Coming up on DTNS, Amazon's smart shopping cart for grocery stores. The UK bans Huawei from its 5G networks and a robot platform with reach. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, July 14th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. And from the forests of Finland. I'm Patrick Beja. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Shane. We were just talking about the Queen of Cows and Milo Ventimiglia in Good Day Internet. If you want that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Google will prevent users who aren't logged in into a Google account from joining Google Meet sessions hosted by G Suite for Education or G Suite Enterprise for Education subscribers. Over the next 15 days, the option will be turned on and can only be turned off by contacting G Suite support. The Wall Street Journal sources say that SoftBank has hired Goldman Sachs to explore the possibility of a sale of ARM or ARM. CNBC sources say SoftBank was preparing for an ARM IPO but received interest from an outside party about a possible sale. It wasn't me. Spotify is adding two podcast charts in 26 countries to be updated daily, a chart called Trending ranks 50 shows partially on the speed of growth in listener numbers, and a chart called Top ranks the 200 most popular shows overall localized by region. Top also includes subcategories like business, comedy and technology in some of the regions. Google's PlayPass app subscription service is now available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the UK. The service launched in the US back in September of 2019. All right, let's talk a little more about those smart cards, Patrick. Let's, but not before I've told you that apparently La Ronde de Voutek is on the top 100 on Spotify for four. Well, congrats. That's awesome. So thank you. Amazon plans to open a grocery store in a Los Angeles suburb later this year. The grocery store will not have the wide array of cameras and sensors used in an Amazon Go store to track what you take off the shelves and charge you automatically when you leave. Instead, Amazon announced the Dash Cart, a shopping cart with a touchscreen and sensors to detect what you put into your cart. A ring of cameras detects most items. Things like produce let you input a price code before you put the item in your cart. Once you're done shopping, you take the cart dash. You take the dash cart through a special checkout plane that calculates your total without needing a human cashier. The cart can only handle up to two bags of groceries. So this grocery store will have normal checkout with cashiers if you need more than two bags of groceries. It's just if you don't have that much, you can use the dash card. And I don't know, Sarah, it kind of strikes me as the self checkout but in your cart. Yeah, there's the whole Amazon Go, which I've never tried. There's one in San Francisco, which would be the closest to me. And I just I've not had the opportunity to, you know, check it out yet.  I would love to think that this would work for not just Amazon but lots of other grocers in a future world, you know, and just have a lot of less contact, less, you know, payment situations, especially when you're on the go. All good. But this is not, you know, our reality today. So the idea that Amazon's like, OK, we got Whole Foods. We have our kind of, you know, futuristic Amazon Go situation. And then we got something in the middle here. It's an Amazon grocery store that's neither of these grocery stores. And we're just going to see how this works with folks, see how it catches on. And I like the idea of it.  This is a this is a very good timing move. And Amazon has always been really good at trying many different things and kind of seeing what sticks out of the many, many different types of pasta. They throw in the wall. This also seems like it might be a little bit more easily accepted by privacy conscious people, because it's really, as you said, Tom, it's a self-checkout counter in your card. So it's really nothing that concerning. And it's also probably it seems more easily integratable into any kind of existing grocery store. Maybe they're going to sell the technology and get all the data from everyone. Amazon Go is the brand for the whole sensor array stuff. It's mostly convenience stores, but they have two grocery stores in Seattle. But those are smaller grocery stores. I have seen this Amazon grocery store that is not Go branded. It's not open yet, but I've seen it from the outside. It's huge. It's an old Toys R Us. It's gargantuan. It's over in Woodland Hills. And so, yes, I think you guys are right. This is Amazon trying something out, saying, OK, our Go system just doesn't scale to a store this size, but Patrick, you're right. We want to sell this technology to other people because that's what Amazon does. Right. They develop cloud systems for their bookselling and then turn that into AWS and sell their cloud services to other people. That's that's proven to be incredibly successful. So I imagine that that's what they're doing here is saying, let's figure out how this works for us. Probably create our own grocery stores using the in-house experience we get from the Whole Foods folks to operate it. And then once we've proven it, we can sell this to the large grocery stores that wouldn't be able to take advantage of the entirely cashierless system that is Amazon Go, because it just doesn't scale up that hard. That far. Well, moving on, UK digital minister Oliver Dowden announced that telcos may not buy 5G equipment from ZTE or Huawei, starting in January of 2021. Existing equipment from the vendors must be removed by 2027. The new policy must still be passed by parliament. Now, back in January, the National Cyber Security Center determined that Huawei's equipment could be used as long as it wasn't in the core infrastructure. Then the US introduced new restrictions to prevent companies from selling parts to Huawei if they use US based parts or IP. That means that Huawei would have to source chips from new vendors. And the UK says, well, we can't properly vet for that kind of security. So 5G rollouts in the UK are expected to be delayed at two to three years as a result of the new policy. The ministry will now begin consultations on what to do about non 5G networks. Meanwhile, Huawei reported year over year revenue growth of 13.1 percent for the first half of 2020. Consumer business accounted for 56 percent of its revenue with carrier businesses making up to making up at 35 percent. Huawei's profit margin increased from 8.7 percent last year to 9.2 percent this year. So Huawei weathering COVID-19 and the US trade restrictions, which started last year, fairly well to date, but probably better than a lot of people would have expected. But they are facing increasingly heavy countercurrents and the UK is one of them. Here's the interesting thing to me. The UK is saying very reasonably, I think the Cyber Security Center is saying, well, wait a minute, now that Huawei can't use the parts that we vetted from TSMC and others, they'll be using parts from manufacturers most likely within China that we can't properly vet. And so therefore we can't say they're secure. We can't we can't properly vet that. That would mean that new buildouts wouldn't be able to use new Huawei systems. But it doesn't explain why they are now saying the digital ministry is now saying you also have to go pull the old stuff out because those have been vetted as being OK for the non-core network. So there is a political aspect to this that isn't reflected in the finding from the NCSC. Yeah, this is, I mean, it's a consequence, secondhand consequence of the U.S.'s claims, allegations, war, whatever you want to say about them. And it does, even though Huawei has fared well, as you said, even through the COVID crisis, does put the pressure on them. And France has also been saying, even though they don't have a problem, they don't have as much of a problem with Huawei as the U.S. We're also having to reevaluate how much