Hoi Hoi and welcome to the video. I'm Dr. Sumerian, not a real doctor. And guess what? I'm back! No, seriously though. It's taken me a little while to get to the point where I could actually have a space for recording that wasn't, you know, in the middle of the house ever since the disaster that destroyed my last recording area.  But I'm back for the moment. And I am in a new space that was paid for by a GoFundMe. Right now I really only have a desk and a bed in here, but I think that's pretty good. I have a GoFundMe still going if you guys would like to contribute to the possibility of me getting a little bit more furniture. But I'm happy with things as they are. Either way, today we are going to go over some dank memes from the dank memes from site 19 subreddit. I'm pretty sure going forward I won't be able to do video for a while until I can figure out what's wrong with my camera setup. But I'm okay with that. I mean, we can go back to just doing this. The first one is Antimonie's slantimonies meme. Researcher Rosen pattern screamers trying to get noticed. I you know, I don't know modern pattern screamers actually don't really work for me as well as they used to do to because everyone's trying to explain what pattern screamers are. And I thought what was really made them it's funny because we talk about like what series one means or like what's a series one feeling article mean. But at the same time, I liked pattern screamers because I didn't know what they were. There was a certain level of malice in the mystery. But the more you explain them, the more you explain anything, to be honest with you, the less scary it can be, which is fine. Because I'm not a particular fan of horror anyway. Like, it just doesn't get me the same way. But pattern screamers were one of the few things where I was like, I had this. I guess it wasn't even so much the horror of it. It was sort of the mystery is what drove my interest in it in the sense of the like my brain was going, Oh, that unknowable eldritch something. But uh, yeah, I actually don't know who researcher Rosen is in this particular meme, but that's okay because pattern screamers trying to get noticed I get yeah. A broken this one is my dead for December. A broken masquerade would lead to night marriage reforms at DRM. Yeah. What mimetic and animatics both involve the transfer and storage of information and how to manipulate it. After broken masquerade companies could make it physically impossible to copy their works or make I actually think I pitched something like this on discord one at one point, make it physically impossible to copy their works or make their media imperceptible unless you pay for the custom nested agents. Jesse, you better not be making anomalous NFTs, which is also a thing that would happen. Yeah, no, in a broken it like in a world where magic existed. This is the thing, by the way, not just broken masquerade, even in a world where, you know, the SCP foundation, the GOC and all those things existed and we're trying to keep things under wraps. If magic really existed, like really existed, then it would be impossible to keep it under wraps. First of all, because the people you're trying to fight are the people with the magic. Secondly, the companies would take over like powerful governments would take over and start using no, no powerful government is going to sit back and be like, Hey, you know, I am not I should say some powerful governments would but most powerful governments, especially in dictatorial regimes, wouldn't sit back and be like, Well, you know, we've got this tool that we could use to keep our populace completely compliant with everything we want to do and vote for whoever we want to in elections to make it look like democracy.  So, you know, we just can't do no, no, and corporations would do stuff like this and more. There would be corporate, there would have to be laws be like, but then how do you enforce them? But the laws be like, you can't anomalously compel people to buy your stuff. That's wrong. Yeah, no, that's just how you know there isn't these things in the world to be honest with you. This one's by fanboy x 27, the pedophysics department author avatars. Someone who actually has written an author avatar onto the site that's fairly popular, I have to say. I'm you know, to be honest with you, it's fun in a way and some of these characters have developed beyond their core of what they used to be. But I think there is something to be said for the idea that moving away from other avatars as a site would probably show a certain amount of maturing as a writing site, but you gotta go with what you got, I guess. And we have amateur writers like myself, even if I do get paid sometimes for writing, it's not usually for the SCP wiki. So we're amateur writers, let's have some fun. Government agencies in control, not just control and a lot of paranormal fiction, we say it will handedly defend the earth from the horrors of the multiverse. Federal Bureau of Control, United States of America, government agencies in SCP, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Unusual Incidents Unit, please help, we're so understaffed. See, that's what make, I honestly, to God, think that's what the UIU actually, that makes the UIU sort of like work in that it is such a departure from how most fiction handles this. And to be honest with you, quite enjoy it. And by the way, this meme is by Moon God Ray 057. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's pretty funny when you look at the difference between, say, the UIU or government agencies and literally any fiction, like usually conspiracy fiction has this like, I was about to use a phrase that probably a little bit too adult for the channel, usually has a bit of a, what's the word, is holding out a torch for government agencies, even though they purport to be like anti government, and they're like, Oh, the government's trying to get you. They have this idea of the federal government or the world government in some cases, or, you know, whatever country you're from. But they have this idea in their head, that it's super powerful and super competent. And no one can truly fight it, except for them, because they know the secrets. That's how conspiracy theorists tend to think. And so taking that and just going, you know, what if the UIU sucked? What if the FBI was just really bad at investigating the paranormal? And it had to be outsourced to just some private company and or foundation. I like it.  See, I, you know, this is one of the, this is this particular SCP and oh God, I can't remember the number off the top of my head. But the racist as the racist interdimensional monster is one of the SCPs that really like drew me into the wiki. And I don't know how old it is exactly, but it's one of the SCPs that really formed my basis for how I think that thing should be written on the SCP wiki. If you know what I mean. Oh, it's actually got a watermarks. That's helpful too. I actually just name all of the image files after whoever it is. So I can say it when I when I scroll over to it. But no, yeah, that SCP in particular, anything that really like covers sort of like alien to me, I always thought interdimensional alien, but you know, potato, potato, I guess, you can call it a monster. But you know, it's always an interesting way to look at the world. It's like, Oh, hey, what if what if the monsters were anti human? You know, sort of a twist on a well known concept. And you just got to love that stuff. The first of many shoulder memes, the Wanderers Library, when they realized they can rent continued sequels of hearty book series on earth and get that die hard fan money business. This is absolutely true. And something that someone would probably get around to doing at some point. And I only included because it's just like, yes, this is a thing that would happen. Another shoulder meme, SCP fan learning how to write in clinical tone and going through multiple levels of critique and posting an article for only the purpose of using it as a counterargument against SCP related debate. So you run into somebody who doesn't really understand that there is no canon. So you write a article that'll survive on the SCP wiki and then use that to be like, No, what I said is correct. See, here's the article. Oh, man, I love it. I love it. Shoulder meme three, the world is ending from a newly discovered anomaly classification committee pondering whether to classify it as a polyon or perhaps seven to nose. Yeah, let's not actually deal with the problem. Let's just figure out how we're going to classify it. This one is by summer Fox, the SCP foundation after plastering their logo and initials on every single thing they own sneak 100. Yeah, that's really more of a what's the word? It's really more for the reader and the writer that it is for like making sense in universe. And to be fair, this is a valid critique, I think, because if it doesn't make sense, a lot of your writing should make sense. So does it make sense that, you know, so and so uses Southern Crosscut Pine? But here's the way I looked at it. When I created, for example, Southern Crosscut Pines as a sort of a front company for the SCP foundation. Sometimes you want people to know who are in the know that it's a front company, right? You don't want the GOC running into your anomalous front company and thinking that they can just go nuts on it when you have prior agreements and interactions with them, right?  And second of all, maybe this is cleared already and we just don't know because it's secret and that's how all the stuff works. The logo on the other hand, I have no idea and it does show up probably, but the initials, I think it's pretty useful, right? But I think, you know, oh gosh, it's just inspired a story idea in me, but like some small or weak group of interest using the SCP foundations initials as they're like front companies just for their purpose of fooling everyone into thinking that it's that it might be foundation related. That's interesting. That's really interesting. You could use that to explore like why they would do that in the first place and like talk about how the SCP foundation has to clean this up because, you know, the GOC and Marshall Carter and dark and some of the other powerful like even government based anomaly controlling groups are like, hey, listen, we know we're supposed to pay attention to this and like, whatever, so you can't just let these guys do this, you have to stop them. Interesting. Yeah, you could really explore the interactions of the GOIs. I'm sorry, you've inspired me to have an idea here, summer fox. Either way, that's it. Thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I upload new videos. Now, I will make a special now, to be fair, I haven't uploaded in about three weeks, almost four now. But, you know, there have been extenuating circumstances. I'm back now. Now, I will say, if you enjoy my videos and you'd like to continue to see more of them, and I have some, hopefully, I said this before, and then not followed through on it because I have had things happen, but I've got some really interesting stuff coming down the line. I think I can get done, and I really want you to see it. But my Patreon has gone from sustainable numbers to not sustainable numbers, and the advertising revenue on YouTube is so up and down, it's hard to tell. So I'm making a special request that if you can pledge on Patreon or join on YouTube, by the way, that's also an option, because we have memberships on YouTube now. Please go ahead and do it. We have people on the screen right now who have pledged, and God, I appreciate you so much, especially you, Sanjiriki, who has pledged $100.  But I'm making do. So thank you very much for watching, and thank you for letting me know that I'm not alone out here, and I will see you all again next week.


