Alright, gonna have to tread extra careful to make sure this one doesn't get demonetized, which means no bad language words. Hopefully the pressure doesn't build up too much. Most authors are bad at writing battles and even worse at writing wars. There, I said it. The most common fantasy war goes something like this. Dark Lord wants to take over the world because he thirsts for power. He fights all the nations of the world at once so they can pull their strength rather than trying to make any alliances or take them down one at a time. Then he has his army zerg rush foes with no regard for tactics allowing the heroes to lay a clever trap and temporarily turn the tide. But then things will turn against them, somehow, until the hero kills the Dark Lord and his old army disintegrates since there's no other generals, lieutenants, or politicians to take command. The most common science fiction war is pretty similar, only instead of killing the Dark Lord the heroes will have to capture a single important location, and maybe one of them will invent some new technology that the villains can't reverse engineer which saves the day. It should go without saying that most real wars don't work out that way. They tend to be much bigger and less dependent on individual people or even individual battles. Realistically, they're determined by things like resources, training of the army, equipment, preparation, and geography. Now, realistic doesn't always mean good. Watching someone sit in a trench for six hours before poking their head up and immediately being killed by a sniper might be a realistic portrayal of how someone would meet their end during the Battle of Verdun that wouldn't make it entertaining to watch. At the same time, when two armies just charge at each other and things turn into a bunch of one-on-one duels until somebody somehow wins, that's so far outside the realm of what we're willing to believe that it's boring. If you make something with a lot of moving parts and clever plans, then that's more attention-grabbing, more tense, and harder for the audience to predict. So let's learn how to do that. Let's start with battles then move on to wars because they're different beasts. But first, campfire. Hi Oscar, how's it going? Are you here to talk about campfire software and what a good deal it is for writers? Really? So you're telling me that the new campfire blaze is in open beta for the month of October? That it includes award processor, character sheets, timelines, locations, maps, relationships, character arcs, encyclopedia, magic, languages, items, and a research module? That you can build your own subscription and only pay for the features you need for as little as 50 cents? Or if you'd rather you can purchase them with a one-time fee and own them forever? The only thing more amazing than that is if you could collaborate in real time with other writers and there was a 30-day money-back guarantee. Wait, it has that too? Amazing! Should the people watching check out campfire blaze today? I agree. The best time is yesterday, the second best time is today. Click the link in the description to learn more. A battle is a relatively short engagement between two or more armed groups that ends when one of them is unable or unwilling to fight anymore. And that's key here. Battles are not about killing everyone on the other side, they're about rendering the other side unwilling to continue. If there was a fight between two groups of emotionalist machines, then maybe they would fight to the last with no hesitation, humans are different. We panic and run if we feel it's the best way to avoid being killed. In pre-modern times, armies would clash while in formation and chip away at each other until the men on one side panicked and ran. But which side wins isn't determined by who killed more, it's based on which side achieved their objectives. Are they trying to capture a strategic location? Push the enemy out of a region? Convince an ally to join their side? That's the important part and it has little to do with how many soldiers you kill. If you can display enough force to convince the enemy to surrender before the fighting starts, then that's still a win. There are exceptions to this. Sometimes when people thought they would be killed if they surrendered they would fight to the last, and some people are zealous enough to keep going when there's no hope of survival, but those are both rare. You mostly see that level of zeal from religious extremists or radical nationalists. A lot of writers forget about this and keep the fighting going until one side is completely wiped out. In Star Wars the spaceships fire lasers at each other until there aren't any more ships firing back at them or until the enemy base is completely captured. No one ever seems to cut their losses and surrender or run away. That goes for every major battle I've ever seen on film, even the good ones, like those in Lord of the Rings. And granted, a lot of the time this is justified by the heroes fighting orcs or shadow spawn or something that'll kill them if they give up. So it makes sense, however it takes away a dimension of the fighting, morale. Commanders have to know how to make their soldiers want to fight and give them hope that they'll survive, otherwise self-preservation kicks in and discipline dies. When discipline dies it's every man for himself and then you're dead. If you write some sort of battle, try and set things up in a way where maintaining morale is important for both sides. That gives opportunities for big inspiring speeches, big displays of power, and clever traps laid by both sides. Make one side tired or low on supplies to make things more tense. You were already putting in a cheesy speech, now you can justify it.  Fear is key. That's why tribal warriors used to paint themselves blue and run into battle naked. That's why Romans crucified rebellious subjects along roadsides. That's why terrorists fly planes into buildings. It's about making your enemy afraid. When they're afraid they don't think straight and they play right into your hands. When the actual fighting starts the manner of the battle is dependent on stuff like terrain and the technology used. Roman legions versus Germanic barbarians in a forest looks completely different from Mongol horse archers versus Chinese levies on a flat plane, which looks different from the Red Army capturing Berlin. If I tried to explain how every type of warfare worked I'd never finish. A few rules stand out and can be applied to just about any situation though. For starters, if the battle results in two sides breaking into large numbers of one on one duels then they have failed at being armies. At that point they're just a couple of mobs. The point of organizing and having things like chain of command is so that you can work together and protect each other.  Formations are key. There are many different types for different situations and different equipment. The point is that there's discipline involved. Discipline charges require teamwork to function properly, that's why breaking up enemy forces into smaller, easier to beat chunks has always been so important. Wrecking formations with things like terrain, archers, or booby traps often decides the winner. And this is one more way in which morale matters. If discipline fails then the army disintegrates. That holds true for old school spear armies and ones with modern hardware. In fact it's more important nowadays considering how much more ranged weapons have and how much bigger battlefields have gotten as a result. The main difference is that soldiers are no longer bunched up together, they're spread out and supported by things like artillery and armored vehicles, simply charging in on foot results in World War 1 and that kinda sucked for everyone involved. Next up, defense is always at an advantage, making it the most important thing to get right. Take the high ground and you'll be in a better position, whether you're using swords or laser guns. Put a wall between you and the other guys and they'll have to climb it while you throw rocks down at them. Defense isn't always an option but when it is, you should probably take it. Beyond defense, the most important part is mobility. If you can move faster than your opponents, you control the flow of what happens and you can hit them from multiple angles. Before modern times, and even during modern times to an extent, the people best at this were horse archers from the Eurasian steppe like the Huns, Mongols, Seljuk Turks, Cumans, etc. They rode horses with more stamina than most and could shoot a bird out of the sky while at a full gallop. So they would usually just ride around their opponents and riddle them with arrows until they broke, then close to melee to clean up. And since their level of horsemanship can't be learned except by a lifetime of experience, it was almost impossible to counter them. The only example of foot soldiers and heavy cavalry defeating horse archers in open battle I found is the battle of Dorilium during the first crusade. And even then, a lot of things had to go right for that to happen. Horses attacked a French army while it was moving and the crusaders quickly realized that if they tried to fight back normally, they'd be outmaneuvered and filled with arrows. So the knights formed a defensive circle with their shields and blocked incoming missiles for about 7 hours. Something like that required a hell of a lot of discipline. And even then, the knights were pushed back into a river before reinforcements arrived to flank the Seljuks. Horse archers are unbeatable on their own terms, but that applies to most armies of all sorts. The trick is not to fight them on their own terms, and that requires both accurate information on their capabilities and some imagination. But that ties into the last, arguably most important rule. Information is key to every encounter. It's extremely rare for anyone to have all the important information on a confrontation, limitations in communication, terrain obstructing the collection of information, and deliberate obfuscation by the enemy all prevent commanders from knowing everything they need. Even playing chess where you could only see half your opponent's pieces and once in a while your own pieces would do something you didn't tell them to, and so you had to rework your plan. Wheel of Time handled this sort of thing extremely well. Most of the time the characters we're following have no idea what's happening outside of their little slice of the fighting. All they can do is what they're ordered to. Things like trees, hills, and even buildings prevent them from seeing everything, and it's nice to read about battles that don't take place on flat empty planes. Warfighting, scouts, and locals should be gathering all the information possible so that the commanders know about possible ambush points, defenses, and choke points. During the fighting, whoever is in charge should be sending messages back and forth to the front line so everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing and plans can be adjusted. Insert that G.I. Joe quote here. For the sake of simplicity, I'm classifying sieges as a type of battle. Basically, they happen when one side holds a major defensive point such as a castle or city and the other side is unable to force their way in so they just surround them. Sieges involve a lot of waiting around for the other side to starve and trying to slowly wear down their defenses. Most of what I said about battles still applies here, there's just more emphasis on attrition. They are cool though. They have a whole host of new weapons to use like siege towers and catapults. So if you want to have a battle that lasts a long time and has plenty of push and pull while one side tries to end things as quickly as possible and the other tries to draw it out, consider making a siege instead. If you want more specific advice for this sort of thing, then one good idea to try is to search for real life battles similar to the one you're writing and use that as a template to get started. Writing a battle in a modern industrial city with modern weaponry? Look at the Battle of Stalingrad. Want to know how to break through a shield wall on higher ground? Check out the Battle of Hastings. Are