Coming up on DTS Justin helps us understand new antitrust bills aimed at big tech in another addition of creepy or not creepy Amazon's drivers get surveillance cam strained on them and pay attention Web 2.0 kids delicious is back. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, February 4th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young. And the show's producer Roger Chang. Oh, we were just talking about Lil Yachty's new movie. It's going to be about Uno. That was on Good Day Internet. If you'd like to get that conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Myanmar's new military government ordered that local telecoms temporarily block Facebook owned services in the country from midnight on February 3rd through February 7th claiming that the platform was contributing to instability. The digital rights nonprofit access now estimates that there are 22 million Facebook users in the country. A new report by Canada's Privacy Commission found Clearview AI's facial recognition database to be illegal mass surveillance and said it sent a letter of intention to the company telling it to cease services in the country and delete Canadian faces. Clearview has not operated in Canada since July due to the investigation and says it will allow Canadians to opt out of the database, but will challenge the determination in court. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is on a bit of a roll this week. The latest from Kuo is word of another lens supplier for the main next-gen iPhone, perhaps called the iPhone 13 that's expected next year and its camera. Kuo says that Sunny Optical successfully passed Apple's approvals process for iPad lenses and are likely to be approved to make the main camera lens for the iPhone 13 lineup. Currently, Largon, Yu Jingguang, and Kankatsu supply lenses to LG Inatec for incorporation into the camera module so Sunny Optical would be yet an additional supplier for that lens. Parler co-founder John Matz announced he's been fired as CEO by the company's board. In a statement, Matz said, quote, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech, and my view of how the Parler site should be managed. He supposedly proposed expanding automated content moderation on the platform as well as a full ban on accounts tied to designated domestic terror organizations. The blockchain-based service network or BSN backed by the Chinese government acts as an operating system for blockchain program development. China's State Information Center, an affiliate to China's top economic and reform planner, credit card processor Union Pay, Telecom China Mobile, and Beijing-based startup called Red Date are all involved in supporting both consortium and public blockchains. This week, BSN announced it will roll out a permission diversion of Cosmos, that's a network comprised of many independent blockchains, and calls itself the Internet of Blockchains. So Justin, you'd have no concerns of just jumping on an open blockchain from China, would you? No, Tom. Certainly no red flags there. I mean, the State Information Center is part of the deal. I don't know what you'd be worried about. Yeah. All right, let's talk a little more about the information given some details on Apple's alleged upcoming mixed reality headset. Sources have more details, including a rendering this time of what they say is Apple's VRAR headset. A lot of the details are similar to what we heard from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg earlier last month. It's expected to use fabric mesh, run on an Apple design chip, cost a lot, although we got a number as much as $3,000. The headset may have more than a dozen cameras for hand tracking, LiDAR sensors for room mapping and AR effects, dual 8K displays and eye tracking. To save battery life, the information sources says Apple would use foveated rendering. That's when you only render in full resolution what your eyes are looking at. Everything in the periphery can be a little lower. Sources say Apple has not finalized input control, but the options they're considering are a combination of hand tracking, eye tracking, a dial on the headset or something they call a thimble like accessory. Oh boy. Well, the thing that jumped out to me first because we have talked about this before, this rumor has been swirling really for years, but it seems to be more of a reality than ever is that $3,000 price point. Now, again, it's a rumor and yes, Apple tends to make things that are similar to other products that are more expensive and then says, but it's Apple. So, you know, we can do that sort of thing. $3,000? Oh my goodness. You know, compare that to the Oculus 2 for $300. That's a crazy price point. I don't know how the company could get away with such a thing. I mean, I hate it when we start debating this early in the process, exactly what the price point is, as if it were announced as a consumer thing and we're going to judge it against other consumer things. I could see by the time that Apple releases a headset like this that we do see a $1,000 version of the Oculus Quest. I don't think that that will necessarily be maybe the most important thing. What is very interesting to me here is the idea that they seem to be going away from any kind of physical, haptic feedback giving device. Oculus does do hand tracking, but this thimble like accessory might be a way that you could have something on your hand that could give you some kind of feedback without it being a controller that you are holding in your hand. The idea that this will be more expensive than every other headset of virtual lock. You can take that to the bank, mostly because you'll need to withdraw a lot of money to buy this, but the idea that it's $3,000, I highly doubt. Apple, specifically when they're in this rumors game, they have a habit of feeding a higher number. So even when they come above the rest of the market, it's lower than what has been reported and it looks like they're more economical than they would be otherwise.  I can't tell the difference between a 4K and 8K television, not with my own human eyes. Maybe if something's that close to you, it will make a difference, but kind of remains to be seen, you know, what these specs actually mean. That's where 8K supposedly does make the difference is when it's really close up, which is why the TV thing. It's like, well, I don't sit right in front of the TV, but with the headset, that could make a difference. I do think it will make a measurable difference in a VR headset. Well, next month, Pixel phone owners will get a feature in the Google Fit Health app that can measure their breathing and also their pulse rates just using the phones built in camera. For measuring breathing, you have to prop the phone up against something. So it's facing you, then the app will guide you to frame yourself a certain way so it can see your torso and then measure the rise and fall of your chest as you're breathing. For heart rate, it can measure subtle changes in the color under your skin when you actually place your finger on the rear camera. So front facing camera for breathing, rear facing for heart rate. Measurement is calculated on the device. You actually have to choose to save results to your fit account, so it's not going to do that without your consent. You can also delete those results whenever you want and Google conducted clinical trials on multiple skin tones, multiple ages, multiple lighting conditions, but the features aren't yet FDA approved, so they aren't meant for medical use just yet. Even so, nice to have a lot of this stuff built in. If you don't have a fitness tracker and you have a Pixel, you can at least get certain things done. Yeah, it's not something you're going to use constantly, right? But it's sort of, in a way, it's sort of a proof of concept of look what your Pixel can do. And I imagine they will expand this to other Android models out there potentially if the cameras meet the specifications. But of course, they know what the cameras are in their pixels, so it's easy for them to roll it out there first. Samsung had something similar to this, but it was a separate sensor that you held your finger over to get your pulse. So the fact that they can just use the camera that's already there is somewhat impressive. How practical, but it's interesting. This is a Cluj, but it's a Cluj in the same way that Apple has hyped up their AR features on their phone. People very rarely use in their daily life the AR features on the iPhone, despite the fact that it does it very, very well. Where it will really sing is on something like a VR AR device that they're going to sell you for a price. I think that this stuff will eventually wind up really seeing a tremendous adoption and utility is in either another device, maybe a mirror or something for fitness specifically, or you build it into some of the Google Home smart devices where you can just look into a thing. Because what's frustrating about this application is that you're going to have to prop up your phone on something that's stable and you're going to have to look at it. You're going to have to touch it without moving it too much and you're going to have to frame yourself. Nobody's going to do that on a regular basis unless you have a tremendous desire to do this. And even then there's probably easier ways that you can get this data. If it's already mounted, if it's already on your kitchen counter, if you already know where you need to stand when you come back from running to see what all your data is going to be, that to me is a feature that sings a little more.  