All right, so we take a look at the Nigerian Tribune this morning, the front page and the board caption or banner header would be our focus 2023 or Siba Joe informs APC governors of bead for presidency. Now this is really interesting. I find this interesting because there were, you know, the permutations around those who would become out of that. Some people say it was just conspiracy theory, but it feels like all of that is coming to some reality set to declare publicly today via social media platforms. Very interesting. And the early intercepts 101 parcels of cocaine in children duvet at Lagos airport. That's also what you find and seized drug beverages or beverage in a door. This is really, really serious now moving away from the board caption. You also have another header saying zoning. Why PDP is in dilemma. Local stock market investors lose for 10 billion Naira in five days. Quite alarming. And just before we move away from the Nigerian Tribune this morning, you find appeal court stops AGF orders from frustrating appeal against judgment on electoral act gives PDP permission to appeal judgment against section 84, subsection 12. You know what that means already. Well that's the much we can take this morning on the Tribune. Away from the Tribune. We'll move on next to the nation newspaper. Shiba just seems to be in the knees almost everywhere or Shiba Joe to APC governors. I'm running for president Upsley put says he has informed Buhari vice president to declare today. Other stories are making headlines on the nation newspaper. Nigera's COVID-19 cases rise by 45%. All health organization is saying that virus still spreading. Beside that particular story, 37 billion Naira National Assembly renovation begins. Contractors mobilized. I could lose wife guns for APC senatorial ticket. Why PDP should not abandon zoning by George. All right, electoral act 84, subsection 12, appeal court stops some malony. 2023, sudden PDP aspirants clash with Saudi's governors. Most stories on the nation newspaper. Nigeria's go through pain for NIN registration. Intercurity won't stop polls says IDIC. Those are all of the stories you can find on the front page of the nation newspaper. Away from the nation newspaper, we'll take a look at the daily independent federal government to reserve Legos Abuja International Airport for new national career. And thus the board caption. AON Warns Against Plan. Convases national debt. Stakeholders say government is in order. These are the writers you find underneath. And just also another board head that you find. Falling oil production, thefts. Falling oil production and thefts. Compound Nigera's FX walls. We're talking about the foreign exchange. And you also find the NIN sim linkage. Surab gives Buhari 24 hours to unblock 72 million phone lines. It's really interesting.  Four others in Abuja.  Four others in Abuja kidnap several and burn houses in platoon community. Appeal court restraints federal government from frustrating appeal on electoral acts. And grants PDP plea to challenge the judgment of any fairy acts. Buhari to recall retired security operatives to help tackle insecurity. And Aquarium Madu raises the alarm over plot to stop his Cuba bead. These are the stories on a daily independent newspaper. A leadership is our next port of call 2023. Finally, Oshiba Joe joins presidential race, raising stake to new level. With some writers there VP to write on deep bonds. Relationships with state governors. Astute politicians across party divides. Hosts APC governors to Iftar at his Aguda residence. Now infra core begins operation with 163 billionaire in transportation. Buhari program for leadership, founding chairman's mother starts today.  Jonathan's kinsmen want against propaganda over ex-presidents tenure. PWC rates in Naira first in global digital currency index. Let's see if we can take some more. PMB governors rejoice with dangote at 65. Bandits kill me at Allah. Chairman for others in FCT. Those are all of the stories on the front page of the leadership newspaper. It's good to have you join us open up on Kataria. Once again, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Justin. Good morning to you open up on. All right, open up. Let's take a look at, you know, the papers this morning. I mean, the ones dominating all of the deal is as the interest of the vice president for the seat of the president.  The vice president is eligible. He's also eligible. He has the constitutional requirements in the Nigeria. And aside from that, he has the constitutional requirements in context for the office of the president. I mean, if he had it, he would have been a vice president to start with, because the qualifications of the president is the same as that of the vice president, especially now that you have the minister for transportation, he has given the money. And these are big weeks, you know. These are people with a non-political cloud. The problem, whom I see him as a trigger of his layer is, but the mistake a lot of people also make is that they don't want to instrument that to the minister of the vice president, that's not true, that's not how that should be done. They're not led for the APC members to vote, in addition to because the president of the press. Only two presidents can stop it. The APC members, the APC delegates. But it is interesting, though. It's a competent person, I can tell you that. It's competent. They have the kind of political which, but he has what it takes of strength. Yes, I was going to say that. Another interesting dimension to all of this is the approach that he is using. You know, over time, most of these politicians, when they make the declaration, it's either they address the press or they address a mammoth crowd, you know, park-to-term supporters and party loyalists. But from what we understand them, the vice president is looking in another direction. We hear that he is going to post-recorded the video of his intention to social media. How do you see that, really? Well, all right, you see closely.  They had to go far. And that is to declare. I think we should be concerned right now with what matters in the country through this process of out-of-the-world bad leadership by President Mahmoud Al-Ghwari. The only minus there is that people will say, why didn't you resign if you're not too confident? But you all know that deputies are vice presidents that have really spent time out of the country. We saw what the vice president said. He said he had to be tested. Ability and accountability. But I don't have a problem with how he's going to declare. That shouldn't be an issue because he's definitely going to face Nigeria. And everything will not be recorded at every point in time. He's definitely going to face Nigeria. So let's not bother ourselves with how he's going to declare. Let us bother ourselves with what we have to offer. Very, I mean, points that you have made seem valid to some extent. But a lot of people are concerned with that particular stance. It feels like, you know, the president himself is robbing off on him. Because if you notice in recent times, the president has not had one-on-one with Nigeria.   The vice president intends to declare his intention publicly. And he decides to put up a recorded message. So it costs a lot of concern. But we'll not dwell on that. We'll just move away quickly. Okay, no, but let me quickly address that message. Let me quickly address that in just one minute. Well, I agree. I think from the point you just raised, it is definitely going to be a cause of worry for Nigeria. We're not going to do the line of this principle. But let us also not forget. I'm not holding grudges for the vice president. Whenever I'm on air, I like to be just as frank as I can. Let us also not forget that if you're going to do this, a man is somebody that is always talking to Nigeria. He's always addressing him. But I don't think he's going to behave like the president. Prove at me for some one reason or the other idea if I'm going to ask for this. But I don't think it's a vice president with a kind of question that will keep talking to Nigerians by proxy. We'll always have a record of this if it's one like that, each expose that highly. Okay, but let's move away quickly from that and look at the leadership newspaper. It talks about, you know, bandits attack. You have bandits, Q, Meti, Allah, Chairman, and four orders in Abuja. And also you also have reports saying that bandits raid and kill several peasants in platoon community. This is really, really getting out of hand. What exactly are we doing wrong? How can we savage the situation? Well, the concatenation of debts are adhering to this country as in the apocalyptic dimension. And there is still anything to talk about. We're talking about the FCT now. I can tell you. Sorry? I mean, I just want to emphasize that we're looking at the federal capital territory. That's what I'm saying. I said in the country, it's not that different. We cannot assist you with the federal capital territory. Because if you do that, that will be, I would like to say, it's important because it's all over the country, not just federal capital territory. To the yesterday, it happened in federal