Hi, I'm Aisha Driggers, the Director for the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities. We are excited to partner with the Minority Business Development Agency to offer a four-part series titled Business Secession Planning. The purpose of this webinar is to build a strong legacy through secession planning. So whether you are preparing to pass down your business to your relatives or sell it to a partner or maybe there are unforeseen circumstances where you are unable to do the day-to-day functions of the business, how do you ensure the continuity of that business? The four-part series starts next week on June 13th from 12 p.m. to 1 30. It is a webinar and we're excited. We're going to talk about common mistakes, contingency planning, legal accounting issues, transition and exiting the business. So we look forward to seeing you next week for the webinar series.


Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. I am Prashant and you're watching Around the World in 8 Minutes, where we bring you news from working class and popular movements across the globe. In our first story, we take you to Egypt where a three-day national referendum began on April 20th on a number of constitutional amendments. These include a provision extending current president Abdel Fateh LCC's term until 2013. The announcement of the referendum came a day after the Egyptian Parliament voted on April 16th in favour of the proposed constitutional amendments. The amendments were passed by a tally of 531 to 22 votes. If passed, the amendments will extend the president's term in office from four to six years. A special article in the amendments extends LCC's current term by two years to 2024. He will also be able to run for another six-year term. This will enable him to possibly stay on in power till 2030. The amendments also allow the president to appoint top judges and bypass judicial oversight in reviewing draft legislation. They gave the military a greater role in the political life of the country. Critics termed the amendments another step back into authoritarianism, a coalition of various liberal and left-leaning opposition parties called the Civil Democratic Movement has called the amendments an assault on democracy. They urged voters to break the barrier of silence and vote no in the referendum. Speaking to people's dispatch, Mohammed of the bread and freedom party said that LCC was an expression of reactionary forces inside the military that sought to be part of state wealth and governing business. He said that LCC's popularity had severely declined due to astronomical rise in prices and debt and the collapse of public services. He added that the suppression of the youth, rise in arrest and forced disappearance of activists had turned the people against him. In such a situation, LCC needed to reverse one of the last achievements of the 2011 revolution, that is the term limits, that is why these amendments were being passed. Mohammed also said that LCC's government was trying its best to suppress any sign of dissent against the amendments by arresting anyone who was critical of it. The state security services are also conducting a major campaign to give the impression that the amendments are very popular. Members of the leftist parties have been arrested, including three from the bread and freedom party. Other reports have also indicated that the opposition has been banned from hanging banners that call on people to vote against the referendum. Meanwhile, large banners urging the people to approve the amendments have come up across Cairo, including Therese Square. Therese Square is famous for, as the place where massive anti-Hussein Mubarak protests took place during the Arab Spring. LCC came to power in a bloody military coup in 2013 against the government of President Mohammed Morsi. Human Rights Watch said that in the past three years, 15,000 civilians, including children, have faced military persecution in Egypt. 60,000 political prisoners may have been detained. In our next story, we take you to Argentina, where two major protests were organized, one by farmers and one by scientists. On April 17th, on the occasion of the international day of peasant struggle, Argentine farmers staged a protest in front of the National Congress in Buenos Aires. Small and medium-scale agricultural producers, family farming organizations, indigenous people and rural workers took part in the protest that is called a verdurazo. They were angry at the rampant inflation and demanded better policies for the Argentine agriculture sector. Verdurazo is a form of protest in which agricultural producers give away fruits and vegetables to people for free in order to draw attention to the difficulties. A number of organizations, including the State Workers Association, the Argentine Confederation of Medium Size Enterprise, Association Grito de El Corta, Argentine Workers' Central Union, Excluded Rural Workers' Movement, La Campora Rural Front, and Land Workers' Union gave the call for the protest. Some of the key demands were regulation of the family farming law, declaration of a family farming emergency law, advancement of the law of access to land, access to soft loans, public policies for the sector, and withdrawal of the modification to the seeds law. In Argentina, more than 70% of agricultural families do not own their land or are in conflict over their possession. About 90% of the sector rents the land at an unpayable cost of 15,000 pesos per hectare. In addition, they pay unsubsidized and increased electricity and water bills of 20,000 to 30,000 pesos. On the same day, hundreds of scientists, researchers and teachers carried out a torch march in Buenos Aires. The march in defense of science and technology rejected the budget cuts announced by the government of Mauricio Macri to the National Science and Technical Research Council, CONICET. The budget cuts announced earlier this month affected about 83% of CONICET researchers. This year, only 450 researchers entered the course and the applications of more than 2,000 students were rejected due to shortage of funds. Enrollment in these courses has been constantly declining. The slashing of budgets is posing a threat to the future and development of science and technology in Argentina. Argentina has been rocked by protests, especially since the government of Mauricio Macri signed a deal with the IMF. On January 12, an increase of 40% in transportation was implemented and from February 1, rates of electricity services increased by 32% and residential gas by 35%. A 38% increase in water bills was imposed in March. In April again, drinking water and electricity tariffs were further increased by 50% and 55%. These austerity measures are a result of the conditions put forth by the IMF in exchange for a loan of USD 57 billion. The IMF demanded that the Argentine government reduce the fiscal deficit and apply severe budget adjustments between 2018 and 2019. In our final story, we go to Ireland, where farmers staged a protest over healthcare. On April 16, over 300 Irish farmers protested outside the Department of Health in Dublin, over the delayed implementation of the changes made in the Fair Deal Nursing Home Scheme. Farmers from all over the country joined the demonstration, which was organized by the Irish Farmers Association. The protesters demanded that the changes that were introduced to the scheme in 2018 be implemented immediately as well as retrospectively. The Fair Deal Scheme allows the elderly in Ireland to contribute towards their own care in a private, public, or voluntary nursing home, while the state pays the balance. The Health Service Executive conducts a financial assessment of the applicant's income and assets to determine how much they have to contribute to the cost of their care. The more assets an income one has, the higher the percentage that they are required to contribute. The applicant's primary residence is included in the financial assessment, but it is subject to a three-year cap. After three years, its value is no longer included to determine the applicant's contribution, which essentially brings down the total amount they would have to pay. In July 8, 2018, the government introduced a policy change that extended this cap to farms and family businesses. However, nine months later, the farmers are yet to reap the benefits of this change. Costs of care for the elderly have put many farmers in massive debt. Some families pay as much as Euro 1000 a week in fees. In many cases, families have been forced to sell off parts of their land to eke out the funds for the nursing home. That's all we have time for today. Keep following us at our website peoplesdispatch.org and on Facebook and Twitter.