your heroes trying to withstand cavalry charges with only infantry? The Battle of Tours holds your answers. If you're trying to show how a technologically inferior force can win using superior knowledge of the area, then read about the Battle of Tireswang. Note that you shouldn't copy it exactly though, since those of us who recognize it will notice. A war is, when you boil it down, a means of negotiating between states or other entities. All sides want something that the others have, whether that's resources, influence or religious endorsement, and taking it from them requires violence. It's not a simple matter of people hating each other, although that plays a part in it. Wars are generally seen as a series of battles, and just like battles they aren't about killing everyone on the other side, they're about making them give up. About making whoever is in charge feel that continuing to fight is not worth the cost. Whatever the type of government or level of technology, this holds true, and the way where you get the other side to capitulate is your strategy. When the rubber hits the road, strategy is far more important than tactics. There are tons of real-world examples of commanders who almost always won against their opponents in individual battles, yet wound up losing the overall war because they couldn't break the enemy's will to fight. Hannibal Barka, Robert E. Lee, Charles XII of Sweden, and Isaroku Yamamoto are all pretty good examples of this. For a fantasy example, look at Robb Stark during the War of Five Kings. He never lost a battle, but he had no real plan to win the war. He took no important targets that would force the enemy to surrender, and mostly just sat around waiting to beat off their attacks before he betrayed one of his most important allies and got assassinated. Plenty of military theorists will crucify me for saying this, and plenty of others will leap to my defense, but history doesn't lie. You need to be able to properly assess the strength of all sides and leverage your advantages against their weaknesses, otherwise you'll be ground down to dust. Feel free to argue that down below though. Generally speaking, wars in the past were settled with one or two big set-piece battles. There are exceptions, of course, the Second Punic War being a good example, but most old-school kingdoms and empires could only afford to field one army of any significant size. Once that was gone, it was to the negotiating table. Even if they had enough people for a new army, how could they feed it, equip it, get it where it needed to be? How could they train it to reach any level of effectiveness? Modern nation states can sustain far more damage than ancient empires and certainly more than old feudal regimes. You ever wonder how Alexander the Great could conquer 44% of the world's population with only around 32,000 men? However large their empire might have been, they needed the bulk of their people to make food and perform the other tasks that kept the economy moving. Nowadays, with the advantages of technology and efficient administration, we can take a bigger percentage of our populations out of work to go fight without making everything fall apart. And even more importantly, we can transport them and the materials for fighting to where the fighting is. Just look around wherever you are right now. How much of the stuff there was manufactured within 100 miles of you? Odds are, most of it was made in one or two locations before being loaded onto trucks, trains and ships to go all over the world. Without that sort of technology, we're limited to moving around stuff with wagons, at best. And even then, this sort of transport needs supporting technologies to work properly. Stuff like roads, railways and oil. During wartime, securing or destroying these resources is often paramount. You ever wonder why the Battle of Stalingrad was so important? Whichever side controlled the city controlled the Caucasian oil fields. The Axis forces needed oil to run their trucks and tanks, but they didn't have much in their home territory so they had to try and capture them. When they couldn't, their war effort effectively ended right then and there. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the American Navy had such great supply lines that they had entire ships that were just used to make ice cream for their soldiers. They had plenty of food so they were able to make more, just as a treat. After that, to the Japanese forces who were almost exclusively relegated to eating rice balls and whatever they could scrounge up for themselves. Before modern times, with all this wonderful stuff like trucks and refrigeration, moving armies were limited to whatever they could take from the land, peacefully or by force. When you write a war, take some time to think about things like this and how each side can take advantage by destroying or taking these things from the other side. If they have factories that make all their weapons, try to bomb them to rubble. If they advance into your territory, try to destroy all the roads so they're slogging through mud. If they're about to besiege one of your fortresses, take all the food from the surrounding area and burn whatever is left so they can't have it. If they have a choke point where all their transportation goes through, try to damage or capture it. That sort of thing is effective whatever the circumstances. That said, in more modern times, winning a war isn't about destroying enemy armies so much as destroying their ability to fight. In other words, it's about destroying their support base. While modern armies are much more efficient and better run than older ones, that efficiency is built on a complex system of supply and communication logistics. When that's disrupted, the whole thing slows down. One of the best real world examples of this is also one of the first used, General Sherman's March to Sea during the American Civil War. First he and his forces penetrated deep into territory held by the rebel confederate government, then captured the city of Atlanta, which was not only a railroad hub but an industrial center too. The army destroyed all the military infrastructure, making the city useless to the rebels, then they moved on to continue their destruction in the countryside. Railroads, factories, cotton mills, horses, surplus agriculture, and more were all taken or destroyed in a path of destruction 300 miles long and 30 miles wide. Civilians were left alone unless they resisted. The campaign was not about killing people, it was about destroying the economic base of confederate armies and instilling terror in its supporters. The government surrendered five months later.  But all of this has yet to really touch on the reasons wars start, and that's arguably the most important bit. Like I said, it occurs when one or more sides want something badly enough to kill for it. The most basic thing is resources or power. However, ideology can and often is important too. While ideology has always played a part in wars, in the past they tended to be less of a focus than, I want your stuff, give it to me. Back in the day, your average person wasn't very politically active, nor did they think they should have the right to be. Most of the time, one guy was in charge, and that was that. When power struggles broke out, it was usually about who would be in charge, not how. And depending on time period and location, the average person didn't participate in the fighting, that was left up to the ruling classes. They were the only ones who had the time and money to spend all day learning how to fight. It was only when average people became more educated and things like guns allowed them to fight on par with everyone else that wars became more about ideals. The flip side of this is that when civil wars break out, they can be along ideological lines as well as ethnic or religious ones, which results in a fractured landscape with a hundred actors all vying for supremacy, and while they can form alliances, the distrust runs deep. Look at the Russian Civil War. The common thinking is that it was the communist reds facing off against the czarist whites, but that's almost completely false. The reds were a more or less united faction, but the whites were divided into czarists, supporters of a military dictatorship, democratic socialists, liberals, and proto-fascist ultra-nationalists. That's not even counting the anarchist black army, the green peasant militias, the foreign armies supporting the whites, or the groups fighting for full independence. A big part of the reason the Bolsheviks emerged victorious is that they were united and working together while their enemies were all busy killing each other. Other factors were in place too, of course, like how they took control of most Russian industrial centers before the fighting began in earnest, but that's the biggest reason. Then look at this chart showing some of the factions fighting in the Syrian Civil War a few years ago, while keeping in mind that many of these factions are themselves coalitions of people who don't necessarily like each other. It's a mess. That's the most important thing about ideology. It always has different interpretations, and sometimes those are severe enough to lead to conflict. If you come up with a conflict motivated by it, there won't be two sides, there will be twenty. Long story short, if you want to write your heroes doing something really intelligent, don't think tactically, think strategically. Are there any faults in the enemy forces they can exploit? Are there different ethnicities or religious groups they could turn against one another? Where are the resources the enemy needs to keep fighting? Can the heroes destroy or capture them? What kind of weaknesses do enemy armies have in terms of equipment, training, experience, or leadership that they can exploit? If they can't beat the enemy outright, can they drag the fighting out until they get tired of it and cut their losses? All these questions and more can be used to shape events into something more complex and entertaining than the good guys simply fighting better than the bad guys. Hell, some of them can even bring up interesting philosophical or moral conundrums. I know a lot of this might seem complex to those unfamiliar with it, just keep in mind that this is surface level at best. There's a reason that becoming a military officer takes years of education. You don't need to create an entire logistical system, tactical doctrine, chain of command, and ethnography of belligerent nations to understand the basics of how wars work. Since you're creating everything from scratch, you're in total control. All you need is to determine the causes and outcome, then fill in the why and how to match with those. People that know their stuff will appreciate the detail, and people who don't will be more absorbed in the conflict, even if they don't understand exactly why. It's the same way that your average person enjoys the mysteries in elementary more than in Sherlock. Elementary portrays a detective who uses intelligence and reasoning to solve crimes, while Sherlock portrays a wizard who just knows who did it and how. They both reach the bottom of things, but one does it in a more satisfying way. Battles and wars work in the same manner. Intelligent victories are far more entertaining than the heroes winning by simple virtue of being heroes. It takes a little more work, but hey, you wanted to stand out. Buy Campfire. As always, thanks to all of my patrons, including the $10 Up patrons, Oppo Savilainen, Ashley Watson, B Quinn, Brother Santotis, Christopher Quinten, Mbis, Emily Miller, Evan Stagall, Joel, Carcat Kitsune, Madison Lewis Bennett, Mike, NB Star, Sad Mardigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, Vacuous Silas, Vaivictus, and all the other names on here, you know. You guys are great. I'd also like to thank the people who made the footage for this one, because, well, without them, would have been a pain, would have been a major pain. And all of you guys for watching, you guys are great. If you haven't already subscribed to this channel, then do that. Please, I appreciate it. It helps a lot. And also like the video, share it around, you know, all that sort of stuff. Anyways, see you next time. Bye.


Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to all of you, including Johnny Hernandez, High Tech Oki, Jim Hart and Nick Giuliani. On this episode of DTNS, Gemini shows the way to Google survival, a lightweight pair of AR glasses you can afford, and Disney sets the future of cord cutting for sports fans and more. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, February 8th, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Animal House. I'm Sarah Lane from Deep in the heart of Texas. I'm Justin Robert Young and I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Oh, my friends, get ready for most of America to call in sick on Monday. It's Super Bowl weekend coming up. And right before the show, Justin made us make our best bets for usher's first song in the halftime show. I went with OMG. Justin, you went with what? DJ got us falling in love. And Sarah was still on the fence. I'm not wagering anything. All right. You all bet amongst yourselves. I'm just going to enjoy it like an American. Fair. Roger, do you even care? How many usher songs? I don't know any usher songs. That's fair. Just let it burn. OMG. All right. Let's start. Those were his confessions. Sorry. Go ahead. Apple has removed the preview tag from Windows versions of Apple TV, Apple Music and Apple Devices apps. The change comes along with a major update to the iCloud for Windows app that leaves Windows users still relying on iTunes for podcasts and audio books. But you know, they're making a change. The new Apple apps are for x86 versions of Windows 10 and 11 only. So you still need iTunes for Windows. Denmark's data protection authority issued an injunction that will require schools that use Chromebooks actually municipalities, but mostly this is targeted towards educational uses to prevent student data from being sent to Google. The data authority determined that the method of transferring data to Google does not have a legal basis for all of its disclosed purposes. So it's not that they have to stop using the Chromebooks. Schools may continue to use educational services offered by Google workspace. They just have to lock these things down so that data is not transferred for other purposes, like helping Google improve Chrome OS, for example. The municipalities in charge of the programs have until March 1st to create a plan and then until August implement it. The US Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint and Federal Appeals Court Wednesday arguing that Microsoft's reduction of 1,900 employees in its gaming division contradicts what it previously told the court, which is that there would be no redundancies between Activision Blizzard and the rest of Microsoft's gaming division because it was a vertical acquisition. Not all 2,000 layoffs affected Activision Blizzard directly, but Microsoft did say the layoffs produced areas of overlap. The company responded with its own court filing to say that Activision Blizzard had planned layoffs on its own before the acquisition. Microsoft was like, wasn't it? The FTC, which continues to object in court to the acquisition, asked the court to pause Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Boy, the story just won't end. The FTC is like, we're not letting this go. You need to stop the thing that is already done. Mozilla's Mitchell Baker is stepping down as CEO, but will remain as Executive Chairwoman. Board Member Laura Chambers will take over as interim CEO. Chambers will focus on product strategy and pipeline. Chambers previously worked at Airbnb, PayPal, and eBay. However, the Mozilla board is going to conduct a search for a permanent CEO. To fund implementation of the Digital Services Act, the EU charges tech companies, who are affected by the act, supervisory fee. Those fees are determined based on user numbers with a maximum fee of 0.05% of yearly profit.  But if you're huge and profitable, think Metta, think TikTok, then you're going to pay a lot. Metta and TikTok don't think this is fair, and that each filed lawsuits against the European Union over these fees. Well, while they do that, Google does what it does best, right, Sarah? Yeah, it changes names of products. Google is the best at this. Hands down. All right. Google, you got it on lock. Google's back at it. So it confirmed Thursday what developer Dylan Russell noted Monday in Google's changelog, the AI-powered chatbot formerly known as Bard, plus its sister model Duet, which handles Google Doc stuff, will both be called Gemini in a combined effort going forward. The company also released Gemini as a dedicated app on Android, which users can use to set Gemini as their default assistant, meaning that you can use the wake word or long press the home button to launch Gemini. Gemini Pro is the standard version. A lot of people will use that at least at first, or if you want to go up for $20 a month, you can use Gemini Ultra 1.0, which is the most powerful version of the model, which also is bundled in as part of the Google One AI premium plan. If you're already on that plan and you're paying $10 a month, then you're only paying another 10. For newer users, it would be 20. Yeah. So I think you made that more clear than it needs to be, Sarah, because as you correctly pointed out, if you're on the Snappily named Google One AI premium plan, you get Gemini Ultra 1.0. But I'd like to point out that Google doesn't call it Gemini Ultra 1.0. They call it Gemini Advanced, but only when it's in Google One AI premium plan. Gemini Advanced, of course, is powered by Gemini Ultra 1.0. So I just thought I'd add that piece of lack of clarity, just in case somebody looks at this and is like, wait, what's Gemini Advanced? Also, just so you know, there's Gemini Nano too. Gemini Nano is the version that is on device that is used on the Pixel 8 for things that can be used by developers. So you've got Gemini Nano, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Ultra are the models. And then you've got Gemini, which is- You have other nomenclatures based on whatever else you're doing with Google, yeah. And then there's, yeah, anyway. Let's let them off the hook and be okay with them just calling their AI Gemini in all its various flavors. Justin, what do you think of Google's attempt to play catch up with open AI? Don't hold your breath on how long Gemini is going to be the name would be my first piece of advice to DTNS listeners. I've been consistently baffled with Google's foray into AI. They're very obviously playing catch up. I was very, very critical of their launch of Gemini, which I thought was anywhere between too slick to outright shameful in terms of how they demonstrated their technology. There's no reason why they should not have a best in class product here. Let me say that I am not here to say that they will never get there. They have to get there. They will change their entire leadership before they fail at AI. It is that big of a issue for them. It is an existential threat. That being said, boy, it is just this reek of Google's biggest problem of the last 10 to 15 years, which is middle managers run wild. And that's how you get 50 different names for one product in a sphere that is still experimental as much as we might know it as the future for technology or at least one of the possible futures for our world of technology. And I'm as bullish as anybody on generative AI. It still is a learning curve for a lot of people and giving it 50 names doesn't make it more inviting. It's just one name, Gemini.  Wow. Now we're writing novels. What I did think was interesting about this rollout is you can clearly see that Google wants to go all in on Gemini. And to your point, Justin, it's a little clunky. This is what Google does best. Not the rollout itself, but just naming things and trying to make sure that all the users understand what's going on. You just have a lot of people being like, okay, four or five different options. Fine. I just want Gemini to do something cool. Well, if you are one of those people, I think it's interesting that there's a new toggle at the top of the app if you're in a mobile experience on Google, switching from search to Gemini. Now, obviously Google search is bread and butter for the company, always has been. We'll probably continue to be for some time. But Google wants you to try out Gemini and learn to love it so much that it's willing to say like, all right, let's hide search and just use Gemini. Yeah. And furthermore, gosh, you know, you're using Gemini Pro, which is great. But if you want the better version, just an extra $10 a month on your Google One plan or $20 a month if you don't have a Google One plan, that's cost effective because a chat GPT's paid plan is $20 a month flat. So if you are already paying Google One, it's only an extra $10 and that looks cheap by comparison. And by all accounts, Gemini is better than GPT for it, some things and not as good at other things, but is roughly equivalent to, so you're not trading down to do that. I think this shows that Google, as we mentioned with YouTube previously on the show, is valuing subscriptions as it's hedge against moribund advertising dollars. So them saying, Hey, in your search app, you can use search, which we fund with advertising, or you can use Gemini, which we fund with subscriptions. Either way, I think that points the future of Google strategy here. Well, it is necessary for them. They need it. Right now, they've got a path in front of them. The question is whether or not they can walk it. And so far from the stuff that I've seen Gemini is it tested well, but in a test that they administered themselves, but it is not equivalent to GPT for and all the stuff that I've read so far. I've read some independent tests that have said, yeah, it's not equivalent in some things, but it's actually a little ahead in other things. It's too early to tell, to be honest. And there's no real objective thing. What I haven't read is someone trashing it and saying they're behind. And so I think, you know, depending on the use case, it's, it's Coke and Pepsi, not Coke and RC. Well, I mean, they are behind. They're behind by the way, by the way of saying that they are launching something that is GPT for equivalent when we could see GPT five from open AI at any time now. Don't count your GPT fives before they hatch. I'm, I'm still waiting on that. I'll bet you. All right. All right. Let's, let's, let's bet a steak on GPT five coming out by June. That's crazy. All right. Singapore based brilliant labs announced a pair of lightweight augmented reality glasses called frame with a multimodal virtual assistant named Noah on board. That's not the Noah that had the arc. It's NOA and the frames kind of look like something John Lennon or Steve Jobs might wear. They're the round frames or Gandhi as the company pointed out. Yeah. Sure. Because Gandhi would have bought some frames from Singapore based brilliant labs, as we all know frame. However, can display images and video at 640 by 400 not not super high resolution, but not bad, especially for something that actually just looks like glasses and isn't a big bulky goggles headset. NOA, the AR, the assistant can respond to voice commands with text that displays in that field of vision, but it can also recognize images, generate images and translate speech. Interestingly, NOA doesn't run just one model. It uses perplexity AI for conversational search. It uses stable diffusion for text to image generation. It uses whisper for speech recognition, and it uses GPT for for text generation. So it selected a model that thought it was best at each of these things and went with that particular model. You do have to connect this thing over Bluetooth to do things like search and to power the models. But that's another thing that's keeping the frames lightweight. One example, one use case they gave was you're out shopping, right? And you look at a shirt and you're like, I wonder if I could find a cheaper online. You can just ask the glasses. Hey, I'm looking at the shirt. Find it online. Tell me what the prices are. Frame is available to order right now for $349 and it'll ship in April. Justin, would you pop these on your face? You know, at sub 400, we're at least in the