Good afternoon everyone. We're ready to start with the last session of NordSec. We will have Hugo presenting. Hugo is a malware researcher with ESET and he will be talking about Wajan. So please join me in welcoming Hugo. So hi everyone, so thank you for coming to my talk even if this is the last one of the day. So today I represent you the story of Wajan. So this is a social search engine developed by a famous Montreal startup which became a massive spread at the world. So what about me? My name is Hugo. I work at the Montreal office of ESET as a malware researcher. Basically my work consists to track different kinds of malicious software and analyze them and essentially in doing reverse engineering. So here is the agenda for this presentation. First, I will present you Wajan as a company as well as their product and the reasons behind this research. Then we will go through the story of Wajan to get a bit of context. The next two sections will be about the analysis of the different versions of the software we collected. And you will see the techniques used by Wajan in their software look a lot like techniques typically used by madwars.  And what this research put in evidence. So let's start with a brief presentation of Wajan, both as a company and as a software. So what is Wajan? Wajan in Internet Technology is a company founded in December 2008 in Montreal by Martin-Luc Archambault. This is a famous entrepreneur in Quebec. He participated at some popular TV shows like The Dragons' Den. And the only product of this company is a social search engine application. So basically it allows searching through the content shared by your relations and social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or even Google Plus, which doesn't exist anymore, unfortunately. And here is an example of what results you could expect in using Wajan. So when you use an online search engine like Google, for example, it will give you the content shared by your friends and social networks related to the keywords you've searched for. And as you can see, there are no ads in this example, but this one comes from Wajan directly. This is an actual example of a Google search with Wajan and you can see the ads and the Facebook, Twitter and contextual menu at the top. So you can see Wajan ads. And maybe you can wonder why we did this research at this kind of software which could be actually useful. And actually, we knew Wajan for several years, but we really started to look at it when Malwarebytes published an article about MacOS Malware, intercepting encrypted traffic for ad injection. And Malwarebytes didn't click it to Wajan, but the domain names used were the same and the injection process of ads was the same. So then one or two months later, we found a Windows version of Wajan based on the kernel driver to intercept traffic. And also as we work in Montreal office, this is a local story for us. So we wanted to fill the gap between the public reporting and the actual behavior of Wajan. So this we started to look deeper at the different samples and as well as the previous one from 2011. So yes, of course, I love studying Wadwares. It's really not. And so before looking at the technical part and the analyze of the software, let's go through the unique story of the company to get a bit of context. So Wajan history starts with a lot of success. The company has been rewarded several times and was acclaimed by many famous magazines like Forbes or different local newspapers. So this was really a success story in Montreal. And even with students, Wajan sponsors a famous Montreal student club, the DCI. So this is in French, sorry for the English and the speaking persons. And but however, the success story is balanced by the important number of user complaints regarding the behavior of the software. And as you can maybe see on the examples, most of the users complain about the unwanted installation of Wajan and their machines and the heavy display of ads. Making the software almost unusable. And one of the other Wajan issues is the collection of personal information. So I will present more about the kind of information that Wajan collects later. But in 2016, the office of the privacy commissioner of Canada initiated a complaint against the company for breaching the personal information protection and electronic documents act. So basically, this is the federal privacy law for private sectors, organizations, and it sets out the ground rules for how businesses must handle personal information in the course of commercial activity. So as you can see on this timeline, the investigation of the OPC started in June 2016 and the final report was published in August 2017. And during the time of the investigation, Wajan transferred all his assets to a Hong Kong company called Iron Mountain Technology Limited or IMTL. Also, one interesting thing you can find by the OPC is the progressive and silent removal of LinkedIn, Google Plus and Facebook of their software between 2012 and 2014. So this means that from 2014, it was only possible to see Twitter results when using Wajan. So here is the company, Wajan funds these assets too. So here is a screenshot of their website to get a bit of context. And this is the answer of Wajan to the report of the OPC in August 2017. And basically, Wajan stated that it was no longer accountable for IMTL's practices. So however, even the OPC had some doubts whether the two organizations where Wajan and IMTL were actually entirely separate entities. And if we go further in the report, it says they observed that IMTL was incorporated in November 2016, while the investigation was ongoing. So, and besides, the director of the company specialized in providing business relocation and corporate services to businesses wishing to establish a presence in Hong Kong, so quite curious. And a few months ago, actually, in October 2018, sorry, this is in French, a local press investigation published and analyzed the report of the OPC and exposed interesting elements regarding the transfer of Wajan to this new company. And basically, if you look at the physical address of IMTL on their website, it matches exactly with the one of another company called Panocean Secretarial Group. So as you can see, so we can wonder some something, this is rather curious. And if we look at the services offered by this company, we can see the specialized in offshore company incorporation. So curious again. And this is actually from their website. They say that they display simply the company name in the reception area and the documents are transferred to the original company. So this is kind of curious. But anyway, now we have some context. Let's move to the technical part. And we begin with the common observation among the different versions of Wajam we observed and how we classify them. So this was not an easy task. We collected an important number of Wajam samples. And so the first step was to classify them by versions and features. So the first observation was to see that Wajam is not the only name used in the software, but there are many others like social to search, search page and search awesome, for example. But hopefully, thanks to the metadata of the samples and mainly windows executables like the PDV pass and the product version, it was possible to classify them. So here is some examples of version numbers and PDV pass we collected over the years. And as you can see, there are some very explicit like Wajam proxy or DLL injection. And it's interesting to observe that from 2017 when the company was sold, the PDV pass started to be random characters. And actually the most recent version in 2018 and 2019 are even more random and seem to follow a specific pattern. So suggesting a possible automatic obfuscation. Also the version numbering suggests there are certain versions, but actually we have only observed the version 1, 2, 3, 9, 11 and 13. So also there is the PE signatures. It was also a good way to recognize Wajam samples. And as the executable has signed with the domain names of Wajam, and maybe you could recognize some of them because they use actually Montreal street name for the domain names. And basically the Quebec Enterprise Register was quite useful to make the link between the domain names and Wajam as a company. So as you can see, there are many different domain names such as iPhone installer, install apps and many others using Montreal street name mostly. So here are the different versions we could identify. So we regrouped them by their features and code base, even if they are distributed with a different name or a different version number. And basically we identified five different versions of Wajam. One browser extension called Priam, three different versions for Windows and one for macOS distributed from 2017. So as you can see, the name of Wajam progressively disappeared and other names like social to search and search or some were used. So regarding the features, each version finally does the same thing and it takes a remote JavaScript code and the users web traffic. But the difference between each version resides in the technique used to perform the traffic interception. So on the software is able to perform the interception. It downloads a list of supported websites. So the list maps a domain name to a specific JavaScript file and for each URL. The Wajam will check if the domain name matches with any domain name in the list. And if it matches, it injects the ads and the tweets corresponding to the user keywords. So here is an example of Wajam list of supported websites. So there are essentially search engines, approximately 100. And the version of the list is identified by hash and it is updated every 50 seconds for example. But the most important field here is the supported sites. Also as you can see, there is also a field to blacklist some processes. So if we look at one example, it looks like this. So there is the rejects pattern to match the website. So here Google for example and the pass of the remote JavaScript file to inject. So this is the JavaScript file for Google for example. So it injects another file and this is the one responsible for the ads injection. So Wajam progressively collected more and more information related to its users. So either during the installation or when the software is running. And basically there are some IDs to identify your particular users. A lot of logs are sent to Wajam servers during the installation process to ensure it is done properly. And the same within the installation. And some information to the setup of the user like the list of the software installed. Or the model of the machine that are also sent to the Wajam servers. So here is an example of network capture during an installation of Wajam on a Windows machine. So you can see a lot of logs and you get some files. Regarding the distribution as I said before a browser extension was initially available from the Wajam official website till 2014. But it is essentially diffused by using the paper install distribution model. And according to the OPC the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada the report they published in 2017. They used more than 50 different PPI providers between 2011 and 2016. So this model was criticized several times for its usage of fake adobe flash player or antivirus installers to deceive the user. And also the heavy presence of adware and even malware in some installers. So for the ones who are not familiar with this model it is based on the revenue sharing and commission. So basically the Kingpin at the top setup a paper install website. It recruits some affiliates which are able to massively spread the installer's bundle by the Kingpin. And they are paid for each success installation. So once the adware is installed on