Hello everyone. So my name is Tripad. So I'll be, you know, speaking about abstractions. I work as an engineering manager at Deserve Labs in Pune. So we are a fintech company offering credit card as a service platform. I am quite active on Twitter. So you can reach me out on Twitter. And I do have some interesting discussions on Twitter as well. And that's, and during those interactions, some of this idea about abstraction came about. So one of the nicest podcast that I generally listen to is called Econ Talk. And one of the speakers of that was Helen Leitman. And he made a very interesting statement that all science is provisional. So all laws, nature, law of nature discovered by scientists are provisional. Scientists will never know whether they have reached the nirvana or the ultimate law that governs everything else because, and that's the nature of science. And that's how I started some thinking when I started thinking about how if we can use these things in our work as well as, you know, apply in our area of work. So I would like to, and part of that problem, I used to work as a consultant for one of the scientific publishing companies in Pune. So those guys were, you know, some of them were like crystallographers. So what they used to do was, you know, scatter x-rays on some crystals, which is opaque. And you can, you know, see a diffraction pattern on an extra plate. And then you figure out how the structure of the material is. And that's how you discover and, you know, make a system. But the problem with this approach is that for n number of combinations, you will have the same scatter pattern on the extra plate. And that's actually kind of intrigued me because what you see on the extra pattern on the photographic plate is the result of that arrangement. You don't actually know the arrangement. You're trying to guess that arrangement by, you know, putting or scattering x-rays on it. And the way they got around is they know few patterns produce this kind of scatter or this kind of arrangements produce this kind of scatter. And you look at the extra plate and then you guess what kind of arrangement, internal arrangement of atoms and molecules would be there in that, you know, subject under study. And that's kind of inverse problem. So what inverse problem says is that we know the outcome. We have observations and then from that we're trying to figure out what actually lead to that particular outcome. And that is part, so there's a saying that it's easy to engineer, but it's very difficult to reverse engineer. And that is a major theme that I discovered when we talk to business scenarios or business stakeholders and they describe something and then we get something from it. And that is, so if you look at, so I was thinking about, you know, inverse problem in, you know, what are the interesting inverse problems that we see around us. So StoneJ, I mean, archaeology is the nicest of the lot I can think of when you look at the outcome of things that has been done or a result of things that have been done.  And that is how you tend to see, so you in our work in software, what happens is we, somebody tells us, hey, I want this, I want Stonehenge, Stonehenge, for example, or I want a search. And they don't describe how it is to be done, what are the inner components, what are the interactions between those components. And deciding that is always challenging. And challenging in a very, very, not just in terms of engineering way or difficulty way, but even, you know, there are a lot of unknowns and that's where the challenges are, of course. And the challenges are also opportunities where we have unknowns. Part of this challenge is, if you describe the end goal, what you're missing is the intermediate state of how those systems are being built or should be built, or how do you think about intermediate state. In complex system, there's a term called as stable intermediate form, right? So basically what it means is if you want to build a bridge, bridge cannot be built or a building cannot be built in its final structure from the start. You have to have a lot of scaffolding to support it, to, you know, manipulate it and get it in a way, but once the building is finished, you don't see the scaffolding. And that actually adds a level of complexity to the problem, because if you look at the stone, if you look at the stone hinge picture, you'll see all the scaffolding missing. I'm pretty sure they must have used some scaffolding, but how they did it, all of that, that kind of data is all missing. And that is where this inverse problem is far more trickier, because you are missing the whole journey of how this thing was built or should be built. Okay. And another case, very classic case, what we've always known as survivorship bias is the case of missing observations. So, if I look at a finished outcome, or if I describe a finished scenario, the things which are not apparent are not present in that scenario are missing. So, and that is where it biases you in certain dimensions. And that is where I hopped into a few other things. What happens if I don't see something?  So, based on the context, of course, so we know something to be looking in a particular way, then we start extrapolating what we have seen, and which is not there. And this is a very subtle point, and sometimes you call it experience, sometimes it's called mistakes, whatever it is. And that is where I come to my next point of unlock the lock. And that the point I'm trying to make here is that can we figure out what are the assumptions I'm going to put unknowingly, knowingly or unknowingly in the model that I'm trying to build or software I'm trying to build. So, if you look at the lock, I mean, fundamentally, the statement was very intriguing to me when I heard it first. A lock is a lock because of the key. If you don't have a key to the lock, lock is nothing but a dead weight. And if you look at Etsy or certain sites like that, people have put on those items as artifacts, as dead weights, and they actually eliminate a certain dimension of the lock which is hidden from us. So, that is how we look at. And we always think when I describe a lock, it's always in conjunction with a key. But if I don't have a key, it's already hidden from us, right? I mean, it's imagined we add that as key as a abstraction, and then we design around it. So, typically, if you look at a lock as a method, then you'll always see those things. And that is where I come to my next point of in an action of abstraction and context. So, we are always designing abstraction in pair. So, one pair is the context in which we are designing those abstractions. And that context is subconscious or assumed or imagined or there are assumptions that we explicitly or implicitly make around to design those abstractions. Thus, what we can say is that abstraction is nothing but interaction between two components of the coupling. So, only the pair or the coupling of your context and the thing that you are trying to model and make it physical. So, or realizing software maybe. So, the only part of the artifact that is visible is your software or interpretation or assumptions are hidden from you. So, when you look at a lock, if I just show a lock to someone and don't show them the key, they'll obviously add key as a concept to it.  But if I describe it as a lock, we put in all of the assumptions on that particular artifact and say, oh, this should be the behavior that should be the behavior or those are assumed behaviors. And those are may or may not be there and can be used or are added by us. And that is where, I mean, you know, the case of our story of elephants and of six blind men. So, and that is where the context matters much more. See, if you are dealing with a very large problem, your abstraction will depend on the kind of narrow focus areas that you're looking at, although we make fun of it, but that is the reality. I mean, this is the reality. People will focus on narrow particular areas and then they come up with the suitable abstraction for that particular narrow areas, adding in all the surrounding assumptions. And that is where I say abstraction is provisional. So if you look at my first slide, science is provisional, and that is where I just got some inspiration from Alan to say that, oh, maybe abstraction is also provisional. So abstraction can also depend on the context. Again, context is nothing but our experiences. So it depends on what we have seen, trade, experience, yada, yada, I mean, mistakes we have made in the past, so on and so forth. I mean, sometimes we call it experience and sometimes we call it mistakes. So as we experience more of that domain, so if you go back, as we see more of this problem, we start realizing more, we start refining our abstractions more and more. So the more wider area of our context, the abstraction can become different, refined or course. So which means that abstraction designed for a particular context should also change when the context changes. So it's not a stable thing saying, oh, this is perfect or that is perfect. What defines a good abstraction is how suitable or how fit it is for particular context and not nothing beyond that.  Everything influences each of us and because of that, I need to be, I mean, we try to be a positive person as much as we can. But that assumes experience is a set. I mean, what I'm trying to say here is that, no, it's a list. The order in which you experience things, changes your outlook, changes your context and changes your way of analyzing particular things. So Nassim Thala was a very nicer quote on history is to say, if you want to become a philosopher king, it's much better to start as a king than a philosopher. Because these two outcomes are vastly different and sometimes they are referred to as non-ergodic systems. So non-ergodicity is where your experience matters, your history matters. And that is where I come to, so I used to run bootcamps, I still do sometimes. The outcome that I've seen, I mean, it's a simple game of snakes and ladders. So that what happens in those games is the moment I define it as snakes and ladders, there is always preconceived notion of what a particular thing should look like. And if I start playing around with those concepts, people get, I got a very different way of different code bases that I ran with the same problem statement in different orders. So that is where how I pose it that if you change the order in which I add problem statement, your outcome or the final design would be different. For example, if I add snakes and no ladders for a single player game, your design, I've seen those experience, I've seen those designs being very different from, let's say, adding a snake and a ladder and then adding variety of rules. Or maybe adding variety of, you know, variety of different rules of dices like different dices or different snakes. So that is very related to the concept of ergodicity where history matters. So what you see and what you experience and what your outcome at particular previous event actually, you know, changes how you see things going forward. And that influences how you can design going forward. So and that is something called as part dependence. So abstraction is also very, very part dependent. So where you are will define where you can go next. And that is not absolute. So and that depends on lot on the context on sometimes even on chance. It's not like for the same set of problems, you'll always have same outcome. Right. So, I mean, I'll close my talk, I mean, quickly, and then we can have some time for question and answer is asking for ideal abstraction is asking for average abstraction. So on average, how does this abstraction look like? So there's no ideal abstraction. It's always dependent on your scenarios on your context in the order which you actually, you know, get those problem statements. Lot of it is not absolute. So it's all a variable and relative in that sense. And the next statement is basically to find right abstraction, just make a guess as to what it is. And if it exhibits the right property for that context, just stop and don't try and attend the perfection from that angle. Right. So there is no perfect abstraction that is, that is a suitable affection for a particular context. And that context changes, the abstraction should also change. And the kind of experiences, the order in which you get requirement will also evaluate or influence your abstraction is the thing that I wanted to discuss. I mean, talk about, I hope in the short time that I got, I'm able to convey some of these ideas and I'll stop here now. And then I take few questions if people have any. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your experience.