capital territory. That's it yesterday. It did not happen just in the federal capital territory, but that is what was reported. It can take place every day. I don't know how else you are linked on a life-long and good perspective because we're almost sounding like a broken record. It is simple. I've always said the federal government is competent. The government is competent. And most of the bandits gave this kind in order to prove to the federal government that they cannot be contained. And to a very large extent, I agree with that. The federal government is competent. Why is the federal government competent? If you have all the things, look at the budget for defense and the money that are released to the defense ministry. I'm subsequently to the various hands of, I hope they're called the hands of military. So there's the Navy, the Air Force, the Army and so on. Now, one matter is not just the money, not even the equipment. I stand commissioner of police. Oh, present my money. You can tell me to give me a commissioner of police in later stage. It will be unfair to mention because we have a family behind. I want to know that this militants, you know, we are waiting half of them. Oh my God, that this is what is going on. Problems, we are moving in. I meant to die for more. What, what, what, what have I said? How to do with the determination and willingness to the federal government ready? No, the federal government is not ready. You know, they said that we are not in dicey yourself because you have the ministry by standard. That was what I received. What's that about? I think there was a confidence giving rights to a part of God to protect. They come up to God to rescue them. The solution we are leaving after six years of performing at this money in a personal appointment. So when they are leaving, the process of when they have to say, they cannot see. There is nothing to show that the money that are located will be used for that purpose. I don't think some of you said that. What happened to you? What is that? You don't say I'm bargaining. It's now a big part of it. I'm saying to not end. Where is Gumi today? Gumi? That is why it's this daily. I can tell you that authoritatively. I'm going to talk to them. Give me the call. Tell me that I'm going to talk to them. I'm going to do this. Then they cease fire for about two, three days. Now give me, let me not talk to them. So at that point, what the leaders want after two, three days. Let them know, look, I think they have to let them try. And even if they don't know, because they're asking for more. Security votes, right? I'm not even asking for more. So it's not a great victory. And that is why this thing cannot come to an end. Unless you have somebody that is winning, that is this I mean. If you have the press, because of the president, they can't be the general. And they say they can't be the general. They can't contain this. But they don't have the willingness to show you. And that is why this thing. All right, Uponobo. Let's stay with the daily independent newspaper. I know it's been seven days since the federal government asked the telecom operators to buy, you know, same style, not links to NIN. And there are reactions right now. The daily independent captions at this way. NIN, same linkage. Sarah gives Buhari 48 hours to unblock 72 million full lines. How do you react, Uponobo? Why would you give me, I want to give my turn up to unblock. Why should you unblock? Where will this come from? We need to be ready. We are not going. Why did you not register for this? You are not allowed to register. The federal government is not allowed. But on the other hand, if you feel like the process is entirely not smooth, because you have a lot of persons who have actually, I mean, there are several people who have the number. And so the process will require that you have the number. There should be some linkage. That's when you connect the number of the NIN to your SIM card. And that's the process, of course. But some persons have actually experienced this hiccup. And so they have the numbers over time, but the linkage process seemed to be a major issue. And the question now and among Nigerians is, whose responsibility should it be? I mean, is the NCC in the north is? Because the linkage would have to be a responsibility of the telecommunication or the service provider that each of the subscribers are using. And so I really don't know if the government is also paying attention to the other side of the divide of the challenge that a lot of Nigerians are going through. So it's one thing to say, you bar the lines. What about the process? Is the process entirely smooth? Is there efficiency in the process? Well, I see this as a special... Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. I see this as a special reason, you know?  How long does it take? Why is it that you're not in the company, not in the company? It's just a company, long before now. This is a big demand. This is a challenge. What did you do? Go. Open a book. This is a problem. So it's about... But why is it an issue now? Why do you have to contemporize it now? That is the problem.  And you know how we can be with the people, you know, after one or two tries, then you give up on the entire process and say, okay, eventually the sold out. That is the point I made. Did they throw out the expansion of the authority? They did. I'm not completely absorbing the authority. But what I'm saying is that if today's 7 million Nigerians are not registered, our comeback cap is going to be 5 million Nigerians for a year to be registered. Because what is the extent? For example, this is Monday. The extent to that is Monday. A lot of people will want to go... Why? Why would you start the process of whatever problems they have? We agreed on the concept. We also had a role to play in a certain level of summit and decodemies at this time. We are completely not registered. Open up. Absolutely. I used to have problems like that. But that is not... Go from this now so we can check out what the... Open up on Kateria. We need to move away from this. I know Justin is, you know, sitting to come up with this question. Because we're out of time. But I mean, the fact that Nigerians are lawless, because Nigerians are sort of Nigeria very low abiding. It just shows that, you know, the system itself has actually encouraged the lawlessness. But we move away, Justin. You know, let me hand it over to Justin. Let's do some other stories. But it is interesting. The world we read this morning, still on the Tribune newspaper, the NDLEA. It's as though these people who do illicit drugs are looking for very innovative ways to consider crime. But the caption here, the NDLEA intercepts 101 parcels of cocaine in children's duvets at Lagos Airport, ceases drugs, beverages in a dough state. Open up on. The line is breaking. That's happening for my right. It's not trying to... But the summary... That's for my right. The summary right now is that the NDLEA, they did a seizure and that they intercepted the 101 parcels of cocaine, you know, concealed in children's duvets at Lagos Airport. They also seized drugs, beverages in a dough state.  They will do that, you know. Well, I... I remember Bobby, I know him. Yes. I was up there talking to somebody who knows that they are illicit. But I remember he... Well, I remember the lack of respect, you know. I know five years of media, it's a state of limbo. Nobody actually did the work and should be commanded on their way. But Booba now is giving them a tough fight will be made to pay the rot of the law and eliminate the drug business. In any drug business. And we are talking of duvets today. We are talking of drug business tomorrow. We are talking of... Nice tomorrow, I'll catch up surprise. Like, because in general, they will come with tissue papers and you say, oh, they've improved on your service. Oh, it's so nice of them. Not knowing that they are part of the drugs. To be a very intelligent man to be a successful man, so far, it was not always in the news. And what is not in the news is not known. Because it was not always in the news so Booba didn't hear or not aware of what the government or the executive of that presidency will not do anything to stay with efforts, to truncate the efforts. Whatever else they need, they should release to it. Although you have to account for that. There are people who can vote politically poison. Maybe crude oil or something like that. It's encouraging all these agencies to tell you that, but that's for another day. I'm not really impressed. They are dealing with Booba Mao and also encouraging him to do more. Because when you talk to somebody in the back for days, they might put in more effort to also impress you for that. All right, open up on Qatariah. We have to let you go at this point in time. And would you appreciate you and your thoughts this morning on the people's... We look forward to having more of you share your thoughts this morning or always on the show. Thank you so much for being part of the breakfast. Thank you so much, Oponabu. Away from off the press, we are going back this day in history and let's see what happened today being April 11th.


