A very good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu newspaper analysis brought to you by Shankar A.S. Academy. Today's date is 11th of July 2023. Displayed here are the list of news articles that we are going to discuss today. For the benefit of the viewers, we have taken articles from Sunday's newspaper as well. So without much delay, let us get into the first news article discussion. This FAQ article from Sunday's newspaper is about the recent export control measure placed by China on the export of gallium and germanium. See these metals are mainly used in the manufacture of semiconductor systems. So the article covers various aspects like the details of export control, what prompted China to impose the export control and what are the impacts. So in our news article discussion, we will see the important points mentioned in the news article. Before that the syllabus relevant to the news article is highlighted here for your reference. You can go through it. First let us see a little bit of background information about the ongoing issue. So the export control on gallium and germanium is the recent episode of the ongoing chip war between China and the West. It was the United States that started the chip war. To understand the context of the chip war, we have to go back to the 1950s. In the early 1950s, the transistor, which is a major component in all semiconductor devices, was invented in the United States. Then for the next two decades, the U.S. dominated the world in the area of semiconductor manufacturing. In the late 1980s, the U.S. started facing stiff competition from other countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore in the semiconductor business. These countries, though lacking the technical power of the U.S., had abundant cheap labor. So the U.S. could not match their prices. This prompted the U.S. to shift the majority of their production to Taiwan. This move of the U.S. resulted in the formation of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, TSMC in 1987. Initially, the deal was IC chip, that is the semiconductor chip. Designing would be done only in the U.S. and only production would happen in Taiwan. That is in TSMC. But later, TSMC started designing chips as well. And currently, TSMC, that is only one Taiwanese corporation, they alone have around 55% of the global market for chip manufacturing and produces around 90% of the most advanced processor chips that are used in smartphones and computers and advanced data centers. To understand the enormity of TSMC, you can compare it to the OPEC, that is organization of the petroleum exporting countries. The OPEC, which has 13 members and has control over only 40% of the global market. Just look at the range difference. The other important corporation that is involved in the semiconductor business is the ASML of the Netherlands, while TSMC of Taiwan is a world leader in semiconductor chip production. The ASML of the Netherlands main focus is on the machinery. To be very specific, advanced lithographic tools that help produce semiconductor chips. So currently, ASML and TSMC have a virtual monopoly on the semiconductor chip market. Now China wants to disrupt this status quo and have a domestic chip manufacturing industry of its own. China has two reasons to augment its chip manufacturing capacity. One is an economic reason and the other is geopolitical reason. First let us see the economic reason. We all know that most of the modern electronic devices like mobiles and laptops are manufactured in China, right? But China does not produce the advanced semiconductor chips used in electric devices locally. 90% of China's semiconductor needs are met through imports. So China spends more on importing each semiconductor chips than on importing oil. And the majority of the input happens from Taiwan. This makes Taiwan a critical supply source for China. As Taiwan is heavily influenced by the US, China to protect its electronic manufacturing industry is planning to develop its own semiconductor chip manufacturing capacity. This is the first reason. The second reason is geopolitical. See China aims to become a global superpower. For that, it needs a modern military. In that aspect, China aims to make the People's Liberation Army, PLA, a world-class military by 2049. As 2049 marks the century of the Chinese Communist Party's rule. To modernize its military, China plans on developing autonomous weaponry including hypersonic missiles and using artificial intelligence for applications that include electronic warfare. To achieve all these, China needs modern microchips. Once China modernize its military completely, the first thing that it would do is invade Taiwan and create a unified China. But Taiwan is the country that has to supply modern microchips to the Chinese military. If infusion of Taiwan is the ultimate aim of China, then how will Taiwan supply those advanced military microchips to China? So, China plans on creating its own domestic chip manufacturing industry. These two reasons prompted China to billions of dollars into building the technology to manufacture semiconductors. And China also had plans of importing advanced chip machinery from ASML Netherlands. This action by China worries the US. This is because not just China, even the US is heavily dependent on TSMC for its semiconductor needs. See what the first thing China will do once it capture Taiwan is, it will restrict the export of semiconductor chips from Taiwan to the US. This will place US in the chokehold. The US realizing this has started taking some actions. Firstly, the US has stepped up its investments in semiconductor manufacturing facilities. In August 2022, it passed the landmark chips and science act providing 280 billion dollar in new funding for domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the country. Secondly, the US started lobbying with its allies like Japan and the Netherlands to restrict the shipments of their most high tech machinery to China. And as expected, Japan and the Netherlands, especially ASML Corporation, agree to tighten the export of high tech machinery to China. Both the countries stated that they are doing so to protect their national security interest. Thirdly, the US has started taking steps to diversify its supply chain. As a part of this one lead during the recent US State visit by our Prime Minister, Micro Technology Inc., which is a US chip manufacturer, agreed to invest in a new chip assembly and testing facility in Kucharat. These three actions of the US angry China, particularly preventing ASML from the supply of advanced machinery to China, agreed it the most. So, as a retaliatory measure on July 3, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that it would implement export controls on items related to gallium and germanium. It said that the control were being imposed in order to safeguard national security interest, which is the same reason as said by the US and its allies, a nice story, right? So, this is all about the chip war. So, these learnt points, now let us move on to the next news article discussion. Take a look at this news article. The article says that the leaders of Solomon Islands and China have signed agreements on Polish economic and technical cooperation. So, in this news article discussion, we will see some important points about Solomon Islands, its map location and the significance of the recent Bonomi between China and Solomon Islands. Now, look at this map. As you can see in the map, the Solomon Islands are part of Melanesia. It is located east of Papua New Gunia, west of Duvalu and Vanuatu, north of New Caledonia and south of the Marshall Island. This island is located in the Southern Hemisphere between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. The Solomon Islands is located 2000 kilometers northeast of Australia. The capital of Solomon Islands is Honiara and it is located on Guadalcanal Island. You can see that in the image given here. See, the country consists of six major islands and over 900 small islands. The Solomon Islands Archipelago mainly consists of volcanic islands and islanded at all. This area experiences volcanic activity because the Solomon Archipelago is located along the plate boundary between the Australian plate and the Pacific plate. This is about the location of the Solomon Islands. Now, let us quickly see about its geopolitical significance. See, the islands were initially controlled by the British Empire during the colonial era. Then, during the world wars, the control of the islands went into the hands of Germany and Japan. It then went back to the UK after the Americans took over the island from the Japanese during World War II. The islands became independent in 1978 to become a constitutional monarchy under the British Crown with a parliamentary system of government. Although it comes under the British Crown, it is Australia that has close security relations with the Solomon Islands due to its close proximity. Currently, China is trying to increase its influence in this area to be specific in the Pacific region. As a part of this, China signed the secretive security agreement with the Solomon Islands. This worried the western nations, particularly the US and Australia, as they thought through this agreement, China might create a military base in Solomon Islands and increase its military presence in the Pacific. Both the US and Australia worry that China is planning to establish military base in the Solomon Islands so that it can insert itself between America's military base in the Pacific Islands and Australia. But China is saying that it is engaging with Solomon Islands for purely economic reasons as the island nation is an important component of its Belt and Road Initiative BRI. Specifically, China sees the region as a critical air-fried hub in its so-called air-silk road, which connects Asia with Central and South America. Although the real intention of China is still unclear, one thing is sure, China is trying to increase its sphere of influence among the island nations of Oshania. That's all regarding this news article discussion. In this news article discussion, we saw about the location of Solomon Islands, then we saw about the agreement signed between China and Solomon Islands. With these learned points, now let us move on to the next news article discussion. Take a look at this news article. This article is about a court ruling in India. The court rejected PepsiCo's appeal to maintain a patent for a specific potato variety. This variety is used in their lace potato chips. The court upheld a decision by the Protection of Plant Varieties and Formless Rights PPVFR authority to revoke the patent. The court stated that Indian rules do not allow patent on seed varieties. This is about the news article given here. In this context, let us quickly learn about the Indian patent regime. See the Patent Act 1970 and the Patents Rules 1972 govern patents in India. It replaced the previous Indian Patents and Designs Act of 1911. However, this 1970 act was amended by the Patent Amendment Act 2005. Now let's talk about inventions. According to the Act, an invention is defined as a new product or process that involves an inventive step and is capable of being used in industry. The criteria for patentability include novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability. Now the Act also specifies what are all not considered as invention. We will see the important points one by one. Firstly, inventions that are considered frivolous or go against well established natural laws or not patentable. Then inventions whose use or commercial exploitation goes against public order, morality or causes serious harm to humans, animals, plants or the environment or not patentable. For example, growing recombinant plants that harm butterflies, they