any user machine it generates money for the adware company. And so the adware company will pay again the Kingpin for distributing its adware and etc. So now we have seen the common features. Let's look deeper at the techniques used by Wajam and especially the ones to perform traffic interception. So as I said before the first version was distributed as a browser extension. So it can easily inject JavaScript code in any web page with this manifest file. So it matches any URL HTTP or HTTPS. And an interesting point is that some older versions contain traces of a screen capture plugin. But it seems the full code was never implemented. And also it was those versions were able to send the bookmarks of the user to Wajam servers. And the browser extension was not distributed since 2014. And they basically removed the link to download it from their website. So here is some traces of the screen capture plugin in the code. So it comes as a GLL along the browser extension. And this is one of the JavaScript files of Wajam using the browser extension to the left. This is an old version which links the bookmarks of the user and the right, the latest version. So you can see that they remove this feature. So this is the download link before 2014 and after 2014. So as they were doing ads injection, the browser extension was quickly flagged as adware by security products. So at first we can see that Wajam tried to remove the detection. But actually this quickly changed from 2014. So at the time of the browser extension was not distributed anymore. We found another version of Wajam internally called WGproxy for Windows only. And instead of using a browser extension to intercept traffic, it set up a third-party web proxy called Fiddler. And also we observed that they tried to elevate their privileges using the SCD by Privilege token and install a root certificate to intercept encrypted traffic and avoid security warnings when injecting JavaScript code in web page. So from what we saw, this version was not distributed since 2016. This one is more interesting. So a few months after the proxy variant, we observed another version with different names and different features. And the techniques used by this one are much more aggressive, I would say. So instead of using a proxy, it injects a DLL in web browsers to loop the functions manipulating clear traffic and so inject ads. So different injection techniques can be used. I will present them to you in the next slide. And also in 2016, they add a mini-filter driver, so basically a root kit to hide the software to anti-various products. And finally, they added progressively some anti-analysis mechanisms, like strings and payload encryption, and checks for anti-various keys in the Windows registry. So this is the simple string encryption which is used by the samples of Wajam. This is only one backdoor, not complicated at all. And also they use some encryption algorithm like AES 256 and the LC4 to encrypt other files. So here are the checks of anti-various keys. So as you can see, each registry key is first decrypted. And basically, if one of these keys is found, it just sends the information to the Wajam servers and does nothing with it. So here is a sum up of the architecture of this version. So basically there is a main executable which injects the DLL in web browsers. The DLL is responsible to hook the functions manipulating clear traffic, as I said before, like PR write, PR read, and it can be send, receive, etc. And as I said before, there is a mini-filter, cannot driver, what's proposed is to hide the main executable and the DLL to other processes. So there are different DLL injection techniques that can be used, depending on the parameters given to the main executable. So we observe three main ones. It can use the set-windows hook, X-technique, the create-remote thread, or the usage of a third-party black-bone memory hacking library. So once the DLL is injected, it uses this file to set up the hooks. Well, it can use this file, but not exclusively. And it contains the addresses of the functions for every version of every brother listed here. So as you can see, there are hooks for more than 1,000 different versions of Chrome. And you can maybe observe that there are no hooks for Firefox because the addresses are resolved at execution time. So here is an example for Chrome with the addresses to hook. You can recognize maybe PR write, PR read, PR write, etc. And here is an example for PR write. So basically, one of the functions responsible for sending traffic and basically the function set hook will modify the pointer to the real PR write by the fake one. And this is the fake PR write which performs the injection. If the domain name matches with one of these party lists, then it calls the real PR write. So as I said before, some versions include a mini-filter driver to hide the files of the software. So basically what this driver does is intercept IO input and output operations before they reach the file systems. So it can be used to monitor, accept, reject those operations. And the most known example is maybe antivirus or more generally, security products. And so it hides Wajam files to all processes except to a restricted list. So here is the architecture. So you can see the IO manager responsible to handle the IO operations. So basically you can register a mini-filter to the filter manager. So like an antivirus, the Wajam and filter, it can be activity monitor, for example. And so the IO operations are filtered before reaching the file system driver. The mini-filter driver comes with a configuration file. So they use the name PCW data as you can see in the configuration. And basically the driver has a white list of processes. And so the files of Wajam are hidden to any process except the ones in this list. So they are mostly web browsers, as you can see. So this was for this version of Wajam. And in 2016 we identified another version that goes deeper in the kernel. So more and more persistent. And its main characteristic is the usage of a net-filter driver to intercept web traffic. So this version is still distributed and built in almost every day. Also a lot of techniques have been added for self-protection purposes. We think that they use a commercial fiscator tool. They bypass Windows Defender and they add signatures for the executables with different certificates. So the net-filter driver is based on the net-filter SDK. So this is the framework for filtering the data packets transmitted via network. It can operate at different levels of the TCP, IP, network stack, depending of what you want to do with it. So this is the global architecture of this version. So there is the net-filter driver and the mini-filter driver to hide the different files of Wajam. And it shows that Wajam is much more implemented, much more persistent than before. So here is what the string encryption looks like in this version. And actually maybe it looks easy like that, but it's actually kind of annoying to analyze. Because each decoder function is different depending on the string that is decrypted. So here, for example, it decodes a function name and gets its address with the load library and getPROC address, which is typically used by malware. And this is the decoder chart technique, so it just may perform an arithmetic operation to get a character for the function name. So this is funny because it looks a lot like the Stenix of Viscator. And it uses similar techniques, but we can be sure 100%. So there are also configuration files for the dates. So what you can see on this configuration file, they name the net-filter driver disk bus. This is still the name used. And there is also a field for a defense driver. So this is basically the net-filter driver. And the different names are used, you can see it's official to search, the search is not completely used. They use different names and slightly different from the usual name of Wajam. That's all for this version. And as I said at the beginning of this presentation, we began this research because of a macOS version of Wajam, found by malware bytes a few months ago. But actually, this version was already distributed in 2017. And at that time, it used a Safari plugin, so the web browser for macOS, to intercept traffic. So they switched to a third-party Python proxy called MITM proxy in 2018. And from what we saw, there is no official distribution of this version. And we only saw it in fake macOS application cracks distributed through Torrents file. So here is the info playlist. So basically, this is the manifest file for macOS application bundles of the application with the Safari plugin. And you can probably see the Wajam domain, the lingerie technology. And here is the MITM version with the Wajam domain as well. And so it just does the same thing as the other versions. So now we have seen the techniques you use by Wajam. What can we learn from this and what are the takeaways of this research? So first, Wajam is still very active, even if the company was sold in early 2017. The samples are distributed through paper installs, so massively spread. The DOPC, the Office Privacy Commissioner of Canada, estimate that there are hundreds of millions of installations between 2011 and 2016. They use different names, search terms, search page, etc. And the self-protection and anti-detection techniques are more sophisticated than ever. Also, there is a post effect of the DOPC investigation if you go on the Wajam website with the Canadian IP address or a non-Canadian IP address. And basically, the evolution of the techniques used showed that Wajam was more and more persistent over the years. And they mainly used third-party tools like filler, black-bone, min-hook, MITM proxy, or even net filter. This is actually probably because of the security mechanisms added over the years to prevent the usage of these techniques that are typically used by malware actually. Also, we can observe a change of strategy regarding the detection in 2014 and before they add antivirus for detection removal. And from 2014, we can see they used more aggressive techniques like obfuscation, like checks of antivirus installed on the machine. They used random names and created installers, etc. Regarding the prevention, it's quite simple because even if Wajam used multiple distribution channels due to the pay-per-install distribution model, it's still very visible. And you still can use an installer to uninstall Wajam, which is quite reliable. However, we have seen some silent installers, which did not ask for the user agreement for the installation. So a few points for the conclusion. So the Wajam story, the famous Montreal startup, they progressively deceived their users because of the massive usage of contextual advertising. This is a company sold in some curious circumstances, but this is the context. But the software is still more active than ever. This research shows that Adware and PUA are still a gray area. They use typically malicious techniques as you have seen. They are more protected than most of the malware. This is a reality. But at some point, they are more annoying before their only display ad than harmful to the user. Even if they collect a lot of information, they can help to identify a particular user. And also, to get more context, some Adware are remarkably close to malware. The example of Stantingo is one of them. So you should be aware of the persistence level used by some Adwares. You have seen that they use some techniques directly in the kernel. So actually, those kind of techniques could be hijacked by another malware looking for persistence methods on the system. So at some point, is it really something that you want on your machine? So that's all. Thank you for your attention. Thank you.