Hi I'm Phil Toy, I'm an immunologist in the biotech theme and I team leader for the animal health activities within biotech which is focused mainly on development of vaccines and diagnostics and also biosecurity protocols. I first came to this campus in 1986 when it was called Illrad and then left in 1995 where I went into the private sector working with a medium-sized biotech company and then returned about five years ago in November 2006. I think the changes I've seen in Illry have been quite dramatic. In 1986 to when I left in 1994 this whole campus of about 60-odd scientists was focused really on two diseases, on two cattle diseases and indeed on two diseases which are limited to Africa. And the focus was on developing vaccines for those diseases. When I returned in 2006 I came to an institute which had a much broader range of expertise going well beyond molecular biologists, immunologists etc. to sociologists, to economists, to people who study and understand market dynamics and market access. And I think this gives Illry a unique almost potential to look at the problems affecting small livestock owners, poor livestock owners and developing solutions, employable practical solutions to those particular problems. I think the major achievement of the group over the last five years has been to develop a much more balanced portfolio of activities. Five years ago the major activities were concerned with East Coast fever and in particular development of a vaccine against East Coast fever, plus a few smaller activities as well. Now, for example, we have much greater emphasis on African swine fever and on contagious bovine pleural pneumonia through the dedicated efforts and the great perseverance of the people involved in these projects. And what's important is they were developed looking beyond the technology. They were developed trying to look at the social aspects of the livestock owners that these diseases would affect. And also the ability of these technologies to meet and use the needs and how they would be effectively rolled out. I think the other balance we've brought to the portfolio is to increase the number of projects focused on more immediate impacts. So for example, the development, the underpinning of the rollout of the infectious and treatment method of vaccination against East Coast fever, which vaccine is protecting the lives of cattle, particularly in Northern Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The development of a Pennside test for pig tapeworm is another more recent example of an outcome and an output which may have a medium effect as well. And more recently, the development of a thermostable vaccine for PPR, in other words a vaccine which is stable without refrigeration. So I think this adds another dimension to the sorts of activities that we're undertaking in BT01. And I think the third achievement within the group is the development of field-based activities. In the last five years, we initiated a project in Boussir in western Kenya called Ideal, a welcome trust funded project led by the University of Edinburgh, which caused us to establish a laboratory out there. That laboratory has since been used by the PAS, the People, Animals and Zoonoses Project, another welcome trust funded project led by Eric Febra. And more recently, substantial African Swine Fever research activities led by Richard Bishop have been undertaken and will continue to be undertaken in the laboratory in Boussir. So this is getting people out of the laboratory and interacting with our clients, the poor livestock owners. We need to get the balance right between the amount of applied research, those leading towards more immediate impact and the undertaking of more basic research to solve the more intractable problems. The latter, of course, are higher risk but also higher return if we manage to develop solutions versus spreading yourself too thin over several projects where you don't really have traction. So that is a real issue we have to address. And it comes when you're trying to obtain and getting more resources, do you put those resources into a new area or do you throw them at the current projects in the hope of accelerating solutions and being able to make a difference more quickly than with the resources you already have. And I hope that as we move into these CRPs, this will help enormously in out getting more focused and delivering more impact in the field.


Hey, welcome back everybody. I'm DroneTech and today I want to talk to you about a story that I actually got from Mark Dice this morning when I was surfing Gab, which if you haven't followed me there, go ahead and do that. I'll put the link in the description and pinned comment. And if you haven't done so already, please hit that like button and subscribe. Might as well hit that bell notification while you're at it. So I get on Gab this morning and Mark Dice has this post about this guy that has been invited to CPAC or I should say had been invited to CPAC. His name is Young Farrow and he's got a lot of crazy theories about white people. It's probably better if I just show you the clip. You got that? In order to possess the cosmic essence, you gotta have neuro melanin and that's the one with the N, not the E. See what I mean? Like why would CPAC ever invite this guy in the first place? We're gonna get into that question and a lot more, but first this quick message from this channel's sponsor HealthWithDroneTech.com. New studies show that by the time people reach their middle ages, the body often produces less than half the collagen it did in youth. Collagen is the main building block in our skin, making up 70 to 80% of it. This is why we get sagging skin and wrinkles as we age. If you want to look younger, you must supplement collagen. That's exactly why I highly recommend HealthWithDroneTech.com. Ageless multi-collagen is a powerhouse of the right ingredients to improve your youthful appearance quickly and effectively. Get my favorite multi-collagen for 51% off today by going to www.HealthWithDroneTech.com or by visiting the link in the description or pinned comment. But I get online to see if this guy, I had to see if this was actually true and I search and immediately I see a ton of stories about CPAC disinviting young Pharaoh, which I thought, huh, that's interesting. Okay, so I look but immediately I notice that in the headlines of all these stories, the reason that he was let go from CPAC is because of his anti-Jewish conspiracy theories because he's an anti-Semite. I look here and like I said, it's all about anti-Semitism. There's nothing in here on any of these stories. I looked at them. What concerns me here is that nobody in the media saw what news were. They even report that he said these things. They only wanted to focus on the fact that he was an anti-Jewish, had put out a lot of anti-Jewish rhetoric. So then I asked myself, why is that? I mean, I can only really think of two reasons. One, they want to paint CPAC as racist and anti-Semitic. They invited an anti-Semite to come speak at their conference. I mean, I'm asking the question why they would invite this guy in the first place given the rhetoric that we saw at the beginning of the video. I think the other reason might be that they want to be able to keep up their narrative that white people are this oppressor and that you can't be racist to white people. And they do that really by just never reporting on anything happening to white people in that regard. Just like they only report on police shootings when it's a white cop shooting a black person. And even then, it doesn't matter if the cop did it in self-defense. It's just that it was a black person that makes it this nationwide story. Yet they never report on unarmed white people that are shot by police. Why? I believe because they want to keep up this narrative that it's black people that are being hunted down by police. In this case, they can keep up the narrative that white people aren't discriminated against. There's no racism against white people. They're just oppressors. By not reporting on this stuff and just pretending like it never happens. And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, there is a third reason that they might be covering this up essentially. And that's because they don't want to have any sort of negative backlash on those communities. I guess based on that logic, the fact that they only report and they cherry-pick stories to get this narrative going, you have to believe that they do want negative backlash against the white community. So there's another story that's very similar to this, Nick Cannon.  It was very similar to what we're hearing from young Pharaoh here. But if you go and you look at the stories at the time, it's the exact same way. The only thing that the media reports on are his anti-Semitic comments. And those seem to be the only ones that matter. And I don't really want to rehash all of yesterday's video. You should go check that out. But there's lots of other bad signs.   And then you have these powerful people who are promoting the idea that white people aren't even human. And then being given jobs as influencers in the mass media, you really start to really start asking yourself what's going on here. And if we should start taking this seriously, I mean, I believe we all need to get active. We need to stand up. We need to protest this. We need to protest Viacom and anybody who is running cover for these people that are straight up racist.  These people are genocidal. Anyway, folks, just had to get that off my chest.  So get in touch with me. You can find plenty of ways to do that in the description or pin comment as well as ways to support this channel. Thanks for watching, everybody. I'll see you all next time.