Hello and welcome to the session. This is Professor Farhat and this session would look at consolidated tax return. This topic is typically covered in a corporate accounting course, definitely on the CPA reg section and in the enrolled agent exam. As always, I would like to remind you to connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven't done so. YouTube is where you would need to subscribe. I have 1600 plus accounting, auditing, finance and tax lectures. This is a list of all the courses that I cover including CPA questions, hundreds of them. On my website, you will find additional resources such as the PowerPoint slides, true, false, multiple choice, problems, exercises. If you're studying for your CPA 2000 plus CPA questions, I strongly suggest you check out my website. So we're going to be talking about the consolidated return. What does it mean to file a consolidated return? Well, this is very similar to consolidation in financial accounting under GAP, similar but not the same. If you remember under GAP, maybe you do, maybe you don't. To consolidate, you have to own 50% plus. Under tax, you have to own 80%. So notice it's more. So if we have a parent and this is a subsidiary, if the parent owns more than 80% of the subsidiary, they can consolidate. If this subsidiary owns this subsidiary, then all these are in the same group. Then if this subsidiary owns this subsidiary, then these are all in the same group. So they consolidate. However, if the parent owns this subsidiary and the parent owns the yellow subsidiary, those they have a common parent, but they are not connected. Those are brother and sister. So the yellow and the blue are brother and sister. Under those circumstances, they don't consolidate. But if the blue own the green, here we're talking about more than 80%, then the green own the sub, then they will consolidate. The election to file a consolidated return is only available to an affiliated group. What is an affiliated group? It exists when a corporation owns at least 80% of the voting power and the stock value of another corporation either directly or in die directly. So what happened when you consolidate the privilege of filing consolidated return is based on the concept that an affiliated group of a corporation constitute a single taxable entity despite the existence of technically separate businesses parent and the subsidiary, they're technically one group. So by filing a return, the corporation can eliminate intercompany profit and losses on the principle that the tax liability should be based on the transaction with the outsider rather than the intra group affair. So what you can do, you could eliminate intercompany profit case. You don't have to pay taxes on that and you could eliminate the losses as well. So what are the advantages of consolidation? One is you losses from one group can be used to shelter the income of another group. So what happened is a, if they have income, if they own 80% of V, if we have losses, they can offset the gain and pay less taxes. Taxation of intercompany dividend might be eliminated. And we talked about this in another session deduction may be optimized due to a percentage limitation being modified as a result of the consolidated process. We will see what does that mean in a moment.  Like for example, for a charitable contribution, so you can take more deduction recognition of income from certain intercompany transaction might be deferred. Sometimes you'd receive income intercompany, you can defer it, you can pay it later basically. And consolidation also eliminate any intercompany pricing problems, which is basically transfer pricing among related corporation that might arise under section 428-36. And what does that mean? Let's take a look at specifically this example. So we get it out of the way. Let's assume Rust Corporation leases a building to Cramson Corporation for 6,000. Now here's what happened. The IRS says, guess what? The real market value is 9,000, not 6,000. Well, a section 482 allocation would increase Rust Corporation monthly income by 3,000. So the IRS said, guess what? You need to increase your income by 3,000 because the fair market value is nine, not six. Not a problem. Okay. If Rust and Cramson are a member of the affiliated group that finally consolidated return, the 482 adjustment would not be made. And if it's made, it's not a big deal. Increase in Rust, corporate rent income by 3,000 is meaningless because it's offset by 3,000 increase and the deduction rent expense of Cramson. So if one company increased their income, or if Rust increased their income, they're supposed to increase income to 9,000? Well, guess what? Cramson will increase their expenses to 9,000, so it will offset each other because it's an affiliated group. So basically, there is no benefit to do so. So it avoid problems like this when you file a consolidated return. Some of these advantages of consolidation is the election is binding upon subsequent year and can be only avoided of the makeup of the affiliate group changes or the IRS consent to revocation of the consolidated return status. Now, when you select to do an affiliate group, all the parties involved will have to agree. If that's not the case, then you cannot have it. So in case you need to change, sometime you need the IRS consent to basically stop preparing your tax return for the whole group. Okay? Also, recognition of losses from certain intercompany transaction might be deferred and that's not good. If you have losses for taxes, you want to take them, you don't want to defer them. If you are an affiliated group, they might be deferred for later until they are transferred to an outside party and we would look at an example. The requirement that all group members use the parent tax year could create a short tax year for the subsidiaries. So you have to follow, all the subsidiaries will have to follow the parent tax year, which in some situation could be bunching income and you have a full year for carryover purposes. Sometime it mess up the income and the taxes. Also, administrative compliance does create complication because, believe me, consolidated tax return are not easy. They're complex and I did few of the moroids in practice, so they're not easy. A further negative consideration is that the tax rules for filing a consolidated return may not mesh with the applicable for those four financial accounting purposes. So for financial accounting purposes, you can do consolidation. Certain rules for consolidation are different. One prime example is if you have a foreign corporation and a foreign corporation, you can include your foreign with your local for financial accounting. For tax purposes, foreign corporation cannot be included and that's what's going to do. That's going to create additional complication and you're going to have to explain the reconciliation between financial accounting numbers of the consolidation and the tax return, which is basically what we're talking about is additional administrative burden because the numbers will not match up because if you're showing your financial statements and you're showing your tax return, one is consolidated and showing that foreign subsidiary, the other one is not, then you have to do more work to show the reconciliation the difference. So those are some of the disadvantages. Let's take a look at how we compute taxable income. So there are several categories that do not enter under determination of the taxable income. For example, intercompany transaction are disregarded, profit and loss are disregarded, dividend paid by one group to another that's basically eliminated, gain and losses from certain intercompany, sales are not recognized until the asset is sold to a third party. And we would look at an example shortly. So what do we consolidate? So on computing the taxable income for any consolidated return, several items are computed on a group basis. And typically, typically on a CPA exam, they ask you questions about what's included and what's not. I mean, the consolidated is tested on the exam, not that heavily, like for example, as partnership, as corporation, but you just have to need to be aware of it. So what are those items? Well, you could net capital gains and capital losses section 1231, you could net casualty gain or losses, you can combine charitable contribution, dividend to receive deduction and net operating losses to believe it or not, that's a lot of benefit. Okay, for the consolidated return. And the best way to illustrate this is to actually look at an example to show you the effect of a consolidated return. So let's take a look at Maze owns 100% of ecru corporation and both have a calendar year for tax purposes. For 2018, they had the following transaction and they file a separate return. So now they're filing separately. Maze income from operation 300,000 capital gain 50. They have a capital loss. Well, that's capital, they don't have a capital loss. They have a charitable contribution of 40,000, of which they can only take 35. Why can they only take 35? Because there is a 10% limit on the taxable income. So basically, if we take 300,000 plus 50 is 350 times 10%, they can only take 