Okay, well the Instruments of Peace was developed because people often times, is there some kind of a concise tool that can help me when I'm starting to feel some kind of upset? And I make a prayer, but it feels like I got a mishmash of ego thoughts just swirling around in my mind like a dark cloud and I need to have some steps to be guided through. Realizing that of course the more you do the steps, the more you kind of are almost like rewiring your mind and reconnecting that it should get easier and easier to just zip back into your right mind as you open to this new way of thinking and the new way of perceiving. But this Instrument of Peace is a way of working through things. Also I shared some very, very radical ideas during this week. I had a group of students that were very devoted to awakening and everything and years ago back in the 1990s and so there was another version that broke out of the Instrument of Peace. This one says at the top, working through upsets and healing your mind. The second version of Instrument of Peace was called Healing the Pleasure, working through pleasures and healing your mind. Releasing pleasures and the students said, oh this is great. I said yeah, if you ever want to do a workshop that's poorly attended, just do one on the second one. It was quite serious and I said if you really want to go fast you need to work with the other one too. But this is a little more introductory and practical for people. Well yeah, working through upsets and healing my mind, that's what I want to do. Because eventually you start to realize that the pains and the pleasures are just two sides of one coin and they both are capable of distracting you from that piece of non-judgment of just being still. So the course is very different from that old thing about accentuate the positive and affirm the positive and eliminate the negative. The positive and the negative are both two sides of one continuum of judgment and you have to really release the whole continuum. But this is really a good start at working with some of these metaphysics in a very practical way. You can work with anything that's disturbing you. It doesn't matter if it's mild irritation or annoyance or if you have rage coming up or vengeance or something that's an intense emotion. It might be good if you start to work with this on a daily basis or whatever. It might be good to start with some of the smaller upsets and build some confidence with it before you go after the jugular of the ego. Anything else when you start to learn how to ride a bike like we saw in Exodus in Heaven, you gain some confidence balancing and pedaling before you go enter a triathlon or something or a train. So what I'll start off with at the beginning here is I'm going to start off with a serenity prayer. Some people say, well, the Course is 1200 and some pages. Can't you summarize the Course in a little more succinct way than other than 1200 pages of words? I say, well, yeah, the Course is just the version of the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. So that's really what the Course is about, except to do that, to make that change, to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. It really takes a lot of mind training and discernment. That's why there's 365 lessons in the Course and over 600 pages of text in the text to help prepare your mind and then even the teacher's manual. So what we're going to do today is I'll just briefly go over this and then what we can do is we'll go through it in an experiential way. So you can actually either use your instrument for peace and write in the things that come to mind for you, that you're wanting to work through. You can do it on a piece of paper that you have if you want to keep this and you want to take it home and Xerox it to practice it. You might want to keep the one with the blank and just write your answers in here on the paper. It's also, like I said, it's on the website. So if anybody wants to just go and you have internet access, you could just go to our website and go to the library and just download it and print it out from there. So what it does, I'll just read the introduction. Instrument for peace, working through upsets and healing your mind. The mind at peace is healed. The mind at peace has wholeheartedly welcomed peace. In this world, lack of peace appears in many forms. For permanent healing to occur, lack of peace must be traced back to its singular cause in the mind. Use of this instrument for that tracing back can help a willing mind let go of what it thinks it knows, see the world differently and experience a present state of peace and joy. So that's the introduction. It's just a very little practical tool to keep the focus on the peace, doing this for the peace of mind. So we'll start with number one and you can see it's, you can just answer the questions and fill in the blanks or put it down on your paper as honestly as you can. But if you have something that's troubling you or upsetting you, it doesn't really matter what it is and it doesn't matter how strong it is or intense. But there's anything that's disturbing you in any way. Something's been rolling through your mind. Bill and I just were meeting in his bus about half an hour ago and Bill was saying, I have an unsettling kind of feeling and then there's thoughts probably that go with that. The unsettling, that would be the feeling. It feels a little unsettled and then you would kind of use this to kind of get in touch with what's going on under that unsettled feeling and as a way of releasing that to come to peace. So we'll start off with what you're thinking about. It can be just thoughts or it can be thoughts about specific persons, places, events, thoughts about what is coming next in your life or thoughts about something that just happened fairly recently in your life, maybe even during this retreat. I don't know if it was a little unsettling or something, but something that seems to kind of be bubbling up in your consciousness and that you would like to use this instrument to work through. So that's what we mean by it's very practical. So you just start off with and take a little time and if there's anything in your awareness that you feel any bit of upset with. Any bit of lack of peace with. Then just start off with number one and fill in A with what I think about A, which can be a past or future action situation or event. Or it could even involve persons. Just feel free to write anything that comes to mind in there for A. And then you can see where B is. We'll follow right after that. In B, you just really are trying to name the specific upsetting emotions. It could be like when we did the little workshop on the cloud and the heart where you may have even several specific emotions that come or maybe it's just one that comes to mind that you want to kind of focalize if you want to work with. And then as soon as you've got your action or situation event person and your feelings that are associated with that action event situation or person. Then see where you would try to name who or what seems to be the blame or there's a second part of the second line there and see or what you're afraid will occur in the future. Just filling in the specifics of what you're afraid will occur in the future or who or what seems to be the blame. This could even include blaming yourself. In many cases people feel like there's nobody to blame in their life but they blame themselves for the feelings and so that you can certainly fill your own name in there. Yeah, you could fill in both of them if you have someone to blame and you still have these ideas of what could happen in the future that is part of the worry or the concern or the anxiety. Okay, now number one is about completing once you've kind of been able to articulate all of that bring it out and write down. Then number two what we're going to work at is going a little deeper. You might think of D for deeper because it takes it a little deeper into your mind than what you're perceiving and thinking what you're feeling and the justifications or reasons that you're telling yourself. That's all encapsulated in number one. Number two is stating A, B and C. The action, situation, events, persons, all the feelings associated with those actions, events, situations of persons and also the justifications of why, who's to blame or what the recurrent thoughts about the future that are troubling. All of those prove that I am right about D and D is basically what we have been calling in our workshop our retreat the self concepts. Everything you think and feel and believe about yourself that's related to the images of the world.  So it's not just like, you know, the indigenous people, the Maori, maybe put on the paint and the mask, it's not just like wearing a Halloween mask. It's also including the entire environment that you perceive yourself as in. So you might say that that's part of the ego's disguise. It's not only made up of false body identity, but it's wrapped the identity in a cover or a shell, which is the world. And so it's not only about having to release your personality, but it's having to release what you think you know about the shell too.  That's all made up. That's all part of the self concept too. We didn't get to watch it yet, but we have a movie called The Truman Show, where the whole world seems to revolve around Truman. And at one point, when Truman goes missing, it's dark, it's night, and so Christoph, which is like the ego figure in the movie says, queues the sun. In other words, they have to let the sun rise. They can even tell when the sun's coming up. And the sun is even part of this artificial environment for Truman. And you might say that things that are even in this world that are accepted as natural, you know, the dawn and the dusk and the sun rising and falling and the moon rising and falling, that seem to be part of such a deep cycle of human history that people call them those are natural phases, they would say. That's the natural movement of the planets and the stars. Nothing's natural. This entire cosmos is artificial. So even what is talked of as the natural environment, like what we're surrounded in versus the manmade or the built environment, sometimes people make the distinction, no, it's all part of this self concept. So you can just write D out in any way that you feel comfortable. You can call it my self concept, my self image, the self I made up to take the place of God, the self that God created, the role that I play, the mask that I wear, you know, any words that are comfortable for you about the means that I think I am, anything that feels comfortable about that thing. And I think the key word in there is A, B and C prove that I am right about.