You have to touch the thing to get the heart rate. So that seems like it's a more temporary thing. But yeah, I could see this leading to other stuff down the road. Amazon told CNBC that it's testing cameras from the company Netredine on some Amazon branded contract delivery vehicles. The camera called Draveri has four lenses to capture the driver, the road and both sides of the vehicle. It records at all times but does not live stream. On-board software can detect 16 safety issues including speeding, distracted driving, hard braking, safety belt usage and more. In some cases like speeding or following too closely, the system will issue an audio alert like please slow down or maintain safe distance. Other behaviors like hard braking or sharp terms will trigger an upload of data to a secure portal without alerting the driver. It does not record audio and drivers can turn off the driver facing camera when the ignition is off. Amazon's privacy policy issued with the camera says Amazon may use data collection on the camera in employment decisions. It can also be used to defend the driver in collisions or complaints of package theft. UPS began testing a similar system with its drivers last year. Yeah, so you could pick where you want to fall on this, right? Because having a system that tells me like, hey, you forgot to put your safety belt on. Or, oh, you're going a little fast there, partner, which is not what it says. But something that's like, oh, thanks. That's helpful. You have a very Pixar-esque version of it. The Disney version of this will be a totally different thing. But I could see some of this being like, as a driver, I'd appreciate it. On the other hand, the idea that when I break really hard or yawn, which was one of the examples that a driver gave CNBC, and that automatically gets uploaded and a supervisor asks me about it later or contacts me and says, I saw you yawn. You now have to take a 15-minute break at the side of the road. I might get a little annoyed at that. Like, I yawn, but I'm not tired. Or, you know, like, of course I hard-braked. I was avoiding an accident, and now I have to defend myself. Yeah, I think that the obvious privacy concern is, I mean, it's just obvious. Some of the stuff that made it less of an issue if I were an Amazon driver is not recording audio. So sure, maybe you're on the phone with your mom. It's hands-free. You're not doing anything illegal. You're driving. You know, that stuff is supposedly not getting recorded. You can turn the camera off if you're not on the road. I don't know. Maybe you're in a parking space or eating a sandwich for lunch. You just don't want anybody to see you doing that because you're not, you know, on the clock. And having safety warnings if something happens is mostly a good idea. I think that, yeah, if you yawn and that becomes something that the company might say, hmm, maybe the shift is a little long. We've been thinking about maybe, you know, splitting shifts up so that drivers don't get fatigued. This is good data for us. That would be one thing. But yeah, if it's sort of like now you're forced to not drive or you somehow seem like you're not doing your job well enough because we're watching you, that becomes a different issue. To me, it's, I don't know how different it is than, you know, having your boss kind of breathing over your shoulder and snooping at what you're doing. And if you don't seem like you're working, you get asked about it, but it's different when it's remote. You know, it's funny that you say, oh, if they're yawning, then we might lessen their roots because the inverse of that would be that if they're not yawning, then maybe they can take on more roots. Maybe they can. Right. Yeah. This is both, both. Yes, it is an invasion of privacy.  It's going to be about Amazon and their culture of recklessness. So this is them covering not only for probably insurance claims, just as much as anything in terms of people looking to sue, you know, Amazon, again, for trucks that have Amazon on the name of it, because they assume they're going to be able to get money from a settlement, but also to try to proactively make sure that they keep as safe of a work for, or sorry, let me not even say safe because safe would even be loaded and biased in terms of Amazon. The least legally actionable drivers that they can possibly have. Lowering liability. Yeah. Liability lowering. Listen, I think every time there's a new system, and I'm not saying the system is better or worse than these other systems, but putting governors on trucks that say, well, we'll just keep people from going over 65 miles an hour and that'll stop our drivers from speeding, or just making people making it against the law not to wear a safety belt, right? Everybody always complains when it changes. So some of it is that, but DJ, a former UPS driver in our discord says, this is all annoying. So yeah, I don't think drivers really are seeing the other side of this. Hey, folks, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? Well, let us know in our subreddit. We love getting those suggestions. It definitely helps us put our lineups together every day, submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. The incoming head of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, Senator Amy Klobuchar, plans to introduce a new antitrust bill targeted at big tech companies that would place limits on acquisitions. If the bill became law, here's how it would shift the burden of proof onto companies with more than 50% market share. So that's how this bill would work. It would work by shifting the burden of proof, and I'll explain what that means in a second. And it would only apply to companies with more than 50% market share, which right now that's a lot of big tech companies. If you are one of those companies, you would have to prove that an acquisition would not create an appreciable risk of materially lessening competition. In other words, if this were the law now and Facebook were buying Instagram now, Facebook would have to prove that buying Instagram wouldn't hurt competition rather than what they had to do under the current law, which is having investigators prove. Like you would, right under the way the law used to work, you had to prove that it would hurt competition for Facebook to buy Instagram. They want to change the law to say Facebook has to prove it won't. Some conduct would be presumed anti-competitive unless the company can prove otherwise. So let's say Amazon shuts a company off its platform for what it says were violations of policy. Right now, the company that got shut out would have to go to court and prove that it wasn't just a violation of policy. It's anti-competitive. Under this bill, Amazon would have to prove why it was not anti-competitive. And a large company could face antitrust liability even if the market in which it took place was not precisely defined by the claimant. There's a whole load of complicated case law around market definition. For instance, and we'll go down this rabbit hole now, but apparently Pepsi and Coke have been ruled in court not to be in the same market because brand loyalty makes customers less price sensitive. So let that boggle your mind for a second and then just realize that same kind of principle has been used for tech companies to say, well, they're not even in the same market as us. This would get rid of that loophole. Justice Department and the FTC would be given larger budgets and would be able to seek fines for first time civil antitrust violations. There's also another bill being drafted by Representative Dave Sisleyne of Rhode Island that would prohibit large companies from operating a platform and then competing with users of the platform. That's one of the accusations against Amazon. The App Association, a trade group of small and mid-sized software companies, opposes these kinds of restrictions because they say it could shut them out of working with large companies. If large companies are seeing them only as competition rather than potential acquisitions, that could cool some kinds of collaboration. So Justin, this is just Amy Klobuchar trying this again. She apparently tried it in the last Congress. It didn't float then. Got any chance of floating now? Well, to be honest, anything that would involve bipartisan support, I'm going to go ahead and bet against right now just because we are not in a particularly bipartisan mood in our politics. However, considering we have a newly minted power sharing agreement between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who have now finalized what that's going to be. We do have a 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker, so essentially Schumer is in the lead. You need 10 members of the opposite party. So I don't know if immediately this would get all 50 senators from either party. It would be curious to see whether or not this is something that you could rally the banners and pitch a perfect game on if Amy Klobuchar wanted to get all of the Democrats on board. Some might not see that it goes far enough because it doesn't break up certain tech companies. I think that Elizabeth Warren has pushed. Some might think that it goes too far on the blue dog side like on Joe Manchin, who has been loathed to sort of push that forward. That being said, we live in a world now where a lot of Republicans would like to see big tech be punished. That's been some of the Sturman drawing around 230, but I think this specifically the idea that somebody getting kicked off would have to prove why it's not anti-competitive. That's an argument that you could say would maybe apply to Parler, who tried to bring a suit against Amazon for taking them off AWS, with their argument being that they were protecting larger clients that Parler could eat into their market share width. I think if you look at it from that perspective, you could say, yes, we want to have Amazon have to prove that the reason why they are doing this is not anti-competitive as opposed to Parler getting a lawsuit dismissed when they made the same claim. So I know it's a mushy answer, but a resounding possible. What I don't like before we