are not eligible for patents. Then mere discoveries of scientific principles or finding living or non-living substance occurring in nature or not patentable. Also using a known process, machine or apparatus without involving a new product or reactant is not patentable. Then methods of agriculture, horticulture and medical, surgical, curative, diagnostic or therapeutic treatments for humans, animals or plants that aim to render them disease free or increase their economic value or not patentable. Also inventions falling within the scope of traditional knowledge like the use of herbal medicines or not patentable. Now we shall talk about the term patent. See in India the term of every patent granted under the Patents Act is 20 years from the date of filing the patent application. This means that once the patent is granted, the inventor has exclusive rights to the invention for a period of 20 years. Also note that to maintain patent enforce, the patent holder is required to pay annual renewal fee also known as maintenance fees or annuity fees. Let's say an investor filed a patent application on January 1, 2020. If the patent is granted the inventor will have exclusive rights to the invention until January 1, 2040 that is 20 years from the filing date. Hope you can understand. Now suppose the inventor fails to pay the renewal fee from the second year onwards if the fees are not paid within the specified time then the patent will lapse and the inventor will lose the protection okay. But on the other hand if the inventor realizes the mistake within 18 months from the date of lapse then they can file a restoration application. All these just show how flexible the patent regime is in India to boost the invention in the country. Now we'll see about important provisions under the Act that is the compulsory licensing. See compulsory licensing is a provision in the patent Act. It allows a person to apply for a license to use someone else's patented invention without the patent owner's permission. This can happen under certain circumstances to ensure public access to essential products or it can happen even to address issues related to affordability availability and etc. If you don't understand let me explain. Let's say there is a patented medicine and this medicine treats a widespread disease but the patent owner is selling the medicine at an extremely higher price. This makes it unaffordable for many people who need it. In this case a person or a company can apply for a compulsory license under the Act. If the license is granted this person or company can produce and sell a generic version of the medicine. They can do this without the consent of the patent owner. This shows how fair the Act actually applies. Then another important provision is the Bolar provision. See the Bolar provision is given under section 107A clause A of the Patents Act. See this provision allows certain activities related to a patented invention without being considered an infringement. So basically the Bolar provision allows generic drug manufacturers to conduct certain activities related to the development and testing of generic drugs. They can do this even before the expiration of the original patent for a brand name drug. For those who don't understand let me explain. Imagine there is a popular brand drug called MediEx that helps to treat a specific medical condition. The company that created MediEx holds a patent and as we know they have exclusive right to produce and sell the drug for 20 years. Now let's say a generic drug manufacturer called Generic Pharma wants to create a more affordable version of MediEx once the patent expires. But Generic Pharma cannot start manufacturing the generic drug because the patent has not expired. See in order to manufacture the generic version itself there should be some trials research that has to happen and it takes time right. So now should they wait till the end of 20 years and after the expiration they can start the trial. What do you think? No right. So here's where the Bolar provision comes into play. It allows Generic Pharma to conduct certain activities related to the development of their generic version of MediEx before the patent expires. So when the patent expires they can immediately start selling the generic version of the drug without wasting time okay. These are some of the very important provisions of the patent act. Make note of them. These provisions actually encourage innovation in the country and it reinforces the fact that all innovation is for the humankind and it makes sure that every one of the humankind gets benefited okay. So with these learnt points now let us move on to the next news article discussion. Look at this news article. It is discussing the affidavit filed by the Indian government in the Supreme Court regarding the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir after the dilution of article 370 in 2019. We all know that article 370 was a provision in the Indian constitution that granted special autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir right. See the affidavit claims that Jammu and Kashmir is now witnessing a period of peace progress and prosperity. It highlights the return to normalcy, decrease in street violence, reduction in terrorism, dismantling of the terror ecosystem and measures taken to integrate the region's youth. The affidavit also mentions the development initiatives and increased budget allocation for Jammu and Kashmir. The filing of this affidavit is done in response to a series of petition that challenged the dilution of article 370 in the Supreme Court. This is about the news article given here. In this context let us learn few facts about dilution of article 370. See before 2019 Jammu and Kashmir had a special status under article 370 of the Indian constitution. This article provided certain autonomous power to the state. It also restricted the legislative power of the Indian parliament over Jammu and Kashmir. It allowed the state to have its own constitution, a separate flag and more control over its law. However on August 5, 2019 the Indian government made significant changes by issuing an order that modified article 370. The order brought about several key alternatives to the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Now what are these alternatives? We will see them one by one. One of the major changes was the division of the state. See the state was divided into two separate union territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Previously it was a single state with its own governance structure. With this modification the special status that Jammu and Kashmir held was removed. Its separate constitution and flag was also removed. It now follows the Indian constitution just like other states in the country. This means that the people of Jammu and Kashmir are now governed by the same laws and have the same fundamental rights as other Indian citizens. They have rights like freedom of speech, equality before the law and the right to education. Additionally the law passed by the Indian parliament are now applicable in Jammu and Kashmir. This includes important legislations like the right to information act and the Indian penal code. Another significant change was the removal of article 35a. See this provision originated from article 370. It gave special rights and privileges to the permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir. It allowed the state legislature to define who qualified as permanent residents and it also conferred certain benefits and protections to them. But after the modifications, article 35a no longer holds any legal effect, meaning the special rights and privileges associated with it are no longer applicable. The changes made by the Indian government were aimed at integrating Jammu and Kashmir more closely with the rest of India. Now we will quickly see what the Afidevic mentions about the developments that happened after the dilution of article 370. See the Afidevic aims to highlight the positive developments in the region. According to the Afidevic schools, colleges and other public institutions in Jammu and Kashmir have been functioning smoothly without disturbances or strikes for the past three years. The Afidevic states that the previous practice of daily strike, stone pelting and shutdowns has almost stopped. The Afidevic further highlighted the efforts made by the government to strengthen democracy at the grassroots level. It mentions the establishment of an elected three-tier Panchayatri Raj system. Regarding the security situation, the Afidevic stated that law and order events reduced by 97.2% and instances of terrorist activities initiated by terrorist reduced by 45.2% between 2018 and 2022. The Afidevic also mentioned the improvement in tourism in the region. We know that the G20 tourism working group meeting was held in Srinagar in May. This indicates the growing tourism opportunities in Jammu and Kashmir. These are also some of the important takeaway points from this news article. Make note of all these points. These are data given by the government itself. So you can freely use it in your main sansa writing. So with these learned points, now let us move on to the next news article discussion. Take a look at this FAQ article from Sunday's newspaper. It talks about the ongoing crisis in India-Russia trade payments. See India is currently importing a huge quantity of crude oil from Russia. For those imports, India has to pay huge money, right? But India is facing multiple challenges in paying money for crude oil imports from Russia. This is the crux of the news article given here. In this context, let us learn few important points mentioned in the news article. Before that, the syllabus relevant to the news article is highlighted here for your reference. You can go through it. First, we will understand about the India-Russia oil trade. See, until a year ago, India imported most of its crude oil from West Asia, that is the United States and West Africa. But today, a bulk of crude oil to India is coming from Russia. If we look at the data in February 2023, Russia became the second biggest exporter of crude oil to India in financial year 2023 by surpassing Saudi Arabia. Now, if you are asking why all of a sudden, India is importing more crude oil from Russia, see it is mainly because of the economic sanctions placed on Russia due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Due to the sanctions, Russia faced huge economic challenges and it was not able to sell its goods in the international market. So, Russia searched for alternative markets and later it found a ready market in India to sell its goods, especially crude oil. India, unlike the West, did not join the list of countries formally imposing sanctions on Russia. So, Russia has offered steep discounts in crude oil prices to India. This has benefited both the countries. On one side, India is getting crude oil at a lower price. On the other side, the huge crude oil imports to India are benefiting Russia economically. But here also lies a problem. As we are importing more crude oil from Russia, we have to pay them right. Now, which currency is being used for payments to Russia? See, traditionally and currently, the import bills are paid through US dollars. But since the West imposed sanctions on Russia, India would be able to use only limited USD to pay import bills to Russia. Apart from this, the Western countries have also decided to cap the price of the Russian crude oil to a maximum of $60 per barrel. This means that the countries could not buy crude oil above $60 per barrel from Russia. India has tactically agreed to maintain the price gap of $60 per barrel as much as possible. So, as a result of this, students only, India is now able to import crude oil from Russia, and it is paying the