Let me also tell you a few other things related to this. I remember I mentioned, so we wrote out the LP for, we wrote out the LP duality theorem assuming this particular form, this particular form for the primal LP that we took it as standard form because every problem can be reduced to this sort of standard form and then you get it, you can and this was the dual of that particular, of the standard form LP, if you have a LP which is not in standard form, if you have LP not in standard form, not in standard form, so for example, say suppose you have a LP that looks like this, say suppose you have a LP that is, say suppose this is your LP, now what is the dual of this one? It turns out, so the way to get to the dual, so this LP would, this primal will also have a dual. Now its dual will not take the same form as the standard form dual, its dual will take a different form, but the way to get there is that you can convert this to standard form, then do a dual of standard form and usually after this some manipulations are needed, because usually this will lead to some redundant variables which you can eliminate easily and so on, do a few manipulations if possible and then that gives you, that will give you the dual of, that will give you a dual problem. Now what is the dual of this one? It turns out it is maximizing B transpose Y, A transpose Y less than equal to C and Y greater than equal to C, this is the form of the dual of this particular LP. You can, as I said consider many other different linear programs and find their standard, find their duals by just converting them to this sort of, converting them to standard form and then manipulations and so on. Yes, yes, this is the same A as this A, the B is the same as this B, C is the same as this C. Yes, some variables will get dropped, yes it is possible that some variables will get dropped, no, so it will come, you can bring it down to this form. So this is also another sort of settle point, see an optimization problem can have many different forms that are all giving the same optimal value. Remember at the end of the day the duality theorem only pertains to the value of the optimization problem. You can always introduce additional variables, manipulate, remove variables, etc., etc., while not changing the optimal value. So there is no fixed form for an optimization problem, that is the matter, but all we know is that yes, this is a form for the dual. So this is how you can, if you have a LP that is not in standard form, then you can, this is the road by which you can get it dual. So as the last topic on linear programming, let me mention to you one other thing which is another type of problem which comes up, which can be written as a linear program. That problem is problem of shortest path. So the problem that I wrote here in this, the network problem here was that you had an old phone and you had a new phone, you want to transfer data from an old phone to the new phone, but then the links that over which the data could flow had limitations of capacity. So you could not push data beyond a certain MB per second along these links. So there is a different type of problem which is of the following kind that you have a source node, you have a destination node. Say the source node is say Mumbai and the destination node is say suppose Delhi, you have, you can go from this source node to this destination node over many different possible paths. One way is that you can go till, you can fly till somewhere here, then you can go, then you can go by, then take another flight and get to Delhi. Another way is that you can go by, you can go from S to some other intermediate node, then you fly till here or you then fly directly to Delhi from here. Another possibility is you can go from here to here and then go there to here, etc, etc, etc. So then you can see there are numerous possible ways by which you can go from one node, from the source node to the destination node. So now if you have this kind of, if you have a general network like this, the problem which we are asked, what we have to, what we want to ask here is what is the shortest path. So every link here suppose has a length or a cost associated with it. So the length say for every i and j, every i and j has a cost, cost C ij, these are all directed edges. There is a cost to go from i to j, cost C ij to, and what we want to know is what is the, what is the route from S to T of minimum cost. What is the route from S to T of minimum cost? Now this is the problem that we end up solving every day when we use Google Maps to find the route from point A to point B. This is exactly what Google Maps is ending up solving for you. It is assuming the cost as say the travel time from i to j. Now if you are within the city, maybe travel time is all you care about in another, when you are travelling from one, from intercity you are caring also about, also about to say tolls, maybe if you are driving on toll road or your cost of a ticket if you are changing modes of transport in between etc. So you can define cost in whichever way you like. So long as you have one consistent notion of cost, this problem can be posed in this particular way. Now we want to know what is the shortest, shortest in the sense of, in the sense of the total cost that you would incur of a route from S to T. So the cost of a route from S to T is simply the S to T is in sum of Cij where i, j is in the, so whenever i, j is an edge that you use in the route it costs you Cij and the cost of the entire route is the sum of all these Cij that are where i, j lies in the route. This is the cost of travelling from i to j. Now here you can see how intuitively how would you solve a problem like this. See if you want to go from Mumbai to Delhi you can see already this simple little graph is a extremely complicated graph. How would you solve a problem like this?  I have, you basically have to enumerate a huge number of possibilities and to try to get to the shortest path. Now that seems like, it seems like an extremely complicated optimization over so many because even just enumerating all the possible paths itself would take you a lot of time. And then listing them all out just simply enumerating all the paths and then try and then trying to find which is the one that is of least cost. Now it turns out this can be solved using linear programming in a very very elegant manner. So let me explain how that is done. So on the routes here now I have, say if I have a node i and a node j here I have a cost cij written for that particular link there. Now I want you to, before I write out the linear program I want you to appreciate the difference between this problem which is the shortest path problem and the problem of maximum flow. The problem of shortest path is simply says I want the shortest path from go to go from S to D without, but every when I travel on any edge in the path, any edge or any link ij on the path it cost me something. There is a certain toll or a certain fee that I have to pay, but there is the capacity is virtually infinite like any amount of flow can go on. So the problem, whereas the other problem there is no cost associated with traveling from i to j, but there is a limitation of capacity where you cannot send more than a certain amount of flow. So you can think of capacity and cost as two different things capacity is how many cars say a road can take capacity of that road. So the cost of traveling on that road is the toll you have to pay for traveling on it. These are two very different things. There are finitely many nodes yes, there are finitely many nodes that you can by which you can and we want to know the shortest path on that particular from source to a destination. No, no, no. So even in a real life problem you need to model it in such a way that it brings it you have finitely many nodes and finitely many decisions to make. So even though there are, the point is even though there are just finitely many, the number is too large. If you just think of all the possible routes you can take, the number of combinations you can make is immense. But what is very nice is you can actually solve this using linear programming in a very clean way. So as I was saying there are two, these are two different problems. The first problem is that of the earlier problem which is the maximum flow problem is about sending the maximum flow over capacity constrained networks. That is about finding the bottleneck. This problem is there is no bottleneck. You can set as much flow as you like. But the which links will you choose is the question. Because the links that you will choose based on the links you will choose you will incur a cost. So now since the cost and the cost here we will, what we will do is say let us say let me write this in this sort of way. Now suppose just imagine suppose I had one unit of flow entering S, just one unit. Some one unit of goods say one truck or whatever, one unit of goods let us not one truck, one unit of goods entering node S and which has to reach a node T. So it enters here and has to reach T. Whenever this flow, one unit of flow reaches any particular node say it reaches this node I, it has a decision to, there is a decision we need to make which is that out of all the links that are going out from node I which one should I pick. Now suppose at node I I have these links which have costs say 10, 20 and 30. These are the costs of the links not capacity costs of the links which and suppose from I know that from here let us say for simplicity from here this is the cost that I would incur say if I came here and then from here if I had to go all the way till here is suppose the cost I would incur someone told me this number that here is the cost I would incur if I came here. So if I came to node I and I chose this particular this particular link it would cost me 20 to get to Delhi if I chose this particular link it would cost me 10 to get to Delhi the other one would cost me 30 to get to Delhi not just to the next node I am taking suppose all the way till Delhi for simplicity. In that case how where would you send your flow? You would send the flow on to the one that is that has the least possible cost of all of these naturally the reason is because the links do not have any capacity constraint there is no reason for you when the flow arrives at a particular node there is no reason for you to split the flow across multiple edges you would auto you will always pick the one that the pick the one that has the least possible cost to reach the destination from there on. So this simple observation is all that we actually need here. So let us write let us write out the some variables and I will explain to you how this works out. So suppose suppose X ij so suppose I am sending so imagine one into node s.  