say that don't paint the devil on the wall, so yeah I also thought about the same that we were plus five before the round and two plus three victories for the ladies would make them champions, so I don't want history to be repeated. Are you a little bit worried? Yes, I have to admit, I don't lie, I cannot lie, so I'm not good at it. Okay, let's look at the game. Hey Balash, we're looking at a fairly orthodox Rylapaz position here, take it away. Yes, it looks familiar because I had the same position two days ago against Gunay and then I opted for d6 and to transpose to some main line Spanish, but today I decided to change to some anti-martial. Can I have the pen please? Yeah, thanks. So here main move is d3 and here I either go for d6 and some close positions or d5 sacrificing upon and in typical martial spirit and then I can either play an id4 for like positional compensation to get the bishop pair or play queen d6, then swing a rook e8, c5 and try to cross the bishop via d8 to c7, play for attack, but instead she played a4, nice move which is to me it made a strange impression because white either plays a3 and then d3 or first a4 and then bishop b7 d3 and here the e4 pawn is undefended so okay if I play d6 then this really nothing happens so I tried to make use of this omission. So bishop a2 knight e4 d3 is natural, I checked something if knight e5 I'm not sure it works I can start with bishop c5 but let's say knight f2, king f2 and bishop c5. I think white cannot take so she has to play some queen h5 because here d4 queen f6 queen h4 it reminds me and I think it will remind the diligent viewers for the game BR against Dubov in similar variations but of course she played d3 and okay after this I try to find different plans to play d5 c5 c4 to cut off the bishop just play c5 d6 develop the pieces and okay I decided to play it safe and easiest because I wasn't sure about anything so after move let's say 20 some exchanges happened. Yeah so I think yeah d4 I wasn't really sure about because after c4 I can get the knight to this juicy d5 square so I think still the position should be equal and what I didn't understand is that why she let me take the bishop pair with 26 f3 because instead she could play queen c1 queen e2 or something and after knight e5 she could return with bishop b2 bishop d2 so after that I regained the bishop pair she played some knight g4 and after I think offer draw after queen exchange move yeah here because of course recapture is really easy what I spent like two minutes because I was like probably the position is equal but with few minutes on the clock 1 km becomes rest as this is what happened I think I thought the optimal defensive setup for white would be just to play like let's make some look a knight f3 king f8 is normal g3 king e7 and here I thought f4 is possible because whenever g5 happens knight f5 is quite unpleasant let's say bishop this is my move okay let's say okay b4 I think she was afraid that I would push b3 but I think that's just nothing so or or she could even bring the king first closer let's say previous move some some king e2 okay king e2 now brief b3 so okay but yeah then the bishop is cut off so what I want to show is okay let's go back to bishop b4 now yeah here before b yeah before okay what I want to show is that like some optimal defensive setup would be that the king just arrives on time to d2 bishop to f3 and I think should be it should be a draw and even at move yeah some 37 I think yeah here okay bishop a2 I didn't really understand I could play king b6 king a5 but I didn't want to lose time because b4 is easier to make already because if she takes what she did in the game then I come with king b5 I'm not sure about actually I think I calculated one line that let's say she gets here in time but bishop c8 is like key move forcing g5 I guess I take and I wasn't sure about this end game but maybe wins for me because the bishop is scuttle from from from the game and it was move 41 it was critical position king a4 yeah sister yeah 39 bishop b1 39 bishop yes yes this one so originally I wanted to take back a take on on b4 take back the pawn but then I realized that okay it's move 40 I can always take back so let's play king a4 and here it's already not easy so like she previous moves she played bishop e2 bishop b1 so so like making bishop e2 would be quite silly but probably need or 91 but in none of them words and I think she found okay if King b4 bishop c2 maybe reaching some kind of setup but even after that I can try to switch to to the this exponent okay I think now nice white misses only one tempo and now I win so I wasn't sure about King b4 but I didn't want to give time so I played King b3 yeah that's right so now King b3 that's fine and here what she played b5 yeah okay other than that if I take on b2 and return to c3 b4 would be hanging so it's logical to push the pawn forward as possible and I was quite lucky here because I missed like I