realm of screw it for S's and G's. Let's see what this kind of technology can feel like at this stage. I do think that the biggest issue or the biggest sign of this, because the product to me feels like a lot of spaghetti being thrown at the wall. We'll see what sticks. Not to say that it's going to be good or bad, but because AI is something that you can build on available APIs for fairly cheaply, it allows for a product that is promising a lot of punch for something that is that cheap because the hardware components have been there for a while. So I think that this is fascinating that these kinds of products are coming out for as cheap as they are. I mean, my first reaction was, are the glasses really my style? But you say that about any AR glasses experience. And obviously, Real Hate Labs is not the first to try this, but we're now in an era where people go instead of VR glasses, who even wants to do that? So dumb to like, hmm, okay, how do I do this out in the real world? Well, I'm not going to wear the Vision Pro on the subway, even though some people are doing that. But something like this could be something that I would use. I think the style, the lightweight function of it, and the fact that it has to pair to a phone, which I always have with me anyway, you know, as much as I would like to say like, oh yeah, I just wear my Apple Watch out and about by itself now. I need the phone to do all the good stuff. This feels like a pretty decent price point for what you're getting. Yeah, I think this is a different product category than either the Quest or the Apple Vision Pro. It's a category that CES was littered with people trying different aspects of this. I saw translation glasses. I saw the N Real, which is very similar as far as like showing you real time information while you're walking around. So this is, you know, these folks have a lot of cred in the community because they made the monocle. I don't know if you ran into that, but if you're familiar, that was a big hit with the open source crowd. And these, the frame are also open source. So, you know, they've got a posse there with the open source crowd. These are going to be a little more easy for people to understand the monocle, which was in fact a single lens as cool as that was, probably not a mainstream adoption take. And so having something that's more traditional glasses. And like you say, you know, stylish in a way that may or may not be your style, but certainly catches your eye and doesn't look like you're wearing a big thing. Well, because you're not. You're not. You're wearing basically prescription glasses, which they do offer. It's designed to be like, put them on in the morning, wear them all day. And by the way, I just went through their, their checkout process for prescription, a prescription version of it, you're still getting out for under $500, which was, I think is, is that's good. That's around the price that if you want to spend a lot of money, if you are somebody who spends a lot of money on glasses or likes to buy consumer tech, 500 is around. You know, that's not a crazy number. It's not that much more than some of the higher end, you know, prescription glasses that you'd get at your eye doctor. Yeah. Or even a, or even a pair of Chanel glasses. I mean, let's be honest, you can see me wear Chanel, but yeah. Well, but, but my point is, is like, you can buy expensive anything. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't do anything, but correct your vision. Sub 500 is good for a product like this. If it can deliver on the promise that the tech says it can, then I think these are a good buy for under 500. Lamar Wilson has been trying out the new version of the Wayfarers. I had the old, the first version of the Wayfarers and we were both talking about how the assistant stuff is kind of the stuff you love, right? It's, it's cool to be able to take pictures and shoot video from your perspective in certain cases, but really being able to just ask it things and have it tell you things and look at things and have it recognize things that feels like the situation you would use it more often. And so what frame's doing here or what brilliant labs is doing with frame here is, is more to my mind, what is likely to get people to want to pick these up. And you mentioned that this is not in the class of Apple vision pro. And I would totally agree. In fact, I think even going forward, this, the Apple vision pro to me is not something that is designed to be worn on the streets. It is designed more like a MacBook where you are at a location and you are, and you are working on stuff. These are the kinds of things that you want to wear at all times. And I do think it's more like the difference between an iPhone and a MacBook with, with the Apple vision pro being the MacBook and products like these as they continue to develop being smartphones. Yeah. And especially because most of the processing is done with your phone. These are just Bluetooth. You get hours and hours of battery life out of these things.  Well, folks, if you are into the Android scene, if you're sitting here every time we say Apple and you're like, ah, man, why aren't they talking about Android? Well, we've got a whole show for you. Android faithful every week. Android aficionados, Ron Richards, when's way down, Michelle, Ramon and Jason Howell bring you the latest Android news and information for an hour or more. You can watch it live on Tuesdays. They just did a show a couple of days ago, 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific, youtube.com slash daily tech news show or subscribe and enjoy it at your leisure at Android faithful.com Disney made a lot of interesting announcements on its earnings call Wednesday following the news earlier in the day that it would team up with Warner Brothers Discovery and Fox on a sports streaming service this autumn. One of the biggest takeaways is that Disney says it will take a small equity stake in Epic Games. Yes, Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite and also the legal nemesis of Apple. Disney says it will partner with Epic on an all new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences.  You get it, Disney magic. Disney also said a new universe will interoperate with Fortnite. Yeah, it's not an epic stake. Ten cents still owns half of Epic, but you know, it's something. Disney CEO Bob Iger also announced that a standalone ESPN streaming service will arrive in autumn 2025. So a year after this combined service with Warner and Fox, that one will have all ESPN network games, shows, content of any kind, as well as some of the website features like fantasy sports embedding. You'll be able to bundle it with Disney Plus and Hulu. And they didn't announce a price, but CEO Bob Iger said it would be more attractive than a cable bundle. One would hope that a service that is just ESPN would be more attractive than a cable bundle. Justin, let's start by focusing on that combo service coming this fall. We mentioned it quickly yesterday on the show. We don't know how much that one will be either, but we do know when it combines games from Fox Sports, TNT, ESPN and more, that it will have about 55% of US sports. Is this what court killing sports fans have been waiting for? I think that it is less what everybody has been waiting for and more an answer to a problem that they are going to really feel acutely over the next 10 years, which is the continued splintering and exclusivity of live sports rights. We already saw the first big shot of this war being fired during the playoffs this year for the NFL, where you had a Chiefs versus Dolphins playoff game, exclusively on Peacock, which is not in the top three streaming services. I've never had so many people ask me how to set up Peacock. Yeah. There's going to need to be consolidation. And from the sports perspective on this, you have probably the most valuable intellectual property in terms of game coverage that will be combining between ESPN, which has rights to things like Monday Night Football and beloved weekly broadcast from Turner Sports with the NBA, as well as a lot of other stuff. I think that there are some very interesting implications if you trace this out further. But for the rumored $30 or so per month that people are saying, if you can knock out the vast majority of all your sports watching and not try to app hop between a bunch of different stuff, I think that this is a pretty, pretty good idea. And it was one that not a lot of people were talking about before the announcement happened. How are you getting your sports these days, Sarah? On YouTube TV. So it's through the cable-like service. You just, you're like, I've got everything there. Yeah. That is, and still not everything, but most things. YouTube TV has come up in price quite a bit since I first got on board. What are we at now? 73 bucks a month? I think it's 72.99. You know, it was like 50 back in the day. But no, this works out best for me with a combination of over-the-air antenna for network stuff that I can get. Can't get any of the good stuff doing it that way, unless it's like the Super Bowl. So yeah, YouTube TV is what I use. I don't really have any qualms with it, but it's also just kind of my least expensive option. If I had a sports-only less expensive option, I would find that very attractive. Because again, with the OTA antenna, I can get like, you know, the Grammys and the Oscars and local news and just stuff that like I need every once in a while. And the rest of it I'm using third-party apps for anyway. Yeah, this doesn't solve the problem of fragmentation of sports for folks. And I think for someone like Sarah, YouTube TV is still going to be a better deal, because it has more things in it that you need. However, I do like the idea of this because it reminds me of Hulu. If you remember, Hulu in the earlier days was stopped, was started in order to combat YouTube, which seems odd, because YouTube is nothing like Hulu now. Everyone thought it was the thing that was ripping off all the TV shows. So major networks ABC and Fox got together to start Hulu, and they got NBC to come on board. They never got CBS to come fully on board, but they did get Warner and they got Paramount before Paramount and CBS were together as one company. I wonder, Justin, if they do that with this, right? They've got these three, so that's 55% of sports. What if they can get NBC and Paramount Plus to join in? Do you get the Peacock and Paramount Plus sports to be a part of this as well? And then you're pushing close to 90% of the sports, because there's other little things here and there, and obviously things on Amazon and Apple, and I wouldn't expect them to join it. Well, here's the other big thing, and I'm going to make a sports point that'll then dovetail out to a wider world. We're at a tipping point when it comes to sports rights. As we speak right now, people are exchanging paper and various different offers for what the NBA rights are going to be going forward. And Apple's involved, Amazon's involved, as well as some of the players here, ESPN and Turner specifically, which are splitting the package. Now, who knows how long those companies are going to be able to bid for that package on their own, unless they create a product that creates a lot of revenue, and they can continue to offer these leagues the kind of percentage upwards that they want. Because otherwise, you're going to be outside of the realm of bidding when Apple and Amazon come to call. And the larger point I want to make is, why would this only be true about sports? Why would this not be true going forward? And while we look at this grand game of musical chairs that is being played throughout all of these streaming services and the companies that may or may not want to be in them, one of the thoughts that people have had is that at a certain point, all of the dinosaurs, relatively speaking, are going to join together because they know that together is the only way that they can stand up to the apples and Amazons of the world. Yeah, I think there's more to this, like you say, that they're pointing towards. And it could be used in other ways. I also think it's an experiment. And I also think my last thing I think is price is everything. How they price this is going to make a big difference. My gut says $55 a month. I don't know why. Whatever it's going to be, we will see. Yeah, something around the $50 range would be... Or $49.95 maybe to start just to... Something like that.  