So what is the objective in expressed in terms of X ij suppose I had a if I have so if I am sending flow X ij on link ij what we will use this interpretation and it will later turn out that this is actually correct. So we will have this interpretation that this is equal to 0 if i, j is not on the chosen path and one otherwise. So it will turn out that if it is not on the shortest path then I X ij would be 0 which means that it will not send any flow on and if it is on the shortest path it will have to send the full flow on it. So the reason for that is exactly what I just said whenever the flow arises arrives at a particular node if it you look at the cost that it has to incur to get to the final destination and the path that will give you the least possible cost. The entire flow will go on to that path it has to be. So if at all a flow is there on a path that path must be the one that encounters the least cost it cannot be that part of it is there here part of it is there, part of it is there in or on another path. So now let X ij be the flow on link i, j and it will have the we will take this interpretation that will be 0 if i, j is not on the chosen path and one otherwise. So the objective is to simply then in these terms is to minimize. So what is this? This is the total cost of a chosen path and now all I need to make sure is that these flows satisfy my flow conservation constraints. So I look at X j, so my flow conservation constraints again my inflow is sum over j such that ij belongs to E this is the inflow, inflow into i then I have a sum over j and this is not ij this should be j i belongs to E, this is ij belongs to E this is this should be equal this is 1 if i is the source node, 0 if i is neither the source node nor the destination node and minus 1 if i is the if i is the is the destination node is this correct sorry my mistake here sorry this should be the other way around this should be minus 1 here that is correct. So this should be minus 1 if i is the source node because so that positive 1 inflow into i so that is correct it is minus 1 this would be it would be 0 at all nodes except for the source node and destination node and it would be equal to 1 at the outflow and we have that X ij is greater than equal to 0. So what have we done we have taken a problem of shortest path and of which was about which was about trying to enumerate all the possible paths in the network and trying to find the shortest path and we have converted it into a problem of finding of minimizing the cost of flow. He said let us imagine a unit flow that was sent in if a unit flow sent in and it had to follow my flow conservation equations what would be the path it would choose it is almost like you know you are sending a flow of water and it is trying to find the path of least resistance or least to go from a particular source to a destination. You solve this and it turns out that this actually gives you the shortest path. So this is a linear programming formulation of a problem that on the face of it looks extremely complicated just you know if you had to enumerate all the possible path would be a horrendously complicated problem but knowing the knowing but with this sort of way of looking at it we are able to reduce it to a linear programming problem. There are many other such problems that end up getting reduced to linear programming that is why linear programming is such an extremely powerful tool across all of engineering and science. So with this we conclude our study of linear programming what I have not touched upon at all is algorithms for linear programming because I plan to come to that next but what I want you to remember the biggest takeaway I want you to remember from linear programming is linear programming duality and associated Farkash lemma. So Farkash lemma is something that we will use again and in one shot you will see how that gives us also optimality conditions for any type of convex optimizations so that is that would be next on the agenda. The form of there is another form of let me mention this also so there is another form of Farkash lemma which we will different form which will be very useful in the in the next lecture. So let A in R m cross n and C belong to R n then the following statements are equivalent for all x such that A x is less than equal to 0 we have C transpose x less than equal to 0 for all x such that A x is less than equal to 0 we have C transpose x less than equal to 0 and then there exists A lambda greater than equal to the other statement. So the Farkash lemma is saying that there are two statements that are equivalent the first statement is that for all x such that A x is less than equal to 0 we must have C transpose x less than equal to 0 the second statement is that there exists a lambda greater than equal to 0. So, lambda is in R m lambda greater than equal to 0 such that A transpose lambda equals C. So, this statement is essentially this this version of Farkash lemma is a different form of of of stating Farkash lemma this is not stating it in the form of two statements out of which only one can be true rather it is saying that these two are equivalent. These are two equivalent ways of saying the same thing one is that for all x such that A x is less than equal to 0 we have C transpose x less than equal to 0. The other is saying that there always is a lambda greater than equal to 0 such that A transpose lambda is equal to C right. So, what this basically is if you look at the second statement what it is saying is that it says is that C is in the cone generated by the columns of A transpose C is present in the cone generated by the columns of A transpose. So, you can always find a conic combination of the columns of A transpose such that the that conic combination equals C right. The first statement says something completely different it says that A x whenever A x is less than equal to 0 it has to be that C transpose x is also less than equal to 0. So, columns of A transpose is consider a cone formed by the columns of A transpose that contains C that is one statement the other statement says that if you look at the if you look at vectors x such that such that A x is less than equal to 0 then they must make an obtuse or greater than equal to 90 degree angle with C C transpose x less than equal to 0. It turns out these two are actually equivalent. So, this is this is another form of Arka Schlemmer and we will this again can be proved using linear programming duality again you have to think of the right sort of linear program look at its dual and again you will be able to argue from that. In fact, you may even be able to prove linear programming duality itself from linear form this particular Arka Schlemmer. So, without you know going through preparating hyperplanes and so on. So, the first principles proof of this Arka Schlemmer would be as hard as LP duality itself. So, the important thing the reason I mentioned is now is that remember this we will use this in a definitive way in the next class. So, we will end it.


Good evening as friends, welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankarayesh Academy for the date 21st of August 2023. Displayed here are the list of news articles we will be going through today. Now before getting into the discussion, I have an important announcement to make. The much awaited pre-storming test series of Shankarayesh Academy is about to start. It is going to start from 21st of September and the first test is on 18th of September. The other details regarding the test series are displayed here. You can go through it. Now without wasting time, let's start the discussion. Take a look at this article from yesterday's newspaper. The Chief Justice of India has recently released a handbook. This handbook provides guidance on how to avoid using harmful gender stereotypes, especially those about women. It identifies language that promotes such stereotype and suggests alternative words that are more neutral and more inclusive. So in our discussion, we will discuss what are the changes made by the Supreme Court and how it will help in tackling gender stereotypes. Before getting into the discussion, I have highlighted the syllabus regarding this discussion for your reference. You can go through it. First, you have to know that this handbook was titled as Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes. What is the objective of this handbook? The goal of this handbook is to encourage use of language that reflects a more respectful understanding of gender. It also provides equal rights for all individuals regardless of their gender. Ultimately, it aims to promote a gender-sensitive language and tries to eliminate gender stereotyping. Here I have mentioned the word gender stereotyping. What is gender stereotyping and what are the negative impacts of gender stereotyping on society? See, gender stereotyping is the practice of assigning certain characteristics, words or behavior to a person based on their gender. These stereotypes can have a significant impact on how people are treated and perceived. For example, a common stereotype is that women are more emotional than men. This stereotype can lead to women being dismissed or ignored in the workplace, or it can make it difficult for them to get the same opportunities as men. Another common stereotype is that men are better at math and science than women. This stereotype may discourage girls from pursuing careers in these fields. Gender-based violence, harassment and discrimination are often rooted in gender stereotypes. These stereotypes are harmful because they lead to discrimination and prejudice, and it can also lead to normalization of these harmful behaviors. Gender stereotypes often result in unequal pay and disparities in the workforce. So, it is important to challenge gender stereotypes in order to create a more inclusive and a more equitable society. Now, let us come back to the handbook released by the Supreme Court. We shall see what are the important changes made by the handbook. The handbook made many changes regarding the use of certain words in the judiciary. For example, the handbook suggests using the phrase, woman who are engaged in sexual relations outside of marriage instead of the word adulterous. It also suggests using words woman and wife without the prefixes chast and obedient. The handbook also provides more inclusive words such as partner instead of husband or wife. It says that, judges and legal practitioners should be aware of the way they describe people's role in the society. For example, instead of housewife, use the term homemaker. The handbook also advises to be mindful of the pronouns. For example, it suggests using the pronoun they instead of he or she. Some other examples like this are given in this picture. You can go through it. Now, why it is important for judges to use proper language? The words used by judges are important because it has significant impact on how the law is interpreted and applied. It can be used to uphold the values of the law and to promote equality and justice. For example, if a judge uses gendered language such as manpower or fireman, it can reinforce the idea that certain roles and occupations are only suited for men. Similarly, if a judge uses stereotypical languages such as historical or emotional, it can reinforce the idea that women are less capable and less rational than men.  The handbook argues that it is important for the judges to use gender neutral and inclusive language whenever possible. Let us see some of the significance of the handbook in combating gender stereotyping. First is ensuring fairness and impartiality. Judges are supposed to be impartial arbiters of law. The language they use should not deflect their own personal biases or opinions. The second one is promoting equality and justice. The language that judges use should not reinforce stereotypes or discrimination. It should be inclusive and respectful of all people. The third important significance is to uphold the rule of law. Stereotypical language can harm the application of the law and undermine the constitutional principles of equality and dignity. Since our legal system is based on the principle of equality, the language used in courts should reflect this principle. Now we shall see some of the Supreme Court judgments that condemn gender stereotyping in the past. The first one is the Joseph Schein West Union of India case. In this case, the Supreme Court struck down the offence of adultry under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code. The court said that the law on adultry was a codified rule of patriarchy and it confined women to a narrow sphere in the behaviour. This is the first important judgment. The second one is the state of Jharkhand West Shailendra Kumar Roy case. In this judgment, the Supreme Court put a categorical ban on the two-finger test.  