This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. Personal experience makes the best of experts in any given field. In today's program, we have Teddy Oyo, the founder of Kisumu House of Photography. Teddy, Karibusana. Thank you. So it's a package for me, your experience in the media industry. Well, the experience is both challenging and exciting at the same time, but for me, my journey and experience has been a long one. However, within a short time, but long in terms of experience, I was not to be in the media industry to start with, because when I finished, well, I had an inspiration, but when I finished my high school, it took quite long before I got into this space. I finished my high school in 2006, and I joined college in 2011. So you can imagine that span. Within that period, I was just doing some other things, but were not related to media or anything back in the village. So it has been a long journey from that time to where I am now. I went to Kenya Institute of Mass Communication. I did broadcast journalism. My experience in exposure in media came at the time when I went for internships in one of the several mainstream media houses. From there, I came and stinted a bit. Where the twist came is when I finished and joined the mainstream media, then I didn't last long because there were issues within. They were cutting down on staffing, scaling down their time. It really disoriented me. I stayed out for almost six months and, funnily enough, I got an opportunity to work in a hotel. I worked in a hotel. So when I was telling my friends I'm working in a hotel, the colleagues or classmates, they were like, hotel, what do you do at the hotel? I would not explain much. I would just tell them I'm working in a hotel because that was my first and imagined experience or diversion of a career. A unique one. Imagine you having inspiration to work in a media house. You have been on radio because I was on local radio and you know the village. You already know you. No, then you want to explain now I'm cooking or doing something because then they don't know any other aspect of hotel apart from offering services. So I kept it silently. What I used to tell them. But nowadays I'm not on air. I'm producing content so you can't hear me. I had to lie a lot of time because they used to hear me. I had a show radio in a local radio station. A show in the evening so everybody would be listening to me. So all of a sudden they are not hearing that kind of thing. So what do I have to do? I have to keep you know the whole world is we don't can't tell them anything. They know you as a journalist. They know you as a media personality and the village about it. Our son. When you go say hi to us. So you can imagine that kind of experience. So from there I began accepting that it's real that I'm not in. I'm not. But in the hotel it is the good thing was I was in the department of communication digital marketing. So it's still I do not die that much in terms of what I do. But it's only the sector that changed. So I stinted there for probably okay I can gauge it for around four years. At some point I left to go work somewhere. Then I came back to the hotel again. Then from the hotel now I I now shifted back now to media. So that's journey. Yeah it's quite a colorful journey I might say. So what sparked the interest towards your media and communication career? I used to have a person I was looking after. Like a person who was my inspiration. Used to be in one of the radio stations as I was growing up. So every time I used to love. Let me just say this is a story of every other journalist. Of every other person immediately.  If at all they didn't become a journalist of media personalities by accident. If at all they didn't. If they didn't come by accident. Then they must have been following somebody who was inspiring them. So when I was growing up I used to listen to a lot of radios. And my dad is an electronics person. He repairs radios. So we had a lot of interaction with radios. So we loved, we loved, we loved it. So all along it was just radio, radio, radio. Then that inspiration came. So when I finished high school. Well I did not go through the, I did not go through the, I mean the job. So I had to wait for me to get some money to go through the college. Then opportunity, when the opportunity came I said now. I was just to make it. I got into class with people who had graduated just the other year. So we were two of us in class. But again the inspiration of our star was, we wanted our star to shine. We were two of us who are older in that class. Because we finished the same year with that gentleman. So we used to tell ourselves that let's shine here. And we used to do it. My first radio experience was within the school where I was hosting a show.  Yeah so I had an exposure. I was hosting a show every week. Then from there when I went for internship I was also, my first internship was of course on radio. Then now another one was also on radio. So it was so much on radio. Your part was just on radio.  Then you know if you are in radio you can only be radio. You see this other aspect of media like let's say TV production and all. There are a lot of other things you can do with that skill. But radio you are just a radio. So it was kind of challenging for you to transition to anything. If you are not working in radio what are you doing? What are you doing? True true true. Yeah so that's what I can say inspired me into being in this industry. It has been a very interesting journey I must say. I've interacted with a lot of people. I've networked enough but not enough for the future. For this far I've seen I can say I've really made friends. And you seem to have so much love for media. So how intentional must one be in order to pursue a particular part? You pursued media as your particular part. So how intentional must one be to pursue their own part? Very much intentional. So if you want to be a chef start interacting with chefs. Be in the spaces where food is being talked about. Avoid things that are food related. In that manner you are preparing yourself for the game. If you media understand and be in those spaces because those opportunities or rather you can be skilled but opportunity might not be there. But how do you get opportunities interact with people within those spaces? So that's a number one intentional. Intentional in terms of skills acquisition. Be know what you know very well what you want to do. You know after having that skill the opportunity will just fall in place. But don't wait for opportunity for you to get skill. Create that skill then the opportunity when the opportunity comes you now just fit in. So yeah so just be very intentional. For me I was very intentional with what I wanted to do. Like I was in the hotel industry but I was still doing. Yeah you're still focused on media. On media and the fact that I was also in the hotel I was working in was also in the setup where I interned and done media. So this generally is still interacted with me. We still got along I still knew what was happening there in the media spaces around me. So I did not lose it. You see some people when they divert they lose it in the contacts their networks. Even the skill inspiration around what they wanted to do. For me I did not lose it. I used to even when I'm off job I'm doing photography and media content for other clients. There are people who didn't even know that I'm Italian. Yeah they didn't. And let's speak about the Kisumu house of photography. You've talked about radio with so much love. So what is the genesis of Kisumu house of photography? It's a short story. When I started my now my okay just doing media or doing content creation in terms of photography I used to call myself Smolted. Smolted? Ted Photography. Smolted Photography. Yes that was the first name. Because the other time I was called by I was attending a state function. I used to write. I used to blog a lot. Those same when blogs were very local blogs. You know Facebook was very subtle in terms of people used to read blogs. So I used to write blogs for different events for different people review personalities. Then my blog was called explorekisumu.co.ke. The Explore Kisumu was about to tell people about people in Kisumu. People around what they're doing. The places to visit in Kisumu. The personalities I blogged about DJs. Musicians coming up. Then there was a creative economy function organized by the state. Then I inboxed. I remember I inboxed. It's funny but I inboxed Big Ted. Out of nowhere. I just inboxed Big Ted that I'm doing this and this. I've seen there's a creative economy conference coming up in Nairobi. But I'm based in Kisumu. Then also when you came because they came to source for the creatives for that event. And I wrote a story on my blog. What event are you talking about just to catch on for you? The creative economy. Oh okay okay. Conference. Creative economy conference. Creative economy conference. Conference. That was the first creative economy conference that was happening in Kenya. So I wrote a story when they came to fish creatives within Kisumu. Then I shared with him that blog link. Then I told him this is what I wrote. Then he just told me Ted gave me your number. You are joining that event. The conference. The conference. All the conference. It was attended by it was the first IM conference that attended. It was IM. Just to say so. So when that came in I was telling you the genesis of KHP. Now the conference when we attended the conference. When I was called because we were the bloggers of that event. We were the hashtag guys of that event. Then Big Ted calls me in a podium. And says also here we have Ted. But now we can be true Ted's. One has to because I'm small. I'm big. I'm Big Ted. He's becoming small Ted. That's how small Ted photographic him. So from there I started branding my things as small Ted, small Ted, small Ted photographic. Then it came people started challenging me because I was growing very fast. People started telling me why do you call yourself small? They didn't know. I didn't have that time to explain the source of that name. So I told them I'll grow big. I'll grow big. So after that I saw there was need to not be small anymore. But to be big. Then I came up I said what outfit can I have that encompasses all the because I was now actually doing digital marketing for different brands. I was doing content creation for different brands and that do not need that small name. That's how we came up with Kisumu House of Photography and Communications. The registered name is Kisumu House of Photography and Communications Limited. So that's the umbrella body that now I use as my company to do my affairs. It's quite it's quite catchy Kisumu House of Photography. You are the house. Yeah, I'm looking for anything. I look for that. Wow. So what activities do you undertake at KHP? KHP. Yeah KHP does a lot of things. KHP handles PR. We do thought and see. We do web design. We do digital content creation. We do brand management and endorsements. We do photography and videography. So that's what we do. Immediately we are a team. Actually, Hinaw's team is around five people, but we work with a lot of people because sometimes we get jobs that need a lot of human capital. That needs manpower to execute. So we... You should recruit me. I'm also manpower. I will. Yeah, of course you feed the bill. We actually don't have a voice of a person. So we always source when client wants. So we do a lot in terms of content creation. And we've worked with several other organizations, corporate entities, individuals, SMEs to... In those regards of PR, content creation, digital marketing, we do all that. So that's what we do. We're based in Kisumu. That's a lot of activities that you undertake. So how do you ensure that everything is running smoothly at the organization? It's challenging, but having been in the background of media and all that, it all costs for planning. Occasionally I have a number of events or assignments to do, but how I do that is nowadays I build client confidence in the company not as big. That's the... I think that's the wisdom I had that I should not go astray because I shall have limited my ability. I shall...  