Hey everybody, welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals And I'm Jamie Scott Okutaya live from the floor of itw 2022 an exciting year We're all back together finally and it's the 15th anniversary of itw. So congrats to them great show. Yes, we're back And guys if you don't know already I'm joined by my good friend Anthony Hidalgo of Hidalgo and co-president and CEO welcome Anthony. Thanks Jamie. Thanks for having me. Of course. It's an honor It's an honor a long time friend and I feel like you've been on JSA TV before so welcome back We were at the first ITW together 15 years ago. Yes. We were absolutely were and now you're aging me. That's all right So that's okay, but big news from you. You guys did a major rebrand So now it's Hidalgo and co tell us a little bit more about that. What drove it and what's the latest on your company? Sure sure So, you know Hidalgo communications started in 2001 and It was my segue out of being in the resale carrier business and coming more into the consulting Side of the house the agency side of the house and it was basically me You know It was I had a goal I had to get to I had a lifestyle that I was used to and just go forward and build this brand and the brand was me and I did a great job and Had a place in my life where two things happened one. I was very comfortable financially and to Realize that there's more than just me to this company that I built over, you know the last I'm sorry 2011 we started so it's been 12 to about almost 12 years so yeah, and I Wanted to honor my company I want to honor the guys that actually helped bring me to where I was because we did build a nice brand of trust in the industry and Knowledge and expertise and really so I had to take a look at what we did build Who are we took a good look in the mirror like like we take a good look in a mirror when we look at ourselves It was like a company look in the mirror like what do we have? What have we built and where are we going? Who are we and who we want to become and I made it about the team and I realized you know Shane Roy will Craig land these guys have been with me for years and Now it was time for them to be in the position where I'm at right It's like how do we create this on a bigger scale? I'm adoring a lot of space and freedom in my life and I think it's a culture I think I think in this culture where taught to that harder is better Working harder is better and a lot of people fall into that and actually it's when you have a lot of space to be able to really Get clear on what you want to do on what you desire and what you want to create that I think where the magic comes so part of the dollar company is creating the culture that actually helped me get to this place and bringing it to the team and making it about the team and now Shane and Craig are building an incredible team and And and leveraging the trust in the brand that we've built and the relationships that we've built Anthony that was beautiful. I love it. You're talking from the heart always as long as I've known you've always you've always done that So what can we expect from Hidalgo and Co in the next coming months and years? Good question So where we're going back to our wholesale roots also So we not only do we have a big enterprise focus and you know retail focus And we do a lot of RFP creation generation Optimization projects, but we're going back to our wholesale roots. So we're announcing a New relationship with Verizon with VP with VPS Verizon partner solutions, which is the wholesale resale side of the house the group that's here at the show and We pilot we did a pilot with them and the pilot went so well that we just formalized it into a formal deal and And essentially they're outsourcing a chunk of their wholesale customer business to us Yeah, and we did it with a few clients in the pilot and we're able to you know Verizon sat back and they realized how much 80% of their business was in 20% of the clients hands and How do they diversify? How do they make it that to the smaller? How do they make their product offering to the smaller company to diversify their their spent their their revenue and We showed them how to do that we worked with them and we opened up the doors and the models going great And so expect more from us in the wholesale arena You know coming back to to help carriers fiber operators To manage service providers anyone that needs help in the procurement side Wants to know where to go quickly and leverage all the relationships up to the sea level along the way I think that's going to be a big value add for us and a lot of what you're going to see in the future Well, that is big news obviously for our ITW attendees here the international wholesale market This is Hidalgo and company guys Absolutely, so where can our viewers go to learn more? Oh, you can go to our website www.hidalgo-co.com It's co-luxio Can find me here at ITW if you want to know more as well, and of course on LinkedIn absolutely on LinkedIn Anthony Hidalgo guys Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to see you And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcast as always guys think green and happy networking


The U.S. President's Joe Biden says there is no evidence so far that Russia was involved in the colonial pipeline ransomware attack. Biden said the U.S. government was initiating a partnership, or the private sector, to mitigate blows inflicted by ransomware and other cyberattacks on the nation's infrastructure. The U.S. is working directly with Colonial to get the pipelines back online and operating at full capacity as quickly and safely as possible. The FBI also is engaged to assess and address this attack. The agencies across the government have acted quickly to mitigate any impact on our fuel supply. And over the weekend, at my direction, the Department of Transportation issued an emergency order to loosen restrictions on truck drivers in order to allow more fuel to be transported by a tanker. We're prepared to take additional steps depending on how quickly the company is able to bring its pipeline back to full operational capacity. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has determined Colonial's network was infected by ransomware and it's a criminal act, obviously. FBI released details of the attack so others can take steps to prevent being infected. My administration takes this very seriously. We have efforts underway with the FBI and DOJ, the Department of Justice, to disrupt and prosecute ransomware criminals. And my administration will be pursuing a global effort of ransomware attacks by transnational criminals who often use global money laundering networks to carry them out. My administration is also committed to safeguarding our critical infrastructure, much of which is privately owned and managed like colonial.