Then in the state of Punjab West Gurumith Singh case, the court observed that the testimony of the survivor or victim of sexual violence is inherently credible. The court said that the allegation should not be disposed simply because of assumptions that women often falsely accuse men. See these are some verdicts that are important in challenging the gender stereotypes and promoting gender equality. Now coming to the conclusion part. See language is a vital tool for the law because language expresses the values and intentions of the lawmakers and the judges. So it is important for the judges and the judiciary to be aware of the impacts of their words and they have to use their words very carefully. This release of handbook is the first important step in creating gender neutral language in the Indian judiciary. As our Chief Justice rightly mentioned, the language a judge uses reflects not only their interpretation of the law but their perception of the society as well. With this note, let us conclude this discussion. In this discussion, we saw what is gender stereotyping, the negative impacts of gender stereotyping in the society. Then we saw some changes made by the handbook and we saw the positive impacts these changes will bring to the judiciary. And finally, we saw some judgments given by the Supreme Court that reinforces gender equality. With this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Take a look at this article from yesterday's newspaper. According to the article, new studies on the wolf riot star has revealed that it might produce a magnetar after the supernova explosion. This is about the article given here. So in our article discussion today, let us quickly go through what is a supernova and what is a magnetar.  It is the largest explosion that can take place in the space. As you know, stars are celestial bodies that emit their own light. A very good example for a star is the sun. See, these stars are formed in a cloud of gas and dust, which is known as a nebula. Though the stars shine for many thousands or even millions of years, the stars do not last forever. Over the time, changes occur in the star and the final stages of the star's life depends on the star's size. Here in the image, you can see how the star develops into a supernova. Okay, a supernova explosion happens when there is a change in the core of a star. Changes can occur in two different ways, both resulting in a supernova. See, the first type of supernova happens in a binary star system. Binary stars are two stars that orbit the same point. One of the stars, which is a carbon-oxygen white dwarf, steals matter from its companion star. Eventually, the white dwarf accumulates too much matter. When a star has too much matter, it explodes, resulting in a supernova. This is the first type. The second type of supernova occurs when a single star comes to the end of its lifetime. As the star runs out of nuclear fuel, some of its mass flows into its core. The core eventually becomes too heavy to withstand its own gravitational force. The core collapses, which results in the giant explosion of a supernova. The interesting fact here is that our very own sun can develop into a supernova. But remember, the sun does not have enough mass to become a supernova. So instead, our sun might develop into a planetary supernova. Okay, see, during the supernova explosion, the core collapses and crushes together every proton and electron into a neutron. If the core of the collapsing star is between one and three times the mass of the sun, then the newly formed neutrons can stop the collapse, resulting in leaving behind a neutron star. But if the core has mass more than that, it will continue to collapse into a stellar mass black holes. Okay, so depending on the size of the star, the star might turn into a neutron star after a supernova explosion. Or if it is heavy enough, it might turn into a black hole after the supernova explosion. Okay, see, the neutron stars can be observed in two forms. One is the pulsar and the other is the magnetars. These two classes of neutron stars are called non-quiet neutron stars. Here, pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. These neutron stars blast out pulses of radiation at regular intervals. Intervals may range from seconds to milliseconds. They have very strong magnetic fields which pushes out jets of particles along the two magnetic poles. These accelerated particles produce very powerful beams of light. Since the magnetic field is not aligned with the spin axis, these beams of particle and light are dumped around as the star rotates. Okay, now coming to magnetars. See, in a typical neutron star, the magnetic field is trillion times the Earth's magnetic field. But in a magnetar, the magnetic field is another thousand times stronger than a neutron star.  Also, in all neutron stars, the crust of the star is locked together with the magnetic field. So, any change in one will affect the other.  But since the crust and magnetic fields are tied together, that explosion ripples through the magnetic field. In a magnetar with its huge magnetic field, any movement in the crust can cause the magnetar to release a vast amount of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. For example, a magnetar called SGR180620 had a burst where in one-tenth of a second, it released more energy than our sun has emitted in the last one lakh years. Such powerful will be the explosion when it happens in a magnetar due to a movement in the crust. Okay, understand this. So, that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw what is a neutron star, we saw what is a supernova and we also saw some points about pulsar and magnetars. Now, with this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this news article. Yesterday, Russia's Roscosmos Space Agency said that the Lunar 25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after its pun into uncontrolled orbit. Lunar 25 is a pilotless spacecraft and it was launched to land in the South Pole area of the moon. Scientists all over the world show interest in this region because of the occurrence of water ice in the region. It had been expected to land on August 21, but its contact was lost on August 19 itself. This is due to its collusion with the surface of the moon. See, only three governments have managed successful moon landings which include Soviet Union, the United States and China. After the disintegration of USSR, Lunar 25 is the first lunar mission of Russia since 1976. So, its failure actually underscores the decline of Russia's space power status. This is about the article given here in this context. Let us quickly go through some important points about Lunar 25. Lunar 25 is a robotic lunar lander mission developed by Russian space agency Roscosmos. It is part of the broader Lunar globe program which aims to explore moon and conduct scientific experiments on its surface and the surrounding environment. The primary goal of Lunar 25 is to conduct detailed studies of the moon's South Pole region, mainly in the South Pole Atkin basin. To be specific, the mission aimed to study the composition of the polar regolith, that is the rock, and to study the plasma and the dust components of the Lunar polar expo sphere. Lunar 25 was launched on 10th August 2023 using the Soyuz rocket. It was launched almost a month after the launch of Chandrayaan-3. However, it will cover the 3.84 lakh kilometer journey within days. This is mainly due to the lighter payload and more fuel storage. This aided the Russian mission to follow a more direct trajectory towards the moon. This saves time while reaching greater distance. The lift of mass of Lunar 25 is just 1750 kilograms compared to Chandrayaan's 3900 kilograms. While Chandrayaan-3 took a circuitous route to gain velocity with low fuel, Lunar 25 took a direct trajectory towards the moon. Another reason Lunar 25 can land a couple of days before India is because Lunar Dawn at its landing site will happen earlier. See, one lunar day is equal to 14 Earth days. Since the payloads are being powered by solar panels, landing happens at the beginning of the solar day. This ensures that the experiments get full 14 Earth days worth of sunlight. Apart from being lighter than the Indian mission, Lunar 25 does not carry a rover. Chandrayaan-3 has a rover capable of moving around 500 meters. The Russian lander has 8 payloads. You can see that in the image given here. And since it has a heating mechanism as well as a power source other than just the solar panels, the Russian mission was expected to work for a year. Whereas since the Indian mission lacked both, it was built to last only one lunar day or 14 Earth days. That is all regarding this discussion. In this discussion we saw some important points about Lunar 25 and we saw the difference between Lunar 25 and Chandrayaan-3 mission. With this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Take a look at this news article. This article is about generative AI. In this article, the author points out various issues surrounding generative AI. In addition to this, he also suggests some solutions to tackle this issue. So in our discussion, we will first understand what is generative AI. Then we will understand the points discussed in the article. Before getting into the discussion, I have highlighted the syllabus regarding this discussion. You can go through it. Now let's start with generative AI. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can produce various types of contents like text, images, audios and so on. The contents that are produced by generative AI are usually similar to human created content. In other words, the points produced by generative AI are indistinguishable from human created content. This is because the GAI uses algorithms and models to generate new data based on the patterns that it had learned from existing data. This means that the generative AI does not replicate the existing content. Rather, it generates its own content based on the learned patterns. These factors makes the contents of generative AI similar to human created contents. One of the famous examples of generative AI is chat GBT. The chat GBT is an AI chatbot that can create human-like conversational dialogues. For example, if you ask chat GBT to tell a story, it will tell you a story as a human would say. It can even help you with writing letters and essays. Yes, if you ask chat GBT to provide love letter with some specialized message, it would provide you such personalized love letter and the letter would look like a human wrote it. So, chat GBT is one of the apt examples of generative AI. I hope you understand the basic points about generative AI. Now moving forward, let us see the advantages of generative AI. Firstly, the generative AI will help to increase the efficiency and productivity in various industries. For example, in the manufacturing industry, the generative AI can be used to analyze defects in the production process. By doing this, the AI will help to reduce the wastage and time consumed, thereby increasing the productivity in the process. Apart from this, the AI will help in automation of repetitive and time consuming tasks in the industry. This in turn will increase the efficiency of the industry. This is the first advantage. Secondly, the generative AI has the potential to increase creativity and innovation. See, the generative AI can generate ideas, designs and solutions to various problems that would take humans a lot of time to find a solution. So, it can bring up creativity and innovation in many industries like arts, music and engineering. This in turn helps in the growth of these industries. Thirdly, the