But I still get that a lot, especially for individuals who still want me to attend the events as a person because then they trust in what I do. Yeah. So but I've really built confidence in my team. I've told them this is something called Hinao's policy, how we do our things, and the quality that is required. So even if I'm not there, you'll see me in the quality that is delivered to you. It's satisfying to see client happy at the end of the day, but that's always our goal. Speaking of clients, who are your target clients and why these specific ones? Our clients, we don't have a specific client for us because in all the industries, what we do is required, is the need that drives our client. Do they need what we offer? Do they need what we offer? We'll offer that. You know, creating content, all these people need content. In everything we do, they need content. So we are not limited to any client. We also work with individuals, NGOs, governments, ministries. Though it calls for you to work with certain entities, it needs you to do some things differently. That's where the company comes handy. There are things we can do that individual cannot do because they need those company registration documents, they need a carrier, they need all that. For you to work with a bigger, for you to go big, you also have to have those things in place. That's so much diversity in terms of clientele. So taking on such a huge responsibility to handle different kind of people, how has it affected your business in the long run? It has affected my business positively because I'm not where I was before. So it has affected me in terms of getting people trusting me that I'll be everywhere, but my team will be everywhere. So that's a positive effect, yes. What other challenges have you encountered in this journey and how did you get by? The challenges that we face are majorly sometimes clients who do not meet their end of bargain. Like do the clients do a project, you've created your time, you've used resources, but now they don't want to pay. They pay, now we came up with a policy, a payment policy. Payment policy services. Yeah, payment policy of, if it's not an LPO, then you commit a percentage before, then during, then after. So the three-tier payment plan it saves us to not to spend on resources that are not going to be catered for by the client. So in the event that client fails to pay, even after the delivery, you have sorted your bills, running course already, so you're not going to lose. Also, you also have clients who take too long beyond their agreed payment terms. Then another challenge we find is there's a lot of lately, there's a lot of theft of equipment. You have so much experience in the media industry. You have been able to rise up against different odds. What advice can you give to a young person freshly out of high school or campus? And maybe they feel there is no hope for them to continue. What advice do you have for them? My advice is two-faced.  Then commercialize your strength. Number two, come out here and identify people who can be humble. Humility is the best thing you can ever do. If you're never humble, you can never learn those things. So, be humble, accept corrections, accept advices. Stand on the way of opportunity. Opportunities can pass the other side if you don't stand there. Be found there. Just be found there. Thank you so much, Teddy. I have loved this. You have so much that you need to share. So, how can we find you as we close up? Okay, we are Kisumah house of photography. Finally, there's not that house yet. There's not a physical house. There's not a physical house. Our email address is info at khpcommunications.com. We have digital at khpcommunications.com. We have for me, Teddy Oyo at khpcommunications.com. But we also have a Gmail address, which is khpcommunications.gmail.com. So, our numbers are 0712, 729390. That's my personal number for business. 0712, 729390. That's the number that we do business with. But by and large, we are always open for business. We do a lot with people. You have had it. Find your strength and commercialize it. Be humble. Find mentors. They will lead you in the right way to start towards your success. This has been Youth In Action. I am Nyongweso Grenis. See you next time.


Meadon and luckily we're under the roof at Fourside Bar Stadium because we've had a bit of everything today, sunshine, bit of sleet, bit of hail and a bit of snow just coming back into the Meadon. The story of the front in the overall competition is that Inkster still leans from Richards. What's happened though in the classics is it looks as though Neil Tollage has lost his lead. And so at the end of this leg let's leave you with some highlights, believe me there have been some things spectacular off and rolled and some very lucky people.


Welcome to NTN Nightly, I am Genelle Norville. This edition stops stories. The COVID-19 protocols have been adjusted to allow some concessions for fully vaccinated persons. The Minister for Agriculture continues to dialogue on the future of the NFTO and I tell DPIO successful expansion to St Lucia. The Government of St Lucia has approved amendments to the COVID-19 prevention and control measures effective the 31st of May to the 30th of June 2021. As St Lucia continues to strengthen its vaccination campaign and after careful deliberation on recommendations from the Command Centre the Cabinet of Ministers has agreed to adjust the COVID-19 protocols to allow some concessions for fully vaccinated persons. This includes allowing competitive sporting activities and social activities for a limited number of persons both with strict protocols. Prime Minister of the Honourable Alan Shastney made the announcement. Returning nationals and visitors with a negative PCR test and who are fully vaccinated will not require quarantine and random COVID-19 testing will be done at all points of airports on their arrival. Additionally, those persons who have a negative PCR test but have not been vaccinated will still have to do the 14-day quarantine. Social events with up to 50 fully vaccinated persons may be permitted after authorization through the Ministry of Health. A person with a valid liquor licence may permit an individual on licence premises to consume intoxicating liquor. A competitive sporting activity may be permitted within a controlled facility with spectators on condition that persons in attendance are fully vaccinated. Sporting events or activities must receive approval from the Ministry of Health and Wellness. All public health measures such as mandatory masks wearing in public, social distancing and washing and sanitizing of hands remain in place. The curfew remains 9pm daily. And the national vaccination drive continues next week. The sites are as follows. Monday, May 31, Sufre Hospital Grounds and VG Sports Complex. Tuesday, June 1, Darren-Sarmy Cricket Grounds and Philip Masler Grounds. Wednesday, June 2, VG Sports Complex and Denry Mothers Preschool. Friday, June 4, Darren-Sarmy Cricket Grounds and Jack Melwell Nest Centre and VG Sports Complex. Meantime, in an update on the NTN Information Command Centre regarding COVID-19 protocol breaches for the period March to May 2021, Assistant Commissioner Police Dr. Mashama Silly indicated that the highest arrests have been for non-adherents to the curfew and non-adherents to wearing a mask. Of the 1,231 recorded curfew and mandatory mask breaches, 250 arrests were made. Breaches in business sector registered at 194 with 30 arrests being made. They either do not have proper protocols in place, so they do not have sanitizing stations. They do not have or they do not maintain social distancing when people are going to the tailor on the line or the clerk on the line. And so oftentimes officers have to go in and ensure that this is done. We also have an issue where the curfew is at 9 and businesses close exactly at 9 o'clock. And so what you'll find is that after 9, there are hundreds of vehicles out on the road and it's after curfew. So we're asking that businesses close in time so that the workers and they themselves can get home before curfew, which is 9 o'clock, so that we can enforce the protocols and ensure that everyone is safe. Lawmen also intercepted 13 house parties resulting in four arrests and 30 mass crowd events resulting in two arrests. You'll find that we have those issues more on the weekend now. So from Friday to Sunday we have to go to we're given information that somebody's having a house party. You know their family members are not the ones at the party. It's more than the 10 that is allotted in the protocol and so we have to shut down those activities. During the holidays you will find people congregating on the beaches in large numbers, especially Pigeon Point Beach and Sandy Beach and they're not maintaining the social distancing as they should. And then you'll find two weeks later we have an increase in infections. There were 22 cases of breaches in home quarantine and state quarantine. 13 cases of hotel breaches were also registered resulting in one arrest. The total number of arrests made during the reporting period of March to May 2021 is 288. Meanwhile all 163 minibus travel breaches registered for this period were let off with warnings. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, of Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives Honourable Ezekiel Joseph recently chaired a meeting on the status of relations between the National Fair Trade Organization and the Government of St. Lucia. And it's your Antoine reports. As the Government of St. Lucia moves to gain more involvement in the National Fair Trade Organization and FTO Agriculture Minister Honourable Ezekiel Joseph convened a meeting with all nominees who are expected to fill in the executive positions on the organization's Board of Directors. The meeting which took place on Thursday May 27th 2021 demonstrates the government's commitment to initiating the strategic new direction which it says will benefit the NFTO and its member farmers as the previous operating procedures proved ineffective. That is not the thinking of government. The thinking of government is to see how we can work with the farmers. We believe that there are enough individuals in the respective groups that can provide proper leadership. I have the fullest confidence in that. What they need is the support. And that is what I am comfortable with the support of my cabinet. We are comfortable in giving the support and not to take over. According to Minister Joseph, government is continuing to collaborate with the NFTO Board to put the legal framework in place to begin restructuring the banana industry. The recent bailout in the amount of $4.5 million was made possible through a loan facility acquired through the Ministry of Finance to pay off banana farmers. I must say that whilst we have as a government despite the fact that we did not receive on a timely basis a reply from the NFTO as far as members are concerned, we took a decision with the support of the Cabinet and the Minister of Finance to pay some advance payment to the banana farmers. Now it has moved from 15 weeks. Well, it has moved from week 15 to week 20 because when they wrote us sometime in April, they owned banana farmers from week 7 to week 15. Today we learn that it has moved from week 15 to week 20 so there's still a lot of money outstanding for the banana farmers which of course we are factor in the loan that we are getting from the Central Development Bank with the support of the Ministry of Finance. Minister Joseph notes that the immediate goals of the NFTO as well as the government of St. Lucia are to ensure that farmers are paid on time and that they produce high quality commodities. It is going to be even more discouraging if the Board cannot increase its market share both on the UK market and the original market. So if the Board cannot do that and what I'm learning today is that there is an interest and there have been requests by the small market through Fives that they want more fruits. So it's for us now not only to sell more fruits but to sell more quality fruits. That's important because we cannot continue to export fruits and when it reaches there almost 50% of the fruit is being dumped. And instead of the importers of our fruit owing the NFTO, we cannot continue that. We have said so before. Minister Joseph reaffirms the St. Lucia government's commitment to assisting the island banana farmers constituent who are pivotal to the success of the island's agriculture economy. I tell BPO continues to expand its operations in St. Lucia having opened its doors on the 15th of July 2020 with 30 employees, the business now employs some 400 St. Lucia's. Featured in the program in the know produced by the Office of the Prime Minister, founder and chief executive officer Ioni Epstein explained that the company has been working with invest St. Lucia to expand even further. The business is already outfitting another facility and is looking to increase its staff complement to 1,200. With the second building we're coming up close to about 700 employees on the ground with the additional 30,000 square feet who want us to be close to about 1,200 employees here in St. Lucia. We love the south, although I love the north we have intentions to go to the north we feel very confident of being in this campus-like facility. In the second building we just finished building a canteen as well too and I'm told that the caterer is going to take over on the 1st of June and that will just really make life a lot easier for our team members and everybody to be in one area and we enjoy the south. It's easy to get in and out from our perspective as well as the quality of staff that we're seeing in the south are great and I understand from a transportation perspective those that are coming from outside of the south are a really easy way to get there as well. So it's been a great partnership it's been a great marriage just far and we're going to continue growing. In St. Lucia, I tell BPO was able to hire new employees who had lost their jobs in other sectors including the tourism sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Epstein noted that St. Lucia employees have exceeded expectations thus far. Every country that we're in has their uniqueness and I would say what we've seen with St. Lucia so far is we're seeing greater productivity we're seeing lower absenteeism and lower attrition than some of our traditional countries that we operate in. To me, that just says a lot for going back to our four Y's the quality of staff are producing as good or better than more senior sites so that means that they actually have more to gain. When you think about reliability we're confident they're going to come into work because we see our attrition lower we see our absenteeism lower when you think about integrity we're not having to worry about certain aspects of potential fraud or cyber crime or things like that here in St. Lucia and then family, we're coming up June, July 15th last year and we opened the site officially so we're coming up on a year in St. Lucia and they've just immersed themselves into the family culture as if they've been there for years. The founder and CEO indicated that the plan has always been to expand hiring new staff and increasing clientele some aspects of this plan will fast-track due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has affected business operations the world over. We went out to a few clients we set a target, we said you know within the first year let's attempt to get to 200 employees and we weren't really sure how the client take-up was going to be because although I may believe St. Lucia has what it takes our clients also have to believe that it has what it takes because they're taking a gamble as we know it is an industry that has been here for some years there is experience in it however it's not widely known so our clients took a gamble with us and basically because of the power of our brand and I tell saying to them you've got to try St. Lucia come with us test it out, let's see they said you know what, it's worth it we want to expand our footprint we want some country redundancy we trust you guys, you guys have done great work for us, let's go and as we started on that journey of going to different clients and I think also the pandemic actually helped to fast-forward that because people wanted more and more redundancy there was different protocols depending on the country you went to there was lockdowns because of what was happening in a particular country or in a major city so this gave them greater coverage founder and chief executive officer of ITEL BPO Ioni Epstein this is NTN Nightly up next, Primus Hutchinson with the NTN Nouvelle, Aguiol here at St. Lucia Distillers we produce an award winning range of rums and rum products we export our rums to the Caribbean North America and Europe standards facilitate our entry into overseas markets in the rum business it is critical that our distillers and blenders get it right St. Lucia Distillers is HASAP certified we use two standards from SLBS the standard for labeling of prepackaged foods SLNS 1-3 2014 and the National Specification for Rum SLNS 12-2003 we are also a registered member of the West Indies Rum and Spirit Producers Association Whisper SLBS ensures that we are up to standard and world class this message is brought to you by the Commonwealth Standards Network welcome back we join Primes Hutchinson for the NTN Nouvelle, Aguiol which has the benefit of international tourism the Prime Minister declare that we are working with theaden and have a good chance to achieve the level of the country which is in the best of the budget and we will achieve the level of the trip and we will also explain that are not more than a distance from us, all the necessary things that we have to do in advance must be done in advance. For the Ministry of Education, the industry must be very excited for all these benefits, initiatives that we have to take. Unfortunately, there are many difficult situations that are very difficult. The financial situation of the industry must always be very excited for all these initiatives that we have to take to the service that we have to take in advance for all these passengers because if the Ministry of Education doesn't take all these passengers to the service that we have to take, then there will be a lot of passengers who have to go to the excursion for the youth. For this purpose, we must work hard to buy the services that we have to take to the service that we have to take in advance. The other way is to organize the visitation between the FI. We can say that we are very excited to be able to ensure good negotiated agreement and to protect the桃es for this country. The first project to clean and clean in the John Compton in the Tetchimmee district We try to We try to We try to We try to we try to we try to we try to We want to make the people of this country proud. We want to make the people of this country proud. The people of this country, the people of the country, we want to make the people of this country proud. I think that this is an opportunity for agriculture, for fish, natural resources, for the cooperative in your area. Joseph, if you are satisfied with this, if you want to work in this country, you can do the work of the fisheries. It is very difficult. Minister Diwisus Natiwella, who is also a member of Kikotoa Tessiya to start working there, was affected by the rain and the rain was so heavy that he came to Jezala. Anouab Joseph Diki, who was the initiator of the initiative, and experienced the industry of the rain. The second phase of Jezala began in three months to come. Minister of Agricultural and Agriculture Anouab Ezekiel Joseph, I have brought good news for the FIG cultivators in the country and we have 4.6 million dollars of assistance to pay debt to NFTO and to support the financial situation of the FIG farmers. Minister Avicola, as we know, has a board of places, I have a chain description, and the Greek NFTO to fill in the government and the necessary information to facilitate payment to Jezala-Pabak. I am a member of the NFTO, and I am also a member of the Direct Boat Farmers. So, at least we can progress. Sanuwele Fair Chulma, it is the West Coast Ability Board, because the Ministry of Nutrity Program, to move with it at 4.2 million dollars but you need to pay about 4.5 million dollars. 4.5 million dollars are NFTO, which is almost 2.2 million dollars, so we have to pay the debt. In addition to salary, the staff members, the staff members have to be encouraged because we have to pay the debt. We have to pay the debt. We have to pay the debt. So at least we can check out how much money we have to pay the debt. But the Ministry of Nutrity of Jezala-Pabak, it is the same as the inhabitants, because we have to expect to make sure that the conditions that we have to pass are as long as possible. So, if we are able to do that, if we are able to do that, we are satisfied that consistently we are able to pay 100% of the debt, but in terms of our inspection, as we are working to make assistance for the Bokaldifig, we can inspect you. Please go over the Bokaldifig and describe what the consistent farm is doing to Bokaldifig. Thank you, Madam. We are now the Ministry of Nutrity, I am Yzequiel Joseph, That brings us to the end of NTN Nightly. Join us next time at 7pm with a repeat at 7am. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am Janelle Norvell.