35,000 of deduction. Therefore, what they did Maze, they have a 5,000 carry over of a charitable contribution. Okay. So their taxable income is 315. Ecru, they have income from operation for 170. They have no deduction is allowed. They have a 45,000 of capital loss, not allowed, which is zero because you cannot, you can only deduct it up to the extent of income. And they have taxable income of 170. That's good income of 170. Now, simply put, I just want to look at this. If we can combine 315 plus 170 together, I just want to show you their taxable income is 485,000 together if they filed separately. Let's take a look, see what happened if they file a joint return. If they file a joint return, they will combine their income 300 plus 170. Their consolidated income is 470. They have capital gain. So M have a capital gain of 50. E have a capital loss of 45. Now, we can use this capital loss. So now we were able to utilize this capital loss. So we have a net capital gain of 5,000. Now, the charitable contribution, we can deduct all the 40,000. Why? Because 475, okay, now 475, which is those two, 475,000 times, 475 times 10%, we can take up to 47,500 in charitable contribution because we are limited to 10%. Well, that's 40,000 is below. So we were able to do two things. We were able to take advantage of the capital loss. We were able to take advantage fully of the charitable contribution. So all in all, our taxable income is 435. Notice 435 versus 485, there's a difference and we saved money by consolidating, okay? So notice the consolidated return allow one group to use the losses to offset the group of the other company's group, which is, that's really good. Now, bear in mind, this is really good. Congress is aware of this, okay? This possibility could lead to major tax avoidance because what happened is companies will buy up other companies that they have losses and they will take their income to offset their losses. So what happened? What happened? The Congress created some safeguards to stop to limit those potential abuses. So one safeguard against the use of losses and deduction arose in a separate return year. So simply put, if you buy an asset that have losses from other years, you cannot use them for this year. Another safeguard is the use of losses and deduction when ownership changes, when the affiliated group has taken place, when there's changes, some of the, you might lose some of the losses because now you have new owners, okay? And the best way to illustrate this is to look at an example. For the calendar year 2018, K Corporation and S Corporation first elected to file a consolidated joint return. As of January 1st, Starling owned a land held as an investment with a basis of 300,000. They have a basis of 300,000 and a fair market value of 280. So they have a loss, technically, they have a loss of 20,000 on this asset. It's unrealized, nevertheless, it's a loss that they have. During 2018, the land is sold for 270. On a consolidated return, you can only take 10,000. Why? Because when you bought this, when they started to consolidate, the value was 280. When you sold it, the value is 270. So you cannot compare 270 to 300. That's the point. The other 20,000 loss comes from a separate return in and related to Starling. It cannot be used by an affiliated group. Now, when we sell this asset to an outside party, then we can take the losses. We can consider this 300,000. Also remember the deferral of certain intercompany sales can be advantageous. So if we have a deferral of gains, that's good. But remember, if we have losses and we have to defer the losses, that's not good because in taxes, we want to take the losses. We like losses, we like expenses. But if we're filing an affiliated return, we cannot take advantage of those losses. So the realized gain or loss from the intercompany sale is not recognized by the third. And let's assume in 2018, Peach Corporation sells a land basis of 100,000 to be for a fair market value of 180. So they have a gain. Both Peach and Beige are members of the same affiliated group and file tax return. Although they have 80,000 realized gain, none of it is recognized. Why? Because it's an affiliated group. So the third gain or loss may be recognized in later year when the property is sold to an outsider. Let's assume we sell this property to an outsider in year 2020. Let's assume we sold it to a developer for 210,000. Well, guess what now? We sold it for 210. We're going to subtract 100,000 as the basis. And now we have to pay taxes on the 100 and 10,000. So notice, although we did not pay taxes on the 80,000 in 2018, all what happened is this gain was the third. So when we sold it for 210, we would still have to use the $100,000 basis because we deferred the gain. And basically, we saved money for three years. We saved, let's assume the tax rate is 20%. So for 80,000 times 20%, we end up not paying 16,000 for three years until we sold it to a third party. So it's not bad at all. Now, all what I want to remind you is this. I'm always here to help you. If you have any questions, you can contact me. I strongly encourage you to visit my website and subscribe. You're going to study for your CPA exam once. You're studying for your college career once. Invest. And this is an investment in your career. Good luck. And if you have questions about this recording, please contact me. Good luck.


Rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r prysgwllt. Rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r amendment 11651.1 yn y ffordd ddechrau Douglas Ross. Rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r amendment 11651 yn y ffordd ddechrau George Adam i'r parlymenau cyfnod, felly mae'n gweithio i gael y byddiol. Rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r vote. Y vote wedi gweithio? Rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r vote, dechrau. Rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r vote. Rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r vote. Y result of the vote on amendment number 11651.1 in the name of Douglas Ross is, yes, 56, no, 62, there were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is, the motion 11651 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out of business programme be agreed. Are we all agreed? Are we all agreed? Yes. The Parliament is therefore agreed. The next item of business is consideration of business motions 11640 and 11641 on stage one timetables for bills. I ask any member who wishes to speak against the motions to press the request to speak button. I call on George Adam Minister on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau to move the motions. Thank you minister. No member has asked to speak against the motions. Therefore, the question is that motions 11640 and 11641 be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are all agreed, and the motions are therefore agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of Parliamentary Bureau motion 11642 on approval of an SSI. I ask George Adam on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau to move the motion. I call on Miles Briggs. I rise to speak against the SSI relating to the council tax variation for unoccupied dwelling Scotland amendment regulations 2023. When the First Minister announced the policy in April, he stated that this policy would improve the availability of sustainable long-term housing opportunities. The local government and housing committee in our deliberations of this policy have heard very little evidence to suggest that this policy will provide any additional homes, including encouraging those who have second homes in Scotland to change how they use their properties. The policy also presents significant concerns around potential behavioural change. The committee indeed heard that there has been a decline in second home ownership and that there are already existing taxes in Scotland on second homes, such as the additional dwelling supplement, which is added to land and building transaction tax. Witnesses to the committee also explained how they believe that there could be unintended consequences for those regulations. In particular, that second home owners may instead increase the availability of their properties for holiday letting in order to become eligible for non-domestic rates instead of paying council tax. The small business bonus provides relief from NDR of up to 100 per cent, meaning that in practice many holiday let owners currently pay no council tax or NDR. We are all acutely aware of the pressures facing local government in Scotland after a decade of SNP green ministers targeting them with budget cuts. For many councils, they will see the potential of a new revenue stream to fill that black hole, assuming that we see no behavioural change taking place. However, again, this policy presents an exemption of how councils should use additional income, for example, in applying it to providing more affordable housing and addressing the housing crisis in Scotland. Therefore, at decision time, Scottish Conservatives will not be supporting this instrument. The regulations before Parliament this afternoon deliver a key priority for this Government