generative AI can provide access to new resources and data. The generative AI can generate new data such as simulation, prediction and forecast. For example, it can provide prediction on complex issues like climate change. This helps us understand the future, impacts of climate change and allows us to make informed decisions. And the final advantage is personalization and customization. See, the generative AI can improve personalization and customization in various industries. For example, in the fashion industry, generative AI can be used to create custom fit clothing based on measurements of a respective person. Then in the gaming industry, it can help us create unique and personalized gaming experience for each player. So, personalization and customization of things is one of the important advantage of generative AI. Having understood the advantages, now let us look into the disadvantages. The first disadvantage is that generative AI can sometimes lead to the spread of false and misleading information. As we saw earlier, it can be able to create contents that are indistinguishable from humans. See, if this feature ends up in the hands of bad actors, it will create chaos in the society. For example, let us consider one particular person wants to damage the image of US president Joe Biden. So, with the help of generative AI, the person can make a video where it looks like that the US president gives hatred speech against a particular community in the US. See, this video here is created using generative AI, but the common people do not know how the video was created. So, it will end up spreading as false and misleading information, which in turn brings chaos to the society. This is the first disadvantage of generative AI. The second disadvantage is regarding privacy concern. As we saw earlier, the generative AI creates content based on learned pattern from the existing data. This means the AI needs to collect the existing online data to generate its content. This raises the concern. See, there is no clear cut policies or rules worldwide that regulates the collection, storage and use of data by the AI tools. So, there is a chance that privacy of a person or business can be violated by the generative AI tools. The third disadvantage is huge energy consumption. Since the generative AI models relies on advanced technology, it requires huge quantity of electricity to run. See, we need to produce high energy to run GAI models. For a country like India which relies more on fossil fuel-paced energy production, the high energy demand will ultimately harm the environment. These are some of the disadvantages associated with generative AI. Now, what can be done to address these concerns? Firstly, the governments should devise strong regulation and guidelines to address the issue of privacy concern associated with the generative AI. Apart from this, the government should develop a robust data governance framework. On one hand, the framework will help ensure data privacy, security and compliance in the AI system. And on the other hand, the framework will help address the concerns in the AI outputs. Secondly, the government should establish strong partnership with external AI experts, technology providers and relevant industry body to deal with the generative AI tools. See, collaboration with these partners will help the government to identify best practices and to share insights on addressing the common challenges related to generative AI. These are some of the measures that can be taken to address the concerns around generative AI. That's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw what is generative AI? We saw its advantages and we saw its disadvantages. And finally, we saw two steps that can be taken to address the concerns around generative AI. Now, with this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this article from yesterday's newspaper. This article deals with microplastics. So, in our discussion today, we will see what are microplastics, why and where it is used and finally, we will see how they can remove from the water bodies. Okay, let us start by understanding water microplastics. Microplastics are defined as synthetic solid particles with size ranging from 1 micrometer to 5 millimeter. And these particles are insoluble in water. The major sources of microplastic includes commercial product development and breaking down of larger plastics. See, microplastics are added to a range of products including cosmetics, personal care and cleaning products. They are relatively cheap ingredient and are used in these products for a variety of purpose. This includes as an abrasive or exfoliant, a bulking agent to prolong shelf life or further control release of active ingredients. Previously, they were commonly used in products like exfoliating scrubs, toothpaste and lotions to provide texture. Also, they are used in industrial processes like fillers, additives or reinforcing agents in a variety of materials and products that includes paints, coatings, adhesive and construction material. These are the important areas and the applications of microplastic. Okay, see the issue with microplastic is that they cannot be captured by the wastewater treatment system. So, if they are washed down the drain after use, they can end up in our rivers and finally ending up in the oceans. Due to their composition, they persist in the environment and they have the ability to absorb toxins and potentially transfer them up the marine food chain. This affects the health of the marine ecosystem. And ultimately, these microplastics will end up in our plate through the seafoods. Now, this is a major issue. So, is there any steps that can be taken to address this issue? The article that we are discussing now deals with this only. See, according to the article, the scientist at the University of British Columbia Bioproducts Institute found that if tannins are added to a layer of wood dust, it will create a filter that can trap all microplastic particles present in the water. Here, tannin is nothing but a class of naturally occurring polyphenol compounds found in various plants. These tannins are natural deterrents with a stringent taste and binding properties. Now, coming back, when scientists tested this combination of tannins and wood dust in mouse models, the process was proved to prevent the accumulation of microplastics in organs as well. So, this can be commercialized and used to prevent the accumulation of microplastic in our oceans. So, that is all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw what is microplastic, what are the source and the applications of microplastic. And finally, we saw how these microplastic accumulation in our water bodies can be filtered out. Now, with this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Take a look at this news article. This is from yesterday's newspaper. See, recently, a large number of megalithic hat stones were found at Nahaparambha in Mallapuram district of Kerala. The stones were spotted from a single site during a recent excavation conducted by the Kerala State Archaeological Department. Note that, hat stones are popularly called as Tupikkallu in Malayalam. They are hemispherical laterite stones that were used as lids on burial urns during the megalithic period. Archaeologists also found ashes in the urn that were covered with the hat stones. They noted that, these findings were different from the previous findings. The archaeologists said that, they usually get cremated bones from the urns. But this time, they found ashes in the urns, which is a special finding. See, the Tirunavaya town in Kerala and its neighborhoods have plenty of archaeological sites. So, the local people are requesting the government to provide heritage status to the town. This is all about the news article. So, in our discussion today, we will see some points about the megalithic culture. First of all, you have to know that the term mehalith is a combination of two Greek words that is meha and lith. Here, meha means large and lith means stones. So, basically, mehaliths means large stones. In earlier times, the mehaliths served as a memorial structure and physical markers. The mehaliths were placed about the burial sites of the dead person to mark the place of burial. This practice is what is termed as mehalithic culture. That is, the culture of placing large stones on burial site is called mehalithic culture. See, the mehaliths are spread across the Indian continent. But most of them are found in the peninsular India. They are mainly concentrated in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Now, we will see the five major types of mehaliths found in India. The first one is the stone circles. The stone circles refer to a large standing stone. They are arranged in a circle or in the form of ellipse around the burial site. The second one is dolmens. Dolmen is a type of mehalith. It is a rectangular box like chamber placed above the burial site. It is constructed with five slabs. The four slabs are placed vertically and the fifth slab is used as a capstone. The third one is cyst burial. See here, the cyst is shaped like a coffin and it was used as an enclosure for dead bodies. Then the fourth one is pit burials. The pit burials contain mortal remains of one or more human beings. Here the mortal remains of humans are buried with a variety of surface stones in a conical form. And the final one is the menhirs. Menhirs refer to large single long stones that are placed upright above the burial site. These are the five major types of mehaliths that is found in the Indian subcontinent. With this information, let us conclude this discussion. Now, having come to the end of the news article discussion session, let us take up the practice prelims questions. We have four practice prelims questions today. Let us see them one by one. Let us take up the first question. Here, four mega erythic sites are given. We have to arrange them from south to north direction. Now, look at this map. If we go south to north, Adityanallur comes first, followed by Brahmagiri, then Hirey Binagal and Nagarjuna So, the correct answer here is option B 3412. Moving on to the second question. This question is based on our magnetar discussion. They are asking us how magnetars differ from neutron stars. So, the correct answer here is option C. Magnetars are a type of neutron star with extremely powerful magnetic fields. Now, moving on to the next question. This question is based on our Chandrayaan 3 mission discussion. Here, three statements are given. We have to find how many of the statements given here are incorrect. Now, let us take up the first statement. Chandrayaan 3 is India's second attempt to land a rover on the lunar surface. This statement is correct. Moving on to the second statement. The lander Vikram and the rover Pragyan of Chandrayaan 3 remains same as the Chandrayaan 2 mission. This statement is also correct. Moving on to the third statement. Chandrayaan 3, like Chandrayaan 2, will take a rather long, interesting route to the moon. This statement is also correct. Since all the statements given here are correct and they are asking for the incorrect statements, the correct answer here is option D none of the above. Now, this is the quiz question for you today. This question is about microplastics. Interested aspirants can write the answer for this question in the comment section. The main questions based on today's discussion are displayed here. Interested aspirants can write the answer for the questions in the comment section. If you like today's video, like, comment and share it with your friends. For more updates regarding UPSC preparation, subscribe to Shankara IS Academy's YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.