import bill through USD. Here, you might have a doubt, is there any alternative to these USD payments? See, in the past, India was in negotiations with Russia to reactivate the rupee ruble trade agreement. This was done mainly to arrive at an alternative payment mechanism to settle dues in rupees instead of dollars or euros. Note that the ruble is the currency of the Russian Federation. Despite negotiations, the rupee ruble payment mechanism could not take off. There are a couple of reasons for this failure. The main reason is that there is a problem with rupee ruble convertibility. See, the value of the ruble is determined by the Russian government and not determined by the market. But in India, the value of the rupee is determined mostly by the market forces. So, Russia has pointed out that the rupee is more volatile than ruble. Therefore, problem would arise in case of rupee ruble convertibility. Apart from this, India's trade deficit with Russia touched $43 billion in 2022-23. This has led to staggering amount of Indian rupee in Russian banks. The issue is, this excess Indian money cannot be used by Russia in its war efforts. So, because of these factors, the attempts to reactivate the rupee ruble trade agreement have failed. Here you might have another doubt, or that any attempts being taken to replace USD. See, as of now, the US dollar is largely considered to be the global reserve currency. But the problem here is that the US at times may impose sanctions which ultimately result in low USD available in the market. This in turn affects the economy of most of the countries. So, many countries view that the US sanctions are one of the ways to weaponize the US dollar. This situation has led the countries to look into de-dollarization efforts. This means that the countries are now looking for the replacement of the US dollar with other currencies as the global reserve currency. But there is a long way to go in such de-dollarization attempt. Now, coming to India. See, India has also recently released a roadmap for the internationalization of the Indian rupee. The value and acceptability of any currency mainly depends on its purchasing power. That is the number of goods and services that can be bought using the currency right now. If we take Indian rupee, currently the daily average share for the rupee in the global foreign exchange market is approximately 1.6 percentage, while India's share of global goods trade is approximately 2 percentage. So, India needs to take many steps in internationalization of the Indian rupee. So, to conclude, India oil imports from Russia are unavoidable. Therefore, to counter the trade deficit with Russia, India should negotiate with Russia to make investments in every projects in India or to invest in common bonds. On other hand, this would help to address the trade deficit. Russia will also get returns while investing in India. That's all regarding this news article discussion. In this news article discussion, we saw about the difficulties in trans-border and trans-currency payments. With these learned points, let us move on to the next news article discussion. Take a look at this news article. It says that the GSD council meeting is scheduled to happen today. During that meeting, the GSD council is expected to consider the constitution of the GSD Appellate Tribunal to resolve the disputes surrounding the indirect tax. See, the GSD regime is now 6 years old, but still the taxpayers need to approach courts to resolve disputes. So, various industries are urging the centre to set up the GSD Appellate Tribunal as soon as possible. This is about the news article given here. So, in this news article discussion, let us understand about GSD Appellate Tribunal. See, the GSD Appellate Tribunal is a specialized Appellate authority that has to be constituted to resolve disputes under the GSD laws. It will hear the appeals against the orders passed by the first Appellate authorities. Note carefully, the GSD Appellate Tribunal is not constituted yet. It is just a proposed body. Now, what is the need to create such Appellate Tribunal? See, in case of disputes in the order of the GSD authorities, as of now, an aggravated taxpayer has to approach the High Court for relief. But the High Court are already burdened with the huge pendency of cases. So, the hearings may get delayed and it may take long years to obtain justice. As a result, many stakeholders have been demanding the central government to constitute a GSD Appellate Tribunal. So, to address this, the central government set up a six-member committee to look into the constitution of the GSD Appellate Tribunal. The committee made some suggestions and it also proposed a structure for the GSD Appellate Tribunal. Now, we will see the structure of the GSD Appellate Tribunal. See, the GSD Appellate Tribunal benches would be constituted at multiple levels like national level, regional level, state level and finally, area level. Particularly, talking about national bench, the national bench shall be headed by a judge of the Supreme Court or a Chief Justice of the High Court. Apart from this, the national bench shall also consist of one technical member from center and one technical member from the state. Note that the national or the principal bench shall be set up in New Delhi. See, the composition of all other benches shall be decided based on the GSD Act and the recommendations of the GSD Council. Now, talking about the powers and functions, see, while trying a case, the Appellate Tribunal shall have the same power as a court under the Code of Civil Procedure. So, the GSD Appellate Tribunal will be a deemed civil court. Apart from this, the Appellate Tribunal has been granted the power to pass orders and directions for the recovery of due amounts, enforcement of its orders and rectification of mistakes. The Tribunal also has the power to impose penalties, revoke or cancel registrations and take such measures as may be necessary to ensure compliance with the GSD laws. As of now, this is the only valid information available from the government sources. The GSD Appellate Tribunal is just a proposed body. Once it gets constituted, we'll get a clear picture about the functioning and all. So, we have to wait for the good news. So, in this news article discussion, we saw about GSD Appellate Tribunal, their functions and jurisdictions. So, with these learnt points, now let us move on to the next part of the news article discussion, which is the preliminary practice question discussion. Take a look at this first question. The question asks us to arrange the islands in Oceania from north to south. Four islands are given. First is Hawaii, Marshall Island, Fiji, Solomon Islands. See, the correct answer for the question is option C, 1, 2, 4 and 3. Look at this map. Here you can see that Hawaii is the first, then comes Marshall Islands, thirdly comes the Solomon Islands and fourth comes the Fiji. So, the correct answer for this question is option C, 1, 2, 4 and 3. Now, moving on, look at this question about Bolar provision. Four statements are given and you have to choose which one best explains the term Bolar provision. See, actually Bolar provision means generic drug development before patent expiration. We saw that in the discussion, right? So, the correct answer here is option C, generic drug development before patent expiration. Now, look at this third question regarding GSD. You have to find which goods or items are exempted from the goods and services tax. See, the correct answer here is option D, all the five, all are exempted from the GSD Regime. Moving on, the questions displayed here are the main practice questions for you today. Just go through the question, try to answer it in the comment section. We will review your answers and your peers also will review your answer. So, with this, we came to the end of the news article discussion. If you like the video, hit like, do comment and don't forget to subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel. Now, thank you for listening.


This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. That's you because you can hear me by definition. You're listening. Thanks to you. Maybe you're A.B. Puppy or Dale Mulcahy or Matt Zaglin or brand new patrons, a non-junior and Tim S on this episode of DTNS, how Beeper brought Apple messages securely to Android, Gmail's new weapons against spam, and how to unlock the most professional video you can get from an iPhone pro. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, December 5th, Cinco de Deciembre 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from studio, hey, does anyone have any extra boxes? I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Cheng. You packing up? You getting ready to move town to town? Up and down the dial? Yeah, yeah. I mean, not physically packing yet, but getting to that point where it's the Seinfeld episode. Anybody have boxes? I need boxes. Yeah. For those, and I know there's a few of you out there that are unsettled that Sarah doesn't have a stable name for her studio. Just hang in there. Yeah, hang in there. I'm with you, y'all. We're going to get there. We're going to get there before the end of the year. Trust you, me. Just trust, trust. GTA 6 released its trailer showing it'll be set in the Miami-like Vice City, Star Lucia, who we haven't seen since the 90s, and come out in 2025. It's all anybody on the internet could talk about yesterday. Let's see what else is making the news in the quick hits. OnePlus officially launched the OnePlus 12 flagship phone in China. Worn a lot of surprises here since OnePlus has been sort of trickling out details for the last month or so, but you can get the OnePlus 12 with up to 24 gigs of RAM and one terabyte of storage, a 64 megapixel periscope telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and 32 megapixel selfie cam are among the four Hasselbad cameras. It's also IP65 dust and water resistant, available in China for the equivalent of between about 600 and 800 US dollars. An international option is set to launch in early 2024. And now we can stop seeing all the clickbaity headlines about OnePlus features being slowly leaked out. Or maybe they'll just start with the next model. Microsoft Copilot getting a number of updates. It will support GPT-4 Turbo for text generation and an updated Dole E3 model for image generation. It gets a new code interpreter and improved Bing search functions as well. GPT-4 Turbo has a larger context window, so that means it can understand your prompts better and offer better responses. The Microsoft Edge browser is getting the ability to use Copilot to compose text in a website's input fields as well as summarize YouTube videos. And that new code interpreter I mentioned can run its suggested code in a sandbox for you. And an overall has more accurate and higher quality responses. The updates should come to Copilot sometime in the coming weeks. Meta is disconnecting Messenger and Instagram chat later this month. If you didn't use it, well, it probably won't apply to you, but some people did. Meta didn't give a reason as to why it's scrapping cross-platform communication between Facebook and Instagram. But speculation points to the avoidance of regulatory consequences in the EU due to the Digital Markets Act. The DMA imposes restrictions on 22 gatekeeper services in the EU, and both Messenger and Instagram have received that classification. All right, this next one's a little bit confusing, but this is why you listen to DTNS. So when someone goes, wait, I thought that didn't happen. You can explain, well, here's what's actually going on. On Wednesday, December 6th, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is going to hear the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC's, appeal of the July District Court