for a fairer housing and taxation systems. Both policies have been developed in partnership with local government through the joint working group on sources of local government funding and council tax reform in the spirit of the Verity House agreement. They seek to empower local authorities to make decisions about the council tax treatment of second homes to determine the balance in the use of housing to meet local needs. In that way, councils would have discretion to apply to second homes either a discount of up to 50 per cent or a premium of up to 100 per cent. Rysg recognises that local areas differ, and the impact of second homes across the country is disparate. What may cause pressures in some communities could equally provide a benefit to others. Those should be decisions for councils to make based on the market conditions and economic tolerances in their own areas. I note that the UK Government has recently legislated to provide councils in England with the same 100 per cent council tax premium on second homes. I have heard a lot of surprising things in the chamber, but to hear Miles Briggs adopt a more extreme position where his Westminster counterparts are intriguing. The instrument also allows councils to grant a six-month grace period from the 100 per cent empty homes premium, where new owners of empty properties are undertaking repairs and renovations. Local authorities will have discretion to extend that six-month grace period. That is aimed at incentivising the reoccupation of empty homes and preventing the empty home council tax premium from becoming a deterrent to new ownership. We have committed to establishing joint best practice guidance with local government to ensure that all councils are aware of their flexibilities in relation to those policies. To conclude, that will put councils front and centre in making decisions about the council tax treatment of second and empty homes in their area. I hope that members will agree with the Government on that this evening. The question on this motion will be put at decision time. The next item of business is consideration of parliamentary bureau motion 11643 on designation of a lead committee. I ask George Adam, minister on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, to move the motion. The question on this motion will be put at decision time. In fact, there are five questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that amendment 11635.3 in the name of Genegal Ruth, which seeks to amend motion 11635 in the name of Liam Kerr, on improving the performance of the Scottish education system be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to vote and members should cast their vote now. The vote is now closed. Point of order, Bill Kidd. Screen has frozen, so I would have voted yes. The result of the vote on amendment 11635.3 in the name of Genegal Ruth is yes, 64, no, 54. There were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore agreed. The next question is that amendment 11635.1 in the name of Pam Duncan Glancy, which seeks to amend motion 11635 in the name of Liam Kerr, on improving the performance of the Scottish education system be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to vote and members should cast their vote now. The vote is now closed. Point of order, Bob Doris. Presiding Officer, I'm unsure of my vote's been registered. I would have voted no. Mr Doris, your vote was registered. The result of the vote on amendment 11635.1 in the name of Pam Duncan Glancy is yes, 54, no, 64. There were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that motion 11635 in the name of Liam Kerr, as amended, on improving the performance of the Scottish education system be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, and therefore we will move to a vote and members should cast their vote now. The vote is now closed. The result of the vote on motion 11635 in the name of Liam Kerr, as amended, is yes, 64, no, 54. There were no abstentions, the motion as amended is therefore agreed. The next question is that motion 11642 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau on approval of an SSI be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, and therefore we will move to a vote and members should cast their vote now. The vote is now closed. I was unable to cast my vote on that occasion, and I would have voted yes. Thank you Mr Doris, your vote will be recorded. The result of the vote on motion 11642 in the name of George Adam is yes, 86, no, 1. I repeat that. The result of the vote on motion 11642 in the name of George Adam is yes, 87, no, 1. There were 28 abstentions, the motion is therefore agreed. The final question is that motion 11643 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau on designation of a lead committee be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is therefore agreed, and the motion is therefore agreed. That concludes decision time, and there will be a short pause before we move on to the final item of business.


Haki is a power that lies dormant in all the world's creatures, presence, fighting spirit, and intimidation. It's not so different from the things that humans can naturally sense such as these. The act of not doubting. That is strength. Hello, and welcome to One Piece 101, the series that breaks down everyone and everything in the One Piece world. Today, we are going to be inspecting the dormant power system that exists within the One Piece world, Haki. Haki is a highly mysterious latent potential that exists within every living being in the One Piece world. While there are very few of those beings ever become aware of its presence, and even fewer come to harness its benefits. Beyond that, Haki is a very difficult existence to quantify because it isn't actually one singular thing such as key from Dragon Ball or nen from Hunter x Hunter. Haki is actually a broader term used to describe three separate phenomena accessible to living beings. Specifically, those are Kenbun Shoku, otherwise known as Observation Haki, Buso Shoku, or Armament Haki, and finally Hao Shoku, better known as Conqueror's Haki. So, let's begin with the wonderful world of Observation Haki. Principally speaking, this is the ability to sense the presence of other living beings. This presence manifests itself as an aura, shaped like the being itself, with no real three-dimensional details. It's very akin to looking at a silhouette, really, and this form of sight is particularly useful because it grants the user vision of beings who may be concealed by something or who are particularly far away, both of which were applicable to say Usopp when he engaged in Observation Haki to fire his bagworm at sugar during the Dressrosa Arc. Observation Haki can also be used as an alternative to those who are blind, such as Marine Admiral Fujitora, who exclusively sees the world through the aura of others. It is also possible to use this aura to directly judge the strength of others, although this does require a high level of mastery to perform accurately and en masse, as demonstrated by Silver's Ray Lee. But Observation Haki also has more diverse users that will generally manifest depending on the needs of the individual in question. To illustrate, Otahime was able to use Observation Haki to sense and even directly empathize with the emotions of others. Meanwhile, combat-focused individuals such as Luffy can use this brand of Haki to read and predict an opponent's moves slightly before they perform them in battle, sort of like an incredibly short premonition, allowing the user to adjust their own movement accordingly. However, if trained enough, then it is even possible to use Observation Haki to see several full seconds into the future, and not just in vague aura-like formations either. As the first prominent user of Future Sight in the series, Charlotte Karakuri was able to discern complex and detailed future situations. This ability comes with a caveat though, which is that he must remain perfectly calm to look into the future. But that can also be said to be a prerequisite of all Observation Haki. It always functions more optimally when the user is in a more tranquil state of mind. So in essence, Observation Haki provides its user with knowledge that can show them where their target is, what they're going to do, and even how they're feeling. Next up is Arma-Mitaki, which is the art of harnessing one's spirit to coat various parts of their body or even objects in a sort of armor around themselves. If you're familiar with the Rokushiki techniques, the general idea of Arma-Mitaki is very similar to that of Takai, the difference being that Takai is entirely reliant on a user's physical strength, while Arma-Mitaki relies on willpower and life force. Arma-Mitaki can be applied in two different forms, one of which is completely invisible and is achieved by lightly coating oneself in spiritual force. However, when this is taken a step further and the user decides to clad themselves in a heavy concentration of Arma-Mitaki, then it turns the affected area black, visually indicating to the regular person that you probably don't want to get hit by whatever that is. However, it has