Hello, and welcome to this presentation of the STM32 Chromart Accelerator. It covers the features of this adaptive real-time accelerator block, which is widely used for graphic computing in the microcontroller. The Chromart Accelerator offers true hardware acceleration for graphical operations. The Chromart Accelerator is built around a 2D DMA engine for fast data copy with specific functions to support pixel format conversion as well as blending operations between two planes. It also provides specific modes for managing anti-aliased fonts. The Chromart Accelerator will offload the CPU for most of the graphical operations with a 1 pixel per cycle throughput, integrated pixel format conversion, and blending. The Chromart Accelerator is fully integrated in graphical stacks, making its software integration transparent to the user. The Chromart Accelerator has four operating modes, registered a memory for rectangle filling operations, memory to memory for 2D memory copy operations, memory to memory with pixel format conversion for bitmap drawing with format conversion, and memory to memory with pixel format conversion and blending for bitmap or text drawing with transparency. The user can independently program all the parameters for the source and the destination, the address of the layer, including its size and position, the color format, and the way transparency is managed. Register to memory mode is used to fill a part or whole destination image with a specific color. The color value is set in a register of the output PFC. Memory to memory mode is used to copy a part or whole source image into a part or whole destination image without changing the color format. Memory to memory mode with pixel format conversion is used to do the same type of copy as memory to memory mode but with a pixel format conversion. It can copy an RGB 565 image into an RGB 888 image without having to use the CPU. Memory to memory mode with pixel format conversion and blending is used to blend a part or whole source image with a part or whole destination image with a different pixel format. This is widely used to draw bitmap icons having transparency or fonts. For each foreground and background layer, the format can be programmed independently. Direct mode fetches the RGB or ARGB content directly from the memory. Indirect mode uses an intermediate color lookup table to determine the color to be used during the copy or blending operation. All the input color modes are transformed internally into ARGB 8888 format to perform the blending operation. Specific modes can be used to efficiently manage texts and fonts. Only the transparency value is stored in memory for rendering anti-aliased fonts. The color is added during the pixel format conversion process and can be programmed by the user. These modes are very efficient for storing high quality bitmap fonts. The output pixel format converter generates the color for the destination independently from the source. There is no indirect mode in output, as this would imply to calculate a color lookup table or CLUT. Nevertheless, memory to memory operations without pixel format conversion or PFC can copy data independently of their formats. The fully hardware blender allows blending of a foreground image and a background image with transparency. This can be used to draw bitmap images of any shape with a perfect rendering. One pixel is generated per cycle, making this complex operation much more efficient than if it was done by the CPU. The resulting pixel can be coded independently from the source thanks to the output pixel format converter. The output configuration defines the working area for the chromart operation. The address and the line offset parameters are used to select which sub-area of the output is concerned. The background and foreground layers have their own configuration for address, line offset and color format. This defines which area of the foreground and background layers are targeted by the chromart operations. The chromart accelerator has six interrupt sources to signal configuration errors, CLUT transfer complete, CLUT access error, watermark reach during a transfer, transfer complete and transfer error. No DMA trigger is used as the chromart accelerator embeds its own DMA. The chromart accelerator is active in run and sleep modes. A chromart interrupt can cause the device to exit sleep mode. In stop mode, the chromart accelerator is frozen and its register's content is kept. In standby mode, the chromart accelerator is powered down and it must be reinitialized afterwards. The chromart accelerator is widely used in any graphical application to compute the frame buffer without any CPU load and with a very efficient throughput. It can compose the whole scene with transparency and facilitate the management of animations. Text rendering is also accelerated, making it easy and efficient to manage anti-aliased fonts. You can refer to the trainings related to the RCC and interrupts for additional information.


Vitalik instead turned around and burned that in order to create a donation for COVID relief. I think it's admirable, but it also shows how weird and volatile the space is. Reputations and coin values can similarly be made and destroyed overnight. Hey, folks. I'm Adam B. Levine, and this is Speaking of Bitcoin. As always, I'm joined by the other host of the show, Stephanie Murphy. Hi there. Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Hello. And Jonathan Mohan. Hey, hey. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about what I've been thinking of as the modern mania. It's not just the everything bubble that's engulfed our world, but the shallowness that's come with it. Well, it sure didn't take long, but we're back with a couple of news items that blew up over the last few days involving Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin. It's modern mania part two, electric boogaloo. So let's jump right in. So Jonathan, this Elon Musk thing, I have to tell you, like it on the one hand caught me by surprise. And on the other hand, it's not surprising at all. Can you catch us up? Sure. I think the good way to preface it is a number of things occurring and people drawing a Glenn Beck style, like linear progression between all of the events into making like Elon the nexus of all causality. But basically, Elon Musk was on Saturday Night Live, where everyone was anticipating him pumping the heck out of Doge. And Doge went crazy up and down on the basis of the expectation of him being on Saturday Night Live. And then perfectly timed on this week, immediately following the Saturday Night Live appearance, he basically made an announcement that Tesla thinks Bitcoin creates too much CO2 in the world. And it isn't sort of the direction they want to go in. And so they will no longer be buying any more Bitcoin. And they are looking for any type of distributed ledger based technology solution that is open and distributed and uses 95% less CO2 than Bitcoin. And so a lot of people were saying, oh, God, look, he's finally acknowledging the CO2 admission in Bitcoin. And then all these Bitcoin apologists felt like they needed to have the free will versus determinism of unending non-solution argument about should we justify or defend Bitcoin's CO2 admission argument, which never goes anywhere and never changes anyone's minds. And a lot of other people felt betrayed because they were like, you were the chosen one. Why did Elon betray us? And then of course, Bitcoin goes down to prices not seen until about two weeks ago. So that just catastrophic decimation in the price of Bitcoin surely must have been Elon. And the fact that he tweeted about that very secret market information known as Bitcoin CO2 admissions. And so as I understood it, Tesla said that they would no longer be accepting Bitcoin for their cars. Incidentally, I believe they haven't let anyone actually buy a car for Bitcoin yet. So I believe they announced that they were suspending the acceptance for something they never accepted, which people saw as a very bad sign for the viability of Bitcoin. And yeah, so that's basically the story. Sounds like someone wants to buy some Bitcoin. No, just kidding. But I mean, people are attributing all of these price changes just to the words of this one person. And, you know, that may not actually be true. Well, it's sort of like the comet hypothesis. And in Twitter is this very vocal minority that liked to peacock all the time. And so it's like, great, all the peacocks are looking at that peacock. That doesn't mean it had anything to do with the earthquake that just happened today, right?  