move on from this, what I don't like about this kind of bill is having it targeted at big tech. I don't like laws that are made for specific companies and this reeks of that a little bit. What I do like about it is that it's not making major policy changes, it's just trying to adjust the levels and say, let's make it a little easier for someone to prove an antitrust case because we're going to shift the burden of proof. I haven't worked through all the implications of doing that. Maybe if I did, I would be horrified by it, but in principle, that seems to be a better way to go around adjusting things than to have these more extreme measures, at least to me. Microsoft launched a new take on a company intranet called Viva, a unified platform to handle everything from employee onboarding to collaborating and training. The platform includes Viva communications for things like policies, benefits, internal communications and the like, Viva learning, which integrates training platforms like SAP, Viva topics for knowledge sharing and Viva insights for employee analytics. The last one doesn't monitor individuals, but lets a manager get a team-wide numbers for things like adjusting priorities, avoiding burnout, and seeing work patterns and trends. Viva is powered by Microsoft 365 and integrates with teams, Yammer and other Microsoft offerings. Microsoft believes the intranet is more important than ever with so many employees working from home. That's true. I've worked at some large companies. One of the largest was AOL. When I worked at TechCrunch, because it was owned by AOL, big intranet used it all the time. You had to. That was the only place you could get certain information. Although TechCrunch had a physical office that I went to, AOL, that headquarters was across the US. In a way, we were kind of remote on a lot of that stuff. I wonder how much Viva is going to not resemble some of these large corporate intranets that I know exist in a lot of places. That training certainly gets managers being able to get stats, especially when a team is now spread out when you used to all get into one conference room. That's probably really helpful. Integration with Microsoft's other products for teams such as Teams, or Yammer, that, gosh, Yammer, I haven't thought about Yammer in a while, but that makes a lot of sense. Sure. I mean, it's Microsoft. Why not use your own stuff? But I don't know how revolutionary this is. If anyone uses it, let me know. A better intranet would not normally be getting the headlines that Microsoft Viva is, but I think that spin of, hey, this will help folks while they're working from home, raised a few more eyebrows, made people pay attention a little more because everybody is trying to deal with that. I'm not sure if this is the solution, but it certainly seems like a good intranet product. Well, if you harken back to, gosh, the early days of social, what year? Let's call it 2007-ish. You might remember a lovely little tool called Delicious. Remember Delicious? Oh, yeah. Save links, categorize them, find them later, be able to share with others. Delicious was the first of its kind and was sold and sort of went into relative obscurity some time ago. Well, if you still follow Delicious on Twitter, which is at Delicious on Twitter, the company posted, Delicious should be now back up in read-only mode for those who can remember their password. You can export your bookmarks or link them with a pinboard account and then links to del.icio.us, which was Delicious's very clever URL back in the day. I actually went and thought, oh, I'll never remember my password because it was so long ago because I signed up in March of 2007.  And you don't really get a sense of what it used to look like when you were using it. You just kind of have to export everything or link to pinboard, but it's there. It's there as read-only. Yeah. Hey, Web 2.0 kids. Enjoy Delicious. It's Delicious. Yeah, I used to use Delicious to prepare Buzz Out Loud. I had the Delicious button in my browser bar in my bookmarks and if I was on a page that I thought would make a good story for Buzz Out Loud, I'd hit that Delicious button and Molly and Veronica and Jason and I all shared Delicious pages that we would look at with each other and then eventually I moved on to Google Reader. That's how long ago it was. We went up the Internet uphill both ways. Yeah. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Friend of the show and off to guest. Alison Sheridan wrote in and said, Hey, recently you mentioned the Scaleway M1 Mac mini cloud service on the show. Thought you might be interested to know that Mac Stadium, which is a different company than Scaleway, which is the company that we talked about. Mac Stadium has been offering M1s for rent for a while and they even have a server in Dublin. So Scaleway isn't the only European cloud service offering M1 Mac minis. Yay for more choice. Yeah, Alison and I were actually texting back and forth about this trying to figure out like is what Scaleway said technically wrong when they said they they are the first European because Scaleway is a European company and Mac Stadium is an Atlanta based company, but Mac Stadium has that double in server. But anyway, the upshot is doesn't really matter. You got more choices. You could use Scaleway or Mac Stadium. Go shop around. Take a look. You get some fast M1s in the cloud. Kind of cool. There you go. Thanks, Alison. Good find. Also, if you've got good finds, you got questions, you got comments, you got anything for us. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com is where to send it. Shout out to patrons at our master and our grandmaster levels. Today they include Ken Hayes, Tony Glass, and Jeffrey Zulks. Big, big thanks to Justin Robert Young for being with us today as he is every Thursday. Justin, what is new? Well, politics, politics, politics. If you are in the Arizona state area or you're just curious why the Arizona Republican Party is censuring people like they're sitting Republican governor or Cindy McCain, you're going to want to listen to Wednesday's episode of the show. If you are a Tom Merritt fan, you're going to want to listen to Friday's episode of the show because he is on. And next Wednesday we have a deep dive into the concept of the California recall, whether it's likely, what needs to happen, when it would happen, and who might replace sitting Governor Gavin Newsom all discussed on the Politics, Politics, Politics podcast. I can say with some certainty that your interview with the Arizona Republic reporter was my favorite part of your show this entire week because I participated in the interview that's coming on Friday. Oh, you're selling yourself short. Yeah, we have a great, a very relaxed one.  So if you like me on this day, you're going to have to go listen to it because it's a great, relaxed conversation. Hey patrons, did you know that your ad free RSS feed can have just DTNS or just GDI or even both? Check your tier on Patreon. It's a little confusing, I know. But your tier decides what goes into the feed. The URL doesn't even change. But if you change your tier from say the one that says DTNS to one that says GDI, then you'll start getting good day internet in your feed. Or if you change it to the one that says DTNS, you'll get just Daily Tech News Show. Or if you change it to the one that says all, you'll get both. You can change your tiers at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Hey everybody, we are live Monday through Friday at 4.30pm Eastern 2130 UTC. You might already know because you watch or listen live, but you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We will be back tomorrow. We'll be back with Patrick Norton and Len Peralta. Talk to you then. 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The Cavalcade of America, presented by DuPont. The Raven Wind Texas, a story of Sam Houston. That is for radio from The Raven, the for-surprise winning biography by Marquis James. Starring Walter Houston, in the role of Sam Houston. Tonight, the DuPont Company, makers of better things for better living through chemistry, again has the privilege to present Walter Houston in an original Cavalcade of America drama, The Story of Sam Houston. In a brilliant career in the American theater, Walter Houston is noted for his performances in the Barker, Doddworth, and Nickerbocker holidays. He has been acclaimed for his roles in the motion picture version of Doddworth, as well as in Rhodes and The Lights at Space. This week, he returns to Broadway in a new play, Passenger to Bali. Tonight, he appears for the second time in this series of The Cavalcade of America, in the role of Sam Houston in The Raven Wind Texas. At the end of a summer day in the year 1832, in the White House of Washington, two men face each other, President Andrew Jackson and General Sam Houston. Sam? Maybe you spoke to me a long time ago about Texas. Yes, I do, Mr. President. You said you weren't ready to talk about it then. Well, I am now. I've been keeping my ear to the ground, hearing a lot about what's going on down in Texas now. And here it is. They were promised statehood in the Mexican Confederation eight years ago. And by the town of Sam, that promise ain't been kept? Of course it hasn't been kept. Didn't think it would be, did you? Here's what I'm thinking, Sam. Texas shouldn't belong to Mexico at all. Certainly it should. It should belong to the Union. It's gonna have a walloping fight to get it in. Well, who's afraid of a fight? No, more on a fight, Sam. Bigger things than that in Texas. Powerful big things. It's the whole Southwest. There's gotta be only one civilization down there. One, the American civilization. Amen to that, sir.  