Hello everybody, hope the course is going on well. As you have seen until now, this is not a normal academic course. We are actually learning by doing through some interventions in a specific context. Last week, we focused on the problem of sanitation in Ayurveda in general. The lectures focused on a situational analysis of wastewater management in the city and followed a stepwise approach to understand the problem at the town level. Also, last week we introduced something called fecal sludge management. Fecal sludge is the slurry that accumulates in your on-site sanitation systems like the septic tanks. If it is not removed periodically, it can potentially contaminate the soil and groundwater. Having understood the problem, this week we will look at the solution space. Particularly, we will explore the different alternatives to tackle the problem of liquid waste management. We will start with different wastewater treatment technologies. This will be taken by Professor Pradeep Kalbar of IIT Bombay and it is a very technical presentation. He will be explaining the conventional model of wastewater treatment, the various processes involved in treatment of wastewater and different types of collection systems. Since our interest is in more sustainable and participatory models, we will be looking at decentralized models. For that, we move on to a practitioner, architect Letha Jaygopal. She will explain the concept of decentralized wastewater treatment and how she has deployed it in one canal in Alapura. Good afternoon. I will show that you have been already expert of decentralization. So, in my time on why decentralization or why some different approaches, but how to achieve decentralization and what are the different technological options we have that I will cover in this presentation. And whenever you have questions, you can ask. If you see this particular slide where I have put the status of water supply and wastewater treatment in India. And as you can see, there is a huge gap between wastewater supply infrastructure that has been created in India and how much wastewater treatment is required. So, there is a tremendous gap between generated wastewater or here in this particular session, we talk about the sewage which is a domestic wastewater. So, there is a gap between sewage generated and sewage treated. So, and these newer funding schemes from central government or state governments are focusing on matching this gap between the sewage generation and sewage treatment. So, there is a huge amount of funding going to come. Still it is already has come and but we are and there are so many technologies available for wastewater treatment and which want to go forward and those kind of guidance are still not there, but overall as a expert when you grow in this field, you will understand what kind of technology choice you will make in given situations. So, I have this all classifications of technologies and I will just touch upon the basic principles of how this technologies works and some case studies where those have been applied that is the overall frame of this particular presentation. So, wastewater is basically defined by two aspect is quality at the flow and both needs to be considered in the design. It is not only the quality that will govern the size of the treatment plant, but it is also the flow and flow has a different aspect that I will cover. So, it is a quality and flow both needs to be taken into account and basically we are dealing with domestic wastewater which is sewage from the urban areas or rural areas from the housing societies, the houses and sometimes we have some small commercial facility that also discharged the air wastewater, but that is accommodated into sewage or institutional like these institutions, colleges or some other institute that also gets accommodated into domestic wastewater. And how the domestic water basically varies is basically on the usage and the resurgent wastewater is affected by climate, community size, density of development, community influence, dependability, quality of water supplies and water conservation practices. So, these are these are all factors that will affect the quality and quantity of wastewater generated. For example, a city such as Mumbai will have very different kind of wastewater characteristics than a city such as Kochi or Jaipur, because they have very different climatic conditions, very different water culture and that affects the wastewater quality and the quantity. So, we will discuss that I think you have been exposed to this terminology sewage is the mix of everything and if you just decipher into what is how sewage forms is basically forms from the black water, from the brown water and grey water. Black water is a mixture of urethane pieces and the washing water in toilet that we use, brown water is a mixture of pieces plus fresh water, but when you have the urethane separate urethane separated toilets you get a brown water and the grey water is from the kitchen and bathrooms that we get. And if you in a city scale we mix all these three flows and we get a sewage typically. So, you remember this particular classification and I guess you already have been exposed and these are the typical characteristics by which environmental engineers classify the sewage. Basically we call a weak, a medium or a strong sewage water depending on the type of its characteristics. The main concern in this particular characteristics is this particular value which is biochemical oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand. This particular parameter you see this varies or varying here it is about 100 here it is about 200 here and it is about 400 here. So, more the strength of the BOD more the basically we classify it as a more strength or more intense sewage and BOD everybody understands here anybody needs an explanation of BOD yes. So, basically yeah any other so people who understand BOD what is BOD do not tell me the lump form tell me the what means. Quickly oxygen required for what to biodegrade right, but why we do why we major BOD what is the reason we measure BOD organic to know the organic matter and its requirement oxygen requirement. So, basically BOD is a not a direct parameter is a proxy parameter. Remember BOD, COD are proxy parameter for organic pollution. So, because measuring the total organic carbon is difficult and it is costly and hence to avoid that we have this measurements called as BOD and COD which are proxy for TOC. So, more the basically oxygen demand of a particular organic compound it will exert more BOD it will exert more COD. So, and the basically COD accounts for both biodegradable and non-biodegradable component of the oxygen demand. So, basically by this classification we have the weak medium and strength as three sewage classification and depending on that the technology choice differs whichever flow you get in this particular concentration your technology choice will be different. That is the first principle you should remember. First of all check the BOD according to BOD your classification or the technology choice will change. Yeah, these are the these are the main spectrum that you should look into and what we want to achieve from this is basically we have to treat, but treatment up to what level is also question that we should not we should have some goal that at what level we should treat our wastewater. So, we have the minimum discharge standards set up by the center position control board and those gates keep updated. So, we can just go and see the center position control board website and get those different discharge standards. So, these are the typical discharge standard which is under this particular environment production act should be 6. Under that we have this particular environmental discharge standards what we need is how much basically BOD and COD and nitrogen is allowed to discharged in a given treated effluent treated wastewater for different classes such as inland surface water such as public sewer this is for irrigation and this is for marine coastal areas. So, as per this again your whether to treat or whether not to treat if has city has its own similar treatment plan and if you have a access to public sewer then you can really do not have to worry about your sewage that directly goes to the sewer and municipal wastewater treatment plan should take care that is the ideal situation based on that these guidelines are basically fixed. And so, and but when you do not have that particular facility and when you have to dispose your sewage into such kind of canal or river or a lake you have to meet BOD standard of 30 and those are becoming more strict as free with the new regulations, but this has some logic why 30 because that much carrying capacity our particular this rivers and lakes has. So, there is lot of really goes into to fix this particular discharge standard assuming there is some carrying capacity available in the natural body. And as we push ourselves from 30 to 20 to 20 to 10 to 10 to 5 the cost of the treatment goes tremendous. So, up to 30 all technology spectrum has some comparison, but as you push below that your costing becomes very different very different. Hence you basically 30 is a very safe number 30 to 20 cost will be tremendous. And then you have a train now and you know this the second thing we should think of centralized and decentralized systems and I think you have a train what is the advantages and disadvantages. And such kind of small scale treatment cluster treatment or household level those goes into the decentralized system discussion. And if you talk about the approaches for wastewater management I call that the not the treatment, but the management because it is a strategy it is not the one technology if we can solve the problem we will have been doing that, but that is not the solution. We have to look at a how what kind of management approach we should have for solving this problem. So, first is the prevention and conservation. So, before creating the sewage we should try to minimize its quantity ok. So, how we can do that is the reduce consumption with this public awareness such as you have like PANALAPI and other such initiatives. So, reduction in the water consumption will give you the more basically lesser flow, but whether your organic load will deeply your VOD will go down or go up if you reduce the consumption. Let us say in all of P we decide from tomorrow we do not we will cut off 50 percent of water supply everybody agrees. And what happens to your VOD then? More or less? Less. Because I am cutting down 50 percent of water supply. So, what are we more concentrated right. So, whether it is good or bad? Bad. Bad? Bad for whom? Bad for whom? This is all question needs to be answered and then we we can say something about it right. As a environmentalist I like it it is not bad for me because more strength because handling more strength strong sewage with less volume is more easy than having a sewage with a diluted VOD and a more volume ok. So, if for example, Jaipur sewage is more easy to treat than Mumbai sewage because Mumbai is a huge flow and VOD lesser than Jaipur because it Jaipur has a very concentrated VOD of 500 400 whereas, Mumbai VOD will be all of 200 because it gives me advantage in terms of cost because if my reactor will be very getting a continuous food that will come