decision not to stop the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. Now you may say, well, hold on, didn't that merger close in October and the two companies are already now one company? Correct. That did happen. And no, most legal experts don't think the FTC has much of a chance of winning its case, but that's not stopping it. It will also continue its internal administrative procedure against the merger, and it's not likely to convince a third-party arbitrator in that one either. But we're saying there's a chance, right? If the FTC were to prevail in one of these efforts, it could cause quite a bit of havoc. Let's say they actually go all the way and get the courts to say, no, this merger should not have happened. They would have to unwind the merger in the United States. Who knows what that would look like? As a result, 37 VC firms and investors have filed a friend of the court briefs, objecting to the appeal. Foxconn, well known as one of the biggest makers of Apple's products and manufactures a lot of the tech world stuff overall. And because of that, how Foxconn is doing is often seen as a bellwether of sorts for the tech sector. So it's notable that Foxconn said it had its second highest November revenue ever and also expects a significant growth in the holiday period. Good for Foxconn, and good for Apple. The upshot of that is Apple has said, we're not selling fewer iPhones because they're not selling. We're selling them because you couldn't make enough. That's the spin. Yeah, it's Foxconn's fault, and now they're fine. And Foxconn's actually kind of like, yeah, no, it was, and now we're making more. So yeah, maybe things will turn around. All right, let's talk about this Gmail thing. Google posted details on what it's calling one of the largest defense upgrades to Gmail in years. They dubbed it resilient and efficient text vectorizer or RETVEC for short. Basically, it's really good at understanding all those tricks that spam uses to get around spam filters.  All those are tricks to try to evade the spam filter. RETVEC was trained on an efficient character encoder so it can recognize all the alternate uses of special characters and emojis and such. Previous methods had to be taught the alternatives. You had to give them a list of things to look for. And the alternatives are somewhat endless. So you wouldn't catch them all. This is more efficient because it's just trained to kind of recognize stuff like, oh, that C is meant to be this kind of C. Google's been using it for the last year or so. So you've had it in your Gmail account. They say that spam detection has improved 38% since it was deployed and false positives have declined 19.4%. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about what kind of special character stuff gets around spam filters because I have got a few different email accounts. Daily Tech News Show is one of them and gets by far the most amount of spam. A lot of it is sort of like, work with us on SEO and stuff that isn't even technically spam, just not people you're necessarily going to work with. But what are some tricks besides a typo in an email that gets through that filter? If you look in your spam folder, wear protective eye covering because it can be rather shocking. But if you look in there, even if you just look at the subject lines, you'll notice a lot of misspellings, a lot of weird characters, a lot of capitalizations in strange places, emojis in strange places. Those are all trying to get around those filters. I was talking about a classic example is in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is the alphabet used in a lot of Eastern European cultures, including Russia. The C is actually an S you pronounce it as S, which is why side note the old USSR hockey jerseys say CCCP because it's so yes, that's what they see is for. So if the filter is saying filter, the word cat, everybody's talking about cat spam. If you use the Cyrillic seed, the filter would go, well, that's not the same character because it's just looking at the Unicode. So it's like when someone uses one instead of L exactly, it's that kind of thing, but even harder for our eyes to notice. And then if you have updated the filter like, okay, now look for cat but spelled with the Cyrillic C, well, then they could use the mathematical C, because there's a whole separate C used for math Unicode. And it goes on and on and on because there's all kinds of glyphs and special characters for all these different alphabets out there. There's Honggu, there's Hiragana, there's Arabic. So you can find tons of characters to use that will look legible to us, right? We're able to read it, but try to confuse the machine. And what they did here was they just trained the generative model to say, look for something that looks like a C when you're trying to filter on cat. And so it didn't have to learn all the different variations that might look like that. It just said, hmm, that looks like a C. It's doing optical character recognition. Yeah, it's doing image recognition. Instead of the, you know, the specific like, here's the specific cat thing that, you know, right. Yeah, so it's learning the concept of a C instead of like looking at the Unicode. And in fact, the algorithm that was used to recognize cats, do you remember that story from a couple of years ago? Same, same underpinnings here. So cats do play a part as they always do in this piece of the internet. Cats are big on the internet. And I know we all like a good, let's kill spam story. I mean, I guess my pessimistic view of this is like, they're just going to figure something else out. But, you know, humans, we kind of know what's going wrong, but have had a hard time stopping what's going wrong. Models like this, being able to stop what's going wrong ahead of time and kind of know ahead of time, like, ah, this is another little trick that might happen. And we're not going to allow that either. I, you know, I welcome our new normal. Yeah, this is a more adaptable defense method, right? Because it can be trained. And it can, if the spammers find another thing that looks like a C, it's likely to catch it, right? You don't have to teach it that. So yeah, it won't eliminate spam. It hasn't eliminated spam, but it does make it harder. And so that's to me a good thing. And dude, well, a company that you may have heard of, if you do a lot of photography and video is called Lux. Lux makes a iPhone app called Halid. That's H-A-L-I-D-E that can capture raw photos and then do fun stuff with them. It's been around since 2017 when Apple first started supporting raw photo formats. Today, the co-founder of Lux, Ben Sandowski published a video. It was kind of weird, to be honest, saying Halid will never support video, but it was sort of a sort of tongue-in-cheek way for the company to announce an upcoming app called Kino, which does support what's known as log video, log as an L-O-G, like the log lady. Video encoding. This is something that Apple now supports on both the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, which Apple announced encoding of this kind back in September. Now, Tom, I might ask you, log video, how familiar are you with us? Was not at all familiar with log video. I imagine your log has something to say about log video. I know from reading this Verge article that log is short for logarithm, but that's kind of the extent of my knowledge. Explain what this is. Yeah, it's technically short for logarithmic, but same idea. It's not the same as raw photos or video for that matter. What log is good for is maximizing what your camera's sensor already has, preserving detail within the captured footage to be manipulated later.  They want something that they can do a lot of stuff with. Sometimes referred to as recording flat footage to the point where you might see the footage and go, uh, you know, it's so there's no contrast, there's no true blacks, you know, where's where the color pops. It's supposed to be designed for somebody who knows what they're doing to make that perfect afterwards, because, you know, everyone knows if you got a blown out photo, you can't make it not blown out. You know, you can't. I mean, sure, there's, there's some tricks you can do, but you can't create data where there is no data. This is designed to be the flattest version of data that then you can work with afterwards. In fact, nine to five Mac explained this in a way that helped me get my head around it saying, applying a logarithm that curve to color information in order to compress that data into a smaller portion of the 10 bits of data, opening up more room for darker shadows, brighter highlights to be recorded. This difference between the darkest and brightest data can then be recorded in is referred to as the camera's dynamic range. Okay. So that makes sense to me in that you're saying the, the flat, the flat explanation is saying we're giving you something that doesn't look the best, but gives you the opportunity to work on it and make it look the best. You can go in either direction or, you know, up, down, right, left, you know, all that stuff.  And there's filters, you know, that, that are part of a variety of apps to help you with that. I mean, Instagram's been doing that for a long time, but so have a lot of photo apps and video apps as well. This is probably the best way to take the most advantage of everything in a, the most pro version possible, not even prosome or like fully professional version, if you've got a 15 pro or a 15 max. Now, iPhone 14 and 13 pro and max lines record pro res videos. So, you know, and that's, you know, on its own already big deal, but being able to capture log video kind of takes that a step further. What's the difference between pro res and log video then? Well, are they both just compression styles? There are encoders. So yeah. So well, actually pro res is a compression method and log is an encoding method of a pro res compressed video. Ah, okay, okay, okay. So they're different things. You can, you can have them both. They are older iPhones. Don't do the log. They just do the pro res.  I really haven't played around with this. I have a 13 pro max iPhone. So this is not, you know, this particular thing that we're talking about is not something that I can take advantage of. However, it did remind me that I can go into settings, go into my camera settings, go into capture settings, and, and have some more control over how I am capturing video.  You don't want to do it just for fun, because it's they're, they're huge.   Even though already, like the HD video is great, you know, on my iPhone, I just was like, gosh, I never really played around with this. Yeah. So this is the opposite of what cameras are promising with AI of like, you won't have to do a thing. Just take a photo and we'll make it look perfect. This is you are in charge. You want to make your photo look perfect.  And yeah, that's not gonna be for everybody, but that's cool. If any casual user was sort of like, sir, give me like a situation where I would want this, I'd be like, I mean, if you don't really want to like geek out on this, I can't think of that many. But for those of you out there who care, you either say, yeah, this is this is dope. I can't wait for, for Kino, the new app from Lux or, you know, I, you know, doing this natively with my iPhone 15 pro or pro max, which by the way, because of the USBC connectivity, lets you dump it out to an external hard drive, which, you know, is a game changer for a lot of people who do work a certain way. Now, if you say, great, where do I sign up? How much is it going to cost? We don't really know. Kino is expected to launch in February. That's what the co-founder said. In fact, he specifically said my wife is going to have a baby in February. And so if you don't ship before then, we're not shipping for a while. So they're really focused on, on that time. We don't know what it would cost or other details. However, for anybody who's like, I like a third party option, something that does things a little bit differently. I think this is one to watch. All right. That's enough iPhone talk.  