So everyone attributes it to the comet. And so it's sort of funny. It's like, well, maybe people were momentum trading Elon or maybe it had to do, I don't know, with the disclosure of inflation last month being 4.2%. It could very well be that Elon's acknowledgement of CO2 output from Bitcoin and the non-acceptance of Bitcoin that he never accepted for Elon cars tank Bitcoin 10%. Or it could just be a massive correction in the bond and equities market corresponding to the federal government acknowledging up 800% increase in inflation in the official rate. But I'm pretty sure it's Twitter. You sound a little bit annoyed here. Can you kind of tell me more about that as my therapist would say? Oh, no. So CEOs of public companies are far more a politician than they are an engineer. And, you know, it's not to say that that's inherently bad. It's just the function that they serve. And so when you look at politicians, I think that, you know, you always should look at a man's actions and not his words, because his words are meaningless if he's in the role of politics. And so people were looking at Elon's words saying, you know, oh, God, how could he have, you know, changed anything? But if you look at his actions, nothing has changed. And so I like to sort of harken back to what Donald Trump would do, which is he was the master. So the same thing with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They're the masters of claiming free real estate. And free real estate is when you do something that costs you nothing to appease an interest group or a base that consolidates your power for an action that you don't actually do that doesn't cost you anything. So it's just free real estate. And so Donald Trump would do this. AOC would do this. And the point isn't action. It's just this cost me nothing to do and consolidates power increases power. And so what did Elon say? Elon said, I acknowledge this problem with Bitcoin, appeasing a base. What did he also say? He said he wasn't selling a single Bitcoin he was holding, right? So how many billions of dollars of Bitcoin does this guy have that he's still long in? He sold 10% of his Bitcoin a month ago before he came to Jesus about this massive CO2 problem he needed to appease his activist investors with, right?  No, he's hodling and he's one of the largest hodlers in the world, right? And so if you actually look at his actions, you think about it in terms of portfolio management, right? So his treasury is, I don't know what percentage, but a super majority percentage Bitcoin, right? And so is it possible that pull a Michael Saylor and do a bond issue wants to buy more Bitcoin? Is it possible that he could convince the board or his CFO that they shouldn't be 60% Bitcoin, they should be 85% Bitcoin? Probably not. And so what he realized internally was he has billions of dollars of Bitcoin that he's going long and he's not selling and that he's not going to be able to internally increase the exposure for more Bitcoin that they would want to buy. And so if he's not going to buy more Bitcoin, but he's not going to sell it and he never actually accepted Bitcoin for cars anyway, but he can appease his investors by saying Bitcoin bad. I'm going to undo something I never did. It's all free real estate. And so that's all he did is just the political move of acquiring free real estate by doing nothing. I think you're giving Elon Musk far too much credit. I mean, in the overall scheme of things, first of all, the Bitcoin holdings that they have is tiny. Vis-a-vis their exposure to national currencies and everything else or that man's individual wealth. But the bottom line is when the argument comes to is Elon Musk, you know, a very proficient engineer or simply a good manager or simply a good investor. The answer is really simple.  That is his primary skill at every now and then.  And that's all there is to it. He's laughing at you. He's laughing at all of us because he's a shitposter and it has no meaning. It's entertainment and that's all it is. And so it doesn't matter what. And anybody who's like a fan of Elon Musk is this super entrepreneur or super engineer.  And I lose respect when I hear people glorifying Elon Musk. The bottom line is that he wasn't the savior of Bitcoin and we should really not pay much attention to his shitposting. He really does seem to be the modern Barnum, right? He's good to Jonathan's point at grabbing that free real estate and just kind of making it work to his point. But the other thing that's interesting to me about Musk, I think we should say this. None of us care about the price of Bitcoin actually. It feels like this is a defensive conversation, but it's just because of how ridiculous the whole thing is, right? Well, it's not that we don't care. That's not our primary focus. And I would actually go in further and say that like the area that most Bitcoin advocates are like the most navel, weasley, weasley, pathetic little like apologist monsters on is in having any type of conversation about Bitcoin CO2 output and acknowledging it as a good thing, a bad thing, a problem or something that exists. Because just like people engage in idolatry with Elon, people engage in idolatry with Bitcoin. And it's this refusal to acknowledge that any single component of Bitcoin could not be a perfect desired outcome. That every component of it is perfect.   And so like any time someone brings up, well, her dear, what about Bitcoin CO2? It's like a four hour conversation of the most weasley, pathetic Bitcoiners talking about how, well, it's not really a problem or this, this and that. And so it's just one of these like very, very big trigger words in this community for people who think that Bitcoin needs to be perfect in order for it to change the world. Here's the real irony. I'm a big fan of electric cars. And I think that they're a revolutionary technology primarily because they distribute non-polluting use of energy in a highly decentralized fashion. But if you look at what people wrote about, especially in the early days of Tesla, for example, there is a palpable irony here because a lot of people pointed out, for example, that the piddly 10 square meter solar chargers that are solar panels that are on top of superchargers are nowhere near sufficient to actually charge all of the vehicles that are going through there. It's mostly decorative or that the vast majority of these vehicles get charged off grid power. And that grid power, depending on where you live and how environmentally friendly the politics of energy production and its CO2 impact are, that grid power may be very, very carbon neutral or even renewable, or it may be very polluting, like coal. And a lot of people pointed out that Tesla isn't necessarily eco-friendly if you put it in an environment where the local politics encourage production of dirty electricity. Well, do you know what else is not very eco-friendly? A private fleet of reusable intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those don't really have the greatest CO2 footprint. I don't know, Andreas, if you ever put your used car into orbit of the sun. But I know that that creates a hell of a lot more CO2 than, I don't know, maybe what you're going to do when you fly to Europe next year. Right. So, I mean, all of these conversations are really about looking at absolute measures versus looking at relative priorities and the politics of carbon. Because shifting the conversation in this way really, I don't think is particularly helpful, but it's ironic because the same exact kind of shallow analysis of the long-term environmental impact that Elon expressed for Bitcoin is the exact same kind of shallow analysis that people were expressing for electric cars. I think electric cars are an incredible advantage because what they do is they concentrate the carbon emissions and pollutions at the grid level where grid is used and not renewables. And those can be more effectively met with carbon hostile policies and politics. You can police one power plant instead of trying to emissions check two million vehicles and make sure that their catalyst isn't broken or that their timing belt isn't off or whatever. And it shifts pollution from the inner city where it impacts the most disadvantaged people to locations where you can apply politics. So to me, that's a net good. And it's one of the reasons why I think an all-electric automotive system and transportation system is a fantastic advancement for the human race. For the same reasons that I think that proof of work is a net benefit because it shifts the politics of money. But it's just ironic to me that the same kind of shallow arguments that we used against Tesla now being used by Tesla's leader against Bitcoin. I don't think it's worth paying too much attention to these arguments anyway. So after the break, we'll be back to discuss another demonstration of this kind of wild environment that we're in right now where there's lots of noise and not that much signal. When we talk about the myriad Dogecoin. Dogecoin. No, that's a good term, actually. Dogecoin clones. Exactly, yeah. The myriad Dogecoin clones that Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin turned the situation around on. It's a funny story. We'll be right back. Oh boy, where do we begin? Okay. So just like there are many different breeds of dogs, there are... No. No, I like it. I like it. I like it. Go. So when anything gets successful, there are lots of copies of it and lots of people try to piggyback off the success. And, you know, Dogecoin has been, we've talked about it. It made it to, speaking of Bitcoin, so you know it's really made it big. It's been discussed a lot lately. Everybody's heard about it. And of course, you know, there are lots of clones, lots of... What would you call it? Like descendants of Dogecoin, puppies, coins or something? Okay, I'm going to stop with this. Yeah. So let's tell a little story about something that happened to us at the show here, I guess, nine days ago looking at this. A long time ago, in episode 102 of this show, which is like 80% of our episodes ago, we for a single episode had a Dogecoin donation address because we interviewed Jackson Palmer. I guess he wasn't the founder, but he was like the primary developer on the Dogecoin project. And remember, we've been doing this show since 2013. Yeah. So this interview probably took place like six or seven years ago at this point. Yeah. So it was 2014. And so we actually received a donation at the time, which I don't think that we actually knew about, which was 102,000 Doge, which at the time was worth like 10 bucks, 15 bucks, something like that. And which we probably forgot about. Hey, thanks. That's nice. Yeah. No, it was great at the time. It was fantastic. So the message that we got was, hey, hope you're well. I'm messaging