been implied by Charlotte Kartakuri that there is a level of Arma-Mitaki even greater than this, which may be what he used when his arms and hands turned rectangular in his fight against Luffy. However, whether this is a true manifestation of that higher level or whether it was simply an added effect from Kartakuri's devil fruit is unknown at the point of this recording. Users are not restricted to coating simple Limso, and should they invest enough life force, they can also coat their entire bodies in Arma-Mitaki, turning them into quite formidable opponents, although the efficiency of doing so is arguable. Apart from the generally increased power, the main benefit of Arma-Mitaki is that it allows the user to bypass an opponent's devil fruit power, which is very notable when it comes to Logio users, as Arma-Mitaki serves as the only real recourse to dealing with them outside of their natural counter-element. With that said, Arma-Mitaki is also most effective against Paramecia users, whose bodies are permanently altered, allowing them to take damages if they had no devil fruit abilities whatsoever. It should also be said that Arma-Mitaki does not nullify devil fruit powers like Seastone does, rather it allows the user to hit the substantial body of the devil fruit wielding adversary. And one final word on Arma-Mitaki the power it provides is not a be-all and end-all. It is still highly influenced by the base strength of the user. So for example, in the case of two people fighting with equal levels of Arma-Mitaki, the outcome of such clash will be determined by physical strength. It's actually even possible to overpower a person's Arma-Mitaki with raw strength alone, although that kind of power is very difficult to generate. Transitioning into the last of the three, we have Conqueror's Haki. Now this class is particularly special because it is the only one impossible to access through training alone. In order to make use of Conqueror's Haki, the user must be born with it. To put it simply, it allows the user to manifest their willpower and exert it quite violently upon others. A common result of this overpowering of the will of another individual is having them rendered immediately unconscious by the experience. Not only that, but victims of Conqueror's Haki can experience more long-term effects, such as the sensation of chills running throughout their body upon awakening. As a result, the greatest advantage of this ability is what I would call fodder control, quickly dispatching legions of weaker enemies so that we can move on to the main event. Although while this usage is commonly manifested in a big radial burst, more advanced users of Conqueror's Haki are able to choose the target of their willpower directly. Furthermore, continuous use of Conqueror's Haki will begin to physically affect the surrounding environment by creating shock waves similar to that of the Gura Gura No Mi. It is said that only one in several million people are born with this power and according to the ever-reliable source that is Treble, this is because Conqueror's Haki is an ability used to determine one's quality as a king or leader, chosen by divine power. And while I'm skeptical of believing anything this mucous baron has to say, it will be denied that most people in the series who possess it either have a regal position such as Boa Hancock who is known as the Pirate Empress, are striving for a regal position such as Monkey D. Luffy who wants to become the Pirate King or have a regal epithet like Silver's Rayleigh who is known as the Dark King. But there you have it, the three general areas of Haki. As stated in the beginning of the video, most people in this world will go their entire lives without ever learning of its existence. But in the grand line, especially in the New World, these abilities are more or less essential for survival, which is unfortunate for most pirates, marines, or revolutionaries because developing an awareness of these key abilities naturally is nigh on impossible. And they only seem to manifest themselves in moments of extreme stress, you know, hard-fought battles and the like. In fact Luffy and the Straw Hats enjoyed the entire first half of their journey completely unaware of Haki. But even if you are lucky enough to find someone to teach you the basics and unlock your latent abilities, there is no amount of training that can advance your Haki usage to the very top levels as Silver's Rayleigh has stated that true advancement in the realm of Haki only occurs during extreme use in battle, which is something we've seen firsthand with Luffy attempting to develop his observation Haki against Kata Kuri. So sadly for most of civilization that's not an appealing idea at all. But for those who are willing to push themselves to the very brink of destruction as well as survive to tell the tale, then the entire world awaits. Some more fun facts about Haki. Despite not being named until well after a decade of production, the very first use of Haki was actually in the very first chapter of the series in which Shanks invoked Conqueror's Haki to scare off the Lord of the Coast. Although sadly he only did this after he had lost his arm. Observation Haki also made a fairly early appearance in the series in the grand scheme of things anyway, as it was commonly used during the Skypea arc, although the citizens refer to it as Mantra instead. Just as I stated that Conqueror's Haki is the rarest form of Haki, it should also be stated that the most commonly demonstrated type in the series is Armament Haki. Haki itself is one of those words that can have a ton of different meanings when translated into English, some of which being vigour, ambition, drive, spirit, willpower, and most literally supreme key. Despite its rarity, the ability to use some form of Haki is a requirement to become a vice admiral of the Marines. In fact, it's very potentially a requirement to be able to use both Armament and Observation Haki, but that is unconfirmed at the time of this recording. And finally, a truly useless fact, Al Pacino, the non-canon Alpaca canon, is capable of using Armament Haki. But that pretty much does it for Haki. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general, then please do consider donating to the Grand Line Review Patreon, because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. Also, do check out my Teespring store if you're interested in shirts, hoodies, and other miscellaneous items, with the proceeds going directly to support the channel as well. And if you'd like to join the fun at any time, then please do head over to my Discord server where a wide array of shenanigan retakes place on a daily basis. And finally, please do comment with who, what, or where you'd like to see featured in the next One Piece 101.


So without further ado, I'm going to introduce John Dunlap and he's currently a pentester at GES. I'll let him explain everything that he's about as he goes through DNA encryption discussion. Alright. Oh, I don't think I'm hot. There we go. Hey everybody, who's ready to encrypt some stuff in living organisms. My name's John Dunlap. I am a security researcher, reverse engineer, pentester, whole nine yards of new security. We're for a firm called GES Security. We have offices in New York, London. They don't do much with DNA, but I thought I would just on a lark. I'll tell you more about how I got interested in that and using DNA as a side channel for encrypted messages. Now let's be clear. I'm a hacker. I'm a researcher. I'm a programmer. I'm a curious, stubborn, perhaps foolhardy. I am not a biologist. I'm not a genesis. I'm not a lab professional. I'm not a full-time cryptographer. But none of this has dissuaded me from synthesizing DNA and making synthetic life forms. Maybe it should, but it doesn't. So what was the emphasis for this talk? Well, I've had a long-term interest in biology. I mean, like many hacker type people, I have a wide range of like a special interest. You know, deep hobbies. I really liked reading about biology. There was a local sort of biohacker space that was offering classes on doing PCR. I went and did some gene editing on E. coli to implant glowing fluorescent protein. You can see this is the results of my experiment. These are E. coli bacteria inserted with green fluorescent protein. Actually, no, it's red gerry. Fluorescent protein. So I began talking with the people who ran the space about like, you know, I'm a security researcher. I'm a security engineer. I think I have a project that we can do. I'm willing to become a member of the space and pay the monthly fee. If you guys will help enable me to do some crazy security stuff with these living organisms. And I did. You know, and just a note on that is you have a local community biohacker space. You know, this is a new idea in life. Please support them. Please be responsible. Shout outs to Mike and Will at GenSpace for helping me out with all this. And that's my local biohacker space, by the way, GenSpace in New York. There's so few of these and you'll see in a second why I couldn't have done this without a community space to do it in. We'll talk about it. So what we're going to attempt