think I played King takes me to a tempo and bishop b4 is a very clever or resourceful defending plan because the plan of course pawn is hanging and if I take I wasn't sure about this but wow wait yeah a king I thought King d2 is possible and now what has to go back to see for because if she takes I think I promote and there is no check so she goes back King maybe maybe 96 is possible but let's say we get this endgame I can even call like the pawn probably should be winning but wasn't 100% sure so I had to check other options bishop a4 instead of King c3 one move sorry one more move bishop e4 instead some sorry bishop e4 yeah the move she played all right here probably c3 wins as well but I wasn't sure for two reasons one is that she gets this defensive setup with knight c2 and bringing the king closer should be winning but then I realized that she can play bishop c2 instead and the thing is that she brings the king via e2 to d3 and then 91 check suddenly wins my pawn so I had to be alert and I think King c3 I found okay I'm proud of that if wins it should be I can be proud of that so the point is that if she takes 95 King d4 both pieces hanging no discoveries is a winning but the big point was that if she takes with the bishop instead I take and this is very similar but still very different from the previous endgame with knight against bishop because her knight doesn't have a good square like okay knight f6 goes too far away and if she comes here King d3 I think I play first and then I threaten to play bishop c5 if b5 b6 I'm still in time bishop c5 they can return to a7 so should be winning and she tried a resourceful defense once again like seemingly slosing but actually it's not so easy because I cannot really move my bishop away from this diagonal because it has to defend the pawn I played okay King c5 King d2 that's normal and here okay I cannot push d4 I cannot move my bishop what do I do and actually the winning point is like very very narrow I think quite narrow but I think I found it low so bishop is seven it's necessary that I have the bishop on this diagonal and not on the other one I will I will show in a second why right King c2 bishop f6 and the thing is that yeah bishop f6 thank you my plan is that I want to get to the knight why I'll bishop d4 and if the knight moves I can take the pawn so and then of course it's winning yes so I and I need to use the f6 square because other than that let's say I and the point is that if she plays b6 okay burning all bridges now it's important that I have bishop d8 if I don't have bishop d8 maybe she makes a draw because let's say if I have the bishop on g7 instead I can only play bishop d4 and bishop d4 now she starts with 95 takes on b7 and I have to take okay maybe bishop f2 wins but I don't want to try that and my idea was when she plays b6 yes in this analysis variation this I can just go back here and the point is that I'm close with the bishop because if she takes I take on b7 bishop c7 and I don't have this resource with the bishop on yeah whatever g7 you're controlling those two squares yeah whatever she does you've got a bishop move yes yes and she tried some g5 once another sacrifice to bring the knight closer but I was two pounds up and after that let's say move 52 like here let's okay I play g5 of course to save the night yeah after that okay I played some king c5 but I could just untangle basically with bishop c6 because even okay let's say bishop g2 just to show okay bishop c6 okay next move king c5 and there is no 97 if she takes even this endgame wins with because of the existence of the g-pounds okay five h-point then it's a draw because the corners her is not good but with g-pounds who cares and the thing is that let's say why just cannot set up a fortress like here I will start pushing f and if she sacrifices I have still got one point yeah it's enough to win very good thank you very much thank you


Several hundred people took part in a farewell ceremony for a Russian pro-war blogger Vladlan Tatarzky in Moscow on April 8. Tatarzky's funeral was held at the Trokyarovskoe Cemetery amid tight security. Tatarzky, a cheerleader for Russia's military campaign in Ukraine whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed on April 2, in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg, where he was due to talk to supporters. Russian investigators charged Darya Trapova, a 26-year-old woman, with committing a terrorist act by an organized group that caused intentional death. The charges carry a maximum jail term of 20 years. Russian authorities accuse Ukrainian intelligence of organizing the killing. Ukraine, which did not take responsibility for the attack, blamed domestic terrorism for the murder. Tatarzky had himself fought in Ukraine for separatist forces and also served time in Ukraine for bank robbery. Today, people of different beliefs, including clearly opposition views, for the country, for its future, for the president.