Not only will we mention Android right now, but we'll give you an entire show of Android called Android Faithful. Ron Richards and Huentui Dao and Michelle Raman sometimes offer you the latest Android news and information in a whole show. You can catch live Tuesdays at 8pm, Eastern 5pm Pacific, right here on our channel, youtube.com slash daily tech news show, twitch.tv slash good day internet. Or you can get it at your leisure by subscribing in the podcast app of your choice and you can go find more information at androidfaithful.com. Well, Sunbird crashed and burned because of its implementation of iMessage on Android was pretty insecure. Turns out Beeper has been providing iMessage for Android users in a more secure way and has gotten a lot of space in the news as of late just as an option. Yeah, but it's still in the cloud and you still have to trust them with your Apple login. A lot of people don't want to do that. So Beeper said, hmm, what's our solution? That would be Beeper Mini. Beeper says, this new app has reversed engineered how iMessage works. Beeper doesn't need to access your Apple ID or your contacts list, but it can do group chats, high res images, high res video, voice messages, stickers, gifts, reply threads, typing status, kind of everything. Can't do location sharing, can't do FaceTime game, certain stuff that's just like Apple proprietary stuff. But how does this actually work Tom? Because it sounds pretty promising. Yeah, so I signed up for Beeper and I was a little hesitant to keep it because as good as Beeper has been way better than Sunbird on this, I was still putting my Apple ID in their hands. And I didn't love that, especially because messages were going through their machine, which is, you know, a second factor authentication thing for a lot of people. So I pulled out of it. But I will absolutely try this because you don't have to give them an Apple ID. Beeper figured out how to craft an SMS message to register your phone with Apple Sergers. They're just sending a text to Apple and the server then registers your phone number as iMessage capable. So it just bypasses the whole login business altogether. That's the reverse engineering part. They figured out how to craft that SMS message. Beeper Mini sends this message. So you never need to use an Apple ID to log into anything. Now, there's a lot of questions you may have like, is that secure? Well, it's tight. It's from your phone number. So it can only work with your phone number. You can't sign up other people's phone numbers with it. And Beeper has limited what it does in the cloud. So they want to be able to tell you when they have a message without having to have your messages running through their servers. So they have two things in the cloud. One is their own API server. That's every app has that, right? That's the way when you log into Beeper Mini, it goes, oh yeah, this person has an actual account. So that one's pretty non-controversial. The other is a notification server that uses the Apple push notification service with a separate credential. And this is taking advantage of the way Apple designed it. You don't log in on that cloud server. You log in on the app on your phone with the Beeper login, not an Apple ID.  Here's the credential to get the notifications. You send only that APN credential to Beeper server. All it can do with that credential is ask the Apple server to send it a notification that a message has come in. It cannot use that credential to get your actual message. That credential to get your actual message stays on your phone. So what it does is it listens while the app is closed so that it can say, oh, hey, you know what, you've got a message and it'll push a notification through the cloud to your app to let it know the message is there. Then the app has to be opened up in order to present the proper credential to Apple to get the actual message. All the actual messages travel between Apple servers and your phone on that separate credential that stays on your phone. Now, if you would like to mirror those iMessages to a Mac or an iPad, which is one of the fun things you can do with iMessage, you would need to log into Apple to do that. Beeper allows you to do that through the Beeper mini app. So you're logging into Apple on your phone. You're not logging in through Beeper's cloud services. So they don't see your Apple ID in that case, but you would have to use it at that point. And Beeper says the request to log in is sent directly to Apple over an HTTPS encrypted request as it should be. So this still needs a third-party audit. They've got a first-party audit. They looked at it and they're publishing the results of their own first-party audit. A third-party should look at this and see if they missed anything. Not through any maliciousness, but just to check and make sure it's secure. But if it passes a third-party audit, which they're letting happen, I think this would be a great way to get iMessage on an Android phone. But Sarah, how long do you think it is before Apple decides to do something to stop this from working? That's a good question. We've talked at length, really, about why the blue versus green bubble matters. It matters to a lot of people and specifically younger people. In fact, Michelle Raman, who noted who's an often co-host on Android Faithful, tweeted this morning, or I guess you can't say tweeted anymore, posted on X this morning, I have finally become a blue bubble because he's using it. BeeperMini, there is something kind of cool about this working as advertised. I wonder how much Apple cares. They seem to care a lot if you believe all of those filings in the Epic Apple case where they talked about the big advantage they had by keeping, you know, they talked about should we make iMessage for Android? And then they were like, no, the blue bubbles keep people in the universe. So it does seem like something they care about. On the other hand, they are fighting in the EU to be exempted from the requirement of the Digital Services Act to be interoperable. Now, if you're fighting that and then you stop someone from interoperating with you like this, maybe that doesn't help your case. Maybe a way to make your case is to say, hey, we should be exempted because we already interoperate. Look at Beeper, they already work with us. It's an open system anyway. So I feel like this is a good thing for Apple in the EU. In the United States, reverse engineering is considered a fair use exemption to the DMCA. So there shouldn't be any legal problems there. The only thing that Apple could do is change the way it authenticates phone numbers, which would mean it would have to change it for all the iPhones too, which would be a lot of work. So Beeper is kind of counting on the fact that that's too much trouble. I feel like this has got a good chance of sticking.  Sure, a few vocal people really care. But how many people really care? Is this something that we're going to find out that the majority of Android users have signed up for Beeper and this is, I don't know, some sort of a subscription model that we could have launched ourselves, that kind of thing. I don't really know. But that would be my guess. I feel like Android folks who are in group chats with a bunch of iOS people are going to be the market for this. And if there's enough of a market, does that cause Apple to surelock it? Does Apple just go, you know what, let's just make iMessage for every other platform. Although that puts it back in front of the EU where they're trying to keep people in their platform and the EU might try to force them to interoperate. So I do feel like it's a good bet that Apple might make the decision this is more trouble than it's worth. Like you're saying, let's just let it happen and not worry about it. As long as there's not a security vulnerability. If we do find out there's some security problem with this, all bets are off, then everything changes. Yeah. Yeah. And those of you in the chat who are like, that sounds so complicated. Just remember, as a user, you don't have to know any of that is happening. I just explained all of that so that you understand that it's a secure way of doing the message. You don't have to build the app guys. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to understand what's going on behind the hood. I just thought you might be curious. All right, let's check out the mail bag. We got a couple of good ones. First one from Marty who wrote in a butter conversation on outlook and syncing emails. Marty says, maybe a dumb question, but why is this new information in the news cycle? Am I missing something? The new outlook has been around for over a year, mostly in beta. And this was described as to how it worked since the announcement of the client. This is why Microsoft only offered support for Microsoft Outlook accounts to start because they needed to build the syncing and API connections for other cloud providers like Apple and Google. Marty says, I'm just curious to your thoughts on why you think the new cycle is treating this as new, I guess. Yeah. So, so great question Marty. And I've actually been conversing with Marty over email about this. And if there's someone out there who knows how this works better and would like to illuminate it better, let us know. What I understand based on what Heise wrote, who's the person who uncovered this, is that everyone knew this was a cloud service, but everyone thought because it was a local electron instance that the credential for logging you in was stored locally. It's very similar to what we were talking about with Beeper actually, where only the credential that is used to get the notification is sent to the cloud, the authentication credential is stored locally. Everybody thought, oh, when you log in with Outlook, the credential to log you in is local, and it's just used to tell the server, hey, send me the emails, right? And what Heise discovered is, no, that is not what's happening. The credential itself never exists on your machine. It only exists in the cloud. So, I think that is why this made news. It's not that people didn't think this was a cloud service. It's that where that logging credential was stored was different. And that a lot of people were concerned to say like, well, wait a minute, if it's up there in the cloud and not on my machine, it's not under my control, and I'm nervous about that. Same reason I was nervous about having a Mac mini in a cloud logged in in my name. There's lots of examples of logging in with credentials and clouds that are perfectly secure. That alone doesn't make it insecure, but that's why it was news. Everybody thought it worked a different way. At least that was my impression of it. Well, patrons, the show is not over for you. Everybody who supports us directly at patreon.com slash dts gets good day internet. And on today's GDI, Sarah is going to talk about her move into a new place and how shopping for the internet has changed since the last time she did it. And especially if you're somebody who's in the same boat looking for internet options or you're just curious what's been out there since the last time you looked around, she'll tell us what she's found and how she's going about making her decision. Stick around for that. Indeed, but just a reminder, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We're back doing it all again tomorrow talking about why GTA six isn't coming to PC until 2026. Scott Johnson, because he knows this show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com.