You find Steve Austin, say everything's out there. He's a good man. Maybe too good to be dealing with that in Mexican rattlesnake Santa Anna. Watch out for his things. He's got them in use. That's a big job, General. Sure it is, Sam. But I tell you, Texas should be in the Union. Should be by the tunnel at Charles. That's what I promise you, General. By the at Charles. Mind if I walk you through your horse, Mr. Austin? Why, no, General Houston. I'm glad to have a few words with you if you'd like. What's on your mind? Mr. Austin, ever since I came to Texas, I've been telling you Santa Anna is a split-tongue reptile that you can't trust. I'm asking you for the last time. Don't go down to Mexico City to see him. It won't do any good. General Houston, I've got to go. You were at the convention. You know they sent me down there to ask Santa Anna to recognize the rights of Texas. I know. I fought the plan all through the convention and I still say it won't work.  He's got every reason to be grateful to us. Texas helped make him President of Mexico. Listen, General, you've been paying too much attention to the hot-headed elements down here. I trust Santa Anna and I believe he'll give us our way in Texas. He can't trust him, sir. He's a tyrant and you'll find out you're just wasting your time. I'm the best judge of that, General. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye, Mr. Austin. Then you're President. Yes, El Monte. What is it now? It is this, then you're Stephen Austin. He still waits to see you. You must wait, El Monte, until I am ready to see him. Actually, it is now six months that he has been here waiting for an audience. May I remind you that... Enough, enough, El Monte. You can remind him and yourself, too, that I am the Napoleon on this continent. But then you're extra defundant and you're Stephen Austin ready to leave. Me? He just told me so, he said. Waited six months, he said. Six months, he too saw the time, El Monte. Senor Stephen Austin will stay with us a little longer. See, would it not be... I need no help from Senor Stephen Austin. I have discovered a letter here. A letter Senor Austin wrote to friends in Texas. It was too badly wrote. I shall make Senor Stephen Austin pay for that mistake I hear. I do not quite understand that Senor Stephen Austin was indiscreet enough to write that Texas might have to separate from Mexico. Separate from me. You're here and join the United States. He is a traitor to Mexico. Senor Stephen Austin will find his mistake to oppose me. El Monte, you go out there. You arrest Senor Stephen Austin. You give him a deep and a solitary cell. When you have done this, El Monte, you come back. Tell me about it. Yes, Victor. Well, sir, will the president see me now? I am sorry, Senor Austin. I have told you the president will not. But I have been trying to see him for six months. Surely. I have said, Senor Austin, you will not see. Senor Austin, you are under arrest. Arrest? What for? You have no right to arrest me. I represent Texas. And General Santa Anna represents Mexico. I trust him. Damn Houston was right. Tell your Santa Anna he can imprison Stephen Austin. But there are Americans in Texas who are making pay for it. You can't stifle the cry of liberty. No man ever has. No man ever will. Mr. Speaker, General Sam Houston. Mr. Speaker, gentlemen, we all know what we are up against. Santa Anna still holds Stephen Austin in a dungeon. And what have our people done? Driven a few Mexican garrisons out. And what's the result? These tortly slaps with Mexico have done more harm than good. Santa Anna will be back any day with an army for revenge. And gentlemen, Texas is not ready for him. We have no government. We have no army. We better organize both and be quick about it. Mr. Speaker, I move that Sam Houston to give him command of the army of Texas. Gentlemen, you have heard the motion. All in favor? The motion is carried. Mr. Speaker? General Houston, yes, what is it? There's a message from the boys at the Alamo. Santa Anna is attacked. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, just a minute. What's wrong, General? I've got a message here from Colonel Travis from David Clark at the Alamo. Ten days getting to it. It reads, I'm besieged by Mexican troops. Santa Anna demands our surrender. Otherwise, our troops will be put to the sword.  Contrary with dispatch. All this convention immediately adjourns. Arm and march to the aid of the Alamo. Gentlemen, gentlemen, please listen to me. This isn't the time to go off half-cocked. That's in our trouble. If you've got to save the Alamo, we've got to have an army to do it. Your place is here. Mine is to find an army. And God willing, we'll save the Alamo. General Houston, oh, firefly, oh. Oh, what is it, my dear? A couch up ahead, found a woman riding by herself, looking for you, sir. You're bringing her back here. Who do you suppose she is? I said her name is Mrs. Dickerson, General. Oh, here they come now, sir. Well, I want to, I want to, what's up? Give me order to hold. Yes, sir. I'm hold, I'm hold. General Houston, ma'am. I'm General Houston, ma'am. What's the trouble? General, I have a message for you. The Alamo is fallen. Fallen? We're too late. Colonel Travis, David Clark, they're all killed. Butchard, slaughtered by Santa Anna. Yes, General. We've set them off for 12 days. Only 180 men against 4,000. Then a dawn on the 13th day, the Mexican foot-scaling ladders against the walls. And that was the end. So only six of us left. We watched Santa Anna come into the Alamo and cross the square to where we were. He came prancing up on a pony and his men's ears and sang till I thought it never seems that many men he actually wanted to hear. The great Santa Anna. 13 days. Well, it's took him that long to ride inside these walls anyway. What do I do? What do I do for now? Keep up your nerve, Mr. Dickinson. Don't let him think you're scared. Remember, we showed him what we could do for 12 days. We're not going to quake the farm now. Make way! Make way for the President! At ease! At ease! At ease! At ease! At ease! At ease! At ease! Well, Almonte, the victory is mine. Yes, Mr. Presidente, but another one like it will ruin you. Silence, Almonte. Yes. These are his prisoners. These five men here are his seniors. The women there. Prisoners are annousings, Almonte. I do not wish to have them. You bloodthirsty beast! Haven't you brought to the enough of this? Oh, there is a flash of spirit for you, Almonte. I shall surely be must. Seniors, come here, Seniors. No! No, I won't! When Santa Ana orders to go, send the Seniors to very easily broke. Proceed, Almonte. No! Oh, no, don't! Almonte, what are you waiting for? Yes, Mr. Presidente. Wait! Wait! Wait! Please, Senora, but my words is very easy. Now you can do something for me. You know this General Sam Houston. No. You will find this Senor Sam Houston. You will take a message to him. Almonte, you have a horse made ready for the Senora. Thank you. Listen well, Senora. Give him my compliments. Tell him what you have seen. Tell him to remember the alum. That will be the fate of every man in Texas who opposes my authority. Now, find this horse quickly, Senora. Up! Go! Santa Ana sends a message. And here's our reply, Mrs. Dickinson. We'll remember the alum all, and Santa Ana will never forget it. Yes, sir. So the men will have to eat cold rations tonight. I want no campfires burning. Too easily spotted by Santa Ana's men, yes, sir. And they'll wipe us out anyway, if you ask me. I tell you, General Houston is no good. We haven't a chance. I'll throttle you if you keep up that talk. Very well, sir. But tell me how 900 men are gonna drive off 7,000. That's my problem, I just missed it. The Mexicans haven't trapped us yet, and I'll tell you they won't. Texas is a powerful big place to fight in, and there's lots of room for one big blow. What's going on there? Right here. What is it? What is that? What's the matter there? You'll pick up a rifle, Snake, rid of it in the camp, General. When you speak up, you'll spy. Santa Ana! When is the next day? No, no, no. We don't serve in Mexico around here. English, you know English. All right. Tell him just what you told me. Go on. Santa Ana! You go on this way. For division. We've seen all. Right behind you. Yes. Santa Ana, right back of us. Shall I hang him or shoot him? No, please. No, no. No, did you? No, there's no hurry. Major Smith. Well, you're right, Smith. It's no use. We can't fight 7,000. I thought so. Yes, we'd better get out of here. Make for the border of the United States before it's too late. I guess it's all over, boys. We're licked. All right, sir. Make sense to me. What's this spy doing in here? Take him out of this camp.   Get out of here! Come on.  We'll have to hurry before it's too late. Well, you're going, Major Smith.  All right, Major. Yes, General? Do you think I'm alone at this? Didn't you just say it was all over? Sure, I said it. Sure, we're going to retreat. When that spy tells Santa Ana he'll come chasing after us, then we'll give him a run. A run he'll never forget. Then, boys, we'll strike. We'll hit him when he least expects it. All right, go ahead, but you're making a mistake. I'm commanding this army. I give the orders. Sound of retreat. Captain Baker. What is this, Major? Now, follow me down the road. Yes, sir. Yes. Oh, there. Oh. Captain Martin. Yes, Major? Follow us. Sorry. Yes, sir. Oh, there. Major Hartling. Yes. Oh. You follow us off the road here, over in those cottonwoods. What's the matter? Oh, come on. You'll see. All right. Yes. Hurry up. Now, listen, men, we've got to take a stand. Houston's kept us retreating for 38 days. Santa Ana's still hot in our trail. Officers of this town, I vote we demand an explanation. He'll give us an explanation, all right? Sure, he will. But if it isn't satisfactory, he should be removed from command. Who'll succeed him? You, Major? Well, that's beside the point, but this isn't. We're licked, men. The army's deserted. Hundreds have gone across the border in states. About time we did, too. Raps getting their hides off the sinking ship, huh? You all heard what General Houston said about this retreat being part of a plan? Yeah, we heard him. We heard him say a lot of things. Victory is certain. Remember the Alamo. I say he ought to remember it. Instead of backing us up to the border and then swinging the feast over this way, he doesn't know what he's doing. Kind of a general, is he? All right, men. He's had his way long enough. We can get along without him. Now, we all agreed to take a stand that way. Wait a minute. Somebody's riding through the woods. Who is it? He's alone, whoever he is. Houston. How did he find out we were meeting? Never mind. Too late now. Oh, boy. Well, I thought I missed you, boys. Letting the army get away ahead of you, aren't you? General Houston, I... Yes, what's the matter? Oh, come on, out with it.  