You've all heard of the debate, nature versus nurture.  Are these more decisive than the genetic template you were born with?  Which of them prevail as you evolve from infant to toddler, from toddler to adult, and from adult to me, old man. So today we're going to discuss this false dichotomy between nature and nurture. It is false because genes are natural, but they constitute an internal environment and genes are very reactive to the external environment. The activation of certain genes is passed on through the generations. Go online and search for epigenetics. So this artificial distinction between out there and in here, genes and memes, genes and the world, this is totally wrong. It's Cartesian, you should blame René Descartes. It's the division of the world into observer and observed, we versus vet. And this is simply not true, because we are all one, we're all one. It's a unitary system, different parts of course, interacting, affecting each other, creating change, rendering certain outcomes more plausible or less plausible, but still a single unitary machinery in the operation of the world. My name is Sam Vaknin, I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited and a former visiting professor of psychology. And this is today's topic. In here, out there is this distinction, false, is it the outcome of our consciousness, our introspection, our tendency to confuse psychological boundaries with real ones? Where do we stop and others start? Or more precisely, do we ever stop? Do others ever start? And is there such a thing as another person? Or are we just the sum total of our relations and relationships, the relational view of psychology? I reached this epitome in the 1960s in the British of all places, object relations schools. So nature versus nurture. I've already said that genes constitute an internal environment which is very responsive to and reactive to the external environment. Information from the external environment affects the expression and activation of certain genes. And these expressions and activations in turn create, recreate the internal environment which then interacts with the external environment. Now we tend to internalize our external environment. For example, we eat our external environment. We breathe in our external environment. The alleged border between us and the world is so tenuous as to be non-existent. We assimilate the external environment and render it internal. And then the internal environment operates on these aspects and elements of the external environment and affects the external environment. Sometimes irreversibly, all these distinctions are nonsense. They are false dichotomies and they are part of a larger debate. Is there such a thing as artificial versus natural? Is there such a thing as internal versus external? The concept of nature is a romantic invention. It was spun by the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century. It was a confabulated utopian contrast to the dystopia of urbanization and Darwinian ruthless materialism. It was an attempt to reject the emerging death cult of ownership, owning things, owning objects as a determinant of one's self-identity. I own this smartphone, I possess this car, therefore I am. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other idealists and romanticists throughout the 18th and 19th century tried to provide an alternative and the idealistic alternative didn't work so well and it didn't work so well because the whole thing was fictitious. It was a narrative. It was not only utopian, which is another way of saying daydreaming, but it was also unreal. And the traces of this dewy-eyed conception of the savage, his alleged harmony and resonance with nature and his unmolested, unadulterated surroundings can be found in the more malignant forms of fundamentalist environmentalism and in pop culture. The most recent example, I think, is the propaganda-laden cinematic extravaganza franchise Avatar. And the other extreme are religious literalists. They regard men as the crown of creation with complete dominion of a nature and the right to exploit nature's resources unreservedly. Similar veiled sentiments can be found among scientists. The anthropic principle, for instance, promoted by many outstanding physicists, claims that the nature of the universe is preordained, almost designed or created to accommodate sentient beings, namely us, we, humans. The whole thing, the whole universe revolves around us. The universe was fine-tuned to yield us, to allow us to emerge. I can't think of anything more grandiose and more fatuous and inane, to be honest. Industrialists, politicians and economists have only recently begun paying the lip service to sustainable development and to the environmental costs of their own policies. And so in a way, they bridge the abyss, at least verbally, between these two diametrically opposed forms of fundamentalism, environmentalism versus religion. Men is the despoiler of creation, and men is the crown of creation and the reason for creation. Similarly, the denizens of the West continue to indulge in rampant consumption, but now it is suffused with environmental guilt rather than driven by unadulterated, joyful hedonism. So you see, we have a very conflicted relationship with the very concept of nature. Essential dissimilarities between the schools notwithstanding the dualism of men versus nature seems to be universally acknowledged counterfactually. Modern physics, notably the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, modern physics has abandoned the classic split between typically human observer and usually inanimate observed. Environmentalists in contrast have embraced this discarded worldview wholeheartedly. There's mankind and there's nature, and mankind abuses more less nature. To environmentalists, men is the active agent operating upon a distinct reactive or passive substrate, so-called nature. But though intuitively compelling, it is a false dichotomy as well. You see, here's the thing, and here's why all these debates should just go away. Nature versus nature, artificial versus natural. These are semantics, not only semantics, but four semantics. Semantics at least lower. Don't lead to any insight, any enlightenment, any new knowledge. These debates, these semantic sword plays. Men by definition is a part of nature. Men's tools are natural. The laptop I'm using right now is natural. Men's constructions, the built environment, the empire state building, these all natural artifacts. Men interacts with the other elements of nature. Men modifies nature, but all other species do this. Every life is part of nature. Life is nature, nature is life, nature is in life, life is in nature, they're one and the same. All species modify their environment and their ecosystems and so on. It's totally normal behavior. All species build things, construct things, all species we now know use tools. Arguably, even bacteria and insects exert on nature far more influence with further reaching consequences than men has ever done. Even an environmentalist like Bill McKibben of End of Nature fame, even he recognized this synergetic conference. Aldo Leopold wrote a book to think like a mountain. And he said that to think like a mountain gradually came to be challenged but by to think like a shopping mall, Stephen Vogel. We should consider the entirety of our surroundings argues Vogel and seek to optimize our environment regardless of its origin. Manmade versus natural is a false dichotomy that had pervaded and permeated psychology to the detriment of psychology. When we separate the internal from the external, the natural from the artificial, the nurture versus nature, when we create these dichotomies and these distinctions, we are doing ourselves a disservice. It reduces our ability to understand the interlocking mechanisms, the flux of in and out, the information flows that ultimately shape us to be who we are. If we want to help people, for example in psychotherapy or whatever, we need to recognize the unitary nature of everything, the totality and the wholeness. And no, I'm not a dewey-eyed mystic. I'm not a believer. I don't have any faith. That's not the issue here. It's a recognition of the facts. We are one system, not multiple. And to presume and to assume otherwise is to set ourselves up for failure, to self-defeat, and possibly to self-extinguish.