into when we talk about the how the reactor works. Hence our particular this reduction in consumption will give me two advantages. One is direct saving in terms of water consumption and second is I will get a more strong VOD in the sewage and that will be more easy to treat in a effective manner than having a very diluted sewage and that kind of thing ok. And for that the second strategy the efficient devices and fixtures and fittings and there can be many more things that you can have efficient devices for reducing the water consumption. So, those two particular approaches one is prevention conservation and then the basically recovery recycling and treatment. So, read it from right to left such as recovery recycling and treatment ok. So, recovery in terms of we cannot have nowadays treatment only for the sake of treatment because of the cost involved because of the kind of operation and mental that this treatment technology is required spending so much money is not possible for government bodies. Hence we should have such a plan such that we can recover the energy nitrogen phosphorus and resources and then whatever treated influence we should recycle and hence the treatment not the only for the sake of disposal ok. So, that is the whole paradigm of wastewater management we are going into. And in terms of how we enable these three things is one is household or building level treatment that is the way of the starting point of the discharges. Second is decentralized treatment schemes and third is the centralized when you have collected everything together and and when to when to call something decentralized and centralized they are not fixed guidelines those basically there are where means depend on the population density depend on the city scale. So, but yeah as soon as you decide that I do not want to create only one single treatment plan that for given location you are thinking in decentralized manner. So, basically the classification for this centralized decentralized system is given in this particular book by Professor Alsewal and Professor Al-Solika where you have the centralized sewerage system which basically has a wastewater treatment plan which can be mechanized or it can be based on natural treatment system in centralized manner. And basically you can have the upside disposal or to water bodies to land or you can reuse for irrigation purposes so that is the centralized scheme of the thing. And then in the decentralized sewerage system you have the wastewater conveyance locally and system flush toilets, septic tanks with soap beads or drain trays or further treatment before surface discharge and package treatment plants, natural treatment systems, pond constructed wetlands or reculture etcetera. And then dry sanitation systems which are like not much commonly used and basically this is the classification of centralized wastewater treatment schemes. So, coming to the now treatment part one by one will go from building level to the community level to the centralized systems. Any questions until here? So, buildings are the start building or houses are the starting point of wastewater discharges and controlling and treating flow at building help in reducing burden on city level infrastructure. So, you may have some intervention at the building level which can be helpful to reduce the organic load on the city scale whatever treatment plant that municipality may be planning. And oil and grease may be trapped at the building level or if you have a big kitchen or restaurants this generates huge kind of oil and grease. For example, in LFP you have so many spas where they use lot of oil for therapies. So, those have very high organic matter. So, it will be basically giving you lot of load. So, you can have basically this spas should be having some island gas trap for their that is the first level of intervention. And then septic tanks are practice in cities where underground drainage schemes is not yet implemented because underground drainage schemes cost a lot. So, cities in India have emerged like having septic tank and then open drain and in that whatever a reduction happens that is going into reverse. But that was fine 30, 40 years before population was not that much. Now, the urbanization has grown a lot and that much intervention is not enough. So, this plus something additional has to be there such as decentralized treatment plant or centralized. And in the building level you have the twin pits and there is very nice point book by EVAC which is a Swiss Agency for Water and it gives a very nice classification of sanitation technologies. It is a very good when look at your level when you start to understand concepts of sanitation technologies. So, it is called compadium of sanitation systems and technologies and that is the representation I have obtained from that is a twin pit toilet and I think you must have been exposed for twin pit how it works right. Anybody not knowing twin pit system one person and I do explain two person yes. So, basically twin pit is you have this particular toilet and which is a flush water toilet. So, basically people use this flush water and twin pit is because one pit will be active at one time and once this is filled this will be closed and this remains there for a year. So, that it will be composted decomposted bacterial will be there and it will be just humus fine humus of the years and that can be used for agriculture applications. And then the second pit will be active in that time. So, by that time this pit fills you empty out this pit and this system works. This is a very good system for rural areas or arperial areas where there is a land or there is a practice of having this particular leach pit. And then you have the septic tank that is a second level building level second building level intervention and septic tanks are basically again a tank for which basically do not have any design treatment, but because of the nature of bacteria in anaerobic condition they leave there and start decomposing the organic matter in the black water. And septic tanks are typically designed for handling the this particular black water only and we have the IS code for huge design guidelines for septic tanks. And there are many of the books and this particular companion that I told which also covers this particular septic tank details. And with the baffle it improves the efficiency in terms of all the solids are collected in one baffle before so that the outlet will not be having any solids. So, basically septic tank is based on a simple principle that you retain the sludge and then we will start decomposing anaerobicity and that is the main purpose of septic tank. And this size basically is governed by how much solid how much solids per day per person generates typically it is assumed that about 30 to 40 liters per year per person is required for holding this sludge for one person and then you need additional amount per day for whatever flush water that generates. So, that is basically some retention time for that. Detention time is basically whatever volume it has divided by the flow V by Q is your detention time in terms of minutes or hours. So, all this treatment plants has a basic parameter of detention time which is V by Q volume divided by discharge that is whatever input you are applying to the this particular any unit whether it is septic tank or whether it is a complicated waste water treatment plant it has a simple in the basic one of the parameter is detention time or it is hydraulic retention time. And then if you want to go for more complicated systems in a at a building scale for a very organized cities or hotels or multi-storey buildings, we have a set of array of technologies I will explain the details later, but the scheme I am explaining here at the building level. So, you can have the sequencing batch reactor, moving bed bioreactor, fluidized bed bioreactor, membrane bioreactor and which will basically take care of organic load of the sewage. So, first is organic load, but that will not be enough for if you want to reuse because if you are making so much of investment I said objective should be to reuse recycle the waste water. So, you can see here the multimedia filters the actuated carbon this kind of additional systems you can place for reviewing the 100 percent solids. So, that your at least the treated effluent loads pure and then you have the ultra filtration movements also. And I will show you one of these examples and you have to disinfect and then we can maybe recycle for our secondary purposes as air conditioning, gardening, car washing those kind of things. And this is one of the treatment plant for one high rise building at the basement where you have this particular screening of the sewage it is a building level in the basement. And this is called membrane bioreactor. So, basically it is a combination of the biological activity and membrane force both are placed together I will explain how it works later just look at the scheme. And then you have this particular plumbing system twin public twin plumbing system or double plumbing system which take care of recycle water will be used for toilet flushing. And this plants can be designed and operate because and how this can be effective because it will reduce the fresh water demand of the entire building because toilet flush is about 40 to 50 liters per person in a such kind of lifestyle. So, that much amount of fresh water consumption will reduce So, this is for a long term sustainability of the city this kind of things are available that these are like more mechanized solutions and more high tech oriented solutions. And if there is a space we can have a simple natural treatment system also which is called constructed weight lines in a scientific language where you have the septic tank at the bottom of the building again this is a high rise building and this is the basically a septic tank and it can be a baffle multi baffle septic tank also. And then you have the weight lines these are designed for a particular flow and particular beauty and this you will not realize that treatment is occurring there itself. So, you have two sets of solutions one is completely mechanized completely high tech this is also high tech this is not low tech it look low tech, but it is not low tech by the way. It requires lot of scientific principles to design and maintain this particular facility. But it gives a very different basically appearance that you are using making the use of nature and treating the waste. So, any questions here we will see we will come to the actual principles by which these treatments occur. And then come into the community scale solutions and you can basically club these natural treatment systems and make a community level treatment system such as this is the waste this is a system from Nehru Nagar Vazirabad we have to check whether it is working or not, but when we documented this particular system that was that time it was working where you have the multiple waste tabulation ponds. Waste tabulation ponds are natural basically natural system where you have a pond there is a algal activity and there is a symbiosis between algae and a bacteria. So, this is a very well system very works with very good in a natural condition. And to improve the night basically the nutrient removal you can have one or two duct width ponds duct widths