It is going to destroy the art form. It is going to take photography from the realm of the artisan and the people who care about it and they care about image making and it's going to put it into the hands of the general public and all they need to do is just press a button and then it just takes a photograph. It is really the death of photography. Those are not necessarily the words of somebody speaking in 2020, but they could have been the words of somebody in 1888 who had been a dedicated photographer who was appalled at this new camera, the Kodak number one, which was a seismic event in the very truest sense of the word in the history of photography because it took photography from the hands of the gentleman, scientist of the person who was hiding underneath the dark cloth behind that big lens, all that mystery chemicals and it put it into the willing arms of the general public and oh, geez, did that public picked up that ball and run with it? Yes, you know, photography exploded. The popularity of photography exploded. Photography all of a sudden broke free of the tripod. It broke free of the restraints that had been built up since the inventions of the the garotype. People were experimenting and taking photography in all of those directions that they've never even considered before. Kodak, of course, were extremely happy with this turn of events because they had seen a gap in the market. They had seen an ability to shake up the way that things had been done. And they have been proven right. Throughout the 20th century, Kodak had a lot of input in the growth of photography. And in 1975, they also developed the very first digital camera. It was the size of a toaster, you know, weighed four kilograms. It would have cost you $10,000 in 1975 money if you could have bought one. And you would have thought, hey, well, Kodak would be quite keen on on this. But they weren't they were just like, no, do you know what? Actually, we sell film. We don't want to create something that stops people buying films. So thank you, but let's put it to one side. Kodak was intent on building up this monolithic company that was basically photography with the capital P. I believe that they saw themselves as photography. And in certain circles, people saw photography as Kodak. The two were synonymous with each other. But that ball that they had started rolling in 1975 and wanted to ignore it. But I think it's going to it was it was gathering speed. It was gathering momentum. And it was rolling inextricably towards the foundation of that Kodak monolith. There have always been arguments in photography and and and today is no exception. There is a feeling amongst certain photographers, right, that film has always been better, will always be better. And those who photographed in the film days are somehow inherently better photographers, and that is a misconception.  I'm actually wrong. I am wrong to think that way. In 1988, I was just a teenager and like teenagers, I was absolutely committed, committed 100 percent to the music that I liked. Anything else that did not fall into that very narrow category, it has to be said, of music was just rubbish, that it was of no consequence to me whatsoever. My parents didn't like it, and I thought their music was just junk, right? So this is what was happening is that I was learning photography. I was learning to see the world through the eyes of the of the older masters, whose story had already been written. They had taken up a camera. They had lived their life with the camera and they had retired or they had passed away. And now people were talking about their photography. And these are the photographers who I was being exposed to. And they are the ones who even now, much like the music that I listened to, have the most connections with them. They move, they have the most impact emotionally on me, because that's what I listened to in my formative years. And there's always going to be that in my mind. And I'm happy to hold on to that. But it has been an issue with with embracing digital. Digital photography was first introduced to me or digital imaging rather when I was a student and there was Photoshop version two, I think it was. Now, this is before layers were even a thing. Right. I don't know if you like hands up. Like like no layers in Photoshop whatsoever. And and it was great. I was like, wow, this is so cool. This is so cool because we can do things and I can use this to fix. And that was the operative word is to fix things that were mistakes that I found difficult to fix in the traditional dark room. It was very hard for me to do that. So Photoshop was a boon. And that is why where the seeds of what are my issues with digital now was so is because I saw it and I interpreted it from a film point of view. I didn't see the digital landscape as a means of expression or a means of somewhere to explore. I simply saw it as a tool to fix things. I wasn't aware of it at the time. But of course, I was living through that seismic change that somebody like LaTig had had when they were in the end of the 19th century and given cameras that they could be free and flexible with taking pictures in the bath.  You know, sort of thing. So all of these things were not in my consciousness because I was in this kind of weird position between digital and film. I had a foot in both camps and I wasn't quite sure which one to go with. All the people, all the mentors, all the people to whom I looked up to, were firmly rooted in the filmic world. And the people in the digital world, certainly since the advent of digital cameras in the early 2000s, they were. For the most part, finding their feet. They were they were taking kind of rubbishy pictures, we could say. And, you know, and I don't think that's being completely unfair. But having said that, it's not like people with film cameras never take rubbish pictures. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of rubbish produced on both sides. But it's unlike it's not. I'm surprised that there was a lot of odd imagery taken in the digital world, certainly in the early days of digital, because it's a new medium as people are experimenting with something just as much as, you know, when punk rock came along and shook up modern music and it took all those people like, you know, Genesis and Yes, who were doing that prog rock, Stray Kids, I am, you know, I'm a grown up musician now. And it said to them, no, right, we don't need all that stuff. We've got three chords and boom and a holy t-shirt and we're going to go with it. And they started a movement. Now, some punk is a little bit rough around the edges and it's it's it's it's an uncultured music, of course, because it's supposed to be uncultured. But later on, the things that leapt from punk, all the genres that stemmed from that moment have found their voice, have found their place. And that's what's going on with digital photography now is that the people who are practicing digital imaging, I think that's probably a better word, digital imaging are starting to find their feet. They are starting to see the infinite possibilities in digital because they're not bound by constrictions of history. They don't feel a burden of expectation. They are quite happy to take their influences from the old masters and things of the nature because they can because they can manipulate the images. And they're quite fine with doing so in a way that echoes those masters, the people who are kind of married to film photography cannot do. Both mediums have fortes and strengths and and drawbacks. But film has a somewhat limited repertoire in terms of emulating other things, whereas digital doesn't. So if somebody wants to emulate old masters, then then do so. If somebody wants to take the technology that is now available to them, because obviously digital photography isn't just about senses and things of that nature, it's about the thing, other things that we could do. Small cameras, big cameras, cameras that fly. I mean, for God's sake, cameras that fly that you can just do that. Oh, geez, that again is like, wow. So you can see this change of pace has been so quick that even in my lifetime, there is so much has happened. There is no wonder that there are older photographers and photographers of my generation who are just going, I really find this change of pace difficult to keep up with. So when I talk to a photographer in their 20s and they're all about Instagram and all these sort of things, and I know Instagram is a whole another debate and the idea of liking and shares and things like that. It's a whole separate thing. But they are comfortable using these tools. They are comfortable expressing themselves in these ways. And I think that is fantastic. I think that is wonderful. And it's that enthusiasm for creation that we all felt when we were younger, when we were in our 20s and 30s and we were we were we were committed wholly to this idea that this was the best thing ever. That that's that's great because we need people like that to shake up the status quo to remind us that this hat that some of us wear about the old ways were the best ways and the only ways is a complete fantasy and has always been a fallacy. Photography has always been in a state of change, a state of flux of movement. Look at pictorialism versus pure photography. Pictorialism is about messing with the photographs and things, essentially digital processing versus photography where no, no, that's all wrong. You shouldn't do any manipulation kind of things. And that argument is still going today. You have the ideas of like, well, I'm not going to dabble in new technologies or I'm not going to explore new technologies because I've always done things this way and this way is the best. Look at somebody like Walker Evans. Walker Evans, hugely famous for all of his work on the FSA and doing the stuff that, you know, that was was kind of showing America itself through the depression. He was gifted a Polaroid SX-70 camera and as much film as he ever could photograph. And he took digital, he didn't say not digital. He took instant photographs. I can't think of anything that's more at odds with the idea of a photographer from the 1920s than instant photography in color. I was surprised. I had no idea he had ever done this and the photography that he created from these is wholly unlike anything that he did with the FSA. Of course, technology means that you and I can have this conversation no matter where or when you are in the world and it's great to have you here. If you'd like to help other people discover the channel, please hit the subscribe button below because that way YouTube takes the sign that you like this kind of content and it will help surface this to other people who share similar ideas.  They hadn't decided to move with the times and to realize that photography wasn't just one set thing that they said it was. Even as late as 2007, Kodak were making adverts saying that they weren't interested in digital effectively, that film was always going to be around and that is a great example of why it's fine to want to hold on to the past and to celebrate the things that we enjoy. I want to listen to the music that I listened to when I was a teenager.  