Well, how much longer are we going to retreat? We have a right to know.  Is that the way you all feel? Bigger? Martin? Ockley. No, sir, I don't. Thanks, Ockley. The trouble with you men is you don't know what's going on. Instead of going off in the woods here, you should have stayed with me and learned a few things. The sculpture they put up at Santa Ana has gone into camp just beyond the San Jacinto there. Only one of his four divisions with him. What are you going to do, General Houston? You see, it's almost three o'clock. Now, they'll still be taking their siesta. Ockley. Is my imagination playing tricks with me again? Playing tricks? That eagle. See it up there? Yes, sir. But, say, there was an eagle above my head, and I came into Texas. Now, this one at San Jacinto, an eagle again, sailing toward Santa Ana's camp. All right, boys, but it seats over. Now, we attack. Here, here they are. Here are the orders. We'll assemble in these woods. When I raise the sword, we'll advance to catch them, and catch them asleep. Don't fire until I give the order. Remember now, no firing until I give the signal. All right, man, try it. You've got to catch them sleeping during siesta. No sign of life in the camp, yes, sir. They've seen us, sir. Hold your fire, man. Hold your fire, Ockley. Yes, General. You're almost the Mexican best. I know. It's about 20 yards, sir. Everything ready? Yes, sir. And you see our artillery? They're looking this way. They're waiting for the signal, sir. All right. Wave your hat. Now, get a grip. Remember the animal, boys. Sit down and lean against this tree, sir. All right, Ockley. All right. Try not to move that leg anymore when you have to, sir. Don't be afraid. Be shattered and bold. Never mind it, Ockley. Have they found Santa Ana? Where is he, Ockley? Well, the men have been searching all night, sir. I guess we missed him. Missed him? And we've failed, Ockley. Santa Ana will be back with these three divisions and wipe us out. We've got to find him. Well, we can't even tell who is an officer. Who isn't the way these Mexicans are ripped off their epilogue? What's going on back there? Major Ockley. Major Ockley, they've caught Santa Ana. Caught him? Where is he? They're bringing him in now. That one there. Well, they can't be Santa Ana. Roberson got him, but he didn't realize we had caught him. The other prisoners began starting our presence this way. What are you asking, Ockley? Wait till I race you up, General Houston. You'll have to. He's wearing a blue smart and red carpet slippery. This is the great Santa Ana. I guess we interrupted. He's the ester. That's it. Well, great work, boys. Go ahead now. Fine, here he is. I am General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, President of Mexico, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Upper East. Indeed. Take a seat, General. Sit down. Sit on that box there. I place myself at the disposal of the brave General Houston. You don't have much chance, choice, do you? The man who has conquered the Napoleon of the West may consider himself born to no common descent. It now remains for him to be generous to the bank. Yes, you should have thought of that at the Alamo. I propose that General Houston. You propose? What? I propose an armistice. Armistice? Well, I'll do all the proposing, understand? As you wish. You'll write an order instructing your troops to lead Texas soil forever. Could I? Could I have?  Opium? So? I... I would be very grateful. Now I see you in your two colors. The Napoleon of the West. It is not a great thing, I ask. No? No lie. Merely that your armies leave Texas. You'll write the order of evacuations. Yes, General. Yes, I will do so. Take him away, boys. No, General. Come on, now. Oddly, yes, General. Uh, get me a paper and a quill. I'm going to write to Andrew Jackson yet. We've won our freedom. Now all that remains is for us to join Texas with the Union. When that day comes, and someday it will, I'll tell all Hickley myself. By the eternal. General Houston. I'm sorry, Hannah. We got here too late. I'm sorry too, Jimmy. He asked about this very last. This is my son, Hannah. How do you do, Hannah? How do you do me, sir? Left as soon as we heard. Could we see him? Yes, sir. You can. Just wait for him. You come too, sir. My son. Yes, Father? My son. Always remember you've looked on the face of Andrew Jackson. He was a great man, wasn't he, Father? No man alive. No one will ever be his equal. Father, he sent you to talk to us, didn't he? A long time ago. Now he's gone without knowing that Texas belongs to the Union. No, General. He knew. Word came this morning. Did he? Say anything? He smiled all over his face. Then he looked up and said, Texas, you mean? My old friend went through to his stuff. He said he smiled. Come along, son. We're going home. The raven sleight is ended. But the heritage he left us lies in the greatness of the lone star state. And tonight, Sam Houston, the foremost Texan of his time, and all time, takes an honored place in the cavalcade of America. Thank you, Walter Houston. We are happy to have you as our guest on the cavalcade of America. And now, before we hear from Dr. Monahan about next week's program, we have a story from the Wonderworld of Chemistry. Picture a room with rows of green apples hanged from hooks on the wall. One green apple hangs from each hook. Sounds foolish, doesn't it? But it isn't. It's just a part of the careful research to find a better and safer way of controlling the cuddling moth and preventing wormy apples. Cuddling moth worms love apples. They cause heavy damage to apple crops and make you pay more for the fruits. Materials now used to protect apples from these pests must be washed off at harvest time in order to protect your health. You can see what a fine thing it would be to have a safe protection that wouldn't need to be washed off. Some years ago, ufant scientists began a search for a material that would defeat the insects and not harm humans. So they built a dining room for the cuddling moth worms with tempting green apples hanging on hooks. They provided comfortable little cages for cuddling moths to live in and lay their eggs. Month after month, they treated green apples with various chemicals and watched the moth worms. It was a long search, but those ufant men kept plugging at it and they found a promising chemical with a long name, phenothiazine. Anyway, the name isn't half as important as the fact that it does protect apples against the cuddling moth when sprayed properly on the fruit. It also protects grapes against the grapeberry moth and a disease called the black rock that stops Japanese beetles from feeding on plants and fruits and is proving effective against other insects too. There's another queer angle to this story. Zoologists of the United States Department of Agriculture have tried out the same chemical as a remedy for certain internal parasites as sheep. They found it to be the most effective known remedy for this purpose. A single dose does the trick. It didn't take long for the news of this experimental work to travel to the great sheep-raising countries of Canada and Australia. Scientists there have had equally good results and now similar trials are being made with cattle, hogs and other animals. So you see, the benefits of chemical research travel far and wide. Whether you grow apples or raise sheep or merely buy a lamb chop and enjoy apple pie. Chemistry has been working to protect your pocketbook and there you have the essence of the DuPont's pledge, better things for better living through chemistry. And now the cavalcade of America's historians, Dr. Frank Monaghan of Yale University. Sam Houston, the founder of the Republic of Texas, was a great man molding a great event and so his name is written large in American history but it is true that frequently a great event can be approached and understood through the hopes and actions of the little people whom history does not headline. The cavalcade program for next week entitled On Jordan's Bank is the story of an unknown news named Sam Davis. Sam Davis was a Confederate spy, a spy who was taught but Davis during his brief career seemed to me to represent the highest devotion to a cause, the most complete loyalty to an ideal and these are qualities that have given strength to the fabric of American character and greatness. Next week when the cavalcade of America presents On Jordan's Bank, our star will be Elliot Reed. Radio listeners everywhere will recognize Elliot Reed and remember his outstanding performances on many radio programs. On Broadway, he's been a talented and versatile member of the Mercury Theater, appearing in Julius Caesar and The Shoemaker's Holiday. Next week, he will be starred in the cavalcade of America's drama On Jordan's Bank in the role of Private Sam Davis. On tonight's program, the orchestra and musical effects run the direction of Don Vorey with his battle rise dales saying good night and best wishes from Dupont. This is the National Broadcasting Company.