The Enoge of Utecon community, his royal highness, Igwagi Imasuen, Edo's of Edo state, said he did not take any, the Oba of Benin. The Enoge has appealed for the intervention of the Oba of Benin. His royal majesty Omon Obain Edoku Apolopolo Oba Ewura II. This is in relation to the debacle in the community where the Enoge of the community has been suspended based on some flimsy and unverifiable claims that took Oba Ere Wudua to court. One Nusa Bayuwana, the Noge Egasse Iziu Saidi, a youth leader. Those are the defendants of this particular group. The plaintiffs are clearly spread out. Enoge was never parted to the court. He was never involved in court. Ere Wudua II is blessed among women to court. Eresi and I, we never went to court one day. Eresi lied against me that I took Oba to court.


Welcome to WRC 19 here in Shamashake in Egypt, the World Rady Communication Conference where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Arturo Robles, who is from the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones, regulator of Mexico. Welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation.  So I just wanted to ask you from the perspective of the Regulatory Authority of Mexico, what are some of the aspects of WRC that will be most important to you? Well, for us, one of the most important issues here for the conference is to be very active for the spectrum planning for the long term and for the next year, because there in Mexico, the National Regulator, they are in charge of planning a spectrum and to define which will be the next band that we will release. There in Mexico, we have a network that is unique in the world called Holte Network and everybody is watching us in order to know if it is a good idea. Right now, we are having very good results there and in the other bands, obviously, we are hoping that we will have a very, very good experience in order to planning the worldwide spectrum. Now a lot of work has gone into the preparation of this meeting. I wanted to ask you in terms of the study groups, what is their relevance, do you think, for the industry as well as for regulators? Well, for us and I think for all the countries, these study groups are one of the main and most important works and tools in order to be coordinated all over the regions in all over the countries, because as a member of the United Nations and as an organism of the United Nations, it is a very democratic and good form in order to get the consent to and in order to coordinate the worldwide spectrum that as you may know is one of the main issues right now with our digital world and the world digital economy. What are the main challenges facing Mexico in terms of connectivity? Well, in Mexico right now, we have more or less more than 10% of the populations that they have no kind of connectivity. We are more than 120 million people there living in Mexico and a lot of these people that they are already disconnected, they live in very isolated areas with a small village, so for us it's very important to maintain all the satellite services, but also to continue moving in the innovative services, the 5G networks as they have technologies and all these new solutions that these new digital transformation is providing to us. And what do you think will be the first to be rolled out in terms of these new technologies? Well, there in Mexico right now, we are having some 5G tests. Besides that, we are having very good results in order to connect this village with the K-band satellite. There are some of these small villages that the commercial satellite operation, they are going there even a decade ago or 10 years ago. There's no interest of any operators to go there and right now they are finding profitable and feasible options there in order to provide connectivity. Is this your first WRC? It's my first WRC. I have been in other ITU events, but for me it's the very first one and it's a pleasure to be the head of the regulator delegation and the deputy head of the Mexican delegation. Excellent. Well, we wish you the very best here at WRC 19. It's a long haul, but I'm sure everybody will come out with a consensus and hopefully getting the results that they want and hopefully we'll catch up with you again at some stage in the future. It would be great to be here with you in another time in another event. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.