What does Greek myth have to do with detective fiction? Welcome to the Endless Knot. Today, we're going to follow the clue to find out. The answer lies in the story of Ariadne and Theseus. Ariadne was the daughter of Minus, King of Crete.  And well, let's just say the result was a half-man half-bull, the famous Minotaur. So, King Minus puts the Minotaur in the labyrinth, puts his daughter Ariadne in charge of the labyrinth, and feeds the Minotaur the seven youths and seven maidens that Minus extracts from the city of Athens as a tribute. This is where Theseus comes into the story. Theseus comes to Crete to kill the Minotaur, and free Athens from its obligation. Upon his arrival, Ariadne immediately falls in love with him, and promises to tell him how to accomplish his task, if he'll promise to marry her and take her away with him. She gives him a sword and a ball of thread for him to unravel as he goes into the labyrinth. After killing the Minotaur, he is able to retrace his path by following the thread and escapes. Theseus does then take Ariadne away with him, only to later abandon her on the deserted island of Naxos on his way home to Athens. Jerk! Actually, in some versions of the myth, Theseus is made to leave her behind by a god, either Dionysus, because he wanted her for himself, or by Athena, goddess of wisdom and protector of heroes and of Athens, who leads him away for his own good. This practice of assigning motivations to the gods, especially for seemingly inexplicable or dishonorable actions by heroes, is common in Greek myth, and is sometimes seen as a very early theory of emotions and psychology.  Well, the word used to be spelled C-L-E-W, and came from the old English word Cluen, which meant ball. Particularly a ball of string or yarn, and in some parts of Northern England and Scotland, it's still used in that sense. When writing about the story of Ariadne, Clue was the word English writers like Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century would use. There, too, have I a remedy in my thought that by a Clue of twine, as he hath gone, the same way he may return anon, following all way the thread as he hath come. In fact, this mythological reference was so common that it came to have a figurative sense, and gradually the literal meaning of a ball of thread disappeared, leaving only the meaning of that which points the way to a solution by around the 17th century. So, a whole new meaning for the word grew out of one specific narrative reference. Of course, the textile arts are a common thread in Greek myth, from the story of Ariadne and Theseus, to the spinning, measuring, and cutting of the metaphorical thread of life by the three fates, Clotho, Lycasus, and Atropos. The other really famous example is the story of Penelope, wife of Odysseus, one of the heroes at the Trojan War. During Odysseus' very long absence, a ten-year siege at Troy followed by a ten-year return journey home, Penelope had to fend off the advances of many suitors who wanted to marry her and take over the kingdom of Ithaca. One of the ploys Penelope used was to ask the suitors for a delay until after she finished weaving the death shroud for her father-in-law. Secretly each night, she unraveled the previous day's progress, thus ensuring it would never be complete, at least until her deception was discovered. Like Ariadne's clue, Penelope's unraveling became a common narrative reference, even in modern literature. But back to the word clue, it comes ultimately from an Indo-European root that meant to gather into a mass, conglomerate, or curl, and leads eventually through various language paths like Germanic, Latin, and Greek, to many modern English words, such as glue, globe, claw, clench, cling, and clay. Through Greek, we get the word neuroglia, or simply glia. The glial cells in the brain support and protect the neurons, the main brain cells involved in cognition, kind of gluing them together, hence the name, to collectively make up the gray matter of the brain. Though recent research suggests that the glial cells may also play a more active role in cognition, but neuroscientists still have a lot of threads to unpick before they'll have completely unraveled that mystery. We now often think of clues, at least in terms of detective fiction, as well as in real life criminology, as trace evidence, fibers from clothing, DNA, footprints, etc. that a criminal leaves behind at a crime scene. This idea in forensic science was first formulated by Edmund Locard that every contact will leave a trace, and the criminal will both leave behind and take away physical evidence which can be used to solve the crime. This is now known as Locard's exchange principle, and perhaps the most famous and transformative example of trace evidence, and the most cliched detective story clue is the fingerprint. The development of the science of fingerprinting in the 19th century is somewhat murky and mired in controversy. We'll start the story with Henry Foulds, a Scottish physician who went to Japan to found a hospital. While there, Foulds became friends with a naturalist, Edward Morse, who's study of shell mounds, basically dumping grounds for shells, had been praised by the likes of Charles Darwin. Morse had also become interested in Japanese pottery because of the fragments that were also often found in those shell mounds, and contributed significantly to the study of Japanese ceramics. Foulds accompanied his friend to the archaeological sites and noticed that he could see the labyrinthine pattern of ridges of the potter's fingerprints still visible on the surface of the fragments. Struck by this clue preserved in the clay, remember that clay comes from the same Indo-European root, he surmised that the pattern of these fingerprints was different for each individual and could be used to identify them. He began to study the matter, collecting fingerprints and experimenting, and determined that they were permanent and unchanging over a person's lifetime. Then one day, Foulds' hospital was burgled, and though the police suspected a staff member, Foulds believed in the person's innocence and used fingerprint evidence to prove it. Seeing the obvious importance of his discovery, Foulds brought his idea first to Charles Darwin, who passed it on to his cousin, Francis Galton. Galton, like his and Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a bit of a polymath. In fact, that's kind of the point with Galton, a member of the great Darwin-Wedgewood family. That's Wedgewood as in Josiah Wedgewood, noted not for studying pottery, but making it. The family was filled with bright lights, and Galton was interested in studying the inherited traits of talent and genius, coining both the concept and the word eugenics and the phrase nature versus nurture. Galton was also a counting fanatic and tried to quantify everything mathematically, including women's beauty, compiling a beauty map of Britain. Spoiler, London-rated highest, Aberdeen lowest, and the efficacy of prayer. Spoiler, none at all, and developed the science of statistics and the concepts of correlation, regression towards the mean, and standard deviation. So it's not surprising that he'd be interested in fingerprinting, except he wasn't at first. And when he did turn his attention to it some years later, he either ignored or forgot about the work of Foulds, leaving him feeling miffed and instead turned to the evidence of a man named William Herschel. Herschel years earlier, unbeknownst to Foulds, began using fingerprints not for criminal detection, but for contract verification. Herschel, and if his name sounds familiar, that's because he was the grandson of the famous astronomer of the same name who discovered Uranus and son of another famous astronomer, John Herschel. So I suppose genius ran in his family too. Herschel was an officer in India who, having trouble with people pretending their signatures had been forged, hit upon the idea of taking fingerprints as well as signatures on contracts to avoid this. Herschel had compiled a large collection of fingerprints, which he passed on to Galton, who established the scientific study of fingerprints and began a system for classification. Herschel later sent Galton's book on fingerprinting to an old friend in India, Henry Cotton, Chief Secretary of the Government of Bengal, who forwarded it to Edward Henry, the Inspector General of Police in Bengal. Henry started to implement fingerprinting for police purposes, but finding Galton's classification system too complex, developed with considerable help from two of his Bengali assistants, Azizal Haq and Hem Chandra Bose, a new simpler system, now known as the widely used Henry classification system.  In any case, in 1901, a fingerprint bureau was established by Edward Henry, now Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, and in 1902, a man named Harry Jackson became the first man in Britain to be convicted on the basis of fingerprint evidence for a thumbprint he left on a freshly painted windowsill. The crime, burglary and theft of a set of billiard balls. A few years later in 1905, the brothers Alfred and Albert Stratton were the first to be convicted of a major crime, robbery and murder of a paint shop owner due to a fingerprint they left on the cash box. But getting back to clues in detective fiction, the 1903 Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Norwood Builder by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set some years earlier in 1894 had already featured fingerprint evidence in a murder case, not to mention many other stories using trace evidence and other forensic techniques such as footprints, tobacco ash, and handwriting analysis. And notably, the distinctive types of clay found on people's shoes. Sherlock Holmes as a detective is in fact famous for solving crimes by searching for physical clues. Agatha Christie later on poked fun at Conan Doyle's famous detective, including a very Holmes-like character, a police detective named Monsieur Giraud in the novel Murder on the Links. Giraud is a meticulous clue finder whom Erkul Poirot calls a human foxhound and he is misled in the case by trace evidence. Poirot instead chooses to use his little grey cells, remember the neurons and glia of the grey matter and solves the case through criminal psychology. As he says, When you have two crimes precisely similar in design and execution, you find the same brain behind them both. I am looking for that brain Monsieur Giraud and I shall find it. Here we have a true clue, a psychological clue. You may know all about cigarettes and matches, Monsieur Giraud, but I, Erkul Poirot, know the mind of man. So, like the Greeks using their gods as explanations for people's actions, Poirot is concerned with the motivations behind the crimes and this brings us full circle back to ancient Greek myth which seems to have been a particular inspiration for Agatha Christie. Erkul Poirot's name is obviously reminiscent of the Greek hero Hercules whom Christie specifically recalls with her book titled The Labours of Erkul, playing on the myth of the 12 labours of Hercules and one of her recurring characters who is a mystery writer stand in for Christie herself is named Ariadne Oliver, bringing us back to the story of the labyrinth. And finally, recalling both the figures of Ariadne and Penelope and the importance of textiles in Greek myth is Miss Marple who is always knitting in her books. In the novel, the mirror cracked from side to side when she complains to her doctor about being old and having to recuperate from an illness, this conversation occurs. And even my knitting, such a comfort that has always been and I really am a good knitter. Now I drop stitches all the time and quite often I don't even know I dropped them. Hadock looked at her thoughtfully, then his eyes twinkled. There's always the opposite. Now what do you mean by that? If you count knit, what about unraveling for a change? Penelope did. I'm hardly in her position. But unraveling's rather in your line, isn't it? And so we followed the clue safely all the way through this labyrinth of etymology, myth, history, literature and science. I'll be back soon with more etymological explorations and cultural connections, so please subscribe to this channel. You can also sign up for email notifications of new videos in the description below. If you have comments or questions, I'm at alliterative on Twitter or leave them in the comment section. You can also read more of my thoughts on my blog at alliterative.net