I have no idea if this is going to be great or if it's going to be a complete shambles. Hey guys, so we got something a little different going on in this video. And I did mention in my last video that I was trying to decide what puzzle to do next and I did say it probably wasn't going to necessarily be a flat jigsaw puzzle. So I was contacted by a company and they asked me if I was interested in some puzzles and I was like, uh, yes. I was lucky enough to receive not one, but three 3D puzzles of my choice. Hit the like button if you are a fan of 3D puzzles and let me know down below what kind of sets have you done and from what brands. I've always found 3D puzzling quite intimidating, which is probably why I've never actually picked one up. I have no idea if this is going to be great or if it's going to be a complete shambles. They have always intrigued me. So I'm really excited to be finally exploring this realm of puzzling. So in today's video, I'm going to be sharing with you one of the three puzzles that were sent to me and it's super exciting because this 3D puzzle model or set, I think it's a model you would call it. Well, it's a model of a place that I really, really want to visit one day. So the first set in our 3D puzzling series is Neuschwanstein Castle. I hope I said that right. Our Neuschwanstein Castle 3D puzzle set is from the company Cubic Fun and they are known as the leading innovator of 3D puzzling. This is 128 pieces. It is 17.1 by 8.4 by 14.9 inches when it's completed. The box has quite a bit of information on it. It says on the front here, well, it kind of shows its difficulty level, which is six out of seven stars. So yeah, this is going to be interesting. It is made of paper and EPS foam board. And this particular set uses LED lighting, which is going to be super cool. So it looks like it's going to require two AA batteries, which is not included in the set. On the bottom here also states that it is easy to assemble. There are no scissors required. There's no gluing and it takes more than four hours to construct, though probably in my case it may be more like four weeks. But we'll see, right? And on the back of the box it talks a little bit about Neuschwanstein Castle. There's also what looks to be a little step-by-step diagram as to what you're supposed to do in order to complete this set. And then on the bottom you have other products from the series. This is super exciting.  This is Neuschwanstein Castle. This is the castle that Walt Disney based the Disney Park castles on. But aside from that, I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to live in a castle? The fact that this set actually has LED lighting just brings this entire thing to life. Now you know out of all the places that I've mentioned and all my puzzle sets that I have a house, that's my house, I'm going to tell you the truth. You know this is actually my house. And you know this because I left all the lights on. I'm not very good about saving electricity. There's just so many rooms in my house. I just kind of forget, you know, to turn them off as I leave to go to the next one. That one's actually my bedroom. I did remember to turn that off. It's a great view when I wake up in the morning of the sunrise. But you know, this place is big. It's very dark so I got to leave some of the lights on, you know?  That's where I go and sit and have my cup of coffee sometimes. And then I'm just admiring the view. If you ever want to come and visit me, just let me know. I have plenty of rooms. But anyways, aside from that, first impressions. I mean, it says that it's going to be more than four hours to construct. As I said before, for me, probably four weeks. But I hope not because I want to get some other puzzles done. Again, I've never done a 3D puzzle before. So I'm not really sure how to go about this. I'm looking at the back again here and it looks like all the pieces are in sheets. It kind of seems like it's going to be pretty straightforward looking at this last diagram picture here. But then again, we don't know. I might forget how to use my hands midway and this might completely collapse on me. I don't know. This is going to be so fun to try. And if you are thinking about getting one of these 3D puzzle sets from CubicFun, I'm going to leave a link down below of the website that you can click on, which is their Amazon store. And there's also going to be next to it a promo code that you can use for a discount. So you can, you know, try one of these out and see if you like it. I'm going to stop talking now. Let's open this up and let's see what we're going to get ourselves into here. All right, let's get this one started. Now, it does have clear plastic wrap on it. So let's get that out. Comes with a hole puncher. I guess that's to knock out little bits out of the puzzle pieces. This comes right out. There you go. All right, cool tool. We have the LED kit here. Well, this is the battery pack and here are the little lights. Then we have a booklet here on Neuschwanstein Castle. Oh my God, look at that view. Yeah, that's definitely my permanent house. I like how the booklet has a lot of little fun facts as well kind of just scattered about. Then it has a bit here about how to assemble. It's pretty straightforward and then information on the battery pack and pretty much the step by step that you have to follow here in terms of using the LED lights and the actual puzzle pieces themselves. My God, I'm going to be honest. This looks a little intimidating here. I'll definitely be giving feedback on how easy these instructions are to follow. All right, so that's the pamphlet. Oh, basically we have all the foam boards, plastic wrap together and these are your puzzle pieces. Let's open these up. Wow. Check this out.  This is more, this is basically the paper part of the puzzle, but the rest of it looks to be the thick foam boards. That's two pieces, I think. No, that's one piece. All right. So let's pull this out and check it out. So that's about the thickness of the puzzle board. You can see there. Pretty sturdy, not incredibly hard, but this is pretty strong. This is going to stand up pretty well. Oh, wait, that was two pieces. How does this? Oh, it opens up. Look at that. Oh, that's the backside. Okay. I'm seeing, I'm seeing now what this is. All right. So all the pieces have next to them a number to follow so that you know, you know, basically what you're grabbing here. Now I'm not going to pop all of these out because I want to make sure I'm following the instructions because we got quite a number. There's 128 pieces here, so we don't want to confuse any of these or mess these up until we are ready to put this bed together. Look at that. Oh, this is fun. This is the, those are all the tree bits there. S-S-Z-A-R-I-N-T-A-R-E-S-S-O-N-T. I'm not going to lie.  This is a new experience. Don't be afraid to try new things, guys. I don't know about you. I would say I'm ready, but I don't know if I am ready. All right. Let's do this. So before you start getting too excited and try to just jump right into throwing pieces together, read the assembly step by step instructions and follow it in that order. And I stress this because I realized during my time completing this set that it just kept me organized and it is something really that is key when completing a 3D puzzle, especially for a first timer like me. So first we have to remove the parts following the instructions for each step and do not remove the other parts. And again, that is key to keeping yourself organized. Now each piece has a number printed right next to it. And for just about all of them, if you look on the back side of the same piece, it also has the number printed in case you just get confused as to what's what. Next you are going to punch all the interlocking holes before assembly.  Next you are going to fold the parts before inserting. And finally you are going to insert the parts and make sure that they are securely in place. And that is when the real magic happens. Alright, now I'm going to be honest. As this was my first 3D puzzle video, I really struggled to figure out the best camera angles so hopefully you can see enough to get an idea of the process. I'm sure after going through this one, I'll definitely have a better idea on how to go about it next time. Now let me know if you have any particular questions regarding the overall completion process that I failed to mention throughout the video. Again, this is all new to me so I really want to make sure that I'm giving you enough info on 3D puzzles in general for the next one. Alright, now a couple of things that I came across or noticed along the way. Number one, the hole punching can be quite time consuming. And it's not really an issue, but I mean there is seriously a lot of punching involved.  Now patience is really important for this. And you have to think how you're going to approach each section as best you can. Now there were times where I would pop one side in a section but the other side would pop out and I'm not sure if that has to do with my folding technique which may have been wrong or if the piece itself was too small for the space. And this was more for the rock work area. It was probably my fault. But I struggled at times trying to figure out which direction to fold certain pieces in. I had several casualties but I was able to repair them with a little bit of tape. Maybe it was the small pieces that were pretty delicate and the image print on it could tear if you folded it the wrong way or if you were too rough. You know me sometimes that could be a persistent beast and you know kind of ruin my pieces. But anyways I mainly noticed this on the pointy spire pieces. It was really hard getting some of the little turrets in place just trying to keep them from falling off the actual building and it was a little frustrating at times but I got through it. There were three parts of the puzzle that were actually kind of like a paper material and those were the larger spire roof pieces. It took me about three times to get the first one right and of course I tore it the first time but again I repaired it with tape so it was fine in the end. After the last one it was fine. I have to be honest there were quite a few moments where nice words were not coming out of my mouth mainly just out of frustration because I kept damaging my pieces and I didn't want to. But in the end I made the repairs I needed to with some tape and I got it done. Now the installation of the LED lights wasn't difficult but I did wish that the wires were just a slight bit longer. It felt a little too tight for my liking at times and I was afraid that I was going to damage the wires or some things. Now in terms of installing the battery pack I didn't really know when I was meant to connect it to the wiring. The instructions did show this step pretty much at the end of the booklet which was basically after you completed the entire puzzle. But really I kind of feel like this is something that could and should be done probably midway through your completion process and I'm talking about once you get pretty much most of the base done and the reason I say that is because you won't have to risk damaging your entire castle by laying it down to connect the battery pack to the wires. Doing it sooner rather than later really kind of makes more sense to me. So use your best judgment when you're completing any 3D puzzle set that has LED lighting kits to it. So aside from that those worked out well in the end. Now although some bits were rather confusing in terms of how to fold pieces and where to pop them into. Actually this 3D puzzle set was pretty darn straightforward in terms of assembly and of course the beginning was tough for me because you know it was my first time but once I got the idea of the process and I stayed organized I started to move much quicker. This puzzle only took me about five and a half hours to complete and honestly I was quite shocked but I definitely feel like now that I know what to expect I feel like I'm going to be way more prepared for my next 3D puzzle set. 3D puzzling is definitely a different kind of challenge and the best thing I can compare this to is pretty much building a LEGO set because it's pretty much the same thing in terms of assembly.  If you love putting LEGO sets and models together you're going to love 3D puzzling and I'll raise my hand and I'll say I love LEGOs. So really this was fun to me even with the occasional bad word coming out of my mouth. Remember if you're interested in picking up one of these awesome sets from Cubic Fun I have the link down below of their store page along with a promo code so that you can get a discount. As I got closer and closer to the end I was getting too excited because it's absolutely beautiful and even with some of my misfits and mistakes and little repairs that I had to make once it was completed and the lights were on it was so majestic and really when you compare it to the actual photos of the castle this set is actually pretty accurate. It looks fantastic. I'm telling you as soon as I flick those lights on I was instantly transported to my courtyard and I saw myself sitting under my tree. I was in this set and it really gave me a different feel because you know it's not like I'm looking at a flat image. I'm telling you it's awesome. I highly recommend you try 3D puzzles if you haven't already. Now I can sit under my tree and have my cup of coffee. So like I mentioned earlier I do have two more 3D sets that I have to go through so if you want to see which models I have be sure to subscribe so that you can catch me completing those and many other jigsaw puzzles that I have. Well guys thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one.