Confused everybody for us here. We've got 20 23 leave art of sport hobby ten bucks case number one random hit style Open up all the cards channel typing minutes. We go we're random at the end to see who gets what good luck everybody We do have another one of these up next is a Lincoln chat for you right now We got some baseball breaks to fill up basketball and football plenty of break spots night full style promo 50 silver packs 10 winners each get Or sorry five winners each get 10 rather 500 you get 10, but we got a fully sell out We got a ways to go you got a ways to go We want to get some some extra stuff Do this stuff is this stuff's crazy. Uh, there's a As I supposed to say diptych Is that what that says it's a joe montana booklet But i'm not going to take this out because it is sealed by leaf joe montana booklet If we get to the end and someone hits it and they're in chat they want to see it we can do that But I'll stay just like that Montana book good start Oh, dude, this stuff is crazy. That's a nice hit there right here. Justin Tucker auto number six of 20 go Legatron there last wow check this out, dude. It's an argentina triple relic here messy jenobley maradona Three of 12 first time i've ever seen that trio together Yeah, dude messy jenobley maradona legend Yeah, why not higley? Gotta do it That's fire and then tool auto. We've got kg and ant man kevin garnett and antity edwards numbered five of eight. Nice Dude, this stuff is uh, this stuff is pretty nice That's fire That's cool and every spot in this break gets a hit I'm fine with it. All right. Yeah, I figured just yeah, I would hope for this purpose everyone that Swords would know what that means. You know what I mean? If we just put garnet I'll go back. I'll fix it. I don't want to mess with it. I was gonna say I would hope every I'll fix it before every sorter knows. Yeah who kg and ant man are I'll just type in if not they gotta go All right And even if they could probably still deduce from all the other hits Take away you should That's pretty cool. That's cool. Muhammad Ali is that robe relic Five of nine triple relic Muhammad Ali Not sure if it says That has the robe pictured. I would assume it is but it might be like Trunks or like glove or something five of nine Muhammad Ali triple relic Yeah, I was gonna say the Montana should be an auto book should be should be Interesting retired interesting that is a Vince Carter six-way jersey numbered eight of 30 We'll say the numbers are hard to read at certain angles eight of 30 Vince Carter Relic card Cool stuff man. We got Jerome bettis auto the bus one of five That's bettis and a ram's uni. I mean it's it's it's uh, it's not an actual photo But yeah one of five Jerome bettis on the auto And what do we got here a dual relic auto Of shack and uh, patrick ewing four of six Sick dude Shack and patrick ewing dual relic auto four of six Vince Carter robe relic What robe that's what rich would say that's kind of cool dual relic Of willy maize and joe nameth canvas combos Five of five right there. I'm 60s stars He's a name of dual relic Whoa, dude. Look at this Jason kid four of five on the jumbo patch What is that from let us see Help me guys. I'm lost on I'm lost on this one Oh cow really I was thinking nva all the way dude. That's nuts. That's sick four or five on the jason kid It's a great patch I was I was like that's not suns. It's not mavericks. It's not nicks. It's not nets. Like what is this cowbears, baby That is an auto of george gervin out of 35 chasing kid in the minors Sub carl sub car george gervin And christiana rinaldo three of nine on the auto. Wow. Good luck on the cr7 everybody Dude, heck. Yeah getting chased out of uh getting swarmed at the hotels of china That's pretty popular. Whoo This stuff is sick christiana on all the three of nine. I think is what it's name Bottom right so hard to read dude Oh, there it is. Okay. I think it's three nine. The next one has had 18 to go And then we've got some baseball to fill up y'all. We got to get these breaks going here You got a full sellout promo on the books. We just got to get all the breaks filled up now We got to fully sell out. Let's keep it going. Yeah, that stuff is always fun Dude, that's a that's insane phillip got p rose triple relic all-time hits leader numbered 32 of 35 A tim reins auto numbered four of six tim reins Rain man right there. Oh, that's pretty sick Dude kevin mc hale one of one jersey patch Wow museum of materials kevin mc hale the one-of-one patch Definitely part of the number there My jerseys were so much thicker back then What are they're also sweaty in the 80s and 90s And an auto connor mcgregor numbered five of 35 Who's this boy? So much variety. Yeah more spots coming in for uh art of sport here This is and I and I see why I see why you're guaranteed a hit Yeah, we're pulling cristiano rinaldo and Kg and and dual autos Is that who I think it is it is the captain is derrick jeter numbered a 35 triple relic derrick jeter triple relic Seven of 35 He's a neon here Derrick rose dude. Is that that's a wolves rose five of 30s six-way jersey card there Derrick rose He can always stay healthy. Do you do you would have been that first injury messed him up? Alejandro garnacho on the autograph numbered 16 of 30 nice garnacho Yeah, nacho that that that kick and score some goals was it 18 39 16 of 30 Alejandro garnacho And that's pretty sick Dual relic auto jim kelly and warren moon Warren moon's got the coolest sig Hall of Fame inscribed warren moon as well one of four kelly and moon dual auto T wolves legend. That's right spencer. How we doing spencer? Sean's here.   Who is that? Who this Dude, is that Bartolo? Yeah, I think Kerry is Bartolo, isn't it? That is Bartolo. Dude, that's fire Bartolo dual jersey auto. Is there a number on this? This is the hardest card to read I've ever seen in my life Gotta be numbered Hang on. No, it's not Not up front. Anyway, Bartolo cologne dual jersey auto I think that's just that's it. Oh, there it is 415. It's right near his elbow.  He was just probably average size at that point average sexy Average sexy eight of 25 renaissance men demaggio snider maize and musial Quad relic numbered eight of 25 Still has to be a cool moment in baseball when you get that home run Down the line Quad relic baseball eight of 25, I guess But that is fine. This is william is Got a cheetah auto here tyreek hill one of six No, I should cheetah If he would have stayed healthy, he would have hit 2k receiving yards this year Easily too very easily. He's still finished really close Nice tyreek And we've got another another fast guy ricky henderson one of 12 on the auto A lot of speed in those last two cards 130 quite the opposite of Bartolo 130 bags ricky henderson one of 12 If hamilton would have played if hamilton would have been in his prime right now with these new rules Yeah, he would have he would have He had a couple of years over 100 and henderson was at 130. So it's not dual patch randy johnson and curt schilling That's a cool curt patch Very cool curt patch two of two on this one randy johnson curt schilling dual patch A couple of uh debacks world series winners right there Oh Piggly piggly yep low-high carl Yeah, lane because you have to have a quite a few longer touchdowns. I think jettas could do it I think he could do it. He's there's a few guys that are really good and could do it, but He could do it on so fewer so fewer receptions Wow, check that out. You got eight way soccer jersey card here Holland imbappe venice jr. Foden rashford benzema de brogna and comma vinga octad number 25 of 35 Totally found me if we see another one we got we got to figure something out All right into a wane runey DC united legend wane runey. That's 18 18 of 35 Nice runey wine runey With a patrick ewing jersey auto patrick ewing Numbered 13 of 25. All right next one gotta be real close now eight to go Some jumbo.  Like we pulled it We pulled a devils atomic auto a few weeks ago. That was pretty cool. And there we go dual relic. We've got steve cur and steve curry Ever seen them in a car together. That's cool. 33 of 35 cur and curry dual jersey Oh, check that out eight way football patch card here Rice urban brown moss Carter owens harrison and maynard. So the best receivers of all time right there Especially some throwback legends That is number two of only two His son might be one that can get the 2k he's that good Back to soccer we got huli on alvarez on the auto number 29 of 30 huli on alvarez 29 of 30 on the autograph And ice tray got trey young auto two of six ice tray Okay triple relic joe demaggio one of eight jolton joe dust on that uh It's a cool hit. I see coming up in a minute here. We got charles barkley four or five six-way jersey card Mr. Chuck a leaf poker set The lane would rip some leaf poker. I would rip some leaf poker. I think there's a few people here that'd be interested in leaf poker Myself a fill ivy We even got some racing. We got a richard petty auto five at a 12.  That's that's a fire. That's a big time player there. I think Not so that guy. I don't know higley. They might not have like the the imaging rights or whatever it may be I don't know. I honestly don't know triple auto andrick gaavi and garnacho That is super freaking cool Andrick gaavi and garnacho triple auto two of three That's pretty fire right there some of the best young players in the sport Hopefully gaavi's uh injury recovery is going well A barcelona could use them right now Yuki sonata. Yeah, yep Self-ass. Yeah, there's not we can't be too too many of them. Uh barry sanders booklet Good luck on the barry That's kind of weird. We pulled montana and barry and they're both at uh They're both at a midfield yesterday before the game started Good luck on the barry. Oh, that's got that's this is cool Duel relic of gill Hodges duke snider three or four So buffy Hodges and snider three or four Quad, quad relic pele messi maradona and ronaldo Geez Yeah, that's uh, that's some of the best you'll ever see on a card right there 17 of 35 Dude the soccer heat in this is kind of unmatched Pele messi ronaldo maradona Quad relic 17 of 35 Yeah, well, dude, we started this break and there were like 20 something to go. There's like three to go now Well, dude, are you seeing what's coming out? It's sick. It's so cool. It's a really good value And then we got a stray hand auto or as jake would say michael stray hand auto 17 of 35 Superbowl super way super bowl mixer super bowl mixers 17 of 35 Thank you There's Brad would call him the gap you can get fuel go through those things Whew, man. All right 40 names 40 hits. Let's run our random Let's get that full sellout going everybody It's jumbo goodness All right, we're gonna randomize five times to do names and hit same amount of times like any other random Put them side by side to see who's got what look everybody. Let's go our names One two three four and five craig w down to jabari l and the hits best of luck everybody one two three four and five Uh, pete rose triple relic to 35 down to the migrager auto. Let's move those over.  That's a cool one Um, philip with the cologne dual jersey auto bartolo Edge with the mcale jumbo patch christopher ch with the reins auto brandon Oh d rose jersey card anthony c the carter jersey card Eric c the sanders booklet michael t the pat ewing jersey auto Megan r the snider and hodges dual jersey dav s ricky henderson auto to 12 to buy us with the eight-way football patch That was the receivers there the legendary receivers Shane w with the argentina triple relic of messy jenobley maradona.