of their hardware we're going to be using for the exact same reasons. So it certainly seems like whether or not it is a trade tactic by the American government, it is having an effect that is beyond their direct banning of the company locally. And it's going to delay UK rollout. It's going to cost UK telecoms to do this. It doesn't seem to be immediately hurting Huawei, though it still could. Huawei probably is going to try to make up what it will lose from the UK and the U.S. and any potential other European vendors by selling to Russia, by selling to Africa, by selling to possibly India, although it's still touching go which way India is going to go because India is not real friendly with China. But certainly Russia and Africa would be potential markets there, probably Iran and a few other markets as well. So again, this is another example of how technology is going to continue to be segmented rather than be a worldwide global market. You're going to have places in the world that have cheap proven Huawei networks that may have some security flaws. The NCSC found it to be maybe not intentional, but to have vulnerabilities. And then you'll have other parts of the world that will roll out slower because they're having to change tactics here. NBC's streaming platform Peacock launches to everyone in the U.S. on July 15th. The free tier with ads will have about 13,000 hours of programming paid tiers will have about 20,000 hours. So you get more content if you pay, but it's not bad on the free tier. The paid tier will cost you $5 a month with ads or $10 a month if you don't want any ads at all. Broadcast shows from NBC's broadcast networks will be available the next week on the free tier. So if you watch this is us, it'll air. And then the next week, it'll be available on the free tier of Peacock.  Apps for Peacock are available for the PlayStation 4. They just announced that's coming July 20th. The Xbox, Apple TV, Google boxes like Android TV, Vizio, LG, Comcast. The Flex TV box has it and Cox. Of course, Comcast owns NBC, so that makes sense. But Cox Cable will have it on their box as well. Peacock does not look like it will have apps on Roku or Fire TV. That is similar to HBO Max, which launched without apps for Roku or Fire TV as well. One of the main sticking points for both HBO Max and Peacock have been that Roku and Amazon want to continue to sell these channels as add-ons to their own apps. The Roku has a Roku channel and, of course, Amazon has Prime Video. Add-ons would mean sharing more revenue, but also sharing the subscriber relationship Peacock and HBO Max want to control both of those. Roku and Amazon also ask partners for ad inventory and a commitment to spend money on their platforms to market. And that's the amount that they want to spend is also in contention. So I mean, if anything, this just points out that streaming's time has come because you've got the platform saying we have the leverage. You have to give us a sweetheart deal for revenue sharing. And we want to have a part in the subscriber relationship and make it really easy for people where the platforms themselves, like Peacock and HBO Max, want to control everything themselves. They do not want to give over that revenue and that subscriber relationship to Roku and Amazon. Yeah, I mean, if there were, I don't know, back in the day when Hulu launched, for example, you know, everyone sort of going like, is this going to work? Is this going to work? Well, yeah, I mean, it's it's changed. It's taken on many forms, but the whole streaming model does work. How many of these streaming models are going to survive though? Not all of them just not possible. People just aren't going to pay that kind of money. So yeah, it really comes down to a, you know, NBC saying with Peacock, this is what we want.  And not every company is doing that. Yeah, Roku and Amazon have 40 million, you know, so or so people. So they feel like if you want to survive, not even win. If you want to survive out there, really, you need to be on our platform. We feel like we have the upper hand and the and these these folks like Peacock and HBO Max are saying we are not going to give in from the beginning. We don't want to start with a bad relationship just to get distribution. We feel like people will want to watch the things on our platform. And if you don't have them, you will suffer. It's it's exactly the thing that happens with with cable TV disputes. It's just happening for streaming and and in a world where people do have more choice. So with cable TV, you couldn't easily go somewhere else to find your TV subscription. With this situation, if you don't like the fact that Roku doesn't have Peacock, you can switch to Apple TV or using your Xbox there, you do have more choices. Scientists from North Carolina State University and Microsoft will present a study at the ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and symposium on the foundations of software engineering in November on the effectiveness of technical job interviews. So specifically, the study interviewed 48 computer science students. Half were given a technical problem to solve on a whiteboard with an interviewer watching in the same room, watching them as they do it. The other half solved a problem on a whiteboard in a private room. They were alone. Those in the private room didn't have to explain their solutions. They just came up with one and talked about it afterwards. Performance was measured by the accuracy and efficiency of the solutions. Those who took the traditional in review performed about half as well as those who had a private room. And notably, all of the women in the public interview failed and all of the women in the private interview succeeded. A larger sample size obviously needed to draw some firm conclusions. But this does shine some light on why, you know, this oh, this whole kind of like test taking thing under pressure is not necessarily going to give you the best candidate because they just might not work that well that way.  But the fact of the matter is, some people do perform well in front of someone. And those are the people who got the job, especially if they had a preexisting relationship or had something in common with the person in the room, because that reduces anxiety. Whereas if you feel like an outsider and you're unfamiliar, you're going to have potentially more performance anxiety. I really hope that there is more. Studies made about this, because obviously this is an interesting thing to look at from a an academic point of view, when it would have significant ramifications for the hiring process. But also the part about all the women in the public interviews failing and all of them in the private interview failing is kind of a, I don't want to say eye opener, but it's really striking. And again, this sample size is very small. It's less than 50 people. So I would like to see how much of this is replicated with a larger sample size. And if it is, there could be other findings like this one that are interesting to take into account. And I think it's important to point out that it is in company's best interest to pay attention to this, because if you are only hiring people that perform well on the interview, you may not be hiring the best people for your job. That's right. Just because you perform well on the whiteboard in front of the person doesn't mean you are the better coder for this. So it's not a fair test of the skills you're trying to hire for. Yeah.  