Yeah. Come on over. ESPN and... And I would be like, yes, it's me. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes in from Brian who said, regarding your discussion on GDI yesterday about podcasts being open across platforms and wishing other social networks and web tools worked the same way, I feel like a key point is that podcasts are inherently unidirectional. That isn't the case with most social networks, where the goal is to get a bidirectional experience, right? Oh, that is a good point. That is a difference when we talk about podcasts are open and they've stayed open. Wouldn't it be great if social networks were that way too? Anil Dash, if you didn't hear our conversation on GDI yesterday, pointed out that you can say, find us wherever you get your podcasts. And that is truly a unique thing about podcasting. You can't say, follow me wherever you follow people. You have to say, follow me with this username on Twitter and this username on Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. And Brian's pointing out, it is easier to do unidirectional broadcasting like RSS than it is to handle follows, which Mastodon and Blue Sky are dealing with that complexity right now. So it's a good, it's a fair point. Yeah. Thank you, Brian. And thank you everybody who writes in with feedback, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Keep sending them. Always makes our show better. Justin Robert Young, you also make our show better every time you're on the show because you're a shining star. What else are you up to? Oh, thank you so much. Well, of course it is the political season with a presidential race ongoing. Your old boy was out in Vegas last weekend, wherein I covered the non-existent Nevada primary and caucus. The caucus is happening right now. But the primary, I told you on the show that Nikki Haley was going to lose to none of these candidates. If you want that kind of insight, you gotta listen to the show. Politics, politics, politics. Wait for it wherever you find your podcast. So you're saying nobody can beat Nikki Haley. My favorite petty comment was, I think, from one of the other campaigns that said the donors to Nikki Haley would have been better off giving their money to none of these candidates. Well, patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. Gotham Heights asked us what our guilty pleasures are. So we're going to tell them and you. Just a reminder, though, we do the show live and you can catch it live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back tomorrow discussing social media platforms from a small business owner's perspective with Aunt Prueh joining us. Back to you then.


In the wake of numerous reports of horrific rapes in various parts of the world in recent weeks, people have rightly been outraged and are demanding justice for the victims and measures to prevent sexual assaults. I share the outrage and stand in solidarity with the survivors and with those demanding justice. But I am concerned that there are also calls and in some places laws already being adopted, bringing in cruel and inhuman punishments and the death penalty for perpetrators. The main argument being made for the death penalty is for it to deter rape, but in fact there is no evidence that the death penalty deters crime more than other forms of punishment. Evidence shows that the certainty of punishment rather than its severity deters crime. In most countries around the world, the key problem is that victims of sexual violence do not have access to justice in the first place, whether due to a stigma, fear of reprisals, entrench gender stereotypes and power imbalances, lack of police and judicial training, laws that condone or excuse certain types of sexual violence, or the lack of protection for victims. The death penalty consistently and disproportionately discriminates against the poor and most marginalized individuals and often results in further human rights violations.  It is crucial that women are active participants in designing measures to prevent and address these crimes and that law enforcement and judicial officials receive the requisite training in handling such cases. Tempting as it may be to impose draconian punishment on those who carry out such monstrous acts, we must not allow ourselves to commit further violations.


The federal government has announced an $800 million World Bank grant as part of its palliative measures, proud to the elimination of the fuel subsidy. Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget and national planning, made this announcement on Wednesday during the Federal Executive Council meeting, which was chaired by President Mohamed Bwari. In order to advance the palliative program, which takes into account the need for bosses, among other necessities, Ahmed emphasized that continued interactions with the newly constituted presidential transition council and the incoming administration are ongoing. We've secured some funding from the World Bank that is the first tranche of palliatives that will enable us to give cash transfers to the most vulnerable in our society that have now been registered in a national social register. Today, that register has a list of 10 million households. 10 million households is equivalent to about 50 million Nigerians. But we also have to raise more resources to enable us to do more than just the cash transfers. $800 million for the scale-up of the national social investment program at the World Bank, and it's secured, it's ready for disbursement.


Welcome you all for the series of lecture on metrology, module number 10 and lecture number 2. In the previous lecture number 1, we started the discussion on comparators and we discussed a few mechanical comparators. In this lecture, we will continue the discussion on mechanical comparators. We will discuss about sigma comparator, Johansson microcator and we will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of mechanical comparators. And then we will move to the discussion on electrical and electronic comparators in which we will be discussing about electro limit gauge, visual gauging head, electronic comparator and their advantages and disadvantages. Then we will move on to the discussion on optical comparators. Now let us discuss about the sigma comparator. Now we can see this photograph shows the sigma comparator. This is the sturdy base and then we have a column here on which the measuring head of the sigma comparator is mounted. We can adjust the height of this measuring unit by moving it up and down and then clamping at the desired height. So, this vertical movement of the measuring unit is needed to adjust the work pieces of different heights. Now you can observe here a replaceable table. Depending upon the work pieces, we can replace these tables and then they have to insert the work pieces between the surface of the table and the plunger. So, this shows the schematic diagram of the sigma comparator. I can see this is the surface of the table and then we have a job which is to be inspected. The work piece to be inspected is placed between the plunger and the surface plate. When the desired, when the work piece size is equal to the desired size, then the pointer shows zero. Initially using the slip gauges, we should adjust the gap between the plunger and the surface plate equal to the desired height. So, in that case the pointer will show, the pointer will show the zero reading. And then what is the upper limit and what is the lower limit of the work piece? So, accordingly we have to insert slip gauges equal to the upper limit of the work piece and then we can mark the upper limit of the work piece and then we should insert the slip gauge equal to the lower limit of the work piece and then we can adjust the lower limit of the work piece. So, these limiting pointers we can adjust by operating these knobs. Now, the construction of the sigma comparator is like this. We have a plunger which is connected to a rectangular block. So, this rectangular block is supported by flexor plates, two horizontal flexor plates. One plate is here, another plate is here and then we have a knife edge which is supported on the crossed strip hinge. The details of the crossed strip hinge are shown here. It consists of a fixed member and then a moving member with these two members are connected by flexible strips as shown here. And then we have a y-arm which is one end of this is connected to the crossed hinge, cross strip hinge, movable part of the cross strip hinge. The other part is bound over a drum of radius R. A pointer of length capital R is mounted on the drum and then there is a bronze band wound over the drum. Now, having studied the construction, now let us see how the comparator works. The plunger is attached to the rectangular bar that we can observe here. And a knife edge is fixed to the bar which bears on sapphire block attached to the moving member of cross strip hinge. We have this y-arm or four-arm of length y and you can see here at the distance between knife edge and this vertical cross strip is x. Then when the workpiece is mounted or inserted between the table and the plunger, depending upon the height of the workpiece, this plunger along with this bar, rectangular bar will move up and down and hence this part, this end of the forward arm will also move up and down. And then the other end of the forward arm will also move and hence the pointer will also move in this fashion and hence we can take the reading using this scale. The magnification can be calculated using this expression y divided by R, y is the length of the forward arm and x is this distance times R upon R where R is the length of the pointer and small r is the drum radius. The magnification possible with such a comparator it varies from 300 to 5000 and at least count of 0.1 micrometer is possible. Now the specifications of commercially available Sigma comparator are as follows. Range varies from minus 0.07 to plus 0.07 and the scale graduation is 0.002 millimetre. Magnification of 1000 and up to 5000 is possible and then we have interchangable work table. Depending upon the workpiece these tables can be changed and the contact tips the plunger end which makes contact with the workpiece. They are replaceable. We can have a flat end contacting or rounded end contact tip like this that depends upon the type of workpiece to be inspected. The workpiece height that is that can be inserted between the plunger and the table surface varies from 150 millimetre to up to 600 millimetre by adjusting the height of this measuring unit. And then we can also have the tolerance indicators which will indicate the upper and lower limit of the workpiece. Now we will move on to the discussion on Johansson microcator. The construction of the Johansson microcator is shown here. We have the two S shaped parts. These two parts are assembled by using this flexible slicked washer. Now in the middle we have the plunger which moves up and down depending upon the workpiece height. And then there is a bell crank lever. This bell crank lever one end of the bell crank lever is connected to this S shaped body and the other end is connected to the top end of the plunger. And then there is a metallic twisted strip. So here we have a cantilever strip between the cantilever strip and the bell crank lever. We have this twisted strip and then at the center we have a light point. Now let us see how this comparator works. When we insert the workpiece between the table surface and the plunger, the plunger moves up and down depending upon the height of the workpiece. Any longitudinal movement in either direction, upward direction or lower direction will cause the central portion of the strip to rotate. See when the plunger moves up and down, this bell crank lever will move in this fashion. So because of this, the length of this twisted strip changes and hence this pointer, the strip will