I like to think of the happy old days of being in the dark room with the stop bath and the fixer and all that sort of stuff. But I'm also aware that those days are slipping inexorably into the past. They are going away and that it doesn't change what I do. It doesn't change how I take photographs. It doesn't change the way I feel about photography. I am excited to see the images that the new generations of photographers are creating because they are wholly unlike the things that have gone before us. They are as different to the photography of the 1990s and the 2000s as the photography of Man Ray and all the stuff that was going on in the 1920s was from the 1880s. It was an exciting time. And that's the people taking a technology that was new and running with it and exploring it, the idea that somebody like Eugene Ager, who spent his entire career essentially photographing with the same camera, big boxing on the streets of Paris and that that's somehow noble and great. Where has this come from? Where is this idea taken root that to be in the to be welded in the past is a good thing? We need to move forward. Photographers of my generation, I'm not suggesting that we drop everything and embrace digital because, of course, most of us do, we most of us use digital cameras. What I am suggesting is that from both sides, we see and appreciate that we see photography from different lenses, from different sides, and that ultimately, so long as you are having fun, so long as you are enjoying the process, it does not matter how you get from the idea of her up here into whatever medium that you want to put it on. I like to read books. I like to see prints, right? You may enjoy looking at photographs on a phone. That's cool, man, whatever floats your butt, whatever you want to do, do it. Let's stop arguing with each other. Let's stop being clicky. The history of photography is littered with people arguing against one another, trying to say that their way is right and their way is better. And it's not. It's all great photography. Everything is wonderful. There's photography is just how we see the world. There are as many different ways of photography as there are people with a camera and a camera is just a tool. It doesn't matter what it is that happens to record light on some sort of sensitive format that you can then look at later on. It is just a thing. Stop worrying about it, man. Just just go out. Have fun. Just go nuts.  You know, it's there isn't a winner in this argument. The only person who's going to win is that you become so obsessed with moaning at the other person and trying to convince them that you are right. That you don't spend that time and that effort and that energy taking photographs. The Kodak number one changed photography completely, not because it was put into the hands of the original photographers, the open beta, if you will, but it was put into the hands of people who just used it for fun without concerning themselves with the with the greater ideas about photography. And that, of course, in turn led to the change in the very way that most people think about photography. And now we've kind of reached photography 2.0 with the advent of digital and all of that that entails and it's up to this newer generation, this generation who have only known digital, who who don't consider themselves to be photographers, but image creators and the camera is just a tool. So so this digital world that we live in has killed photography just as much as the Kodak number one killed photography before. And what photography was priced at change and it will change again in the definition of photography will change, but it doesn't change the fact that within us all throughout the generations of people who have looked upon the world and go, I have a capacity to fix what I see in some sort of form to share with others. That is what draws all of us throughout the years throughout the generations throughout the centuries to this this human instinct to create a mark on the world to say, this is this is what I see. Kodak didn't want to admit that. They thought that it would just be the same always and that their way of seeing the world would never change. Much like this this grain silo in Cape Town was a large concrete industrial thing. And for years, people only saw it as an eyesore and something that blotted the landscape and it took a new way of seeing a new way of interpreting existing things to create this lavishly complex, bizarre, artistic, wonderful expression of architecture from an existing block of resolute unchangingness. This is the joy of what's happening in photography today.  And I wish that I had the use and that Vim and that Viga to go with them. But I would encourage you absolutely to not say to these people, try and force them into the old ways of doing things, encourage everybody to explore the sheer joy of taking photographs. A photographer who kept evolving with the times is Edward Steichen. I would suggest you go and check his video right here. I know that you will enjoy it. Thanks for watching.


in the CUBE office here, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and also the co-host of theCUBE. Our next guest is Jeremy Allman, who's the CEO of PayStand, hot startup, doing some really new things in and around blockchain, decentralized and really targeting the B2B space on a really compelling and an interesting topic that a lot of people are interested in. Jeremy, welcome to this CUBE conversation. Awesome, thank you, John. Hey, so talk a little bit about the company and set the table for us at PayStand. What you guys are doing, why you were founded, and what's the disruptive enable that you guys are taking, what's the angle of your business?  So you can imagine what PayPal or Venmo does from the consumer level. We do for complicated commercial transactions between accounts receivable and accounts payable departments that normally would be paying with paper checks and a manual process. So basically accounting, ledger, I'm kind of guessing nice fit for blockchain. Correct, yeah, yeah. So what we do is we apply blockchain technology to help a company speed up their time to cash, automate their business process, and dramatically lower their transaction costs. I'll get your thoughts on this. I interviewed Don Tapscott at an event and we were riffing on this notion of the nature of the firm, right? People would come to an office, you'd have accounting, all these things that you'd have to put in place as systems. Now with this decentralized world we're living in, internet and with blockchain in particular and a cryptocurrency market that's pretty frothy, but you go to the blockchain and separate those two for a minute, you really can look at ways to change how work is organized. How do you guys view that?  Then you got businesses who are just trying to operate and make money, right? So keep the lights on, but they also have to start rethinking about the future. So what is this block wave, blockchain wave coming? How do you talk about that? Is it that disruptive? I mean, certainly centralized databases aren't going away anytime soon, but it's coming. What's your thoughts and reaction to that? It's coming. I think it will affect the enterprise, which is where we spend our time and space in a lot of ways like cloud did, right? So I've spent probably 15 years doing unsexy B2B tech in some way, shape or form. And what we've seen is digital transformation in the enterprise has happened in a few key areas. CRM is now in the cloud, right? You have companies like Salesforce that have become significant. ERP is now in the cloud. Your financial software is now automated, right? Kind of ironically, the last mile piece, the part that lubricates the business, the core of the business, the money movement piece is actually still really, really manual. So you have humans that sit around and they take an invoice and then a paper check and then they move it. And that process is very, very inefficient. And so having a more automatic smart financial system can improve the business's life in really significant ways. Also, you know, one of the things we've been commenting on opining here on theCUBE is, I made a statement a couple of weeks ago, oh, more tech, marketing technology, wave, all those logos on those landscape slides didn't really pan out because the cloud kind of changes that. And it's panning out, but not the way people thought. FinTech, financial tech is also certainly important. Banks, obviously trading, you see that. What is the inhibitor for these new trends? Because you mentioned moving paper around. I mean, it's money. They probably don't want to mess with an operational system that's core of their business. Is it fear? Is it tech? Both? What's your view on why it's taking so long or is it moving along at a speed you think is going to be adopted? Yeah, it's actually kind of a unique point in time right now. I think in one hand, financial services in general, part of their job is to manage risk. And so they're going to be a lagging in some ways industry. And so digital transformation, right? The internet has opened up and democratized media. It's opened up so many other areas. Blockchain now is the entry point for digital transformation of financial services. And so the time is probably right right now. We've been in the space, we started the company in 2014.  What's the technology stack look like? Obviously four years is like decades in the blockchain world. And obviously people are running as fast as they can. It's kind of a moving train at many levels. The business model side as well as the tech stack. And this is really the opportunity. A lot of these systems, I mean some of the e-commerce systems are 20 year old tech stack, some are even older. Just going back four years since you were founded, what's the big moving glacier, if you will, of change and how are you guys managing that? And how should people think about managing the risk of the tech stack? Yeah, I mean I think on the blockchain specific side, in the early days, a lot of it was about currency and actual payment, right? I think what we're seeing now is the opportunity for blockchain, particularly in the enterprise, to actually dramatically improve their operation side, right? So Ethereum, private blockchains, actually have the ability to not just decentralized how money movement or networks operate, but how an internal system operates. I'll give you an example. We use the blockchain to a private blockchain to actually control approval workflow. So when a payment goes out, oftentimes you need your accounts payable person to send a payment out, but the controller or the treasury or someone else has to sign off on it, right? So that signature, you need it to be valid, trusted, the identity around it, right? And you want an audit record. And so blockchain's a really, really good use case for something like that. That's not pure play payments. It's not pure play settlement. It doesn't require a million people to get on. It just can operate in the business in a really critical function in a better way than the current technology does. It's interesting. I love these new technology opportunities because there's always going to be a tipping point and the famous Steve Jobs quote is, hey, if I was asked to build a better phone in 2005, I would have built an excellent, better blackberry. But then he built the iPhones. He thought differently. No one was really asking for the iPhone. The question I get a lot from skeptics in blockchain is no one's really asking for blockchain. So again, this is kind of like, you could always say, I'm building a better centralized database system in a distributed computing environment. Okay, we've done that. Are people asking for blockchain or are they just asking for it in a different way? What's your thoughts today? I would say that there's a big picture question of are people ask for it? And I'd say society is actually asking for it.  