Hi, I'm Akshath. I'm the founder of Blockvault. We are a WordPress backup service and we have been doing this for over six years.  Let's give it another shot. Sorry about that.  I just come back from my honeymoon and you guys must be thinking, oh, marriage is tough. Marriage is tough, but it's not that bad. So we are one dreadful morning. One morning I received this dreadful email from a big customer of ours who had many of his sites which had the Blockvault plugin installed on it getting hacked. Now if you are... If you build a plugin or if you deal with WordPress, you'd be like, you are used to thinking that maybe it's not really you who's causing the WordPress site to get hacked. Sites get hacked so often. So the first question we asked was, was it us? It must have been WordPress itself. That past week WordPress had a major vulnerability. I don't know if you remember, but WordPress 4.7.1 had a major content injection vulnerability and that had come out, that had been made public in the last week of January. So you're like, okay, maybe this is related to that. Investigating further, we saw a common pattern. We saw that many of our customer sites were getting hacked in a very similar manner. But how could it be us? We followed the best security practices. We did in-depth code reviews. It cannot be us. But it was. We had solved hacks earlier. We had helped our customers remove malware from their site. We had helped customers deal with really major WordPress vulnerabilities like Tim Thumb, Gravity Forms. These vulnerabilities had affected millions of sites across the world. We had helped many of our customers deal with this, but this was totally different. We were unprepared for this. We were the culprits here. But it was not as simple as that. Like there were questions to be asked. We knew that we were related to the problem. But was it a plugin which was the problem? Was it our servers? Did we get hacked ourselves? It was not clear. We did not know what to do. We did not know what to tell our customers. Even how to tell them, in fact. We had never, we would email our customers once in a blue moon and never really had done bulk emails to all our customers. So how do we even send bulk emails to such a large number of customers? Existing and old. We did not have anything in place. One thing we did know was that we are going to help every customer of ours. This was a complex situation. Every website is important and the customers by themselves have their everyday users of WordPress. Some of them are experts, but even then this is a difficult situation. And we knew that we had to help them. The other thing we knew was that there would be no hide-and-seek. We had to be truthful. The customers themselves had limited understanding of what was going on. And if we did not, if we were not truthful or if we withheld information, then that would make things only worse for customers. We knew these two things for sure that we had to do these two correctly. Beyond that, so once we had this, we were like, communications played a very major role. We had to come within the team to our partners, to all our customers. Communication, it was a stressful situation for each and every one of these within the team and outside. Communication we knew was extremely important. So once we reached out to our customers, everyone, the entire team, eight of us, jumped in and we started helping customers over different channels. Chat, email, even phone. We normally provided only email support, but now in this situation, every channel was being utilized for the customer support. But it's not that simple. We actually were just running around like headless chicken. There was utter chaos. Eight people doing eight different things. Emails were getting lost. Cleanups were being incomplete. Sometimes you would do the same task again and again. There was, at the beginning, it was just chaos all over. Fortunately, we soon realized that this situation cannot, the situation requires more thought. Cleaning up a few sites once in a while is easy. Something of this magnitude is not that straightforward. You need to set up plans. You need to set up processes. It can be as simple as creating a document which tells our customer how they can find the FTP details from the web host. To creating tools to identify malware. We were lucky in many ways that we had some extremely powerful tools within our company to help us deal with malware. But nonetheless, we had to build tools on the fly. So, communicating bad news itself is difficult. It is even worse when you don't know the exact reason. We knew that we were the problem, but we did not know exactly where the problem lied. And finding this is non-trivial. We did identify the problem, one of the problems early on. There's this function called unserialize. If you are developers, you would have definitely come across it. Don't stay away from that function. That's my one take away from this entire talk. We did patch it immediately, but we could not be sure. There were only 20,000-plus installs of LogVault. How could so many customers get in? So many sites get hacked if there are only 20,000-plus sites. Maybe we still had, our servers had been breached too. So we communicated the worst-case situation. In hindsight, this was a good thing and a bad thing. We did play it safe by communicating the worst-case situation. After our analysis, we realized that the cause was only the vulnerability in plug-in, but the message just stuck. So, like I mentioned, identifying whether your servers are hacked or not is non-trivial. It means going through terabyte of logs, non-trivial tasks. You have to build tools on the fly to identify this, but you have to be committed. We spent a month figuring this out, like going through and identifying whether something was wrong or not. You will get false positives.  It was just the plug-in. You will end up fixing it. When you are combing through your systems, you will find other issues and you will end up fixing them. Some of these are just distractions. I wished you could prioritize correctly, but sometimes you just, as things come your way, you fix the issues as you see them. Mistakes were made, many, many mistakes. We ended up mailing customers whose sites had already been cleaned. Some of them got angry. Many were confused. It was a very, very painful process. So we are making changes on the fly. We are doing these. We are building tools as we think of them. We are cleaning sites. All of this are complex processes. Make detailed notes as you are making these changes. You are touching your customer's sites. You are removing malware. Make detailed notes because they will help with communication. So there were a few lessons we learned as to what not to do for sure. Some of these are lessons which are easier said than done. The very first one, I don't think this requires rocket science, but do not panic. Again, easier said than done. We would panic and we would make more mistakes. Fortunately for us, there were a couple of people in our team who acted as anchors. They ensured that the team was calm and that helped us weather the storm. Do not shy away from the truth. Both internally and externally. Integrity is the key here. There are many situations which are difficult. Sometimes you need to make difficult decisions. When you know that you are going to be truthful, those decisions are easy to be weighed because there is only one answer in that case. When you are dealing with a hack or malware or any of these situations, it is difficult. It is very, very time consuming. And there is a tendency to just look inwards, huddle together, huddle the team together and just try and figure out how do you fix the issue. There is a huge strong tendency to do that. But remember, business is about customers. You need to prioritize them. Finally, I think one of the biggest things that we learned from this situation was how helpful the entire WordPress community was in the process. They helped in small and big ways. We reached out to security experts who came in, dropped by our offices, gave us perspectives on an urgent basis. Others who jump into a Skype call and review the emails we would send to our customers. Because these are complex communications and sometimes the way we would frame it would again be too internally focused. And having the community members look into it really helped us. Finally, customers will be your biggest supporters. They will be understanding and they will help you. Occasionally you will find a customer who is very demanding. You would want to run away from them. But no, jump into the call and deal with them. Some of them might even abuse you. But you must understand, they are going through a difficult situation. The websites have been hacked. The web hosts have shut them down. It is stressful for them. But overall, majority of them will be extremely kind. At least that has been our understanding. Finally, you will survive. And you will come out stronger. As in our case. Thank you. Thank you very much, Akshad. Well, we are open to the Q&A session if you want to ask anything. Yes, the gentleman at the back, please. Hi, thanks for the talk. So can you go into detail about what the hack specifically was and how they were able to get in and what you guys did to plug the hole? No. All right. So we use this function called unserialize. So if you know, in WordPress also, but in PHP you have a serialization mechanism, a data serialization mechanism called serialize and unserialize. Those are the two functions. Now, the way unserialize works is it is an inherently dangerous function to use. When used over an unauthenticated data or unverified data, it can cause a person to execute any code. It gives remote code exploitation. It opens itself, opens a plugin or a site up to remote code exploitation. So that was the case with us. Unwittingly, we had added unserialize to one version of our plugin and that caused our systems to be exploited. We immediately moved it out to a place where we knew that the input was verified and that solved the issue. But yes, we are not the only ones. After that, we have come across multiple articles being written which talks about how unserialize should be avoided at all costs, especially on unverified input. At that time, while we identified the issue, we could not be sure if this is the only issue. Our plugin is, we are a paid premium plugin, so we were present on 20,000 plus sites. Now, why would someone, so we thought our systems are compromised to be able to access these 20,000 plus sites? But then we realized that a hacker, the hacker in this particular situation just attacked thousands and millions of sites around the world. And when you do the math, you realize that it doesn't take that many resources to attack millions sites for an exploit. All right. Thank you, Akshath. So, as Akshath already mentioned, so the first thing that you shouldn't do is panic when such a thing happens, right? Because it's like your worst nightmare come true.  So if anybody else wants to ask any question because it's a very interesting topic. All right. You can catch him later maybe during the tea break later today if you want to ask anything more. Thank you, Akshath. Thank you very much.