rotate along with the pointer. Now we can see one end of the strip is fixed to an adjustable cantilever and the other end is fixed to this bell crank lever. The bell crank lever in turn is connected to the plunger at this portion. So which moves up and down when we insert the workpiece. Now the bell crank lever causes the twisted strip to change length when there is a movement in the plunger. This change in length will result in a proportional amount of twist of the metallic strip. The magnification can be varied by changing the length of this bell crank lever. Now what are the advantages of mechanical comparators? These are usually inexpensive when compared to other devices, other types of comparators. These do not require any external power supply such as electrical supply or compressed air supply. Usually the mechanical comparators have linear scale which is easily readable. These mechanical comparators are very robust and they are very compact and hence they are easy to handle. For ordinary workshop conditions these are suitable and are portable. Now what are the disadvantages of mechanical comparators? They have many moving parts than the other types. Due to this the friction is more and ultimately the accuracy is less. So this diagram, this photograph shows the various parts, December parts of dial indicator. Any slackness in moving parts reduces the accuracy considerably. The mechanism has more inertia and this may cause the instruments to be sensitive to vibration. The range of the instrument is very much limited as the pointer moves over a fixed scale. Now let us start the discussion on electrical comparator, a particular comparator named electro limit gauge. So in this we will study the construction of the measuring unit of electro limit gauge and working principle of electro limit gauge. I can see here the schematic diagram of the measuring head of electro limit gauge. The construction is shown here. This is the surface plate or table on which we have to place the workpiece. We have to insert the workpiece between the plunger and the table surface. Now the plunger depending upon the height of the workpiece, the plunger will move up and down. If the height of the workpiece is greater than the desired height, the plunger will move up. If the height of the workpiece is lower than the desired height, then the plunger will move down. And then we have an armature which is supported by metal strip springs here. So the other end is free to move up and down. When the plunger moves up and down, this armature will also move up and down like this. It will tilt like this. This being the hinged point. Now when the workpiece is removed, plunger will move back because of this spring force. Now you can see here we have two electromagnetic coils A and B housed in this enclosure. Now these two coils A and B, they form two arms of AC bridge unit. When the plunger moves up and down, the armature will also move. The movement of the armature between the coils so the armature will move in this fashion. So this part of the armature will move up and down in the gap between these two coils. Because of the movement of the armature, the coils sets up out of balance which is indicated by the display unit. So this display unit will directly show the amount of movement of the plunger which will indicate the deviation in size from the desired size. Now this view shows a complete arrangement of an electrical comparator. We have the table surface plate surface and then this is the work table on which we have to place the components or work pieces to be inspected and this is the plunger of the electro limit gauge. So this housing contains the two coils armature etc. etc. So this is the measuring unit. The height of this measuring unit can be adjusted by operating this wheel to accommodate the work pieces of different size. Now the plunger movement sets up an out of balance which is supplied to the recording head. So when there is out of balance because the movement of the armature now this pointer will move over the scale and that movement of the pointer indicates the deviation of the size from the desired size. Now this is the schematic diagram of visual gauging head. Now this is the work table on which we have to place the components. This is the plunger of this visual gauging head which is connected to rod C. So in between the plunger and the rod C we have the magnification device which can be a mechanical liver arrangement. Now we have two electrical contacts A and B. So in between there is a gap between A and B there is a gap in which the rod C will swing. Now the electrical contacts position can be adjusted by operating the micro meters. So depending upon the upper limit and lower limit the position of these electrical contacts is adjusted by operating the micro meters. Now when the rod C is in central position that means where it is not in contact with either here B then that indicates that the work piece size is between upper limit and lower limit and the green light will glow which indicates that work piece can be accepted. Now if the work piece size is greater than the desired size or if it crosses the upper limit then rod C moves to the right and makes contact with B. When the work piece height is greater than the upper limit the plunger will move up and then the rod C will swing and it makes contact with this contact B and then red light will glow indicating that the work piece is above the upper limit and it should be accepted. Now the work piece is other size that means it is lower than the lower limit then the rod C moves to left and makes contact with the contact A and then the yellow light will glow indicating that the work piece size is lower than the lower limit and it should be rejected. So we can see that in this type of comparator the actual size of the work piece is not indicated it will only indicate whether the work piece is acceptable or to be rejected. Now this shows multi-gaging device. In the previous case we have one set of contacts that means at any given particular time at any given point of time we can check only one dimension whereas in multi-gaging devices multiple sizes can be checked at a time. For example we have a work piece wherein we have four dimensions to be inspected this is the first dimension, second dimension, third dimension and fourth dimension. Four dimensions are to be checked in such cases we can have a multi-gaging device since four dimensions are to be checked we can have four gauging units. So the work piece to be inspected is placed on the table and the work parts will come in contact with these gauging units. So depending upon the actual size of the different dimension of the work piece the yellow light green light or red light glow depending upon the size and they will indicate whether the work piece can be accepted or not. Now we will move to the discussion on electronic comparator. So this diagram shows the general arrangement of an electronic comparator. So this is the contact probe or stylus which comes in contact with the work piece. The work piece is to be inserted between the contact probe and the table. So depending upon the height of the work piece this contact probe will swing. Now the electronic circuitry of this comparator is like this we have an we have oscillator and then we have regulated DC supply and there is provision for adjusting zero the range also can be adjusted different ranges can be selected and then magnification can be adjusted. Now these electronic comparators they work on principle of frequency modulation. When the work piece is placed on the table the oscillator frequency alters that is because of change in the dimension of work piece from the preset value. For the desired size of the work piece there is a particular frequency when the size of the work piece differs from the desired size then the frequency gets altered which is indicated by this display unit in terms of the linear dimension. So thereby we can inspect the work piece and then we can decide whether it should be acceptable or rejectable. Now let us study how we can use an electrical comparator. We can see these linkage bars which is used as a reference to set the comparator for the basic size. Now we are watching the electrical comparator LVDT fixed to the stand. We can see the indicator which indicates the deviation of the work piece from the basic size. We can see two knobs are there to set the limits upper limit and lower limit. We can connect two comparators at a time A and B and this is for adjusting the sensitivity of the comparator. Now it is set to 100 units 100 microns. So the highest sensitivity is 0 to 3 microns. Now you can see the knob is set to 100 microns. So the range is from 3 microns to 1000 microns. Now we can see the back view of the indicator. So we can observe the power connection. This is the power connection power cable and we can connect since a comparator to A and B at a time we can connect two comparators. Now the power connection to the indicator. Now you can see this is the LVDT the comparator, electrical comparator fixed to the stand, the rigid stand. You can see it is fixed to the bracket and the height of the comparator can be adjusted by moving it up and down and then you can clamp it using the knob. So this is the clamp to clamp the electrical comparator. Now you can see the object wave inspected. The basic size of the component is measured using the ordinary caliper. So basic size is 19 millimetre. Now the basic size of the workpiece is 19 millimetre. So I have to take two, I have to build a pile of slippage of height 19 millimetre. So I am taking two slip gauges. First one is 9 millimetre and second one is 10 millimetre thickness slip gauge. I am bringing the two slip gauges after cleaning them. Now we can see the slip gauge pile of 19 millimetre thick. So this is the basic size of the component. So I am inserting the slip gauge pile between the table surface and the plunger of the electrical comparator and then indicator is set to read 0 when the size is 19 millimetre. Now you can see the pointer is reading 0. There is a small parallax error. Now the reading is 0. Now I am removing the slip gauge pile and then I am inserting the workpiece to be inspected. Depending upon the actual size of the workpiece, the pointer will move to the positive side or negative side. If the size is greater than 19 millimetre, pointer will move to the positive side and it is reading 4. So we have selected a range sensitivity of 100. So we have to read the top scale. Now let us discuss some advantages of electrical and electronic comparators. Now when these type of comparators, the measuring unit can be at a remote place and display unit can be in a control room. So in the control room, we come to know whether the workpiece can be accepted or rejected or how many workpieces are rejected, how many workpieces are accepted in a particular shift can be, the details can be obtained in the display unit placed in the control room. Now there are very less number of moving parts and electrical and electronic comparators. Hence, the frictional losses are very, very less. So very high magnifications are possible as I have said 10,000 times. The measuring unit can be very small, very compact and hence it is easily portable. Now what are the disadvantages of electrical and electronic comparators? These types of comparators, they require external power supply, that is electrical power supply is needed for the operation of these comparators. If there is any fluctuation in the electrical power supply, it will definitely affect the results obtained from the comparators. And since in some cases, there are heating the coils, magnetic coils are there because of heating of these coils, the measuring unit may cause zero drift which alters the calibration of the comparator. So at regular intervals, we have to recalibrate the comparator to ensure that the comparators are working with the correct calibration. If the scale is fixed with a moving pointer, then the working range is very small with high magnification of the comparator. Generally these electrical and electron comparators are more expensive when compared to mechanical comparators. Now in these