It's like, okay, are you as a manager willing to stand over this person every time they're trying to solve the problem? No, that's not actually how the workplace works. You don't actually want that. I mean, it's cool to have somebody who works well under pressure, but a lot of people work differently. And especially in the engineering field, you kind of open it up. And you would think that maybe that's a stereotype, but coders might not be the ones that do their best work under pressure having to present their back office workers. And the way this test is presented, the study, is basically saying you're testing for anxiety and presentation skills, not for coding. And that's not what you want when you want to hire coders. Definitely, definitely. All right. The Trusted Use Initiative, or TNI, a coalition of publishers and tech companies, announced Project Origin, an attempt to combat disinformation by digitally watermarking legitimate content. The watermark will be used to automatically flag manipulated or fake content. Standards for product origin will be published in September. Audiences will see a small color indicator along with a message on the content or in the browser to verify the content is the original. TNI has successfully combated misinformation in the UK 2019 general election, the Taiwan 2020 election, and COVID-19. TNI is made up of Agence France-Presse, the BBC, the Financial Times, First Draft, the Hindu, Reuters, the New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, Associated Press, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, along with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft. Yeah, so up until now, and continuing into the US election, starting a month before the US election this year, TNI has worked on keeping each other informed. So members here and the technology companies help alert each other when some misinformation is being spread so that the news outlets themselves don't fall for it, which you think they wouldn't, but sometimes, you know, scramble to cover, it can be difficult. So this has proved very successful in preventing misinformation from being accidentally passed along. This project origin is very interesting because this is consumer-facing. What we want to do is, on an AFP story, we'll put this watermark and that will be something we could train viewers to look for. People in the audience can say, well, if I don't see the little color badge there, then is it really the official story? Now, obviously, there are ways to just put a color badge up, so it'll be very interesting to find out what the standards here are to prevent this from being faked and actually make sure that that watermark, you know, can't be subverted. But there are lots of ways and encryption to do this sort of thing, so I'm interested in which one they pick, and it would be better than just going by branding, because branding and URLs can also be manipulated and faked to fool people into thinking they're looking at the original source. So this is potentially a better way to do it than just that. Folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Hello Robot was founded three years ago by former Google director of robotics, Aaron Edsinger, and Georgia Tech robotics professor, Charlie Kemp. On Tuesday, Hello Robot introduced the Stretch Research Edition. It's a platform that really is a big poll with an arm on it, aimed at research labs, corporate R&D, and startups. Stretch is a mobile manipulator robot. It has a single telescoping grabber for picking things up and putting things down, attached to a central pole that can move around a little bit as well. The arm is touch sensitive and can handle items that weigh up to 1.5 kilograms. The grabber itself is not a human hand looking thing or even pincers, it's a pair of rubber cups and some metal springs. They modeled this on the grippers that are used by people with disabilities. They looked at what do people who need assistance use to grab things. Let's take the stuff that works for them and put it on the robot. Stretch will move on its own 34 by 33 centimeter wheelbase, navigates around with a real sense depth sensing camera and a 340 degree LiDAR sensor. It uses a combination of ROS and Python and can handle voice commands with some limited autonomy. It's capable of moving around a room, maybe grabbing and passing objects. There's a demo of it cleaning a counter with a wet rag. It's not meant for you yet. The idea here is that Hello Robot wants to sell its stretch platforms to research organizations. So six stretch platforms have been sold to research labs so far. These kinds of platforms are usually heavy. This one's light. They're usually expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars. This one costs $17,950. So there's an open source aspect to this as well. I think it's interesting what Hello Robot is doing here because it may not sound that impressive to you because you can't buy one and put it in your house, but what they're trying to do is say we've created a really good platform that could be good for a lot of things and like putting out an SDK with software, we want to give it to folks who can experiment with it and find applications for it. It's really interesting to see what result you get to when you don't start with a preconceived idea of what it should be because this is really just a poll with a pincer at the end on an extent. I hesitate calling it an arm. It's just another poll going off the main one that goes up and it really looks like it is extremely capable and versatile and I'm really curious. This is a very interesting approach. I'm very curious to see what people come up with or companies or researchers come up with as users for this because even on this small little video it can do so many things that you wouldn't expect it to do when you're looking at it because you're obviously trained as a human to expect human behavior or human capabilities from something that looks like a human. This is completely different. I do want to bounce off that point that it's very interesting because it actually has all the range of motions that you normally have in a human arm, but it's not structured like a human arm which is generally like when I think of robots in an automotive plant, it's a giant arm. If I'm looking at soft robots in a factory that puts together fragile objects, it's an arm. This has the range of motion, right? You don't need to have joints, you just need a way to pivot and it can pivot on its axis because it's on rollers as an arm that can extend because it's on the telescoping device. It doesn't need all that and it goes back to what Patrick said. If you get rid of the idea of it needs to look like an arm to do all these things and just say what do we need to actually get this task done? This is what we came up with. Yeah, I like this too because the other thing to consider is $17,950 sounds like a lot to me. I didn't pay that much for my car, but if in a lab situation where you're used to having to budget hundreds of thousands of dollars, $17,000 is achievable in your budget and something you might be willing to take more risks with. You might be willing to try more things with it because you're not like that was a $500,000 piece of equipment. It's going to be hard to replace if something goes wrong. I'm hoping that we'll see more people take this to places they wouldn't have taken those more expensive versions of it. Plus it's lighter weight. You can move it around and have it do more things anyway. It's safer in an environment where you have small children or pets because it's not a lumbering around device. Or even just other people. This is going to be used not in places where small children and pets would be right out of the gate, but I think that point still holds. Even in an industrial situation, it's not going to roll over somebody's foot and crush it. For people who are just audio listeners, this is really imagine a Roomba with a pole going up about two to three feet and then in the middle of that or a pole perpendicular to that with a pincer at the end. That's it. That's the robot. It looks like a rolling hat rack. It really does. Well, I love from the TechCrunch article that showed me variety ways of how it could clean my couch. Or give me a glass of water. Or maybe take some laundry out of that. There are these kind of mundane things that we don't really say like, I need a robot for this because people just are used to doing it. But once you have something that is versatile enough and at the right price point, which it isn't yet, but you know, again, early