here is a form of DNA data storage, which is not a new thing. I didn't invent a lot of these ideas. I'm just looking for a DIY implementation of it that someone with a minimal molecular biology background could implement on a minimal budget and do successfully. And if you want to think about the dream attack here, what we're looking to do is take, you know, the codes, maybe the launch codes, and put them into a bacteria where your local TSA agent, where it's not going to think to look for them, you know, oh, hey, this is just my bottle of E. coli. Think nothing of it. They can't ask you to decrypt that hard drive. And even if they were to be smart enough to sequence your DNA, they wouldn't know where the heck to look for it. It's such a big space of area to look for that data. And it's encrypted. It's the other thing. What we're going to do here. So we're going to attempt to implement biological encryption. You know, living stago, if you will. Now, people have been trying this on a research and experimental level for a while. There's some great going back to the 90s even, some great papers suggesting this and going through the viability of various encryption schemes all the way from, you know, one-time pads to RSA and that kind of stuff, or, you know, doing public key cryptography in DNA. The vast majority of it is sort of theoretical. There are groups working on this in practical terms, but there's limitations. We'll talk about that in a second. It's not really the same as what I'm trying to do. And there are definitely limitations that hold you back from doing this. You know, if you read my slides later on, you can take in the breadth of the research. A lot of it proposes using something called a DNA chip, which is sort of hybrid between something you buy and something you cook up in the lab that lets you to have a stable binding of the DNA that can be easily read and to. It's too expensive for me, so I'm disregarding it entirely. And this sort of side channel attack or secondography in DNA was proposed as far back as 1999 and continues to be talked about. Here's what one of those DNA chips looks like, by the way. But in general, there's a lot of crypto papers, papers from cryptographers, less than biologists, talking about how you would do this, the data science of whether it's viable, how you would implement the encryption, but not a whole lot of practical lab results. And again, I get the sense that people are doing this, but a lot of the actual experimental data isn't public. Like, for instance, I'm aware of there's a lot of DNA data storage research going on, like IBM, and their practical results are not public. So my idea is to do it small and do it simple. Because I don't have a lab of my own or funding or a team of grad students or microarrays. I'm just going to cook some cryptography up in an eco-like culture that can be replicated by DIY people. And the way I'm going to do that is to edit a plasmid. We'll talk a little bit about what that is in a second via restriction enzyme digestion, which is the classic gene editing technique that goes back to the 70s with Watson and Crick. And we'll sequence the culture and see if we can get the plain text back out. And then maybe giggle at the results madly because this is just too cool. So what we're going to want to do is first construct something called oligo. And for our purposes, simplified in this talk, we're just going to get a little crust of DNA that we're going to implant into our host organism. If you're going to get DNA synthesized, if you're going to have some like arbitrary DNA made up for you, the various DNA shops that will build the DNA for you have guidelines on what oligos should be. We'll talk about the practicalities of how that falls into my project in a second. But there are a few no-goes for what can go into DNA. And we're going to put our oligo into a plasmid. And a plasmid you can think of as like a DNA donut. For our purposes, in our host organism, a plasmid is like a little ring of DNA that exists outside of the chromosome, which is nice for a couple of purposes. Mainly that it's unlikely to directly negatively affect the life cycle of the host organism. And also, bacteria share these plasmids between each other rather promiscuously, so it's a very easy environment to do gene editing in. Bacteria normally just swap out these plasmids on their own. So inserting them forcibly into the bacteria is actually not going to be abnormal to their life cycle. If you've ever heard of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, one way that that property is sort of passed between bacteria is via a plasmid transfer. Here's what a plasmid looks like under a scanning electron microscope against this donut structure. And here are some bacteria sharing plasmids via what's called bacterial conjugation. They actually sort of reach out this long kind of tendril and swap stuff out. It's pretty freaking cool. So step one, we're going to pick an amenable model organism. In my case, I picked E. coli because it is cheap, easy to work with, readily available, and I've worked with it before. Next, we're going to pick an amenable encryption strategy. We want something that works with a small amount of data that's low complexity, high integrity, and low cost, and it's cheap, and it's cheap, and I can do it in a community lab. Okay?  You can order DNA in the mail, which is freaking cool. Every time I explain that to people, they're like, no, really? But size is a factor. Anything over about 60 nucleotides gets radically more expensive, and things like self-compliments or palindromes, basically, anytime that the complementary DNA nucleotides are repeated backwards on each other creates a situation where you can get something like a hairpin that will ruin your synthesis. Repeating patterns can be a problem for sequencing. We want to avoid all that stuff. So for my purposes, the classic encryption algorithms are just too big. The key size on its own is not going to work. It's too complex. There are papers that attempt to do this in DNA, but it would involve sequencing a lot more DNA than I want to spend money on. So I decided to keep things classic, keep it simple, and go with a one-time pad. It can be small. It can be perfect. I don't want to mess with key sharing for DNA. And the likelihood of anyone even finding where the encrypted data is pretty low. And since our message sharing is going to be so slow anyway, we're talking about mailing or walking DNA back and forth between our crypto partners. The key pad problem with one-time pads isn't going to really be a practical problem. So here is just some nucleotides. We have to find a way to encode our message. We've got to turn ASCII text into nucleotides. So we're going to convert ASCII into ACGT. And the exact method by which we do this determines the density of data we can encode. Let's check that out. So we can map 0, 1, 2, 3 into adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. I had no idea before that a base-4 integer is called a quat, by the way. I think that's really funny. There is no standardized term for a base-4 byte either because there's bytes for normal bits to bytes, and then trits to trites, but quats to quites. I think everyone just gives up at that point. I found only fragmentary data of what you're supposed to call that. So we have a base-4 integer, and then we have to decide this is most important thing is byte width. How big our bytes are going to be is going to affect how much data we can encode, and also like the size of our ASCII table. Some people call a base-4 quat byte crumbs. I've run into that. That's really weird. And here's our comparison. So if we use a 4-quat byte, we can get the entire ASCII table. 3 is acceptable. 2 is kind of sketchy. So for simplicity's sake, I went with 4. Next, we have to design a primer. And so the easiest way to think about this is that when we make our oligo, we're going to have encrypted data, right? And on each of that data, we need some sticky bits that are going to help anneal that data onto our plasmid. So we have like most of a plasmid ready to go, just bought from a lab, and we're just going to like stick on our data that's synthesized. So what we want is a 20 nucleotide primer as a binding site and a 20 nucleotide reverse primer. And it's going to be in the shape of a primer binding site, payload, and reverse primer. And then, you know, I had to check with my lab to make sure that that format would work. And then I had to check with the synthesis people to make sure that they were okay with it. Lots of advising going on. If you check with each of the synthesis companies, they'll give you some advice on what's good for them. My very synthesis company, Synthesis Company, I use a company called IDT in my case. Usually they have some pretty elaborate like JavaScript toys to like try and give an idea of the sequence you've given them, it works. But it's not bulletproof. So you want to avoid, like I said before, repeating sequences can cause some problems. Self-compliments can cause some problems. There's a good explanation of the self-complement problem right there. Basically each nucleotide has a