because I was tracing my old Doge wallet to notice that I donated to LTB 102, save Gox in the show floor and these coins were never moved, just letting you know that these are sitting there. And so we were like, oh, well, that's interesting. And so we went and took a look and found that that $15 tip from seven years ago had turned into about $50,000 worth of tip, which was quite interesting. For the show, that's actually a couple of years of operating expense for us. So it was like a really big deal. And so this kind of led to some conversations around Dogecoin and all of this happening as kind of the fervor around Doge and Elon Musk with his SNL appearance, that definitely seemed like it was probably going to end badly and spoiler alert, so far it has ended badly for Dogecoin, all of this kind of excitement around it. But in the aftermath of Dogecoin sort of losing some of its glamour as a result of this rather lackluster performance on SNL when talking about this stuff, a whole bunch of projects started spinning up on the Ethereum blockchain. And these projects have names like Arshib, Shiba Inu Coin, Doja Lawn, which of course goes by the ticker Elon, Akita Inu, MW Doge, and other stuff like that, right? So like memes on top of memes. Well, yeah, they're like derivative memes, right? Okay, that's the phrase I was looking for at the beginning of the show. Thank you so much. Okay. Yeah, just how Bitcoin sort of derived all of these altcoins, right? Because it was like, well, you have coins different than Bitcoin. That's an altcoin. And then Ethereum came out, right?  Because you've got Ethereum and then you've got all these Ethereum killers. So these are like derivative memes that really aren't memes themselves. They want to be. And the other thing they're trying to do is they're trying to make it so that people can make a lot of money or at least feel like they can potentially make a lot of money. Because there's so many of the coins, trillions and trillions and trillions in many cases. I believe a quadrillion actually, in one particular case, that even if the price moves just like one-one-hundredth of a penny, well then, holy crap, that's a lot of money, right? And so all you need to do is just buy a lot of this token and anyone can afford it. So as part of all of this, as part of the marketing of this really is the way to say it, is that Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, who is himself, just based on public funds and what we can see that he actually possesses, is himself a billionaire. He's also kind of like the symbolic head, right? He's the Satoshi for Ethereum, except you can't actually send Satoshi any money because we don't actually know his addresses. I guess we do know his address. So I guess you could do this. Why aren't we doing this on Bitcoin? Okay, back to the story. So anyways, creators of these various derivative meme tokens sent these tokens in large quantities. In some cases, 50% of the total supply to Vitalik so that they could then claim accurately that Vitalik is a holder of this coin. And so this kind of presents an interesting like a Streisand effect question for Vitalik because on the one hand, I'm sure he doesn't particularly want these people drafting off his reputation. Yeah, he didn't ask for this. They're just using him for marketing with this gift if you can even call it that. I feel like it was almost kind of thought about as a proof of burn, right? We're burning these tokens. See, we as the anonymous creators of these tokens, we can't access these. We've sent them to Vitalik. He's a very trusted figure, right? And so what wound up happening was, and I was looking into this a decent amount yesterday. So he got a bunch of these different types of tokens and a bunch of ones we didn't mention too. Another one that jumped out at me was Labradoodle. And again, all of these are garbage, no network, no really nothing, just ERC20s and then a lot of speculation around, oh, this is going to be the next dose. So anyways, he got sent tons of these tokens and about 24 hours before all of this action happened, he actually burned some of them. Like he literally took a large proportion of one of the tokens and sent it to a burn address. And then he didn't do that with the rest of them. And about 12 hours passed and then he started selling the tokens on the one side and donating the tokens on the other side. A very large donation in nominal terms, specifically to the India COVID Crypto Relief Fund, which I believe he was one of the people who started also. So that donation was worth a nominal $1.5 billion at the time that he made it, making it one of the largest on paper charitable donations in the history of charitable donations. So that was interesting. So why do you say it's a nominal $1.5 billion? Is it because if you tried to actually sell it, the value would not be there? Yeah, exactly. Like these are tokens again, like everything is valued on a market cap, right? It's like even valuing doge on market cap is kind of silly because you look at how many doge are out there. And then you look at how many of them actually have moved in the last five or six years. It's not a big amount, right? Like there's a lot of tokens that are out there. But again, like this is true for Bitcoin too. Like in the early days, people just didn't understand that it was going to matter in the same way. And so the reason to keep such amazing good track of it and not have one little mistake kind of compound and then make it so that you can't access those tokens anymore, like that's pretty easy to do. And that's true with Bitcoin, which people thought was going to be money. But it's even more true with Dogecoin, which people didn't think was going to be money. People just thought was, again, like, here's a fun 100,000 tokens I'm going to send to you. Look at me, right? Like that's what I certainly used to do with it. Like it was really like a very solid tipping token because it was so cheap and because nobody really thought of it as money in that way. Yeah, so I think one of the interesting things that's happened repeatedly in this industry is that overnight something that starts as a joke can become serious money. And then it's up to different people to see how they react when they suddenly find themselves in a situation of serious money. I think Vitalik did the right thing here and demonstrated character because one of the things that we've seen repeatedly is that people who have a strong reputation in the industry will use that reputation to get kind of sponsorships and endorsements and go and promote various coins as investments. You know, that's one of the things that John McAfee was indicted for recently. And, you know, John McAfee presumably was not exactly poor when he did this, but was obviously in a situation where he wanted to pursue the riches and screw the reputation. Vitalik demonstrated the exact opposite here. He had the opportunity, even as a joke to participate in these would give them the kind of boost that can make their founders millionaires or more overnight. And Vitalik instead turned around and burned that in order to create a donation for COVID relief. I think it's admirable. But it also shows how weird and volatile this space is. Computations and coin values can similarly be made and destroyed overnight. I want to tail on to that for a second. So you mentioned that he basically burned these by sending them to the charity. I actually think that there is a distinction here between burning. Well, no, no. What he did was he burned the endorsement by burning the coins or sending them to charity and not using those coins or giving anything in terms of an endorsement back for those who tried to use him for his reputation. That's what I meant by burned. I would go one further. He accepted receipt of them and then sold them via station. So if anything, he accepted the endorsement. Well, so this is actually exactly where I wanted to go with this. So he did, as I mentioned, literally burned, literally sent to an address on the Ethereum network that is a burn address that is so specific that it cannot be reproduced naturally. There's no way that anyone can have the private key to this particular type of address because it's so unlikely to come up that you just couldn't recreate it. So he did that first and then he stopped and he didn't do that again. And if you think about it again, just gaming this out, by burning it, he actually reduces the supply of the token which can then be interpreted by the promoters as a positive thing. Oh, now there's less of this token. But if he either sells it or if he donates it to someone who will then themselves sell it, then that's a fundamentally different thing. Now it's taking this thing that is supposed to be locked away with this person who has all of this provenance. And now it's something that's actually pulling liquidity and money out of the marketplace. So I think they expected him to do nothing, to just have it sit there like the 500 other coins that are randomly sent to anybody who has an Ethereum address containing anything within them that are worth nothing. And they're not even worth sending anywhere or doing anything with. And instead, he kind of turned it on its head and he said, all right, well, I actually am going to play along with this, but only insofar as it causes problems for the narrative that you're trying to push by including me in this in the first place, right? Instead of this being safely stored in the founder of Ethereum's wallet, it is instead safely stored in a charity that's going to sell it and then do good things with it, right? And that's great in an aggregate sense. And it's a good move, I think, of the ways you could respond. It's probably the least worst option. But for the project, it's really bad because now suddenly all of this supply is held by people who have no cost basis on it and who have every incentive to maximize the value that they get out of it. So on the one hand, that means we're not likely to see, the charity suddenly sell all of the tokens. They might try to manage them and actually participate in the ecosystem. And so far, the messaging that's come back from them has said that, that they want to be good community members. But again, it kind of just fundamentally shifted the game theory and made it such that the big player in the space isn't someone who has all the money. It's someone who has the need for all of the money, has this arguably, like, Herculean task to try and help the country of India broadly to deal with the COVID pandemic, which has been very challenging. And of the options that he had, it's kind of the least worst. But from a game theory perspective, I think it was probably the right one. I'm curious what you guys think. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I've been in a similar situation where people have airdropped tokens to a public address of mine and I've basically let them sit there. But that choice was a lot easier because the amounts we're talking about were tiny by comparison and therefore just letting them sit there and ignoring them was the easier choice. If the value was significant, it does put you in a very difficult position. And it seems like Vitalik's choice was kind of the best that could be made overall. So, on our next episode, we're going to get into kind of the current environment of inflation, what it actually means in real life, maybe what it even means 20 or 30 years ago because that's actually a little bit different than it is today. But, you know, again, just like we keep coming back to this thing, which is that all of this stuff on the one hand doesn't matter. And on the other hand, it's so fascinating, right? The conversation that is going on, sort of the meta-conversation that happens in our world around this stuff, right?  What Vitalik does as a founder, arguably he has less influence now than he did back in the days of the Dow when by sort of aggressively advocating for one particular approach, he was able to have a really outsized impact. For the most part, he doesn't have an outsized impact anymore. But I think it also speaks to kind of the importance of these projects and specifically of Bitcoin not having a figurehead that can be drafted off of in this way, either for good or for negative, right? And again, Vitalik for all of the good that I think that he does, and I think the maturity that I think that he displays, simply by being there, right? Simply by being Vitalik, who people understand to have been the inventor of this originally, you know, like that puts him in this position where Andreas, as you were saying, like, there just isn't a good option. And it's something that they're going to be put into kind of over and over and over again because the incentives for the people on the outside who are doing this, well, I mean, they have every incentive to use you to the kind of maximal extent possible. It all matters in a little bit, but it really doesn't matter at all. And that's kind of weird, right? We're kind of in this time when stuff is like so crucial and time critical and important, and yet none of it matters because it's all such this floaty nonsense that actually doesn't impact anything. Yeah, it is a very strange environment to be in. And I find myself kind of much more disconnected with the news during the times of crazy bubble-iness. Today, I checked the price of Bitcoin for the first time, I think, in a week. And I saw some kind of message that it had collapsed. So I checked it, and it was where I remember it being. But that's only because I hadn't checked it for a week. And apparently it had gone way up during that time and then went way down. And that caused enough excitement for people to write an article about its collapse. It's hilarious, right?  And I find myself more disconnected at times when things are very frothy because the level of hysteria that is happening all across the media on these topics becomes just unsettling. And I think people like Vitalik who end up in these leadership positions have an unenviable job. We're very lucky that Satoshi isn't around because you can end up with a founder that is highly problematic and only becomes a negative asset. Liabilities are for the entire industry. And we've seen that with a number of systems that have popped up, which have had fairly flawed founders. We don't have that problem in Bitcoin. And Ethereum has been lucky enough to have someone who has demonstrated character and integrity repeatedly. I have a lot of respect for Vitalik in his community leadership and his decision-making. It's pretty rare for someone that young to have maturity and that's good. But you don't want to take that kind of chance, right? So it's much better to have leaderless systems where the founders are either anonymous or are gone, or both as in the case of Bitcoin. That way you don't have to deal with that problem. In Bitcoin what we have is dozens and dozens and dozens of influencers slash charlatans who are trying desperately to fill in the shoes of Satoshi and none of them matter. This is opening a can of worms, but I'm just going to do it as we close out the episode. Who do you think will be worse? Elon Musk as Satoshi or Craig Wright as Satoshi? I think that we don't have an answer to that question. Well, folks, that's a wrap on another episode of Speaking of Bitcoin. Today's episode featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, and myself, Adam B. Levine. This episode featured music from Jared Rubins with Editing by Jonas. If you enjoyed this episode, send us an email at adamandspeakingofbitcoin.com or just leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. And until next time, thanks for listening.


So you've never used Unity before, not a problem. Now for this series, I am gonna assume that you are coming from Blender as a modeler or an animator or really any other 3D software. Once you've downloaded Unity, if you go to the hub and create a new project, you will find yourself at this window. Now even if this is your first time using Unity, you might notice that it feels a little familiar and that is because Unity 3D is designed to be comfortable for people who use 3D software. So the main menu is very similar to how things look in Blender. You know how every time you click on something in Blender, all of its characteristics show up on the right side under Properties? Well it's the same thing in Unity. Every time you click on something in the game, all of its characteristics will pop up over here on the right. In Unity, this area is called the Inspector. The same way that you can see a list of everything in your scene under the Layers tab in Blender, in Unity, you can see a list of everything in your scene under the hierarchy. The game window shows you what the player or the camera would see. But the scene is the normal develop view, where you can drag in and move all your objects around. You can also use the industry standard hotkeys of W, E and R to quickly switch between move, rotation and scale. And just like in Blender, you can drag these windows around and customize your view. To control the camera, middle click the pan, alt left click to rotate the camera and to zoom in and out, alt right click or scroll up and down. To focus on an object, left click and press F that the bottom here is where you navigate through all the assets used to create the game. Now I'm assuming that since you're coming from Blender, you've probably already created some 3D stuff which you would like to put into your game. So the first thing that I recommend you do is go down here in the assets area, right click and create a new folder for all your 3D stuff. Alright, so how exactly do you get your stuff from Blender into your game? Well if you have an unrigged 3D object, you export it as an OBJ. But if you have a rigged or an animated 3D object, the most common way is to export it as an FBX. And make sure that you send your objects into your 3D stuff folder in Unity. If you have textures, drag those in too. If you are using procedural or non-UV mapped textures, make sure you bake those into texture maps before you drag them in. Now just like in Blender, you have to use materials to put textures onto your object. So if in Blender your object had two materials in Unity, you will find that your object has two slots for materials. Now to create materials for your textures in Unity, right click, create, material, drag your map onto the material and if you ever want to duplicate something you just press Ctrl D, then left click and drag that material onto your model. And you're done. That's really all you need to know before you're ready to start coding. Which we will start doing in the next video. And in the meanwhile, as always, hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.


The paper examined the properties of a PIN structure made up of NGASN slash GOS triple quantum well layers. Three different methods were used to evaluate the DLTS spectrum, including a new numerical algorithm. Defects such as material and growth imperfections were identified, along with emission from the quantum well. The energy levels of the structure were calculated and compared. The study concluded that this structure has potential for use in solar cells and suggested further optimization of the growth process. This article was authored by Jakub Rybar, Lubikas Tachlikova, Ladislav Harmatha, and others.