And my bricklayer father, they spent their entire lives getting their first home. And 800 square foot home is nothing special, but it was their American dream. In 2008, in financial crisis, they lost a house. And so I think society said financial services and core parts of our economy actually could, we could do better, right? And I think the magic thing about technology is we get to imagine the world not as it is, but as it ought to be. So one, I think society is actually asking for, can the core parts of our economy actually do better? Can we dream up something better? Right, and I think that's the purest part of what the folks in the blockchain movement are trying to do. That's at a very high level. And then I think practically, right? For businesses like we operate day in and day out, if there's technology that allows them to be able to operate their business more efficiently, drop their costs and grow faster, how that worked, right? It's in some ways like cloud. How does cloud work? I think now we're really getting into the deep mess of it, but cloud was transformative to the business, right? VOIP was transformative to some businesses. Inbound marketing is transformative to some businesses. Blockchain is the same kind of concept. I mean, in cloud too, there's a lot of naysayers. I remember I used the first EC2 instances of Amazon when it came out being an entrepreneur, like, oh my, I don't have the provision servers. This is amazing. I can put my credit card down, pay a few bucks. And then even still, up until, I would say even three or four years ago, they were dismissed as relevant. And again, the rest of history, look at what they've done. So there's always going to be those naysayers. But to the point about cloud and blockchain and even crypto, this is a wave. And we're very bullish on this movement because we see the waves coming way out there and it's huge. And this is probably bigger than the other waves combined in our opinion. So you mentioned societal change. This is a big deal. I mean, you're seeing regulations right now in GDPR in Europe, kind of trying to govern an old database market that's even in own problems. It's a mess, database-wise. But it makes sense from a society standpoint. People want to pull their data out. This is a trend. You got societal forces and then technical legacy. I mean, this could be an opportunity for a blockchain to saying, hey, optimize for the new wave. Don't try to retrofit, say an old wave. What's your thoughts? Correct. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a number of areas, even in the data side of society, take an Enron scandal that happened a decade plus ago. Out of that came regulation called Sarbanes-Oxley. And Sarbanes-Oxley's concept is to ensure that companies publicly account for their records in the proper way, that there's an audit trail, that they don't take their financial systems and misrepresent them. The blockchain, because it's a source of truth that's immutable, meaning it can't be changed, is a great way to have more efficiency in that process. Today, there's a whole industry that's popped up just for Sarbanes-Oxley, just to regulate the financial system, just to ensure that the books actually say what they're supposed to say, right? That's kind of the definition of what a smart contract can and should do. This is the really opportunity for entrepreneurs to think about it. I mean, a lot of alpha entrepreneurs are really licking their chops on blockchain because they can see how it could disrupt industries. And this is really, and I showed you some of the things we're working on, what we're thinking about, the silicon angle, about media and data. But it brings out things that we obviously see every day in the press. The election, weaponizing content for bad things. Facebook's having a challenge right now on how they optimize their data for their own self-service reasons. This is a problem, this is a revolution. People are kind of tired, so what's your view of the role of data to the human?  But how do you see that vision playing out? I mean, not just from a Facebook, this is a social network example, but how does data impact a user going forward in your vision because they could really change from the outside in? Yeah, I mean, I think part of what's critical with data is two things. One, identity really matters, right? How do you manage identity? And so I think there's a number of really fascinating blockchain companies that are specifically focused on the identity question, right? And that's true around the social media side, it's true around how do I actually manage where I move identity around. So I think that's one side that's really, really critical to solve. I don't know that we've got a crystal ball yet on what it will ultimately look like, but the blockchain model for identity allows us to rethink the fabrics of what privacy is, what permission looks like, and what trust looks like with people I wanna engage with and with people I don't wanna engage with, right? It's interesting, you have a blockchain culture being more societal and mission driven, my word, you're kind of implying that. I remember when the cloud came out, it was the network guys were in charge and the app guys were like, have to feed off the network requirements and then that seed change flipped around, the app guys are in charge, data's driving requirements for the network. Question for you is, do you see a day soon where societal requirements will dictate technology? I mean, you're seeing that pattern kind of emerging now is kind of not yet been fully thought through in public commentary, but we see the pressure points potentially impacting tech design. Yeah, yeah, I think there's actually a good tug of war balance, right? So entrepreneurs naturally are going to run as fast as they can to see innovation, hopefully with means of improving society, right? And then you have regulators and you have government agencies who are looking and saying, okay, you might be thinking about one myopic view and we need to make sure we're looking at the good of society. So I think that tug of war you saw with the internet, right? Where how much do we regulate the internet, right? And I think the balance was mostly healthy. And we're sort of seeing that true today with blockchain as well where, you know, things like ICOs have good and bad implications. The regulators have been watching it relatively closely, but they also haven't completely came down and clamped down on it, you know, even this week, right, there was a relative balance in the discussions that came out. SCC's done a good job. Correct. They whipped a few people in shape, send the signal, but they weren't foreclosing any innovation. That's correct. And ICOs certainly had some scams. What's the good sides of ICOs? Obviously the scams are out there. What's the good sides? The fundraising, democratization, what's your take on the ICO? Yeah. National coin offering opportunity. You know, I think in some ways, democratization has become such a buzzword. It's lost its meaning, right? But if you think about what it really is, it's so powerful because it's this concept, right, that we distribute power and control to the hands of many. And so, you know, I think there are a lot of public good technologies that actually can use that concept, right? The internet is a public good. You could argue Wikipedia is a public good, right? And so utility type tokens actually are valuable because they can have a dual nature to them. I think the other thing that I'm particularly interested in watching how ICOs evolve is I think there's some danger in ICOs coming in and in the early stage market because early stage companies tend to be, they're so nascent that they need guidance, right? And I actually, I might be contradictory here to most people in the blockchain space, but I actually think early stage investors have a lot of value in that space. And so I am actually fascinated about what happens in later stage rounds and what do ICOs become there? So I think utility and later stage rounds are actually two fascinating areas of ICOs. That's a great point. I would also say that the trend that we're seeing is there is an early stage component that needs mentoring and needs some nurturing. I would agree with that. And that's a classic VC, maybe some token economics in there, but again, different playbook. The tokenization of business is really interesting because now you have token economics being applied to a pre-existing proven business with a disruptive nature on the other side is super interesting. So I have to ask you, are we going to have a chief economic officer as a new role soon? Or is that going to be, because remember you think about token economics, it's about opening up and changing the distribution of our data and wealth. You can argue both was the same, but how do you view that? Because that's a trend we're seeing. The tokenization of a business to disrupt an industry incumbent set of incumbents. Correct, yeah. And I think it's really, really early days and what you have really early stage companies that are thinking about tokenizing their business before they exist, right? And then you have other companies which are maybe past the innovation curve and they're trying to apply tokens to their business. A pivot of an all-existing business. Yeah, so we've seen these right public companies that have added blockchain to their name, right? I think the fascinating thing will become where fast growing real businesses where there's a there, there, they've crossed the chasm, go, okay, how do we apply tokenization to our company? And how do we think about it from both a commercial economic part of the business and then how do we think about it from tokenizing the business? And we haven't seen many cases yet, but I actually think that's one of the next waves. We'll see. Great insight. I got to ask you on a personal level, you're doing some talking, obviously the founder of the company, CEO, what's going on? What are you talking about these days? What are you passionate about? I know you're talking to some folks that using your center, Barbara, you mentioned, go another to teach down there. What are you talking about? What are you sharing publicly? What's on your mind these days? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm personally deeply motivated every day by waking up and going. The financial service industry, it can go through a massive transformation, right? And I think there's a lot of really good companies that are doing that at the consumer level. And so, I think our space, we have a unique place in time to be working at the commercial level. So the commercial level affects big parts of our economic infrastructures in ways that we don't think about, right? The Equifax breach was a pretty big deal to people, right? The financial crisis was a big deal to people. So how do we imagine those kinds of industries, right? Supply chain, title, logistic, right? And how do we think about those industries democratizing them with blockchain? Those to me are the unsung heroes of what blockchain will ultimately help transform society. It's interesting, you said you were kind of humble when you came on earlier. I'm in boring areas of B2B, but I got to say to see your point about cloud earlier, there's a calm before the storm, these boring areas that are, they come, are really the grounds where you see disruption. I think that's an area, not just high frequency trading, that's going to be always an issue, but in terms of real financial plumbing. Perfect for a ledger, perfect for those things. Okay, explain, take a plug for your company. How are people using you guys? What's the value proposition? What are some of the things that you guys are involved in? How does someone engage with you guys? Give the plug for PayStand. Yeah, so at PayStand, we tend to work with companies where there are high volumes of paper checks in the process, right? So if you have a $100,000 invoice that goes out, for example, with a company that you've been working out with for a decade, and you have a contract that says it's a net 60 contract, right? The challenge is, it's paper check, you want to move it digitally, what do you move it digitally to? And the reality is consumer payment companies that are focused on credit cards are not really an ideal solution for that, because their business model is a percentage business model. There's nothing wrong with a percentage business model that charges a company two or 3% if I'm swiping for a $5 cup of coffee, right? If it's a $100,000 payment that I owe someone that I know and I have a contract terms, I'm not going to pay the bank $3,000 to move ones and zeros from this bank database to this bank database, right? So what we do with our network is we make that money movement fast, instant, automatic, verified, validated, right? With control in a way where we can automate the process. It's so funny what jumps in my mind is punch cards to computers, tape to storage. This is interesting. So the paper checks probably big. I don't know what the numbers are. You might have them handy. People are doing paper checks. So you're building a system around paper checks. Did I get that right? Yeah, so we digitize what would have been a paper check. Today over 50% of all commercial payments are still done in paper check. So they're gone in our digital world, right? Like you and I, we Venmo each other. But when the business goes to write a check, when they get an invoice, they send out a check. And so we digitize the whole process. The moment that the invoice is ready to go to the moment it gets in the bank, it all becomes digital face to face. And the alternative is what? I got to go check when it was mailed, was it received, was it cashed? Did it get put into the accounting system? And that's kind of- That's correct. That's the manual. That's the manual. They'll spend a week tracking down the payment from the moment the controller says okay to pay to the time it sits in their bank account. That's humans, time, money. An old antiquated system that doesn't change because of what? Well, it's legacy infrastructure in one way. But in another, even the banking infrastructure, right? The most of the banking infrastructure that are for commercial payments was designed in the 60s and 70s. And last time I checked the 60s and 70s was before the internet today. So they weren't really designed for digital real-time payments and they weren't designed for commercial use cases like today. Is fraud a factor? Is that not a factor? Is that part of it or yes? Yeah, I mean, I think a key thing with what we do enterprise payments is security is really, really important, right? We take it very, very seriously. And this is again, one of the downsides to the legacy commercial infrastructure is when you have a check, right? You have this checking and routing number on it. Anybody who takes that, in theory, that's all that identifies you and your company and your account. And so money can actually be moved and ran against in that case. With a network like ours, we can validate that you are who you say you are. You have the money in your account and moved when it should and you've actually authorized it, right? These are all things that we should know but we just don't. And you put the data around it, you take that payload, AK check, put it into the system. Okay, so when does a company want, should be calling you? Was it like, I'm overloaded with paper, I want a new system, I'm doing a refresh. I mean, when do people call PayStand? What's the signals that would give your buyers some indicator of time to call PayStand? Yeah, so generally it's after, it's when they have high volumes of checks and they're growing and or that they've basically taken their ERP and they've done an ERP cloud migration, right? And so now they've got their general ledger and that financial system is not in a shoebox anymore, right, it's in a critical core ERP system. And so what they're finding is they bought digital transformation for financial services and their accountant only sort of has half the solution, right, and so they come in and they use us to close the last mile. Okay, so I'm gonna put my naysayer hat on and ask you the question. I love it, but what's this blockchain thing? I'm an accounting guy, took a one computer class or whatever, I get blockchain. How do you stay up to date? How do you ensure that I'm gonna have a system that's gonna be working and know that blockchain standards are changing? How do you guys mitigate that? How do you handle that question? Yeah, I mean, I think the critical thing for our customers, right, is for us, our customers, money moves in dollars, right? It leaves their bank account and goes into their supplier's bank account. The supplier's bank goes into their customer's bank account, right, their financial system does not change. We're actually very, very sensitive to that. We think about this very different than a consumer solution, which is consumer solutions almost have a critical mass question. They need everybody to get into the system for it to work. For commercial, you don't actually want to change the business process of your partners, right? It's really important, they've been doing this. So we are very thoughtful about our software, doesn't change business process, it doesn't require you to enter into some kind of new economy or new currency. You simply do what you're always doing with the systems you're already using, right? And we just digitize the process to make them faster, cheaper, and automated. Awesome. Talk about your goals for the year at PayStand. Were you guys at company-wise, funding, goals, hiring, what's going on? Give a quick final word on the company. Yeah, I mean, I think we're blessed right now, I would say we're one of, if not the fastest B2B payment companies, fastest growing B2B payment companies today. So I think we have a long way to go where, I would call this inning two for us, right? We ultimately, I think much more about what does 10 years look like than 12 months look like because this is the beginning of the commercial financial service wave. And so I think we ultimately believe that digital transformation is going to reinvent our industry. And if we can go lead the way, we'll be very happy. And for us, that just means to continue growing, continue serving our customers, continue hiring. I think if we do all that, right place, right time. Awesome, final question for you. The folks out there watching, you're an expert in the industry again, FinTech as well as computer engineering. If my sister who is not savvy says, Jeremy, what is blockchain? Well, how would you describe blockchain to someone who's interested and needs to know the importance, definition and the importance of blockchain? Okay, so blockchain to me is basically a way to be able to take information like you might have on your textbook or you might have in a spreadsheet and use it where anybody can access it in a way that's actually easily controllable, visible, secure and automated. That doesn't sound very sexy, but the important thing is how we keep records affects all of society, right? We have records of who owns our houses. We have records of how much money we have in our account. We have records of who did we vote on, right? Those records are the foundation for our society. Currently, companies own those records. Companies are fallible, right? And so what blockchain does is it allows us to make a more infallible system to keep access to those records you and I care about. And this is an infrastructure opportunity, not so much cryptocurrency, kind of a distinction between the two, right? That's right, that's right. I would say cryptocurrency and money is like the first pillar app on top of blockchain. Jeremy Almond, CEO, founder of PayStand Hot Company, doing something really good in a growing, changing market called checks, paper checks, and if you have them and grow and digitize them, great entry strategy for blockchain. Thanks for coming on this CUBE Conversation and thanks for joining us here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier in the CUBE Studios for CUBE Conversation. Thanks for watching.


The Minnesota primaries are less than a month away and today mark the first debate among Democratic candidates for Minnesota's 8th District Congressional seat. All five Democratic candidates were present at the debate in Brainerd and our Anthony Scott was there to get the details. Five Democratic candidates running for Minnesota's 8th District Congressional seat piled into Chalburg Theater at Central Lakes College in Brainerd for the first debate in the primary season. The race for the seat is considered a toss-up and with Trump winning the district in the presidential race Democrats fear the House seat could also turn red this election season. Before the debate each candidate had a different issue that they were most passionate about. I think we need a fundamental restructuring of our economy and I believe that that can happen with political will and working across the aisles. I think our first step is to reverse the one trillion in tax breaks we just gave. That if we can bring broadband and high-speed internet throughout the rural areas of not only the 8th District but throughout this country that we will help to stimulate the economy by creating small businesses small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Reversing climate change is is my number one issue we really have to address the fact that our climate is changing rapidly that we're seeing warming in a lot of our local lakes. If you grew up as I did on spending your summers on lakes in northern Minnesota fishing for walleye or current mix of sport fish that's going to change. So I think that what we need to do is find a way to make sure that more of our health care dollars are devoted to care right now too many dollars are devoted to the administration to CEO bonuses to lobbyists and to advertising. So I think what we have heard from the district collectively is that families can't keep up with the rising costs of health care. We had a woman in Baxter who said that people right in this community are rationing their insulin medication that's just wrong. How that will affect the future of unions. We need to make collective bargaining the law of land. When our country's middle class was strongest union membership was at its highest percentage. What I'm hoping this represents is a renaissance in the union movement in this country that we fight back and we fight back harder than we ever have because the future depends on our middle class was a lot stronger when we had a lot higher union membership in this country. We need to go after the the coax we need to think about boycotting their products. We need to figure out who's behind these attacks and make their make their pocket books pay and and to take them to the streets again. Let me say number one right to work is wrong for Minnesota. I will be an ally for unions because I know that unions have given us that 40 hour week.  We can't go back and change this decision. What we can do is make sure that the judges appointed to the highest courts believe in people. The candidates shared the same stances on a lot of issues since they were all members of the Democratic Party, but the public got a sense of who the candidates were and how they plan on making a difference in Washington. Reporting from Brainerd, Anthony Scott, Lakeland News. And primary election day in Minnesota is set for Tuesday, August 14th. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.