days, then that's where it gets interesting. Hey, thanks to everybody who participates in our sub Reddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailyTechnewshow. Reddit.com. Oh, look, Mailbag. Oh my gosh. Wow, weird. I wrote in to chime in our conversation from yesterday about job requirements that sometimes didn't make a lot of sense. For example, a job requirement requiring you to have more experience in years than the software has been around. That doesn't make sense. Zach says, I've seen this a lot while looking for jobs. Usually it's a red flag for smaller companies. But when larger companies make this mistake, it does make me wonder, is it because they're forced to do a public listing before they could allow somebody within the company to take the position so they made it impossible? The other issue is just your requirements themselves. I've also seen impossible requirements, but I've seen requirements to have experience of the year different tools and languages were created that were different. This has made finding a job more difficult since I pretty much have to use most tools within a year of their creation and continue to use them for three plus years, which, unless you're really good at picking winners, is really hard to do. Not saying when filling out the applications that you have to click a check mark saying that you agree that you truly meet the requirements listed before submitting your application. Not all job listings are like this, but it seems to be at least in Zach's experience about 20%. Zach says, I hope to find a realistic opportunity soon. Yeah, and Allison Sheridan wrote in with I think he's a good example of what Allison was pointing out. Allison says, Hey guys, I heard you talking about bungled job application requirements for longer than technology had been around. There's a fantastic episode of the Code Newby podcast interviewing Aubrey Blanche about how to create equitable design and by that she means getting a diverse workforce and harnessing it correctly. The reason it's relevant to your story is that she talks specifically about how making too many and too specific of requirements in a job description actually gets you worse candidates. And I think Zach's an example of that Zach. It's probably a great candidate, but he's holding off applying for these things because he's like, well, I don't have 12 years experience on software that was out for 12 years, so I guess I shouldn't apply. Well, shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including Ali and Lisa Sanjabi at John Atwood and Chris Benito also thanks to the one the only Patrick Beja Patrick, what's been going on with your world? I have a feeling it has to do with working from home. I felt like evil kind evil for a second there. Yes, indeed, you can go to workinsanity.net if you want to check out the Work Insanity podcast that Tom and I do together it's 15 minutes every Monday and if you want to check out Laurent Desvous Jeux or Laurent Desvous Tech and you speak French go to notpatrick.com. It's very easy you get a link directly to your podcast app to subscribe to those shows Laurent Desvous Jeux and Laurent Desvous Tech just go to notpatrick.com and you're done you're welcome. That's so nice and Work Insanity Season 1 just finished up so if you've been waiting to jump in now you get a complete season, you get the complete package episodes 1 through 8 so go and check that out right now also we know not all of you need a mask but if you do we got them in the DTS store and who wouldn't want to walk around with the DTS logo on their face I know I do look for me on the streets you could be like me go check it out dailytechnewshow.com slash store if you've got feedback for us our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com thank you in advance we'd love to hear your feedback we're also live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 UTC tune in if you can and find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live this show is part of the broadband network get more at frogpants.com I hope you have enjoyed this program


Let's now put aside the STM32 family to focus on the graphical user interface aspects. First, we will see how the graphical user interface evolution drives the MCU evolution and lead to this workshop. Then, some basic graphics terms will be presented to set up a common language. Then, we will describe the many points that must be taken care of when dealing with graphical user interface management, such as memory or screen refresh. And finally, we'll get an idea of how Graphics Library can help in this task. The release of the iPhone in 2007 changed the user's expectations regarding graphical user interface on small devices. The result is that as soon as a 5-inch screen is involved, user expects a smartphone-like graphical user interface with full colors, touch, animations, etc. In terms of graphical quality, user expects bigger display size, better display resolution, nice icons, and state-of-the-art animations, such as the cover floor, for example. The user expects the same experience as on smartphones. But this means a huge resource on the microcontroller side, also some hardware acceleration becomes mandatory, and the content creation and design also becomes a key aspect. However, even on smartphone interfaces, 3D rendering is not required. 2D graphics is sufficient. Speaking about display on everyday devices, the trend is now moving from optional monochrome displays, such as seven-segment displays that we can see on Alarm Clock, for example, to dot-matrix displays that can be seen on also Alarm Clock, but on elevator screens or toaster screens, for example. And with limited interactivity and most of the time physical keyboard buttons and Knob. On the next generation devices, users will expect color display with touch-sensing and even some virtual keyboard and Knob displayed directly on the screen with which the user can interact. And of course, some richer content, such as integrated user manual as video or animations of how-to, as you already have on some printers that can help to diagnose an issue or to remove some paper jam. Since no specific knowledge was required for this workshop, we must at least present some basic 2D graphics terms that will be used during this workshop. If this vocabulary does not make you graphics experts, at least we will share the same language. A pixel is the smallest element of a digital image. Pixels are usually rectangles, but are only associated with a color value, not a size. The reason is that the size of a pixel may vary among the same screen, so it makes no sense to describe them with their size. It is defined thus with a combination of primary colors that finally define its color value. A bitmap or raster image is an array or grid of pixels that forms a digital image. A bitmap is defined by its widths, its height, and a pixel format, such as RGB 888 or RGB 565. We will come to later in the slides to the pixel format. Just know that a pixel format can also be called color model or color mode. In today's graphics, a differentiation must be done between raster image and vector image. A raster image or a bitmap contains a color value for each of its pixels. On the contrary, a vector graphics or vector image contains a description of the image content. Regarding digital images, a differentiation must be done between raster image, that is called bitmap, and vector image. A raster image contains a color value for each pixels that compose the image. It takes a lot of room in memory, in ROM, usually in flash, because the pixels are stored in C tables. But it does not require any MCU usage, except if there is compression involved, to display the image on the screen. On the contrary, the vector graphics are a description of the content of an image. So instead of containing all the pixel values that describe a circle, we will have a description of there is a circle at this position, with this diameter and the color is this one. So the main advantage of a vector