Right now what we're seeing is that more and more people are going to their mobile phones to shop for the necessary items that they need. Welcome to the We Are Slam Show where we share marketing agency insights, best practices and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder and chief strategist here at Slam Agency. And today I'm going to share with you the five absolutely must-haves on your website if you want to do online sales. When I talk about a must-have, what I'm talking about are the things that are necessary in order to convert somebody from a shopper, from a looker to a buyer on your website. You know, in the brick and mortar world you have an opportunity for these people to walk into your store, to come into your office, you can do the wine and dine, you can build the relationship online. That's not always the case. Online you have to do things right here and now in a way that drives trust and credibility and in a way that makes their experience from looker to buyer seamless and simple. Okay? So the first way to do that, especially right now, is to make sure that your site, that your store, that the online store platform that you're using is mobile-friendly because like it or not, you know, when people are at the office every day they're able to get on a desktop and do business that way. But right now what we're seeing is that more and more people are going to their mobile phones to shop for the necessary items that they need. So what this means is that your website should look just as good on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop and this should be a critical priority for you at this point in time. Number two, we talk about conveying trust and credibility. I want to talk to you about trust indicators. This is super important. A perfect example of a trust indicator is a BBB accredited seal. BBB accredited seal tells your customer that number one, that your business follows and adheres to a certain set of ethical guidelines, a certain set of principles that place you in that upper echelon of businesses that you're not necessarily, you know, a business that you need to be concerned about. Along with that seal you're going to have a letter grade and I'm sure because you're watching the show that your letter grade is probably in the A category, you know, an A minus and A plus something like that. And what that means is that you're trustworthy. Another way to convey trust is to make sure that your site is secure, that it's the HTTPS, that you have a security certificate, that when they're typing in their credit card information that you have right there, you know, next to that box a lock icon that just reinforces the fact that, you know, they're going to type this information in and their credit card is secure. This is super important to convey trust, okay? And then finally provide a guarantee, a guarantee that satisfaction is guaranteed. You can always say 100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. And a lot of times business owners are like, man, that's a big commitment. But here's the thing, if you make that commitment to your customers, you're going to win customers, you're going to win more customers. And as you win these customers, I guarantee you that the percentages are so small that even when the customer's not satisfied 100%, they're not going to ask for their money back because it just goes against our human nature. Now every once in a while, you know, there's an outlier that's going to take advantage of you. But overall, what we know is that it's going to benefit you to provide that 100% money back guarantee. Okay? So those are some ways that you can convey trust and credibility in your brand, in your website experience for the buyer who's on your page right now. The other thing I want you to think about is design. You know, if you're advertising in pay per click and people are coming over and this is the first time that they've come into contact with your brand, they are going to give an instant judgment based on your design, based on the cleanliness, the simpleness of the user experience. So they're going to judge whether or not they think that you are a credible business. In an instant, they're going to land on your page and they're going to make a decision whether or not to spend money with you. Okay? So do yourself a favor and at this point in time, invest in a high quality design. If you're not sure if your design is high quality enough that will pass that test of, do I, will I spend money with this person or with this business? Send me your website. I will take a look. Put it in the comments. It's a simple yes or no. It's a gut feeling. I'm not going to try to sell you a website. I'm not going to tell, you know, nine out of 10 people that they need new design. If I think that it passes the test, I'll let you know. The next thing I want you to think about, number four, is to make the checkout easy. Okay. Right now we are all doing a million things a day, you know, a lot of people have kids at home. A lot of people are, you know, trying to do work at home. There's just, there's all this stuff that's happening right now. It's a very unique time in our history as Americans, as individuals, as, as, you know, this is the first time that we, we're dealing with something like this. Make it easy. Make the checkout easy. The least amount of steps, the better so that I can get in. I can make a purchase and I can be on my way.  Okay. We're all sitting at home. We're all on computers. We're all on mobile phones. Like I said, we're doing a million things, but this is your livelihood. This is how you're making it through the storm. This is how you're going to get to the other side is by transitioning from brick and mortar to online sales and thriving in this experience. Don't just take an order, ship it. Don't just take an order and have somebody come pick it up or whatever the case may be. Communicate. Say thank you, express your gratitude for this person buying from you. Don't do it automated. Do it personal.  Right now, people want to know that there's people on the other side of that screen that are thinking about them, that are interested in their wellbeing and that are grateful for the purchases that they're making online. And the best thing you can do is to communicate with your customers. That's what you can do. That's what you can ask your teams to do. Get personal. Remember, it's not business. It's personal. So get personal and just be there. Be there for your customers, for your team members, for your vendors, for your distributors. Be there. This is the time when we all need to be there for one another. And so that's where we start. Next week, for those of you that have, you know, been watching each week and you're not quite sure if you want to do the whole online store thing, but now you're like, yes, I need to do it. It's time. I'm ready to do the online store thing. I'm tired of sitting on the sidelines and I'm getting back into business. Next week, I'm going to share with you the things to look for when evaluating an online store solution. So if you haven't picked one up yet, this will be the show for you. It's what you should look for when thinking about what type of online store solution should I invest in? Should I invest in a monthly and, you know, like a Mac Daddy big time software solution? Is it something I can do on my WordPress site or should I just, you know, scratch all that and just take orders over the phone? We all have different needs and next week I'm going to be sharing that. If you've enjoyed this show, share it. Share it with a friend. Leave a comment in the social media feed. If you're watching on YouTube, hit me up, ring the bell, tap that bell. If you're listening on a podcast network, Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, wherever that may be, subscribe, rate and review. We value those reviews. That's how we can get out in front of more people. Share it with your friends and family. Thank you for tuning in. I will see you next week. Thanks for watching. If you like what you just watched, subscribe, then hit that bell. You'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live. After that, you can watch more videos from Slam Agency. We've picked something we think you'll love.


in search of Earth 2.0, presented by Science at NASA. NASA's Kepler spacecraft is a prolific hunter of planets outside of our solar system. Since it launched in 2009, Kepler has confirmed more than 1,000 of these exoplanets and cataloged thousands of more candidates. The menagerie includes planets with densities greater than iron and lower than styrofoam. Planets smaller than Mercury and bigger than Jupiter, planets with one sun, two suns, and even four suns. The number and variety of exoplanets is exhilarating to researchers, but in some ways the collection leaves something to be desired. Laypeople and scientists alike share a longing to find one particular type of world, a world like Earth, that speaks to us in a way that hot Jupiters and multiple star systems cannot. We long for a world whose very existence cries, we are not alone. Kepler has just found the closest analog to the Earth's sun system. In July 2015, NASA announced the discovery of Kepler-452B, an exoplanet a little over one and a half times wider than Earth, orbiting a G2-type star similar to our own sun. Moreover, Kepler-452B's orbit is located in the Goldilocks zone of its star system, where the temperature is just right for liquid water to exist. This is also known as the habitable zone, because water is required for life as we know it. We can think of Kepler-452B as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, says John Jenkins of NASA's Ames Research Center, who led the team that discovered Kepler-452B. It's awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star, longer than Earth. That's substantial opportunity for life to arise should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet. Kepler-452B isn't the first exoplanet found in a habitable zone. Indeed, about a dozen such worlds in this size range have been discovered so far. That is, 10 to 15 planets between one half and twice the diameter of Earth, depending on how the habitable zone is defined, and allowing for uncertainties in measured planetary sizes. Among those dozen, Kepler-452B fires the imagination most because it is the closest analog to the Earth-Sun system discovered to date. A planet only a little over one and a half times the diameter of Earth, orbiting within the habitable zone of a star very much like our own Sun. A year on Kepler-452B is 385 days long, only a few weeks longer than a year on Earth. The planet is only 5% farther from its parent star than Earth is from the Sun. This extra distance is mitigated by extra sunlight. Kepler-452B's parent star is 20% brighter and has a diameter 10% larger than the Sun. The similarities are remarkable indeed. Says John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington DC, this exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0. Kepler-452B whispers the possibility that we are not alone. How much longer before a new discovery shouts it out? For updates from the Planet Hunt, stay tuned to science.nasa.gov.