Yes Thank you for being here And not only thank you for being here because you are going to take something With you you will not get right now from the web. I will provide you an overview About what is required as per January 2024 So what drone manufacturers need to fulfill in order their drones may be distributed or operated within the European Territory for the category open and category specific I will try to give you an idea how this process goes with a reference to the classical known CE declaration for any type of electronic goods I will also do a small step aside Coming to a market surveillance done a campaign on our PIS systems Very interesting outcome Which will also give a little bit more awareness about how serious this topic will be taken Then yes, you will get a Very small overview about us and have said where do we come from and how do we get let's say towards or got towards? certification of drones Then most important I think for most of you attending here is what about the standards? So what is available? What can I get so far from the web? What is preliminary? What is then what are the next steps and yeah, who has that latest information? We have certified drones for 1.5 years already you are going to ask yourself how is that possible? Well, there is a way out main pain points by by by manufacturers and also their investors And yeah, we will try to sum this up with some USPs from our perspective helping you and then maybe you have some questions at the end anyhow You can write an email. It's it's up to you So very important if you would like to bring any type of Electronical good into the European Territories sell it operate it whatever you need as CE declaration This is done by the manufacturer itself now in addition to this There needs to be a declaration as well about the conformity of the drone towards this delegated regulation Michael was referring to and this declaration has to be done by the drone manufacturer himself if this is there and Both labels more or less are on the product then the product may be sold and or operated within European territory so CE declaration Mostly known by all people It it's about topics like these red reach EMC MV etc. And the question is how is that done? Well, this declaration is not that easy. You don't have all that measurement equipment the facilities in house So mostly due to complexity these tests are performed by an external laboratory and In a similar way this will now also happen with the drone Certification respectively with the declaration then by the drone manufacturers about their classes So there are the following six classes defined in the category open Whereas you see the two red ones mentioned here will be primarily used in the category specific So also for flights beyond vision line of sight Definitions are made what has to be within a class one draw a zero drone below 250 grams one two and three four is like what you and I maybe as the hobby pilots are flying during the weekend and Five and six will be those drones flying beyond vision line of sight Maybe together with some standard scenarios with respect to the risk assessments Whereas I can say or we can conclude that Requirements towards the C5 and the C6 six drone are based on the ones of the C3 drone C1 C2 and C3 Anyhow need to be let's say Assessed by a notified body and for the other drones as well a declaration has to be made by the Drone manufacturer and how will this happen in reality again? and Notified organization may assess these drones and Provide let's say the information so that the drone manufacturer can declare that conformity. I Spoke about this. Let's say market viewed review that has been done in 2015 on RPS I will just click it through because there are many many things in there We can speak a lot about it, but in the end the story is 97 drones were taken from the market assessed over period about six months different ways how these Drones were taken from the market and with the focus on RTT These drones have been measured and that's the outcome 92 percent. Sorry guys. Take your drone off the market 82% do not fulfill RTT requirements. So now we have additional requirements, which are let's say all good Which are defined In the delegated regulation and underlining standards So we will see that something will happen here as well So there will be a market surveillance and supervisory done on this topic A few words about Nefzut. We were founded in 2006 in Brunswick Brunswick in the northern part of Germany very closely to Volkswagen and There has been a requirement together with the two of suit a technical service regarding precise positioning Velocity and also time and with our expertise. We could bring this so this joint venture has been set up in 2012 Due to let's say market requirements and also it was fitting to the to suit organization reshaping We became independent so we could also offer our let's say know-how and also services to other technical services and complete their requirements toward the market Now we are bringing in our know-how Into norming groups like you see them here Dean Etsy etc Then we were also delegated by them to international organizations like the ISO for example So since 2006 working 2012 100% owned by Ocon We had to fulfill certain requirements So we could be continuing our work with the to suit technical service But also for other technical services around the world and therefore we need to be accredited as a laboratory According to the ISO 17 025 That's an interesting point Because this is already one basis of our business The second let's say poll in our organization then is now the certification of drones and therefore we have an Organization which is accredited according to the 17 065 done by the German accreditation body and based on that positive accreditation by the German a feral Asian Federal aviation agency we have been notified to Certified drones in Europe. There are only five companies that are notified. So they may assess those drones And you can compare this assessment with a homologation of a car So a car if you would like to sell or operate cars or drive cars or bring cars into the European territory They must be homologated now. It's a quite similar process for the drones Of those five only four of them have so far at least according to the latest is a is a report certified drones and Only one of them has certified more than drones from one supplier very interesting there as well plus only three of them are Somehow able capable and notified to assess drones that may fly beyond vision line of sight Very important site information So in a nutshell said that what we are doing with drones is a very core topic. It's very defined It's according to the delegated regulation the underlying standards and so on There is a much broader scope. We will not go into that detail here But that was the original reason why we were always attending the intergeal To support services required for let's say the pure original intergeal marketing so what about nevcord and now this this Yeah, information about and in relation to two drones. So yes indeed like we did in the other segments history for vehicles for example emergency call we nevcord we actively Supported in writing the standards so coming from our hand. That's in a very important message also with respect to the standards here the En 4709 standards there are many standards around some of them you can buy we will see in one of the slides later on But if you obtain them, you are definitely not having the latest Version of the standard there are modifications and you can understand with our experience from 2006 2012 until 2022 where we got became the notified body that of course we have brought in our expertise But also our testing methods with all this legacy into these standardization Based on the fact that there are notified bodies that usual in Europe then the Commission says there needs to be a committee Set up and the notified bodies within Let's say that scope have to Let's say elect a chair of this notified bodies group and chair and this committee don't mix it up with these Laboratories that are accredited that need to do inter-laboratory Tests in order to achieve similar and comparable results same as also on let's say the certification bodies now There is one committee on top which has also to address let's say more or less all these topics By the way, there is no certification body that has in-house an own laboratory which is accredited three weeks ago we have been Accredited with a flexible scope meaning would in the future something changed with respect to the standard We can modify our test schemes ourselves Release them and from our certification body. We can grab in there and we can go by this very important Message for you as well. If you are a drone manufacturer about the scope I don't or need do not need to tell much because it's the entire scope everything under the delegated regulation underlying standards We can support here and we are accredited to Perform tests there. This is most important slide. I think for you guys here joining this session So if you go and you search for standards And you would like to be conformed with the standards You will find something like this with these dates and if you start to define Let's say your specifications based on this and also your drone based on this. I have to say Thank you These are the latest versions And I have them because I modified them and I know these are the dates We did the latest modification thereafter has been no modifications now. It's up To the authorities to make out of these standards the harmonized standard And if they will get the date let's see for the first one the general test June 2023 or they make it November 2023. I don't care, but the content is that what I have Who has this else? Yeah, if they if somebody was writing in that group, they might have it. I Doubt that because not many people were joining there. There are worse some joining. Yes These guys have it but the others don't have it and this is also a fact Some other Notified bodies the same is also for those don'ts that will fly beyond vision line of sight the black one Information you might find in the market the blue ones not so question We are going to speak to quite clear. We can skip that one now since we have here that the Let's say the delegated regulation has been postponed already by one year since January 2023 till January 2024 the question is What did we provide firstly to our clients and secondly? How could we support them in getting drone certified? How the hell it is possible to certifies drones if you have a not an harmonized standard? Well, I answer these questions first I jump into the topic if you have specifications we can check if the Specification of your drone matches the delegated regulation and underlying standards having the latest version I can do so Yeah, of course, I take a risk and I'm prepared to take a risk because I write the standards. I know what's in there I can take that risk We have found out During these of course that the standards or the specifications did not match with the standards. Yeah, so 95 percent