graphics image is their size, because they require only some space to contain the description of the content. But on the contrary, they require some MCU computation to actually display the image on the screen. In this case, a GPU or a graphical processing unit is mandatory. Regarding geometrical transformation, of course, the bitmap, as you can see on the small images that are at the bottom of the screen, on the left side you have a zoomed bitmap. As you can see, we can discover the pixels, because we are actually just making bigger the pixels that are described in the bitmap. On vector graphics, when you zoom in an image, you just add the description in the image to zoom it, and then it's computed when the image is displayed on the screen. So it's direct geometrical transformation, but with a lot of processing involved. As far as graphical interface and microcontroller are concerned, we will go on the left part, so on bitmaps. We will use only bitmaps, because we cannot afford to add a GPU, because a GPU is large. It requires a lot of RAM and of course some complex software to be driven correctly. So it is not required for most HMI, so it is not required for most HMI. We will then only compute bitmaps. Other terms regarding bitmaps are the definition and the resolution. These terms are sometimes confused. But to remember, just think about your television. You bought an HD television, and the HD stands for High Definition, and the HD means that you have 1080 lines on the screen. So it's the number of lines, which implies the number of columns that compose an image. So the definition in general is the number of pixels composing an image. You have several definitions that are very well known, such as VGA, SVGA, etc. The resolution is the number of points forming a given length. It's usually in dot per inch. In display domain, it's pixel per inch. So for example, a laptop usually has today 1600 by 900, which means on a 14 inches screen, 131 pixel per inch. The ISO iPhone 7, for example, has a resolution of 386 pixel per inch. And for the SDN32F746 discovery board, we are at a similar resolution as a laptop, which is 128 pixel per inch. Remember also that the screen size is usually in inch, and is the diagonal of the screen, not the width or the height. So this is an example of a star, a red star, at various resolutions. As you can see, the higher the resolution, the clearer is the star. What we will call a framber phone during this session is the portion of memory that will be directly displayed on the screen. It's a portion of contiguous memory because the display, depending on this type, may access directly this memory. It consists of color values for each and every pixel to be shown on the display as we see in the bitmap definition. Of course, it needs a fast access memory storage, such as RAM, SRAM, or SD RAM. We will see why later. And this frame buffer, depending on the color format, can be very large. Once again, we will describe the color format in the next slide, but just to have an idea, the size of the frame buffer is the width of the bitmap, multiplied by the height, multiplied by a pixel size. And the pixel size, which is one aspect of the color format, can be on one bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, or 32 bits, depending on the display. And as you can see, depending on the pixel size, the size of the frame buffer can grow very fast. And sometimes, trade-offs are necessary between the color image quality and the memory usage. For example, a 16 bits frame buffer can be stored on the internal RAM of the STM32F746G, but not a 24 bits one. The display cycle is the set of operation that leads to the display of one image of a graphical user interface. First, we start with the graphical element of the graphical user interface, such as button, text box, images on an ST logo. In the first step, we fill the frame buffer by composing graphical primitives. A large memory area is needed to store the input bitmaps, but not necessarily a fast one. So the flash in this case can be used to store the input images. The frame buffer is refreshed at what is called the rendering rate. In the second step of the display cycle, the frame buffer is sent to the display. In this case, the refresh rate is fixed by the display itself. Most of the displays are required to be refreshed 60 times per second. So keep in mind that the refresh rate, which is here, for example, 16 hertz, is higher most of the time than the rendering rate. As we saw, the frame buffer may not be refreshed as frequently as the screen needs to be. That's why usually we introduce the notion of double buffering. The display is refreshed at a constant rate, let's say every 16 milliseconds. But a complex frame may take more than 16 milliseconds to be rendered. The idea is then to hide the next frame construction using a second buffer while the current one is sent to the display. The buffer that is sent to the display is called a front buffer. It's sent whatever it contains every 16 milliseconds. And no writing is allowed in this buffer while it is displayed. On the contrary, the back buffer can be filled during the screen display to prepare the next frame. Let's see an animation to understand why double buffering is needed. Let's take an example of an image viewer example. So the idea of the graphical user interface is to first display a loading box. And once the image is loaded to memory and ready to be displayed, as well as some button, for example, next image, previous image, and an ST logo. Then the frame buffer will be sent to the display. At the frame end, the back buffer contains the loading message. The front buffer also contains the loading message and is displayed on the screen.  But the filling is not completed yet. So the front buffer still displays the loading message. And finally, at frame end plus 2, 16 milliseconds later, the back buffer contains a ready to be displayed image containing all the buttons, the image that will be displayed that is finally loaded and an ST logo. The front buffer is for a few instant still the loading box. But then they are swapped so that the image is displayed on the screen. Without a double buffering, the result would have been a halfly rendered image with a part of a loading box. And we do have created some flickering on the screen. We already talked about pixel format or color model. Let's go deeper in this topic now. So the pixel format is defined by three things. First, the color space on the left image is displayed only a grayscale image. And on the right part, you have a three component color image. Then the color depths, which is the number of bits, required to code the color value. And the color depths define the color precision. Here you have an image with a color depth of one bit. So you have only two possible values, which is white and black. On the second image, the color depth is on four bits, which gives 16 possible values for each pixel. And finally, the last image is on 24 bit per pixel, which gives you more than 16 million value for the pixel color. The RGB888 color format is the most widely used color format. And finally, the data mapping of the values in memory that we will see in further slides. In terms of pixel color coding, a differentiation must be done between direct coding and indirect coding. In direct coding, a pixel value contains the information for each color component it contains. On the other side, for indirect coding, a color lookup table is needed so that for each pixel is coded only an index value, which corresponds to a real value that is stored in a color lookup table. So the image size using indirect coding is smaller than direct coding, but requires an additional element, which is the color lookup table, so that a pixel index is converted in a pixel color value. This is an example of a color lookup table. So indirect color coding only on 8 bit value. You could expect that on 8 bit value, as I mentioned previously, that the image will look quite ugly. But in fact, as you can see, it's perfectly