Okay, been obsessed with trying to figure out this holographic, opalescent, black, marble look. Haven't gotten to figure it fully out yet, but since it's on my mind, I thought I would go live early because I have it on my mind and I'm gonna figure it out. And it's been not the funnest, trying to figure it out, but I'll get it. So I've got my chat screen up so I can see what any of you lovely faces are saying. And we're just gonna get started. What's up, Susan? I know I'm early today, my bad, my bad. But when you have like a finish on the brain, what else are you gonna do, except for whatever you gotta do to get it out, you know? I can't be the only one. I probably am, but I'm sure I'm not. So, the pieces from yesterday turned out kind of okay, but a stir stick landed in one of mine and it looks horrible, but just look amazing. I'm not even sure how that happened, but it happened. All right. Hi, Brenda, how are you doing? Can I paint on top of resin finish and then resin over again? You sure can. I went ahead and mixed up my resin just to save time. So you guys don't have to just sit there and watch me stir epoxy for a million minutes. I used my drill with my paint attachment and so it's very foamy, very frothy looking, but it will be fine. What's up, Tim? Beauty. Hi, Lisa. You guys are having a wonderful day. I promise I'm not gonna fill your lives with this holographic iridescent look that I'm currently obsessed with for too long, I promise. But if you don't like it, then blame Judy. She's the one that first inspired me to investigate this look, you know? I won't tell anyone, Jessica Terry, but have an awesome day at work. Patricia, Timmy, what up, girl? Kelly, good morning. I hope you're all having an amazing day. So let's get started. I'm going to divvy out this resin into these cups and ultimately what I think I'm gonna do is kind of what Jeff did yesterday in that big dirty pour, but then I'm going to, I think I'm gonna try to keep it on the thinner side because I think when you have a lot of paint, nope, a lot of pigment in your resin, it tends to cloud it. And I really want the black to help the vibrancy of the colors shine through. So I'm gonna kind of test and see if that changes anything one way or another. And I'm gonna try to granify it. So I'm gonna get my opalescent background and then I'm gonna make it into granite with the spray paint and alcohol. Okay, so this one is the violet. I'm not gonna put too much in there. I'm gonna try to restrain, refrain, however you say. Not gonna load them up too much, just one scoop on the mousse-sized stick is all I'm putting in there. So violet, green, this one's gonna be the red. What's that, Joseph? Are you guys having an awesome day or all of you hiding from work? I did laundry today. So basically I'm ahead because I adulted, right? Maybe not, probably so, but also mostly probably not, I don't know. What's that, airbrushing with stewardism-designed LLC? How are you doing? Are you airbrushing today? Thinking about working with resin? Down with work, well, that is amazing. That's why you're working from home. Live in the dream, I see. Okay, so I put less than half of what we were using yesterday into my resin. This is going to reduce the occurrence of those pieces not quite mixing in, I think. And I think it's gonna make the colors more vibrant and less cloudy. And probably if I used even less colorants, it would be even more vibrant. How bizarre is that? The less colorant you use, the more vibrant it'll look. Doesn't make logical sense to me, but from a practical standpoint, it seems to be the case. Working at a haunt in Sparta in full sun, I am not, I'm not jealous. That sounds painful, to say the least. Okay, so I'm not going to, okay, I'm gonna do a thin skim coat, comma grease the pan because I really want to keep everything thin and close to the black background, which is just spray paint on cradleboard. Thank you, Vant for reminding people about the class we have coming up in August and then the one we have coming up in September. Woo, okay. So I think I'm gonna skim with, not Milky Way, where's any, Avalonois, I'm gonna use Avalonishel. All these colorants are from color art slash resin art slash bling it. You can get them all at artiststilldeath.com, my website, you can find links for that down below and throughout the video, the mods will be posting links for that as well. So I'm gonna skim around this Avaloni very thinly. The idea here is that it's gonna help my resin move more easily across the surface, but not keep my resin too far away from the black background. I don't know if that matters, if that means anything, but I'm gonna test it out because it could matter, it could mean something and who's gonna test it so that you don't have to unless I do. So I'm going super thin, but if it happens to be just thicker in areas that is fine, perfectly fine. Because those areas where it's a little bit thicker will just have peek-a-boos of the background and just be kind of breaks in the iridescence and then just shows black through it. So that's why I'm kind of putting little pockets of Avaloni. You know, Rhonda does this a lot with some of her melded pieces. We're gonna see if it crosses over into what I'm trying to do. Abandoned Acres, that's fun. Diamond Desk adds some 007. I should be getting more 007 then soon. I got notification of shipment in motions though. That's always good. Now, don't get too worked up about how this is looking right now because just hear me out, it's gonna be great. Everett Resin, I just started, I just mixed up my colors and we're about to get into it. You don't know what this is. It's like leftover resin from another resin piece. Okay, meow. I'm going to, do I wanna use white? Doesn't matter, cause I didn't make any white. So I'm gonna be just layering up my iridescence. I'm not really sure what most of them are because it's hard to tell until they're on top of the background. And if this doesn't really look right after I get all of this out and on the board, I'm just gonna kind of scrape, skim it around and just make it a thin layer and take it from there. Okay, so now we have all of our stuff in here. I'm scared. Okay, let me think. I'm going to just do lines of this. My goodness. Okay, it looks 1,000% like holographic-ness. So I'm going to just create one more dirty board to get all of this iridescent resin out. I'm so excited already and it didn't even do anything yet. If you guys can give me just one second, I'll bring you around so you can see it from my perspective. You can really see the colors. How bizarre is it that it just takes a little bit of colorant to get such a great color payoff? I'm just gonna do this. Let that drain out. The whole thing looks like it's chameleon because of all the color shifts from the iridescent. Also, this iridescent green reminds me a lot of our Dalmatian chameleon color. Trash, trash. There's something about holographic stuff that just lights my eyes up. You know, it just, this holographic count is a color because if it does, it's my favorite color. My mermaid fan is holographic. I'm sure I can come up with other things of mine that's holographic, but that's all that came first to mind. Okay, let's get to many outside corners. Bowie says hello. Nope, all right, cool. Of course, it didn't land bottom down. Why would it? Right, now I'm gonna take you guys down and show you where we're at right now. And then we're going to move on to the next step. Obviously it's still really bubbly. I haven't done any heat to it yet, but how fun is that? This is my favorite part so far, but because I did so many different layers, not layers, but okay. That just sounds like it was 12 gallons of gas evaporated if you guys heard that truck. Anyway, let me forget what I was talking about, but I'm sure it was important. Now, what's up everybody? To the dark side of Micah, don't get too excited. As soon as I can make this into a paste, I'm gonna do it. All right, now I'm just going to fill in any areas that look kind of low, this area. I'm just breaking that surface tension because the reason why it hasn't moved into that area, it hasn't dispersed. It's because of surface tension. Now all those areas will fill in. If you don't wanna run your hand through it, you can also run some of this Milky Way so you're not physically mixing up your colors. Also, I basically used all of my Milky Way, so that's the end of that. It's fun over here in Micah world. Don't get crazy. Where's my torch?  I didn't learn that till we went to Australia. So there. Oh, forgot all of this. All right. I don't wanna use too much heat as per use because I don't wanna give any of this the chance to blend together too much. And I still have little flecks of color that didn't mix in fully. You can see. Oh, I ran through. Oh, you can do that one right there. I'm torn on if I want to try to get them out or just let them kind of just live. Moving forward, what I think I'm going to do is pre-dissolve my powders in alcohol. And that will help reduce the occurrence of these little flecks. Not completely mixing in. Paste wouldn't do this to me. Vamp. That's okay. You guys are gonna do some other stuff to it. Now, I'm gonna try to create some cohesive movement by tilting it a bit. What's the difference between ocean coat and diamond coat? Ocean coat is, it's really made for making cells. So they call it ocean coat because you can get really nice ocean pieces with it. It is, I think, more UV resistant and has a longer working time than diamond coat, but I have to double check on that. So many flecks of color in it that didn't get in. Vamp, I will take away your wrench. You too, Judy.  I mixed it for the exact amount of time that I mix all of my pigments that are usually paced. It's not my fault that this is more difficult, okay? Okay, so I like it better now that it's kind of blending and moving in to each other's space a little bit. And purple is pretty awesome, isn't it? Tim, I know you're not laughing at my pain. In this kind of look, it may be kind of okay to have tadpoles of color because it just will look more galactic. I don't think so, Judy. There's something else in there. Mainly, I think that because the ones that I tried, just mixing in part A didn't do the same thing that my regular pace do. I like it like this. I'm gonna take you guys down again. Can you still use resin that has yellow maybe with darker opaque color? You sure can. Caught alive. Haven't got alive in about a year. Spotty A internet signal. I'm sorry, Angel Ridge Designs, but I'm happy to see you here. I have to mix it longer. Okay, y'all, quit bullying me. I'm feeling very attacked, but I think it kind of works in this. The brown bottle stuff, I don't think that is part A, but she doesn't even sell that anymore. So I think she like gave up. Not attacked more like strongly advised. Okay, ma'am's gonna be in time out. Nah, I wouldn't do it. I think the little ch-ch-ch-ch-ch of color works. Maybe we should just revisit it next time I'm over there, Judy. I wish you guys could see what this looks like. IRL, this is my inspiration. I didn't get quite as vivid of colors. I think if I added a little bit of a dye to my iridescent colors, maybe it will do what I want it to do. I don't know. So this is where we had a pocket of clear. You can see that darker. But that's where the iridescence ran over the clear pocket. This is where the clear pocket is still on top, still on top. So I didn't use any actual black colorant. It just works by having pockets, you know? I could see this in a geode form or shore. And it is aurora borealis, isn't it? You did it yesterday and it didn't mix long enough. Judy, I've seen you mix. You mix quite thoroughly, I would say. All right, JJ, anything with pockets is amazing. Test it at a little paste and put it on a coaster and see if it takes away from the effect. Kim, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do that. I used up every ounce