complementary sort of letter and it can cause the DNA to fold in and sort of bind with itself, which is bad. You also have to do some analysis on annealing temperatures depending on exactly what base pairs you put on, it affects the annealing temperature. If the primer and the verse primer have radically different annealing temperatures, that can throw off the entire experiment. Then, once you've done all that, you can put your little oligo into BLAST, which the National Institute of Health has a website where you can search to make sure that your oligo isn't part of some pathogen or something like that. Here's the results for my oligo that I most recently had synthesized. It's such a small pattern. It comes up in all kinds of other fragments from other organisms. Nothing too scary in there. I automated this process with a program. It converts ASCII into our base four representation and applies in one time pad. You can configure the bite size and description as well. It's up on my GitHub. It's still marked private right now. I'm going to send it public right after this thought. Let's do a POC on that. We're going to convert some LeetSpeak into DNA because that makes me laugh. A commercial synthesis company actually took this same LeetSpeak and synthesized it for me and made DNA without any complaints, which also amuses me. What it doesn't do is do some of the more robust structural checks on the DNA like self complement and temperature. I use external tools for that. That's on the to-do list for the tool itself. Also, again, when you order from synthesis companies, they will do some of that for you. For our one-time pad, you need a key that's the same size as message. User specified by the tool. Believe me, you'll have plenty of time to figure out no keys in between one-time messages in this process because it's like a two-week turnaround to get the entire E. coli gene editing thing going. If you're not familiar with one-time pad encryption, you need a book of unique keys that are never reused. Having that going between two labs, it's doable. The plain text we're going to use is elite feet because we accomplished something cool. The key is going to be CripKid because we're using this script to become a genetic engineering script kitty. Here are the help and arguments for my tool. You can load the key from a file. You can do different byte sizes and whatnot. If you want to do this at home, if you need to use more information, you can use a smaller byte size, et cetera. Here's what looks like being run. It spits out some nice nucleotide encodings, which is cool. Here's a decryption. Decryps to elite feet. Once I had that and pasted on my primer and reverse primer, I could order the DNA for synthesis. Except not. This is where the community lab thing comes in. For better or for worse, at least in the United States, in our system, you can't just order stuff from labs anymore, which is kind of sad, but I guess it's for the best. If you're ordering DNA from places like IDT, they're going to ask for your credentials as a biologist, what lab you work for, et cetera.  In my case, without the relationship with the community lab, I would be unable to order this DNA period, even though there's not much I could do with it without a lab in the first place. There's a lot of stuff in science you can't order with access to a legitimate lab, which kind of sucks. And it would be pretty tough to do the synthesis on your own because it requires some nasty chemicals that are hard to handle. You'd end up having to do it in a lab in the first place, unless you're very brave. So next up, we're going to be editing our equal lie and, you know, high level protocol here. We're going to use a restriction enzyme to edit our plasmid. Same technique Watson and Crick use in 70s. We're going to snip the plasmid, leaving some sticky ends, which our synthetic DNA may attach to. If you want to see lab protocols for how to do that, I give you some suggestions. Genscript.com is a really great site for checking out genetics protocols. They list out stuff like this, or how to do really accessible versions of PCR. One of the reasons I did this version of the experiment is because it's very well documented. There are many protocols on it. There's lots of advice on it. People do it in college all the time. But let's show some cool pictures because it's not real until you see it, right? So here's the DNA I ordered from IDT. It comes in little vials like this. Here's some more. You know, that's leapspeak carrying DNA. PCR machine had to do some amplification on this. Plates, little carriers for the vials. More plates and PCR gels trying to amplify the stuff pre-sequencing. And here's Genscript's protocol on this. A little too nitty gritty to go through in deep detail. But you add a bunch of reagents together, do some centrifuging, and there's a temperature cycling step that gets the plasmid to accept our DNA. Tons of variations on this. But once we have this done, we can verify that the DNA is in our E. coli. We want to send it out for sequencing. And again, this is another thing you're going to have trouble doing without access to a legit lab. A lot of places will sequence your human DNA. It's a little different than getting stuff like 23 in me, right? Like asking people to sequence bacteria is a little different. They want to know that you know what you're doing and they're also going to charge you more if you don't know what you're doing, because you can send them a plate of bacteria and ask them to figure it out, but they're going to charge you a lot more than if you have something very purified for them. At that stage, once you've done that, you're free to go interpret your results. The lab's going to send you basically chromatograph readings. They're going to turn out to be a bunch of nucleotide strings. It's your time to check and see if things went wrong or right. Results look kind of like this. That's where if you had the repeating patterns or the self-compliments, things could have gone very badly because again, the repeating patterns tend to throw the sequencing machine for a loop. It makes the head kind of think like it's gotten stuck or something like that. Once you have done all that, you can take your secret data anywhere. Anywhere that E. coli is accepted, so I don't know if that's the airport or not. How much did this cost me? About 300 bucks for a lab membership, since this cost me about 40 for a pretty good quantity of the DNA. I did pay about a couple hundred bucks for lab expendables like enzymes and that kind of thing. That's more than enough to last me for a while. Sequencing cost me a bit more because I paid for a primo sequencing kind of situation. About 800 bucks, but if I did it again or I'm continuing to do it right now, it costs less every time because I don't have to buy most of that upfront stuff. What's the method? What's the point? No one is going to ever guess your data is in that bacteria. No one's going to ask you to decrypt it. It's an obvious storage medium. There will never be any key escrow on your bacteria. It would take a very dedicated effort for the NSA to bacteria. You get to birth synthetic life, which is pretty cool. But it is pretty expensive. It's slow.  There is a problem of, since our synthetic DNA or whatever, does not provide any evolutionary advantage to the bacteria to E. coli. It has a high chance of generationally just doing away with it, evolving away the plasmid you put in there because it has no reason to keep it. Bacteria sort of evolves pretty quickly. You can't really do this without the involvement of several labs. But if you're really dedicated, you can. The cost per byte is a little high compared to on-chip AES, just saying. What am I going to do with this in the future? I'm going to try this out in a new model. Organisms put it on stuff like yeast genomes with CRISPR, trying to implement some more lab algorithms yet cheaply. Then maybe a viable method to package a living colony for stealthy transport. To do some longer-term testing to see how long our encrypted information is capable of living in the bacteria without being corrupted. There's a lot of talk in literature about error code implementations to make sure that your stuff doesn't go bad. Making the lab people less mad with fewer begs for help. Promising idea yeast might be able to make a dried yeast or something where our information stays alive pretty well. I hope you guys had fun. If you're a well-informed molecular biologist, I'm so sorry. This is going to be like when I watch CSI Cyber or something. Yeah. I'm a hacker. I dabble. That's what I do. Please get involved in biohacking community if you're not already. This stuff is pretty accessible to me to teach you. Just make sure you're around people to write credentials to teach you to handle lab equipment safely and you don't get bacteria in your eye or something. There's also a lot of fun bioinformatics work to be done. If you're thinking of starting a community lab, please do that. The world needs more of those. Please do hit me up on GitHub or Twitter if you're interested or have questions about my project. In general, have happy time biohacking.