clean. The reason is that only the required color are coded into the lookup table, which is displayed on the right. But this color lookup table contains only 256 colors, so it's quite small, but it's dedicated for this picture. You cannot use it for any picture. The alpha channel defines the level of transparency of a pixel. The alpha channel is the A that stands in the RGB 8888. So our RGB 8888 means that each component, transparency, red, green, and blue are coded on 8 bits. Each color component ranges from 0 to 2 power 8 minus 1, which is 255. So you have 256 values for each component, including the alpha channel. Usually the maximum value for the alpha channel means complete opacity, and a null value means full transparency. For example, this red square has each of its pixel alpha values set to the maximum value, which is 255. The second box is half-transparent, and this one is 75% transparent. With the alpha value, or transparency, comes the notion of alpha blending. Alpha blending consists in mixing a source image with a destination one, taking into account the alpha information of each pixel. For example, let's take this bulb image as a source. Note that the chessboard in gray and white behind the bulb is actually how transparency is represented in an image. So you can assume that all that is outside this bulb is transparent. Each pixel has a zero value for the alpha. The destination is this background image, which is fully opaque, and of course the bulb in itself is composed of pixels that have alpha value as its maximum, so it's fully opaque also. For the computation during the blending, the alpha value, which is comprised in between 0 and 255, is converted to a floating value between 0 and 1. The reason is the formula required to compute the output color, which is displayed at the bottom of the screen. In theory, this formula should also take into account the alpha value of the destination, but to make it more simple and easier to understand, we remove this one. So the output color of each pixel is computed from the input color of the source multiplied by transparency, added to the pixel color value of the background, multiplied by 1 minus the transparency of the source. The result is the bulb mixed with the background without the square around the bulb. If the source image didn't have any transparency information, we would have got a simple mixing result containing a square around the bulb. Anti-aliasing. The aliasing is a staircase effect observed on oblique ages of digital images, as represented on the right side of the screen, but also and more specifically on fonts. Anti-aliasing consists in adapting the edge pixel alpha value to mix with the background. For bitmaps with non-square edges, as you can see on the anti-aliased version of the image, the alpha value of the pixel on the edges of the edge forms are adapted so that the staircase effect do not appear anymore on oblique lines nor on a circle. This is even more important on text. Here is the version of the ALater with anti-aliasing. Finally, as mentioned before, the pixel format is also determined by the data mapping of the each pixel. Here is the list of all the pixel formats that are supported by the internal DMA2D accelerator that we will see in the next session. The idea is to show that depending on the pixel format, the data will be stored differently and will take less space for each pixel. For RGB 8888, you need 32 bits to represent one pixel, but for 16 bits representation such as RGB 565s, only two bytes are required because the green value is split on two different bytes. And finally, the L format at the bottom of the screen are lookup table ones, so they are very compact. But as we saw before, they only contain an index for each pixel, but needs an external lookup table to determine the actual color value of each pixel. In this section, we will describe the graphical user interface, composition and update processes. First, the graphical user interface is composed of graphical elements. These elements can be basic geometrical forms, such as rectangles, circles, images, text, buttons, and more generally advanced graphical controls that are also called widgets. Widgets is a shortcut for Windows gadgets and is the generic word used in graphical user interface domain to describe an advanced control. So a widget can be a progress bar, a checkbox, a slider, or a customized one. Actually, we are talking about widgets as soon as there is a state machine behind a control and an associated action. Then, these graphical elements must be managed. First of all, the graphical elements appearance must be managed through a set of primitives that compose the elements. For example, this button is composed of several forms, basic ones, such as rectangles with transparency information in it, but also some text. And the different text allows to draw some shadow on the button and the various basic form allows to make some 3D aspects. Also associated to a graphical element is the element states. For example, a button is either pressed or released. But we must also handle their purpose in the overall graphical user interface. Their purpose means their relation with other elements.  So that is called the Z-ordering information. It is the third dimension of a graphical user interface, the first two ones being the X and Y information. Their purpose is also dependent on user interaction through the two screens, for example, or even through physical buttons. And also dependent on system events such as sensor input, for example, for a widget that would display the temperature of a room, or a timer also for a clock. And finally, the actual refresh of the frame buffer must be handled by the graphical user interface manager. Regarding the frame buffer refresh in itself, let's consider these two clock widgets. The left one has a second hand, which is moving, of course, every second, and requires a refresh every second. On the opposite, the right one has only minutes information, but has a temperature also information displayed on it. So the right one must be updated every minute or maybe more if the temperature changes. But still, the display needs to be updated 60 times per second. The frame buffer does not need and must not be updated each time something moves in the graphical user interface. That's why we are talking about partial rendering to update only the required area.  For example, for the clock widget, when the second hand moves, only the part that contains this hand will be updated, not the rest of the clock. It will save some flash read operations and thus reduce the overall memory bandwidth. Further, objects that are hidden by other objects do not need to be refreshed in the frame buffer. This is called occlusion culling and strongly depends on the Z-ordering information. For example, here with the background on the clock widget, the background does not need to be read entirely from the memory since it does not need to be updated while it's hidden by the clock widget. So from the graphical user interface logic to the frame rendering, there is a lot to take care of when managing a graphical user interface. Fortunately, GraphicsLibrary handle most of them almost seamlessly and efficiently. ST has a partnership with three solutions, M-Win from SIGUR, EmbeddedWizard from TARA, and TouchFX from DROPNER. These three solutions propose first a framework which is composed of ready-to-use advanced graphical control elements that we call the widgets. An environment which is usually object-oriented, this environment allows to handle the position and size of each graphical element of the graphical user interface, but also to handle the graphical element's connection to other graphical elements or to user-based interactions. And finally, they provide some additional tools such as graphical user interface visual editor, but also some build and prototype environment. At least the GCC tool chain is provided. Some tools such as TouchFX also provide some ready-to-use kill project or IR project. And usually