type of comparators, the measuring unit can be at a remote place and display unit can be in a control room. So in the control room, we come to know whether the workpiece can be accepted or rejected or how many workpieces are rejected, how many workpieces are accepted in a particular shift can be, that details can be obtained in the display unit placed in the control room. Now there are very less number of moving parts and electrical and electronic comparators. Hence the frictional losses are very, very less. So very high magnifications are possible as I said 10,000 times. The measuring unit can be very small, very compact and hence it is easily portable. Now what are the disadvantages of electrical and electronic comparators? These types of comparators, they require external power supply that is electrical power supply is needed for the operation of these comparators. If there is any fluctuation in the electrical power supply, it will definitely affect the results obtained from the comparators. And since in some cases there are heating the coils, magnetic coils are there because of heating of these coils, the measuring unit may cause zero drift which alters the calibration of the comparator. So at regular intervals we have to recalibrate the comparator to ensure that the comparators are working with the correct calibration. If the scale is fixed with a moving pointer then the working range is very small with high magnification of the comparator. Generally these electrical and electron comparators are more expensive when compared to mechanical comparators. Now let us move on to the discussion on optical comparator. Now let us study the working principle of optical comparator. We can see here we have a mirror which is pivoted at this point and at the distance of D we have a plunger. So this plunger moves up and down when we insert the workpiece between the plunger and the tables. So when the plunger moves up and down, the mirror gets tilted. Now when there is no movement, when the mirror is horizontal we have a light source here, this is the light source and this is the reflected light source and then we have a screen with a scale. Now the angle, this angle is equal to the angle that is available here. This is the normal to the mirror surface. This is the light ray and this is the reflected light ray. So this angle is equal to this angle. Now when the plunger moves up, when the plunger moves up by a distance h then the mirror gets tilted by an angle alpha. Now we can observe that the reflected light, the reflected light tilts by an angle 2 alpha. The mirror tilts by alpha, the reflected light tilts by 2 alpha and this is how we get magnification in optical comparators. Now this picture shows the general arrangement of optical comparator. We have the table surface and this is the workpiece. So depending upon the heights of workpieces, we have the input displacement x. So this is the deviation from the desired size. We have a lever and then there is a pipe out here and the one end of the lever is in contact with the workpiece surface and the other end is in contact with the mirror. So when the pipe out, when the pointer, the one end of the lever moves by a distance of x, the other end moves by a distance y because of this mechanical amplification. Now when the, this end of the lever moves by y, the pipe out. Again we have a mirror here and then a pipe out here. So because of the moment of this moment y, the mirror tilts by 2 theta and the reflected light moves by 2 theta. So if the moment at this point is a small x, the moment of the pointer over the scale is capital X. So the, hence we get the, this moment is magnified here. So we have mechanical amplification as well as optical amplification. Now the main advantage of optical comparator is that it is capable of giving the higher degree of magnification due to the reduction in moving, less number of moving members are there and higher degree of magnification is possible because we use two types of magnifications, one by mechanical amplification and further it is magnified by optical means. So far we discussed about the different kinds of comparators wherein the, there is a plunger in the comparator which comes in contact with the workpiece surface and then the plunger moves depending upon the size of the workpiece and the moment of the plunger is sensed and then it is amplified and the amplified value is compared with the size of, with the desired size of the workpiece. Now let us study about the another method of comparison wherein we use chart gauges. The chart gauges contain lines which denote the tolerance limits of the parts. I can see here we have a diagram here, this is the screen of the optical projector, optical comparator and then a chart gauge is fixed mounted on the screen of optical comparator. These chart gauges they contain lines you can see here this is a line corresponding to the upper, upper limit of the workpiece and then we have another line inside corresponding to the lower limit of the workpiece, low limit of the workpiece and this is the shadow or image of the workpiece. So image is made to fall on the chart gauge, the shadow of the part is made to fall on the chart gauge and if the shadow is within the tolerance zones that means you can see here the shadow the edges of the shadow are between upper limit and lower limit. Now if this is the case the workpiece is acceptable. Now I can see here how the comparison is made. This is the screen of optical profile projector wherein on the screen a chart gauge is mounted. You can see here we have different lines corresponding to different radius values and then we have circular scale using which we can measure the angle. So this is the workpiece image and this is the chart gauge mounted on the screen. So these apart from the comparison these chart gauges are used to check fillets, chamfers, threads, etc. For example, so we have a workpiece like this and then using the radius chart gauge we can measure the radius of this fillet that means the shadow of this work part is made to fall on the chart gauge. Say this is the shadow of this particular part and we can see to which radius line this shadow is coinciding and that particular radius will that particular line will indicate what is the radius of the fillet. Similarly, we can measure the chamfers and then we can also check the threads, screw threads using these chart gauges. Now how do we design the chart gauges? The following considerations are very very important in designing the chart gauges. The chart gauge should be made of a dimensionally stable material. A rigid material is preferred for normally plastic sheets. Clear transparent plastic sheets are used or the chart gauges are made on the soda line glass plates. The humidity and temperature coefficients of the chart gauge material must be considered. The lines on the chart gauge must be uniform in width with sharp edges. The lines must withstand the normal usage and cleaning operation. The chart gauges should be calibrated at regular intervals determined by the usage. The chart gauge master image should be produced with a precision plotter to 0.025 mm or better accuracy. The calibration fiduciary marks should be included for dimensional control. They should be stored. The chart gauges should be stored flat and they should never be rolled and they should be stored in a normal gauge room in the environment wherein the proper temperature and humidity is controlled. Now there are custom chart gauges depending upon the application or the customer usage. These custom built chart gauges are made by using a CAD file or a marked up print along with the chart size. And what is the magnification needed? She is also should be known to prepare the custom chart gauges. Now we can see here this is a custom chart gauge with the upper limit and lower limit of the work piece. Commercially standard chart gauges are available in the market and they are reproduced under controlled conditions from precision master on a dimensionally stable plastic sheet or soda line glass. Standard chart gauges are available in various line patterns at various magnifications like 10x, 20x, 50x. So different magnifications chart gauges with different magnifications are available in English as well as metric units. I can see some of the standard chart gauges. So this is a centerline chart gauge, radius chart gauge for example. So we have a work piece round work piece. So the round work piece is placed on the table of the optical comparator, profile projector and shadow is obtained on the screen which contains the radius chart gauge. The image is compared with the lines printed on the chart gauge. So with which line, with which circular pattern is coinciding that gives the radius value or the diameter value. Similarly thread screw thread chart gauges are available, protractors are available using which you can measure the angles. So this picture shows a combination chart gauge. You can see here one side we have which gives radius values and other side we have angle, angle can be measured, angle of work pieces can be measured. So this is a radius angle chart gauge. Now we can see a component which is having an angle. So it is placed on the table of profile projector. We wish to measure the angle between these two edges. Now we have selected an objective of 10x and using a chart gauge of 10x it is mounted on the screen of profile projector. So this angle chart gauge is used to check the angle on the work piece. Now we can see one edge the shadow of one edge of the work piece is coinciding with the zero line and the other edge of the shadow is coinciding with the 45 degree line. So the wedge angle on the work piece is 45 degrees. Like this we can use the chart gauges for measurement of angles. So this is the complete view of chart gauge. Radius can be measured as also angles can be measured using this particular chart gauge. Now what are the advantages of the optical comparators which uses chart gauges? So these optical comparators have a small number of moving parts. Now let us study what are the advantages of optical comparators. So these optical comparators have a small number of moving parts and hence less friction and higher accuracy is possible. In the optical comparators the scale can be moved past a datum line and thus have higher range and no parallax errors. It has a very high magnification and optical lever is weight less. So inertia effects are very very less. Now there are some disadvantages of optical comparators. As the instrument has a high magnification heat from the lamp and transformer etc may cause the setting to drift and electrical supply is necessary for the operation of optical comparators to light up the lamp. The operators are usually large and very expensive and compared to other types. When the scale is projected on a screen then it is essential to use the instrument at a dark room in order to take the readings easily. If there is too much of light in the room where the optical comparators are placed then taking readings becomes a bit difficult. The instruments in which the scale is viewed throw the eyepiece of a microscope. Such instruments are not convenient for continuous use since the operator is subjected to high fatigue. Let us conclude this lecture 2. In this lecture we discussed about the different kinds of mechanical comparators such as sigma comparator, Johansson microclator. We discussed the construction and working of these sigma and Johansson microclator. Also we discussed about the various advantages and disadvantages of mechanical comparators. Then we also discussed about the electrical and electronic comparators. In this section we discussed about the electro limit gauge, visual aging head, electronic comparator and various advantages and disadvantages. Also we discussed about the optical comparators. So in this section we discussed the working principles of optical comparators and we also discussed about the use of chart gauges, the different types of chart gauges and how to use them. And also we discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of optical comparators. In the next lecture we continue the discussion on the comparators. Thank you.