in this piece. I need to hit it with some heat. But there it is. Now I need to know if you guys think masking fluid trees in the mountain. Oh my goodness, we could totally do that, couldn't we? If we did it from like this perspective, this person. I wish I had added the lines on this way so that all of this would be how it just is. So that I wouldn't have to kind of deduce whether it would be better to do it from here or here. So should I leave it at this? Sorry about the guy that's really angrily wasting all of his gas outside of my place. Do you think I should granify it by Italian dripping over some black spray paint or should we let it live? I like your idea, Kim. Good idea. Judy, it would be a cool countertop one, not. I just love that soft fade between one color to the next. Man, calm down with the black. So JJ, that's kind of the look I'm going for is just letting it be awesome. You know what I mean? Unicorn granite. You'd have to wait longer to set it up. This is true. What's up, Dee? Long time no see, how you doing? What do you think of my this? So you know what you guys? I think because of the flecks of color that are kind of just jetting about and then having tilted it the way I did, it kind of looks like maybe a little bit of stars and that makes it more realistic to an aurora borealis unless I'm just making that up in my head. Can you see the colors jetting through the other colors? Am I making that up or do you guys see that too? Does it look more aurora borealis with these lines? Or am I crazy? I'm great, Dee. Did you I'm married? It happened. I'm waiting on my wedding band to come in. Color art definitely has the most intense interference colors. I will definitely co-sign that. I'm here for it and we love to use their colors. I think I may do another one for the aurora borealis look and leave more pockets of the abalone to have more of a starlight sky in the background. You know what I mean? And then have a few, you know, if I like erased this and erased this and just had this band of overlapping colors with the striation of not quite mixed in particles, I think that would lend itself best for an aurora borealis. And I have been asked, I don't know how many times, how to create this look and my Judy came through and helped me figure it out, you know? Oh yeah, it will stay. I could add in some halo, huh? What's up, Joe? Okay, so you guys think I should aurora borealis this one and maybe just black out some of it or should I do another one for the aurora borealis look? Since this sample was a success, I hate that I'm just showing you the same stuff over and over, but I'm really torn on what I should next step this. Do another, do another. Looks like the consensus is to do another. But now I know the exact formula to get the look I'm going for since we've done three tests now, maybe more. You should do the A.B. like you did with the pop stick yesterday. A.B. I assume means abalone shell. Maybe black sections would be awesome. Right, so should I granify this? Is that what you guys said? Or let this one live and then visit that on a completely different one and save this as the successful piece to base all future aurora borealis. What's it called when you're making bread? Is this the mother yeast? Or the mother, do they just call it the mother? I don't know. We got one let it live and one granify, two lives. Okay, so two granites and three lives. Four lives, five lives. Mother seed, is that what it's called? Dirty poor like Jeff did yesterday for it. Cool, cool, cool. All right, looks like the elives have been outnumbered. Let it cure quite a stencil of trees and mountains. Okay, so let this one live. Maybe we'll do the something. What's the thing I was gonna do? Words, words are hard. We'll do the other thing that we're gonna do. Oh my goodness, I still have COVID fog I swear. Vamp is so extra, she just woke up with it. All right, we'll stencil this one out and make it an actual aurora borealis-ness. So yeah, all right then. Do another one with bigger pockets and granify it. I'm here for that for sure. So I hope you guys enjoyed this live. I did three loads of laundry today. So basically I'm a full adult. No, that's a lie. So anyways, I got a lot of work to do before Vamp gets over here to tell me to do more work. So I gotta go, but I hope you guys enjoyed this live. I super did. I'm very excited with the success. And so I'll see you guys later if you're gonna be, I think Rhonda's doing a live tonight on RK3. If you have time, that's on PM Central. Come on over to RK3 Designs. Vamp and all of us mods here will be over there to do the things. I have no idea what she's creating, but it's gonna be awesome cause it always is. Anyway, hope you guys have an awesome day and we'll see you guys tomorrow. Be kind to one another cause you never know what someone's going through. Till then, bye. I guess I should say it for Jeff. We did a test. So you don't have to. Y'all have an awesome day.


Hi everybody this is Josh at the surf station and today we are going to be doing a board review on the Donald's Hakiama Model T. The Model T by Donald's Hakiama, this one is a 9-6, it is pretty much the most retro nose rider the Hakiama has in their line, it has 50-50 rails, ball amp hatches on the tail and the deck, if you are interested in this board or any of the longboards that we have here to offer at the surf station feel free to give this call or contact me at Josh at surf-station.com


I will have to punt and ask someone else to draw the picture. That would be the open stacks textbook crew. Here are my two kidneys. Here is the tube that is bringing the urine once it's been produced by the kidney. It's bringing the urine away, away with you. So my question is, number one, what's this tube called? It's carrying urine at this point and it's the ureter, ureter, ureter. Okay, that was a good one, huh? Where's the ureter taking the urine to the bladder? So check it out. I have to draw this. I'm going to draw my bladder like this. Here's my bladder and like that. And we'll look at where a bladder is located in the body in just a second. I'm drawing it like this because what I want you to see is that the ureters, there's a place in the bladder where the ureter opens. The dotted line is showing you that the ureter is passing behind the bladder and then there's this little opening. So the, whatever, right side kidney is dumping urine in through this little hole into the bladder. The same thing is true for the left side kidney. It's dumping the urine in through a little hole. So this is like the opening of the ureter. We're dumping urine in. How does urine get out? Well, fancy that you ask such a thing. There is also a hole by which urine leaves the bladder. The ureters bring urine in, urethras bring urine out. Bye-bye. Before I tell you about the phenomenal nature of urethras, I want to tell you this, again, is nothing more than a hole. And so you actually have three holes in a kind of triangular shape in the wall of the bladder and two holes let urine in and one hole lets urine out. And together, if you were to draw a line connecting the holes, because I know that's exactly what you wanted to do, you form a little triangular, like, place in the bladder and that is called the trigone. The trigone is the triangle created by the openings to the ureters and the urethra. Now, I'm not going to attempt to draw this next picture because my skills are only so phenomenal. And the picture, what we have to look at is the urethra, the position of the urethra, and here's the deal. The ladies have a urethra, the fellas have a urethra, everybody needs a urethra to get pee out of their bodies, but our urethras are a lot different. So let's go look at the... Oh, it looks like we have a girl urethra first. How do I know it was a girl urethra? Well, let's orient, shall we? First of all, look, this is a, what? Midsagital slice of femaleness. And what's highlighted in color is the bladder. What you can see right here, this little tube that exits the bladder right about her, that is my urethra. Does that work for you? The urethra has an opening. That's the urethral meatus, the external urethral meatus. I'm sorry if it's a meatus. External urethral orifice, much better than meatus. External urethral orifice, ladies and fellas have this structure. The urethra of female humans is anterior and found between labia majora, and we're going to do reproductive anatomy in the next lecture. So parts and pieces will become more clear, but the labia majora are the big lips, the flaps of skin in the vulva of the external female genitalia. Check it out, just for perspective, I have another hole right here. This is the vagina for perspective, and I have another hole. Oh, but of course, we must have one more. This is the anus. Women have three holes. This is important for you to be aware of. It's different from the fellas. All right, ladies, it's a urethra. We're done. Fellas, not so fast. The urethra actually has three parts in the fellas because, holy crud, it's a lot longer. The urethra in the fellas has two functions. It functions in urine excretion. Here's my bladder, just like we would expect. In the fellas, they had their ureters drawn in. It's kind of nice why we didn't get our ureter drawn in there. That's okay, I'll forgive you. We have the opening to the urethra right here. You can see that, and we also have the external urethral orifice, right here. The urethra is colored, you can see that. Do you think we're going to revisit the fellas urethra when we talk about the reproductive system? But of course, the male urethra is unique because it also carries reproductive swimmers. Those would be our spermies. Our spermies are created in the testes. They travel up through the vas deferens and they get dumped eventually into the urethra. Now, before we go anywhere else, we need to know that the male urethra actually has three parts. Two of them are illustrated nicely here and one of them is sort of missing. First, urethra, it's all one tube. But depending on what structure it's passing through, it gets a new name. I'm going to tell you that this structure right here that I'm coloring in blue, that is the prostate gland. Prostate gland, which is fantastic because you tell me what is the name of the urethra that passes through the prostate gland. I just colored it in and now it looks terrible. Okay, I'll undo that. This, my friends, is the prostatic urethra. It's kind of not a big deal because it's the prostatic urethra until it gets out of the prostate. You're going to have to know the prostate for the reproductive system. So it's actually getting us ahead of the game to have our urethral parts.   Like think about your pelvis.  Your urogenital diaphragm plays a role. There's actually muscles and other tissues that cover that hole and prevent the stuff from falling out. So urethras have to go through that hole. I mean, urethras have to go through that, yeah, that pelvis hole. If they can't get through, then you can't pee your stuff out. That is the part of the urethra that passes through there is the membranous urethra. After that, everything else in this penis is called the spongy urethra. So everything else, can't see that, is the spongy urethra. It's also called the penile urethra. So if you see that, that is why. Penile urethra makes much more sense to me because I'm cool with spongy urethra as well because what I know and what you will learn in the next lecture is that the urethra that passes through the penis is surrounded by spongy erectile tissue. And it's spongy because it's got all these spaces that can fill with blood. So we'll talk about that aspect, but I want you to know your urethra parts. Once we have our urethra parts, we can make PPs come out of our urinary system. All right. That's gross anatomy. Now we get to go back to the kidney itself and look at the microscopic anatomy that enables the function of the kidney. I will be right back.