they also propose some bitmap and font importation tools to convert bitmaps and fonts into C tables. But the core of a GraphicsLibrary solution is Graphic Engine. The Graphic Engine allows to save MCU usage so that the application can still perform some action while the graphical user interface is updated. It can save the MCU usage using a deep knowledge of the platform architecture. For example, on the M7-based platform, a floating-point unit is available and can be used to leverage the computation processes. Further, some hardware accelerator such as the Chromart is available on some STM32 products in case save also a lot of computation process from the MCU. It also saves some memory bandwidth usage by compressing the bitmap or using indirect color mode that we saw previously. They propose advanced occlusion calling algorithm that can skip the reading of hidden objects and finally, the dirty-region detection algorithm allows partial rendering to save also the memory bandwidth usage. All this processing runs in software, of course, but usually has a low memory footprint on the solution selected by ST. It's around 20 or 40 kilobytes of RAM and they use deterministic memory allocation as much as possible. In conclusion, at the end of this session you should now understand the vocabulary to deal with graphical user interface. You know what is a bitmap, a frame buffer, what is alpha blending, what is a pixel format. You also understand the difference between composition rendering versus the actual screen refresh, what is doubled buffering, what the display cycle involves. You know now what needs to be watched to handle efficiently a graphical user interface which is composed of graphical elements and should perform occlusion calling and partial rendering. And you have some hints on how Graphics Library solution can help in this process through a graphical user interface framework, the graphic engine and some hardware optimizations.


Greetings aspirants, I welcome you all to the Indian Express Weekly News Analysis brought to you by Shankaray's Academy. In this video I am going to cover important news articles from the November 3rd week Indian Express Newspapers. And a kind request to you all aspirants, those who have not, subscribe to our YouTube channel, do subscribe and hit the bell icon button so that you will get regular updates about our controversy videos. Displayed here is a list of topics that we will be discussing today. Now let us get into our first news article discussion. Look at this news article. This article is taken from 11th November in the Indian Express Newspaper. This article is talking about digital advertisement policy. Recently, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting approved the digital advertisement policy 2023. This new policy will allow the advertising wing of the central government such as the Central Bureau of Communication to undertake advertisement campaigns on social media, OTT platforms and other digital media. See this article discusses key features of the digital advertisement policy. So in this discussion we will learn some important points about digital advertisement policy 2023. Now first let us understand what is digital advertisement. Digital advertising which is otherwise called online advertising is basically a marketing strategy. Using this strategy, the companies launch advertisements through online channels like websites, social media, OTT platforms and so on. By doing this, they promote their brand and products and services. See digital advertising is one of the most effective ways for businesses to expand their reach. It also helps the businesses to find new customers and to diversify their revenue streams. Okay, this is all about digital advertisement. Now with this information, let us understand the need for digital advertisement policy in India. As we all know due to the launch of digital India mission in 2015, India has witnessed a huge growth in the number of people using the internet and social media platforms. For instance, according to the telecom regulatory authority of India, as of March 2023, the internet penetration in India is over 80-80 million. Despite this huge penetration, there is not enough awareness among the Indian people about government schemes and policies. So the government wasn't able to fulfill its dream completely. Therefore, the central government felt that digital advertising will help to reach millions of people in a short period of time. That is why the government has enacted digital advertisement policy 2023. Through this policy, the government aims to disseminate information and to create awareness regarding various schemes, programs and policies of the Indian government. This empowers citizens and it also brings in transparency and accountability in implementing schemes and policies. Okay, now moving on to say about the key features of the digital advertisement policy 2023. As I said at the beginning, the digital advertisement policy allows the advertising wing of the central government such as the central Bureau of Communication to undertake advertisement campaigns on social media, OTT platforms and other digital media. So as per the policy, the central Bureau of Communication can select a list of digital media agencies to place advertisements or to spread information about public service campaigns. This helps the government to reach out to YouTube or OTT viewers and other social media users. This in turn will help the government to advertise messaging through whatever media the Indian people use. Okay, so this is the first important feature. Secondly, for the first time, the policy allows the central Bureau of Communication to spread government messages through mobile applications. See earlier, only websites or newspapers are preferred to place government advertisements. But the new digital advertisement policy allows the central Bureau of Communication to place advertisements through mobile apps in addition to websites and newspapers. Okay, so this is the second important feature. Thirdly, as per the policy, the central Bureau of Communication is important to penetrate new and innovative digital communication platforms. This means that the central Bureau of Communication can be able to place advertisements in any kind of future and present digital communication platforms. But this can be done only with the approval of a review committee. This provision provides the central Bureau of Communication a flexibility to adapt to the dynamic digital landscape. Okay, so this is the third important feature. And finally, as per the policy, OTT platforms can now also be chosen for the production of in-flim advertisement or promotion or branding activities. Earlier, OTT platforms are mostly used to place advertisements along with the regular content that the OTT platform runs. But as per the new policy, the central Bureau of Communication can choose OTT platforms to engage in promotion or branding activities. Okay, so these are the key features of the digital advertisement policy 2023. Now moving on to say about the eligibility and the advertising rates. See the digital platforms that are to be chosen to place advertisements should meet a criterion. The digital advertisement policy mandates that the websites, mobile apps, OTT platforms or digital audio platforms who are at least a year old are only eligible to apply for placing advertisements. So any digital platforms that are at least one year old can apply to the central Bureau of Communication to place government advertisements. Okay, now talking about the advertising rates, see to place advertisements, the digital platforms have to be paid some amount by the government right. The government said that the advertising rates will be linked to the subscriber base or viewership numbers of the platforms. The government also pointed out that it will use competitive bidding methods to ensure transparency and efficiency. The government further noted that the rates discovered through the bidding process will remain valid