are again some very specific species for that can grow on the this particular pond. And there you have the facultative pond for basically for further treatment. So, these are the pictures from that particular side and we have a book chapter which documents all this sorts of treatment approaches which is anaerobic pond facultative and vitro shift pond and basically this is the grid pond. So, this is based on use of nature, but you can see the land requirement because, but this if we plan I guess assume some of your planners. So, if you are a planner if you while grow while you plan a city or while you plan expansion of city if you leave this spaces for having this kind of treatment this will basically help city sustain in a more environment friendly manner. Because if we do not have land we have to go to those machines and then machines will work to the basic difference between these two systems is this particular systems have low rate of basically full term removal. Whereas, the mechanized systems will basically accelerate the rate of removal and hence compact the area requirement. So, that is the basic difference one here both of the systems will give the same result at the end of the day. One will have slower rate natural treatment systems whereas, engineer system mechanized systems will have higher degradation rate because of we are doing something artificially there and that is why your land requirement is coming down. And then we come to the centralized collection and treatment. So, I explain the building level I explain the community level and now this is centralized collection and treatment where there are two different types of collection system one is called combined sewer system where we put together the storm water you see here storm water is connected here and mostly in Indian cities except metros if you metros we have the combined sewer system because it is more economical. So, one moorly sewer taking the and we are very only 2, 3 months rainfall and also some finite number of dates. So, this kind of system works in India and then you have the second is separate sewer system which where the sewer sewage is taken separately and storm is taken separately. So, these two kind of systems are in place and depending on your design you have to make a choice for when you decide a collection system. So, assuming that for centralized or decentralized with at some good scale you need some kind of collection system and for that you have to keep in mind centralized basically combined sewer system or separate sewer system. And these are some wastewater treatment unit operations and processes ok. So, basically there are some physical unit operations that we use for wastewater treatment such as cleaning flow equalization sedimentation flotation or granular filtration and those are used at various stages ok. It is it does not mean that I started with this that means it comes at the start of the plan just classification from the physical unit operation point of view. And then there are chemical unit operations which are like chemical precipitation adsorption disinfection and other chemical applications and that we take use of bacteria and algae and other microorganisms which are biological unit operations. So, we make use of three principles physical force chemicals and biology this combination of these three works in wastewater treatment plan ok. And in biological treatment you have a credit less possess aerated lagoon trickling filters a point stabilization all these things ok. So, we cover that good and what are the types of collection system combined and separate and which is more feasible in India or more commonly used in India combined. What are the commonly used unit operations and processing wastewater treatment first the three classification physical chemical biological two in physical two names in physical two unit two in chemical chlorination adsorption and two processes from biological aerated lagoon trickling filters actidation process ok good. So, any questions until now clear. Now, we come to the how all these three physical chemical and biological unit processes or operations there is a difference between operation and the process are put together to have the treatment. And as per our guideline center which we have a central public health environmental engineering organization which we call CPHEO which is a agency to develop guidelines for sanitation and sewage treatment. And this I am referring from this 2013 CPHEO guideline which basically talks about conventional wastewater treatment plan ok conventional meaning this most commonly conventionally we have been treating sewage in this manner. So, conventional treatment goes in this two primary and secondary and this particular in primary treatment we have the unit operation or process screening, grid removal and primary settling ok. So, in the primary treatment we take care of mostly suspended load of the particles ok. So, suspended load meaning will it remove some BOD will it remove some BOD how come. So, some motion right because even if it is a suspended, but it can be organic right. So, it will exert some BOD on the system. So, primary treatment is very essential and why I am saying this because primary treatment in primary treatment we make use of gravity that gravity will be used to settle the particle ok. Now, something that can be settled by gravity it is not wise to put it into a reactor right or for the further treatment because for the further treatment we are making use of basically additional artificial air to supply the oxygen which will increase the cost of the system because it will require more energy ok. So, basic principle you should remove basic principle you should remember is something that can be settled by gravity should be used in should be settled in primary treatment itself you should not take it to the secondary treatment because secondary treatment is a heart of the system which is meant to only convert the biological the dissolve BOD into suspended BOD ok. So, basically that conversion happens in the this reactor and there are different types of reactors ok, but basic treatment if you want to remember first principle is to remove the screen screen will help it is remove the floating material such as a plastic or something will come that will be obstructed with the screens. Then you have the green basically sand sealed particles of more large diameter which will settle which are mostly inorganic in nature those will be removed and then in the primary sedimentation time PST primary sedimentation time or it is also known as clarifier ok, primary clarifier ok because that is the settling settling of the solids ok and then this all very now everything you have removed that is subjected to the this particular biological reactor. The most commonly used biological reactor is called as activated sludge process ok. So, activated sludge process is where you see here some part of the sludge is taken back to the reactor because that particular bacteria available in the reactor are active ok and you do not have to basically always put new bacterial culture to maintain the system. You can just part of the system can be recycled part of the biomass is recycled to maintain the given concentration of the biomass in the system ok. So, this particular activated sludge process use the biomass to get removed the this particular BOD from the system ok. And whatever excess so, basically this particular reactor will convert the BOD to the suspended form and that needs to be settled down that is why secondary settling time or secondary clarifier ok and that will settle down that will be taken part of the sludge will be taken to the reactor and part will be wasted that is the excess sludge that system cannot hold or we should not keep that in the system ok. So, that is thickener and this will go back to the whatever the supernatant after thickening the sludge because this particular sludge will be very having lot of moisture lot of water into it and storage will be low.  So, typically we use this particular thickener and take take out whatever possible water from the sludge makes sludge more dense and again put it for the anaerobic digester because anaerobic digester will basically whatever remaining organic matter is there which is in a concentrated form now can be subjected to the anaerobic bacteria. Basically those bacteria which do not require oxygen for their metabolism ok. So, these are the bacteria which are survive on basically other form of sources than oxygen. So, here in ectodyslose process here we use use of anaerobic bacteria in anaerobic digester we use anaerobic bacteria and which provides basically methane ok bio gas and hence the energy can be recovered ok.  If you understand this all other treatments are variant of this particular scheme ok. Most of the systems require this nobody wants basically the solids into the biological reactor ok. So, and this biological reactor varies, but basic principle of recycling this biomass active biomass remains the same. Any questions here? That is the most important part of understanding wish order treatment. And this looks like in a graphical representation the screening is happening here bar screens are placed then this is the grid removal, this is primary clarifier. You see the oxygen is supplied here on some external source ok because we have to maintain the bacteria in anaerobic mode. Hence we have to supply some air from the outside and that sludge is settled and taken down for sludge processing ok. Coming to the variants of this particular treatment systems one of the conventional treatment plant works on a principle of basically this biological reactor activity sludge and bacterial mass is in suspension ok. It is a complete in suspension ok. That is why those are classified under suspended basically treatment methods, but we can attach the biomass to some media ok. So, that is another classification. So, wish order treatment methods or techniques that if you want to call what is physical chemical which are like this using the physical and chemical actions or physical forces and chemical using the chemicals which are like screening, sedimentation, ion exchange, multi media filter, adsorption, some membranes, rheumatism process and these all have its own particular unique purpose and when to use and when not to use ok. And then you have the biological system that classifies under first aerobic and anaerobic, aerobic where treatment is supplied and bacteria aerobic bacteria and anaerobic are where the bacterium are survive without oxygen. And under them you have the contact base of flow anaerobic sludge bank it UASB of flow anaerobic sludge bank it. Then you have the sludge digesters anaerobic bonds those are there. Then you have the in aerobic you have the suspended growth and under suspended growth you have the active sludge process, extended adhesion, aerated lagoons, waste ablation bonds ok. And then you have the attached growth where you have the bacterial mass is attached to some media ok. In all these technologies bacterial mass is in a suspension. And then you have the trickling filters, rotating biologists, land treatment, constricted wetlands and vermiculture these are the attached growth processes. Any questions here? This is the basic classification you should remember for anyways for the treatment ok.