Troubles 90 percent documentation what not complete even interpretation of the standards Totally wrong right very interesting points. We found issues with DRI. That's the broadcasting Let's say of of of the drone here This is me and also interesting due to the fact that we are the experts on precise positioning time and so on We found many issues with respect to positioning. So do caging do fencing a lot of issues. We found there This is how we could Let's say tell clients. Hey guys, you will have a gap here. This is the standard This is what is the request and not what you wrote there Then we also could perform some pre-testing for some clients. It said in this area We are not so no, not so sure we would like to see how this will happen in a real test environment based on this we can approach the market and Provide certainty because we know what is the latest standard We know what will be tested because our test schemes have been accredited by the ducks and we were notified as a Certification body. So we know exactly how the test will be performed. How much time it take what will happen So it should be a clear point. What is the cost of such a test? Clearly can be answered and that's exactly what we did we can then also of course take care that The drones will be complying with the with the standards even they are not published yet This is an interesting point. Usually I I know it. It's just the way You need to be ready with your certification by then, please. So it's always right now Senders your documentation and we are waiting send us your documentation, please. We are waiting now. So this is Today still the point, but we would like to be ready in time and then we have the clarity about course so entire Let's say delegated regulation Underlying categories C0 till C6 whether fixed-wing whether copter multi copter doesn't matter We can certify those drones provide the gap analysis to check if your drone fulfills the requirement already today At a calculable risk straightforward fully transparent according to the latest standards And if you have questions here drop your email or grab me later on here Thank you


Dono and Dukar have escaped from the city of Tor. Jeanette, quartered in the palace among Artea's serving women, agrees to find and give to Wong Tai the key to the Queen's Treasure Cave, providing that he will, through his influence over Artea, prevent the combat between Mungo, chief of the Torian warriors, and Tarzan. Dono and Dukar locate the camp of the Torian jungle patrol, climb the stockade under cover of night, and make their way cautiously through the sleeping camp toward the picket line of riding elephants. In the jewel pits to which Tarzan and O'Rourke have been condemned, Kailuk, a Rathorian slave, reports to Tarzan that the ape man's plan of a mutiny among the slaves has been eagerly accepted by the prisoners who look to Tarzan for leadership. As the ape man and Kailuk discuss the plan, the huge entrance gates to the pits swing open. Seated in a houda, strapped to the back of an enormous elephant, Artea and Jeanette ride into the enclosure followed by Mungo, Wong Tai, and several nobles of the Queen's Retinue. As Artea taunts the ape man and O'Rourke, the elephant upon which she and Jeanette are mounted takes fright and stampede directly toward one of the deep-open pits. Holy Saint Patrick Tarzan, the blutes headed straight for the pit. Mungo can't stop him. If the base falls into that pit, Jeanette will be killed.  Slaves and guards alike leap from the path of the frightened beast as it swiftly nears the edge of the pit. Swift as an arrow from a bow, Tarzan's beats along beside the great beast. With a mighty bound, he leaps into the air, catches a projection on the gilded houda, and the next instant drops astride the huge neck. His fright evaporating like mist onto the sun at the soothing friendly voice, the great elephant checks its speed. He turns away from the brink of the pit and drops to a slow, shuffling walk. Oh, Tarzan, you're not hurt. You saved my life, Tarzan of the apes. Any demand you make within reason shall be granted. I have done nothing. I demand nothing. But do you not understand? You have saved me, Artea, Queen of Tor, from death. Not to mention, Jeanette. Jeanette Burton is a slave. Her death would mean nothing to the welfare of my subjects. But I am the Queen, whose death would mean much, my Tarzan, to you and your friend. How are they? How are they all right, Tarzan? Jeanette? All right, O'Rourke. No harm done. I'll get down now. Stay where you are, Tarzan of the apes. Mungo, la handa puka, a step for the Hada. Bring them. Jeanette Burton, get down. But stay within call. What do you want, Artea? You, Tarzan of the apes, I want you to accept the kingship of Tor. I thought we had settled that question, Artea. I'm sorry. I wouldn't be satisfied to stay here in Tor, even as king. Instead of offering you my throne and myself, I should or do you all put to death at once. You have spurned me, scorned my love, made a fool of me before my subjects. Be careful, my Tarzan, that you do not drive me too far. Mungo and those others would gladly cast you into the fires of Tor. Why don't you give them the order, then? Listen, Tarzan of the apes. I could have had you killed long ago had I wished it. But when I first saw you, I knew you to be the man I had seen in my dreams. I knew you were fit to be the mate of Artea. I would teach you love, Tarzan. Love... Yes, I know. You told me that before. And if you remember, I told you that friendship must come before love. You've been anything but friendly to me and my friends. That can all be changed at a word from you.  Then you shall come to me. You need not to remain in this slave pit. It is not for such as you, my Tarzan. I'm satisfied to stay here. Artea, my friends come first. I am here to rescue them and friendship is sacred, which you should know. But love, Tarzan, such as I offer you... Wait. If those people don't go free, I will have failed in my trust. However, I'll neither stay nor leave without them. You threatened me, Tarzan of the Apes? Would you, weather slave? But we've gone over this before. The decision rests with you.  When I have seen my friends safely out of the jungle, you have my word that I'll come back. And once out of sight of tour, you would quickly and conveniently forget your promise. No, no, my Tarzan. You say the decision rests with me. Good. To let them go is a little matter, if you stay. Do you agree? For the last time, yes or no? No.   You forget that two of them have already escaped you. They will be found. They and these others shall be fed to the fires of tour. In the jungle stockade of the Torian mounted patrol, Dhanu and Uka move, poisonous as shadows, along the wall toward the barred gateway in the line of picketed elephants. The sounds of the heavy breathing in the deep snores of sleeping men come faintly to their ears from the long, dark, open shelter in the center of the enclosure. High above in the blue vault of the heavens, the myriad stars begin to lose their twinkling brilliance in the diffused, silvery light of the rising moon. In the lead, Uka approaches suddenly close to the ground, motions Donald down beside him. There, in the shadow beside the gate, do you see? What is it? The god. He sits leaning against that post close to the first elephant. Can you not see him? But no, not clearly. The fire has burned so low, and the shadows are so deep. Look closely. It is necessary that you see exactly where he is. Tene, oh, moment. Ah, now I see. Just beyond the first elephant in the picket line, between him and the gate, n'est-ce pas? He is facing the center of the stockade. There is room to pass behind him. That will be too dangerous, unless the fellow is asleep. He will undoubtedly hear any sounds made so close to him. There must be no sound. If there is, he will not hear it. Then we must wait for him to sleep. There is no time for that. The moon is already up. Soon it will shine down into the stockade. We must be away by then. Ah, mongria. I told you it would not be easy to steal an elephant from the midst of the toria and patrol, even though they be asleep. We shall be recaptured, if we feel it. Do exactly as I say, Dono, and it will be simple. We shall not be recaptured. Allure, I am ready. What am I to do? We go forward. Stay close behind me. Keep as close to the ground as you can. When I touch you, remain where you are, until you see that I have quieted the guard. And go to the gate. Open it as quickly as you can, and as with this little noise. Don't, don't do it. And then? Then join me beside the first elephant in the line. Bien, bien, I understand. Come then, follow, and keep down near the ground. Blending with the deep shadow beside the wall of the stockade and the darker ground, Ukah and Dono, like creeping death, work their way noiselessly toward the drowsily nodding torian. Ukah fastens his narrowed alert gaze on the face of the unsuspecting guard. Closer, closer, until only a few yards separate him from the yellow giant. A touch of the ratorian's foot against Dono's shoulder, and the Frenchman sinks to the ground, becomes motionless. Inch by inch, Ukah moves forward. The torian war spear held close up under the blade in his right hand. Directly behind the drowsy guard, he pauses, lifts himself into a crouch. At the whisper of sound, the torian starts, leans suddenly forward. Instantly, Ukah's muscular yellow arm and circles the man's throat to cope back to warning cry. The blade of the heavy spear sinks to the half in the broad yellow back between the shoulders. The gate, Dono, break haste! Dono leaps to his feet. In half a dozen strides, he reaches the gate, thrusts back the heavy bar from its sockets, swings wide the creeping barrier. A moment later, he crouches beside Ukah, who fumbles at the picket chain of a great blue-black elephant. Vite, vite mon ami, that fellow's cry may have been heard. The chain is locked. To Malay, quick, go to the guard. He will have a pouch as it belt. The key. The press that we are caught now, we are locked. Make haste, Dono. Make haste. Vite, vite, you say, make haste. And I am doing just that. Ah, voila, Leclerc, je l'enlée. Here, here is the key. Now, hurry. This is not the key. It does not turn. Sacre, it must be. There was no other. Oh, mon Dieu. Look, that fellow's cry was heard. There, you see, won't you? The men are coming from the shelter, looking this way. I have it unlocked. Here, Dono, on the elephant kneels and lowers his trunk, climb up to his neck. Oroc, nanda, oroc. The low voice's familiar words of command. A huge beast sinks awkwardly to one knee, lowers its trunk to the ground. Swiftly, Dono scrambles to a seat as stride the barrel-like neck to be followed instantly by Yuka. Bada, look there. The entire patrol is aroused, and they are coming. Get close behind me, Dono. Nanda, nanda, nanda, nanda, nanda. Whom, lo, lo, lo, nanda. You know the sheer? This brute moves as though he were on parade. They will have us in one little moment. Oh, hurry, gays and Ouka. Whom, nanda, pomm, pomm, nanda, nanda. Cheyor, Cheyor. There, Ouka. Be quick or we are lost!