What's up people, Manu here. Coming to you with a video. This time we are going to be making stuffed karale or stuffed bitter melons. It has a very distinct taste. It is extremely delicious and it's extremely healthy for you. The first thing that I've done is I've washed them thoroughly and I'm taking these small sticks out because these are not edible. Now once we have washed them and chopped the ends, I need to scrape off the top skin off it and we are going to reuse it. In addition to that, I've also sliced half an onion. This one was a large onion. I've sliced it. We're going to be putting that into a pan and we're going to be cooking the filling or the stuffing inside. So step one, wash and take off the stem that was holding the fruit. Once that's done, take the onion, chop it up into lengthwise pieces. Now that we have that, I'm just going to take a peeler and start peeling off or scraping off just the top layer. We're just taking the top layer off so that the bumpy portion of this can be off. Do not discard it. This has a lot of flavor. It has a lot of fill in it. We do plenty use it. I personally prefer the melons, the bitter melons, also known as kareli in Hindi, to be bitter. If you don't like them bitter, what you can do is you can cover them with salt and that takes a bitter part out of it. Personally, me, I don't mind that at all. So this is from one. Do the same thing for the other. The scraper that I have, I know how sharp it is, so I'm able to do it this way. If the scraper that you're using is sharp, just be careful. And once we have peeled off or scraped off this part, do not discard it because this is useful. We are going to be using it in the cooking. Just put it in a side plate. Get a peering knife out because the next step is going to require that. And again, this is a bitter dish and the way that you want to pick up the kareli or the bitter melon darker the better. If it's lighter, it's going to have a slightly okay taste, but darker the better. And now what we want to do is we want to take the knife and make a small incision right down the middle. And we want to take out whatever is inside there. So again, be a little bit more aggressive with it. It has a thick skin and we want to peel, we want to open that up and we want to scrape out all these seeds and the pods that are inside. Use your thumb if you need to just go in there. These are like pods and they will come right out and the inside should be left clean. And sometimes the seeds are going to be red. That means that then it's not that they are bad. It just says it's a little bit more aged or they've actually got a little older, which is okay too. They are okay to eat. This is a very unique dish. People all over India eat it. In the US it's not easy to find this in the restaurants because they don't sell them because the shelf life of this dish is very short. Within 24 hours if you don't eat, they go bad and they go soggy. It's better to make it at home. And please be careful when you're doing this because it's easy to cut yourself. So know your knife, know your tools. And if you don't like the seeds to be too big, you can always take a knife, cut them in half. These seeds are very tender with an exception on the red ones, which can be slightly tough if they are. Just omit them. Just take the seeds out, but leave the flesh in. These are the inside seeds. Just remove them. They're going to be slightly tougher. But keep the top shell because that has a flavor in it. Again, the red ones are tougher. So don't use those seeds. You can just toss them out. Fun fact, you can just put them in the garden. They do grow and this is like a vine. It just climbs everywhere. So hot or summer season crop. In the winter time, it's not going to flourish. In the summertime, this will grow and it will take over. So be careful when you plant it. Okay, now in a wok, we're going to be putting some oil to your liking. There is really no amount just enough that can cover the onions. Wait for the oil to heat up. If you like at this point, you can salt the stuffed or the cut carrelle that way the bitter flavor can go out. Take about half a teaspoon of mustard seeds. Toss them in there. And yes, these are whole mustard seeds. Take a half a spoon of cumin seeds. Toss them in. Also just roll it around. And as soon as you start hearing the mustard seeds crackle and pop, this is when you need to toss in the onion. And be careful when you toss and get in. Toss it away from yourself. Once you toss it in, just mix it up. That way the cumin and the mustard seeds do not burn. Just break up the onions a little bit. I like to cover the onions as they are on the heat. That way it speeds up the cooking process. As soon as the onions are started to take on the color or they're becoming translucent, this is when the green chilies are going to be coming in. I'm using about three or four Thai green chilies diced. You can also use, if you like, hollow peanut peppers. If you don't handle your heat properly, you don't need to use the Thai chilies at all. You can just get the respect. And again, you have to respect each ingredient. You have to let it cook a little. And at this point, the seeds that we took out or the stuffing that we took out from the bitter melon goes in. Now is the perfect time to add crushed black pepper to your taste. And also salt. We're going to be adding salt. And keep one thing in mind, if you did salt the skin of the bitter melon, use less salt. This is when we're going to be adding in the green part. Put the heat off. Taste the salt. And now we're going to be adding in the spices, red chili, crushed red peppers. And because this is a very sour dish, we're going to be adding a little bit of humchur powder. The tanginess cuts out the sourness also. So just about a half a teaspoon of humchur powder goes in there. Keep key point. The heat is off. Now we're going to stir in the spices. We're going to level it off. And the cover goes back on. And we're going to let this thing simmer for the next five minutes. All right. So this thing has now reduced. It has cooked thoroughly. It'll be a perfect time to taste to see if you need any extra spices, if you need any salt or pepper. Once you've tasted it and everything seems to be fine, now just take it out in a bowl or a wide pan. And this needs to go in the fridge to cool down really quick. And just don't wash this karahi just yet because we're going to be using it to cook the karela in. Just spread your thing on a plate and put it in the fridge so it can start cooling off. All right. Our mixture is now cooled. It's easy to pick up. It's not hot at all. And now we're going to be taking this and stuffing this cooked mixture inside the bitter melons. So just open them up. You can use your hand. You can use a spoon. I personally prefer to use hands. That way you'll know exactly your stuffing it properly because your fingers are able to go in and push everything in the crevice. It doesn't have to be perfect. The main intention is just to get as much of a stuffing as you can in it without it breaking. And the reason why we are not using this small sliced onion and we're using the big long onions is that way they don't come out easily. So this much will be just perfect. Just put it on the side. Move on to the next one. Stuff them through. Put it on the side. Again, open it up. Take a handful. Start dropping it in. If it falls out, don't worry about it. Just put it back in. This is a very unique dish at the Indian subcontinent. You don't get these at the Indian store or even at their restaurants. They just don't make them. In order to eat it, either you need to cook it yourself or you need to get an Indian friend that's willing to invite you. The other ways that people do often is they will batter it in a basin better and deep fry it. I personally prefer it. It's your deep frying the food that is supposed to be healthy for you. But hey, to each their own. And yes, it's a messy process and yes, you're using your hands. But hey, you're cooking for yourself, right? And these bitter melons you can find at Indian grocery store. You can also find them locally in Tampa Bay at MD market, which is an Oriental market or any Chinese or Japanese store. They will carry them. Do try them out just because it looks like old looking vegetable. Don't get scared by it. Adventure, live a little. And if extra is left, just go back and see if any of them had a little room left if they did. Or if you didn't stuff them properly, initially just go back and put them back in. All right, the end result should look something like this. If you have a budget wine, you can use that. If not, just use a toothpick, pierce it through that way it doesn't open up. And it also helps it to stabilize and stay on top. All we're trying to do is go through the top portion of the skin. Do it gently. You don't want to break it. And again, right from the top, just go right through it. And if it's over stuff like this, just take the filling off. You don't need that extra. It's going to fall out anyways. On the same pan, we're going to be adding, we're going to be putting it on medium high heat, adding a little bit of oil, squashing