Hi, I'm Dr. Buchrae of Hackensack Meridian Health. We know you may have put certain health issues on hold due to the pandemic. Here at Hackensack Meridian Health, safety and quality are our topmost priority, so we have taken measures so that your healthcare doesn't have to wait any longer. We've made doctors' appointments safe for everyone, by universal mask and policies, adopting universal temperature screening, enforcing physical distancing, and often asking patients to wait in their cars to prevent weight room congestion. We may also ask that necessary forms be filled out prior to the appointment and have staggered schedules to reduce weighting. We've also encouraged telehealth appointments when appropriate. As always, our teams are working very hard to rigorously sanitize all of our facilities. To learn more about how we're keeping our practices and communities safe, please visit hackensackmeridianhealth.org slash get care now.


Hello everyone, this is Amit Dan and on this channel you find financial travel and more videos. If you like what you see Please do the thumbs up and consider subscribing. Thank you Hello everyone, this is Amit Dan of amitdan.com Today I'll have another episode of great card unboxing video and I'll be presenting the BMO ruse mastercard on this channel, I do financial travel and other videos and my Great card videos and any other videos. They're not affiliated unbiased and honest So the difference between my reviews and other big websites or any other reviews that those are affiliated and Biased opinions because they're working for the greater company. So basically they're going to hide important information From you so you can sign up using their websites or links so they can make some money off you But on this channel, I don't provide any affiliated link or I don't accept any money from credit card companies or any other companies So you are going to get totally honest opinion and then I'm going to give you Insights which will not get from anywhere else. So today I have the BMO viewers mastercard So let's take this card out of the envelope and then we'll talk about more about This card so the envelope came this way and I'm going to just take this out here. So let's Set this aside here and this is the Introductory letter and where the credit card is Stacked inside right here. So I'm gonna just leave this here for now and just let's look at some other literatures Came along with this great card. So you have the BMO viewers terms and conditions so Here they're just giving you information about, you know, how BMO viewers work and how to redeem and what to do in case of Debt or Canceling or withdrawing points. So I'm not going to be talking a lot about this So I'll just set it aside here and then we have here a certificate of insurance Literature. So this card is a free no annual free credit card. So they're Shouldn't be that many have free insurances provided. So let's just take a quick look here that you know what we have here Okay, so it looks like we have these Insurances which come with this free credit card. So these are purchase protection benefits extended warranty benefits and Looks like that's about it Okay, so let me just Go through quickly Extended warranty is just you know, you'll get another additional year after manufacturers warranty, which is usually one year So you get one plus one two years in total when you purchase anything with the credit card Or some like, you know items based on their terms and conditions But this insurance is very common. Usually it comes with any paid or free credit card. So That's what we have here and purchase protection benefit right here and this is another Insurance usually it comes free. So this is you know, you get coverage for 90 days from the data purchase and It gives you protection from Thift damage or a loss of items. So you have to just you know read the Details on these if you would like to use these insurances and then purchase protection exclusion limitation Extended warranty. Okay. So I don't see anything else to mention here. So I'm just going to be setting this aside So these are very basic common insurances which come along with any other credit card Then we have a literature for BMO Rewards points how it works now the BMO Rewards structure Or the BMO Rewards points for this card, which is a no annual freight card and the BMO World Elite Mastercard Which is a hundred dollar NO3. You aren't the same reward. It's the same reward, but just different weird structures So the reason I have this card because I canceled my BMO World Elite Mastercard Which has a hundred fifty dollars NO3 and I asked them to convert it to this free no annual freighter because I don't want to lose my Credit availability. So let's open this up and see what we have here So I have it here So it just talks about what you can do with your BMO Rewards and this card earns one point for every dollar you spend Okay And these are like an additional option You can add it to your card Roadside assistance and freight card balance protection and then added benefit is extended warranty purchase protection, which I already mentioned and The common mastercard worldwide security and protection. Okay Don't have anything else here Zero liability protection lost and stolen freight cars. So this is very common all freight cars combined resolution and All other information so they haven't provided much information here. So the way the BMO Rewards work for this card is that you get one BMO point for each dollar and the redemption rate for BMO point is One dollar four hundred forty points when you redeem for travel expenses So if you do the math or calculations the way it works here is that you're going to get point seven cent for each dollar spent So it's not even one cent for dollars. So this card has a very low rate of return and I don't recommend this card no annual fee card to anyone because You can get better a no annual fee card from other Crater companies some of the examples are which can be in many of yours. We were split in a power plus master card blue sky credit card from American Express and then we got simply cash card, which is a few one from American Express Tangerine money back credit card. So These are the some free credit cards and then another credit card If you're looking at the RBC, RBC Rewards Visa credit card, so that's another card You can look at for a no annual fee Great card the full name of the RBC card is RBC Rewards Plus Visa card Which earns one RBC points per dollar on selected categories. So there's no point having this card If you're looking for a free credit card, so that's the honest opinion, but now Let's open up the card and see how it looks. So here is the envelope and here's the standard welcome there and We have here some other information We have here some just a General information. I'll take out the card for you. I'll show you how it looks Nothing fancy. Just a simple card So here's what we have BMO Rewards master card Okay, I'll set it aside So that was the review and unboxing of the BMO Rewards Mastercard and again for a no annual to credit card They're better options than this because this is not even giving you one cent per dollar spent If you'd like to know more about other credit cards, just you know go to my YouTube channel and look under a credit card section and you'll see there are lots of videos and Also, you'll be seeing lots of travel videos on this channel because you know using viewers points and Miles I travel the world and then I document my travel which is this channel all about So that's all for now. If you like what you see, let's give it a thumbs up and subscribe Because there will be more videos coming up. So I'll see you shortly. Thank you


We are at different levels of maturity in diversity, but the diversity is not one item of gender only. It's not everything. So we are a mixed bag. For the engineering company, we are focusing heavily on gender diversity. It's not bad, but we want to further improve on merits. It's a mindset and culture change. For a software company, our diversity gender diversity is pretty good already, but further we need to hire the bar. In terms of inclusion and DEI, we want to go on that journey to hire the bar and strengthen the bar. We already created last year a very strategic focus towards this. The leadership is committed on this. It's a journey like I told you we want to go into. Four years ago, we went into GPW. Today on GPW, we are rated amongst the best auto components and auto companies. We want to further hire the bar. So I would say each of these are journeys. And these journeys, it's very important to accept the status. It doesn't matter if it's three out of 10, five out of 10, or seven. It's very important to share that with everyone. We try to share that. And it's very important to create measurable journeys and go up on the majority chart.