I can't remember a time when I didn't hate myself. It's a truth that haunts me every day. A ghost that pokes at my heart, my mind. See, here's the thing with depression. It creeps up on you. It might be slow at first, but when it hits you, it chokes you until you cannot breathe. Strange really, how it felt like just months ago I was fine. And now I feel like I'm drowning. But depression doesn't always come slow. No, it can crash upon you like a wave when you are least expecting it. It started with the small things, sleeping in a little later, eating a little less, feeling drowsy, tired and unmotivated, feeling different emotions for no reason at all.  Now it stays in bed, now its entire meal skipped, now it's a messy house, now it's numbness. My phone rings, it's 1pm and I'm borrowed beneath a pile of blankets. I really don't want to pick up that call.  I give myself a quick peek at my phone, and my gut twists when I see it read, mom. I still hesitate, I just want to go back to bed. Why are all these people bothering me? I feel guilty though. My mother is probably worried and I haven't even looked at my phone in three days, as I reluctantly rise. I numbly gather that I am sitting in a room that reeks of rotten food, with piles of laundry rising like towers around me, and somehow I do not care. I don't remember when there was a time that I did. Hi mom, I say weekly. I always cracks with days of unused. Her soft, troubled voice makes me wince. She asks if I'm okay, she asks if I've eaten, she asks if the house is cleaned. I answer shortly to everything. One word responses, and I think that troubles her even more, though I can't know for sure. I'm not quite sure of anything these days. I expect her to ask me these questions, to be concerned for me. It surprises me a little though, when her voice turns hard, and she says, you used to be so much more, now.  Hurt comes in a wave that shocks me, for it is one of the darkest feelings I have felt in a very, very long time. It hurts me because she is right, because it is a truth so harsh that strips and reveals me. Two months ago, I was on the verge of promotion in my career, in a healthy relationship and surrounded by supportive friends. Now, I grieve for the life I had. I haven't talked to my partner or friends in days. Work emails flood my inbox, and I surely lost that promotion that I worked so hard to get. It surprises me that this all makes me mourn the life I had. I expect to bury myself back under the sheets of my bed and live the rest of my day away from the world. Instead, though, I find myself peeling back the covers, my feet touching the floor, then walking to the kitchen. I take one look at the kitchen. Dishes piled up high, food scattered all over the counter, and for the first time in weeks, I feel something like a spark festering in my mind. Telling me to clean that dish, wipe down the counters. So, I spend the next hour cleaning my kitchen. My mind is still a little numb, but it gives me help when slowly some of the wheels start turning in my head once again. When the kitchen is spotless, gleaming in a way it hasn't before, I feel so very proud of myself. My eyes shift next to the messy living room, but suddenly the thought of cleaning it overwhelms me. So, I think, baby steps, and then the day with a small smile on my face. Hope, at last, takes root in my heart. I say to myself, thank you for cleaning up. Thank you for knowing your limits. Thank you for trying. The next morning, I convince myself that staying in bed would just be easier. I can feel the momentary high from accomplishing something yesterday wearing off. That numbness is in my mind again, and I just feel so tired.  I feel guilty and like a failure. When I spend the day again, borrowed beneath my sheets, avoiding the world, I feel frozen. I feel distant. So much self-hatred burns through me, but I don't have the energy to do anything about it. I feel so many things, but I just can't get up. The next day, I decide it's a new morning with new possibilities. Guilt and remorse still turn in me for wasting a day, but I know I can atone for it by making the most of this one. I make my bed. I even get ready to go for a walk, which I haven't done in months. Just as I'm about to leave, I notice a slip of paper on the counter, and recognize it as my therapist's phone number. The thought of calling her scares me, but I don't even think of it as I slip it into my pocket. The sky is blue. The breeze, gentle. It washes out my mind, clears it out, and suddenly I feel sharp. In a way, I haven't been in a long, long time. For a while, I just walk. Just me in the open sky. And I cannot remember the last time I felt so focused. So sure. Soon, I let my hand reach for the paper with the faded phone number. I stop and stare at it, and for a moment, fear and logic war in my mind. Speaking my feelings and being so vulnerable has always scared me, though I know it is an essential step if I want to have my life back. So I stop as I dial the number. Her voice, calm in its way, floods my ears and relaxes me. She has her way of doing that. Her voice alone, able to take a weight off my shoulders. So right then and there, under the shade of a tree, I pour my heart out to this person who listens and understands. I always feel guilty for burdening others with my issues, but it feels good to at least feel like I'm not so alone. It's hard to come to terms with the fact that some will support your recovery and some will not. Some people don't understand how long it really is that it contains ups and downs. When I go to speak with my mom, she does not understand. She looks frustrated and says, But you used to be so happy. Just be happy again. It's so hard to tell her that it doesn't work like that, because she just doesn't understand mental health very well. It's hard to fight those tears, and I know I shouldn't let my anger get the best of me, but I do. I yell at her.  You make everything worse! And I storm away. My mind a flurry of emotions. Doesn't she know I'm trying my best? That night, I crawl into bed, and my mind replays every word I said to my mother. I feel so many things. Anger, regret, repulsion. It's too much. My breathing quickens. I feel lightheaded and my palms become sweaty. I feel like everything is about to come crashing down in for a moment. I think I should welcome it. It's difficult to feel like a burden.  I feel useless. I must be such a hard person to be around. I just can't stop feeling guilty, because I make everyone's lives so complicated. I often feel like a boulder, and my peers are forced to drag this weight around. I'm so sick of feeling that way. Like someone they have to be careful around. Through my struggles, I try to remember everything my therapist said, that every day is a new chance, a new day I shouldn't waste it over one moment. So I start doing the things I love again. Painting, reading, gardening. They calm my mind, and above all, make me so happy. They rekindle the passion that I knew was always there, but just tucked away. I realized bringing back the things I love is important, because it reminds me that there is just so much to live for. Life can be so very beautiful if you look in the right places. I also begin to be kinder to myself. Instead of punishing myself for every fault, every flaw, I begin to see the small beauties of life once again. They aren't major, huge things, but then again, most beautiful things rarely are. It's a cool breeze on a hot day. It's homemade cookies and lemonade. It's music that calms my mind. These things, I treasure in my heart as it begins to heal from the damage it went through. It has been two weeks. Two weeks of days when I have felt on top of the world, and days when it has gotten crashing down. Today, I step into work. They tell me the inevitable that I've lost my promotion and that I will have to work to earn it back. It hits me all at once. I knew what was coming. I really did, but hearing those words out loud was like a blow to my heart. I thought that I was ready to move on, that I had been doing so great in my recovery that I was strong enough. I think what hurts the most is that this proves that I'm not. Feelings flood into me. I suddenly feel like I can't do this. Like it's so much all at once. So I do what I told myself not to do. I walked away. At first, I feel incredibly guilty and hated that I walked away. I feel like a failure. I feel like everything my mom told me I was. Nothing. Simply a burden to everyone I meet. Why can't I be better? Why can't I be smarter? Why can't I be more adaptable? These questions haunt me for a few days. I feel myself falling back into familiar habits after this one setback, and I hate that above all. It takes me a while to come to terms with the fact that I'm just not ready to go back to work, that healing can take a while, and I have to let that happen before anything else. It's been a few months, and in these months so much has happened. The major difference I made is that I began to remind myself of how I felt when I had those beautiful days, how I felt fulfilled, and how I would think I want this to last forever. It took me a while to realize that this feeling could last forever, if I wanted it to, and that is when my life changed. That being said, if I said that my recovery has been a smooth easy process, I would be lying to you. It was in fact hard and unpredictable and strange as any transition in your life might be.  Others are filled with exhaustion and blankness, tears and numbness. No one claimed it was to be easy or smooth. No, it's filled with tears and grief and everything in between, but maybe there's some beauty in that process too.