it around. You can use olive oil. You can use actually a low temperature oil because this is going to be a very forgiving dish. Just put it on medium high heat that the air or the temperature come up to a slow heat. And the way that you want to put it is top side up. Preferably put the small ones towards the outside and the big ones in the middle, that way they get a chance to cook and heat more evenly. Like so. Again, medium high heat. The main intention is that each and every one of the bitter melons should be touching some portion of the wok. Now we'll cover it, let it slow cook for about 10 minutes. The color has started to change. This is going to be the perfect opportunity of flipping them. Preferably use tongs if you're not able to handle the heat. Just hold the toothpick and rotate. Just hold the toothpick and rotate. Look at that golden color. And if it comes out, just put it back in. Don't worry about it. Once you flip them, just cover them back up and let's start cooking them again. And it did come back and open the karahi or the wok and I'm going to rotate them. This side is perfectly done. That's the color that we want. I'm going to roast the other side also to the similar texture and the similar color. And these should be ready to eat. Traditionally, these stuffed karelas or the stuffed bitter melon are served with chapatis. You can have them with paratha or puri. Don't serve them with rice. They don't go well with rice. You need something like a tortilla or a flatbread or a naan to go along with that. And as you can see, these are golden brown and delicious. While they are not crispy, they are not supposed to be crispy. They're just supposed to be done. That's the color that you're looking for. As always, like, comment, subscribe. And I will see you guys and girls on the next one. Little people. And don't forget to thumbs up. Bye.


So I've been working with ICT for the last six months on trying to bring the first data across to the LMS to inform the skills maintenance for breathing apparatus. So in the past we've recorded but wearing BA for skills maintenance in two different ways through incidents and training and now we have an opportunity and they have separate expiry dates on them. Now we have an opportunity to bring those together in one expiry date which considers training or wearing a BA at an incident. So now when you wear BA at an incident and it's logged through a first call that data every night will get sent to the LMS and your BA will be extended by 180 days from the date of the incident. It happens daily that's another really important thing to note. It will all come across automatically every night. There's a job that runs that brings the incident data across into the learning hub and we'll update everybody's expires accordingly with 180 days on top of the incident date.


So now let's go over the Etsy shop manager. Here we have all the menus and everything that we'll need to manage our Etsy dropshipping business before I talk about dropshipping automation. Dropshipping is a business model that will allow you to host an online store, have an online store like here on Etsy for example, list products from dropshipping suppliers meaning you don't have to hold anything in stock so I can have my Etsy store, have all my suppliers research winning products to sell, import them to my Etsy store and only after a customer purchases it from my Etsy store, only then will I go to my suppliers website, purchase the product and send it directly to my end customer. Then I will keep the profit between what I'm paying the supplier to what the buyer paid me on Etsy. So it's a very low risk, high reward business model and that is why I've been dropshipping for over six years and now let's see how we can connect it all to Etsy. But first let's understand Etsy's shop manager. So first we have the dashboard which shows us how many views our listings got, how many visits to our store, how many orders, how much revenue and a few more insights like people who put our items in their favorite lists and people who put our shops in their favorite list. So that is a dashboard, a small overview of what's going on in your business. Then we've got the listings. So here you can see all of your open and active listings but you can also see that on Autodesk which I will show you soon. Then you've got your messages. So messages that you're getting from Etsy, messages that you're getting from your buyers, you're going to see that under the messages screen. Then we've got orders and delivery. So all of the orders that you're going to get from your customers are going to show up here as well as your Autodesk account which I haven't showed you yet. Then you've got StarSeller. Just like how eBay has top rated sellers, Etsy also has StarSellers. They'll give you an icon next to your name and this way you'll get better search rank results on Etsy, more listing views. The buyers will know that you're a StarSeller on Etsy and that will ultimately lead to more sales. For StarSeller eligibility, you need to have a 95% and above message response rate, a 4.8 and above product rating. So customers who are purchasing your products and leaving you positive ratings, 95% shipping and delivery on time. So 95% of your orders need to be shipped and delivered on time according to your store policies and a minimum of five orders and a minimum of $200 in sales. It's really not that hard to be an Etsy StarSeller. Then you've got your store stats and analytics. So who's visiting my store, how they got to my store, customer behaviors, and so forth. Then you've got your finances. So this is where you have your payment settings, your monthly statements. And here, for example, you see that I have a small account to pay for Etsy. And if you want to know exactly what you have to pay for, you can just scroll down a little and see your recent activities. So here it's mainly for listing listings. As you see right here, this is the price I paid on this account for every listing. So listing fee 20 cents, listing fee 20 cents, listing fee 20 cents. And that is that 20 cent listing fee that I was talking about. Then we have the marketing section, which I showed you a couple minutes ago, but here you can run your ads. You can create sales and discounts so that your buyers will be able to use promo codes. This will also help you bring customers back. So it will send offers to buyers who purchased from your store. Etsy will also help you with abandoned cards. So if a buyer added one of your listings to their cards and then they just went away without purchasing, Etsy will send them a small reminder to come back and purchase from your store and also turning favorites into orders. So I just showed you an example where a buyer added one of my items to their favorites lists. So it's to their watching list, to their favorite list, call it whatever you want. You can send an offer to those buyers who put your items on their watch lists. And this way you're convincing them to come back, get a discount code or whatever it may take to get you to purchase that item that you added to your favorite list. So that is the marketing section. Then you've got the integrations and integrations is just like how the Shopify App Store has Shopify apps. Well, the Etsy App Store has Etsy apps and this is what it looks like. So you can download and install marketing apps to help you market your store like social media apps, email marketing apps to send emails to your Etsy buyers and so forth. And you've also got some SEO apps to help you rank even higher with your listings so that you'll get more traffic and more sales. And there are also apps to help you manage your bookkeeping and taxes as well as managing your inventory and analytics. And thankfully you also have AutoDS for that. But that is what the integrations is for and it's a good thing to have after you create your store and you're looking for those extra add-ons to take you that extra mile. Then you've got community and help. So if you want to open up a help ticket, if you want to see what the community wrote about, so if you need help on something that they already solved for you, you can go read it there. Then you've got your store setting. So this is where you can add that Etsy Plus subscription, but it's really not needed. At least not one for when you're starting off the info and appearance of your shop. You can also write the about us section here so buyers can see exactly what your business is all about and more things like your delivery settings, your store policies, if you accept returns, paid returns, free returns, shipping policies and so forth. Where here you can also opt out of offsite ads if you don't want to reach out to Etsy's customer support to do it. Or if you don't want to wait for Etsy to do it automatically before you opt out, just do it here in advance and you won't have to worry about it later. And you also have Facebook shops. So you can integrate your Etsy store on Facebook shops and list the same items that you have on Etsy on your Facebook shop store easily and start getting sales from both directions. So that's a brief overview of the Etsy shops manager.