for three years. Okay, this is all about the advertising rates and this is all about the digital advertisement policy 2023. To sum it up, the government has enacted the digital advertisement policy 2023 to spread information and to create awareness regarding various schemes, programs and policies of the Indian government through digital media platforms. The central Bureau of Communication, which is the advertising wing of the central government is the nodal agency in implementing digital advertisement policy 2023. Okay, and that's all regarding this discussion. This discussion is about what is digital advertisement. Then you saw about the need for digital advertisement policy in India. Then you saw about the key features of digital advertisement policy 2023. See, this topic is very much important for your both prelims and main exam. So, revise all the facts that we discussed. Now, with these points in mind, let us move on to the next news article discussion. Look at this news article, this article is taken from 12th November Indian Express newspaper. This article is speaking about smart cities ranking. Recently, the union ministry of housing and urban affairs released smart cities ranking. This ranking is employed to assess the progress of cities that are covered under the smart cities mission. Now, before getting to see the rankings, let us understand the basics of smart cities mission. The smart cities mission was launched on 25th June 2015. The mission was launched to improve the quality of life of the people living in cities. This is being done by enabling local development and harnessing technology. The mission is operated as a centralised sponsored scheme. This means that the funds for the mission will be shared between the centre and the states. The union ministry of housing and urban affairs is the nodal agency for implementing smart cities mission. Note that the smart cities mission does not cover all cities in India, whereas it covers only 100 selected cities across India. The cities for the smart cities mission had been selected through a competition method. Now talking about the scheme duration, initially the mission was set up for a duration of 5 years. That is from financial year 2015-16 to financial year 2019-20. But from time to time, the deadline for the mission has been extended due to various issues like COVID-19, elections and so on. Currently, June 2024 is set as the deadline to achieve smart cities mission. Okay, now with these basics, let us understand the objectives of the smart cities mission. The main objective of the smart cities mission is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure, clean and sustainable environment to the people. The mission also aims to provide a decent quality of life to the citizens through the application of smart solutions. Some of the smart solutions include e-governance and citizen-centric services, smart parking, then employing smart meters in water and energy management, waste to energy solutions, smart mobility, telemedicine and so on. By carrying out these types of activities, the smart cities mission aims to improve the quality of life of people in cities. Apart from this, the mission also aims to drive economic growth by carrying out comprehensive work on social, economical, physical and institutional pillars of the city. The main focus is on sustainable and inclusive development by creation of replicable models. These replicable models will act as lighthouses to other aspiring cities. Okay, this is all about the objectives of the smart cities mission. Now, let us see the funding pattern. As I said earlier, the smart cities mission is a centrally sponsored scheme where the funds are shared between the center and the states. So under the mission, the center government is providing financial support to the extent of rupees 48,000 crores. An equal amount is provided by the state government or urban local bodies. The state governments are also obtaining additional resources through grants under finance commission, municipal bonds, other government programs and borrowings. Okay, see the smart cities mission also encourages the participation of private sector through public private partnerships. Nearly 8,000 projects have been carried out in 100 cities across India under the smart cities mission. Okay, this is all about the smart cities mission. Now, moving on to see about the recently released smart cities ranking. See the smart cities mission is approaching the June 2024 deadline. According to the data from the union ministry of housing and urban affairs, as of November 1st week, about 22% of total projects are still ongoing. That is around 1,724 projects out of 7,959 projects are still ongoing. The ministry said that the ongoing projects are likely to meet the June 2024 deadline. Okay, now coming to the rankings, see the cities in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Mathya Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan account for the top 10 in terms of completion of projects and financial progress under the smart cities mission. On the other hand, the union territories and cities in northeastern states are in the lowest 10 out of the 100 cities. Surat which is a city in Gujarat has stopped in terms of completion of projects, fund usage and other criteria under the smart cities mission. Surat is followed by Agra, Ahmadabad, Varanasi, Bhopal, Tumakuru, Udaipur, Madurai, Kota and Shumoga. So these are the top cities in achieving the smart cities mission. The bottom 10 cities include Kavarathi, Puducherry, Port Blair, Impal, Shillang, Dayu, Gauhathi, Aizwal, Gangtok and Pasigat. Okay, some of the sources said that this low ranking was due to lack of capacities and capabilities in smaller cities. Despite low rankings, government officials are saying that the ongoing projects in such cities are likely to meet the June 2024 deadline. Okay, so this is all about the recently released smart cities ranking. And that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion we saw about the basics of smart cities mission. Then we saw about the recently released smart cities ranking. See this topic is very much important for your both problems and means. So revise all the points that we discussed. Now with these points in mind, let us move on to the next news article discussion. Look at this news article, this article is taken from 14th November in the Express newspaper. This article is speaking about the concerns surrounding draft broadcasting services regulation bill 2023. Recently, the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry has invited comments on this new draft bill. So based on this news only, this article here is written. So in this discussion, let us understand the important provisions of draft broadcasting services regulation bill 2023. And then about the issues surrounding the bill. Now first, let us see the basis of the bill. The central government has enacted the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023 to consolidate the legal framework in regulating the broadcasting sector. Now what is this broadcasting? See, broadcasting refers to the distribution of content or information to a larger audience through any medium of electronic mass communications like television or audio. TV news channel is one of the examples of broadcasting, okay? See, broadcasting helps the people to get crucial information like details about government schemes, weather forecasting and so on. Apart from this, the broadcasting also engaged in entertaining people by distributing songs, movies, cartoons, et cetera. See, there should be some mechanism to regulate the content flow in broadcasting. This is because if the content is not regulated, it sometimes ends up in chaos. So the government from time to time created various legislations in the past to regulate the broadcasting sector. The presence of various legislations affects the coordinated effort in regulating the broadcasting sector. Apart from this, the age-old legislation does not address the issues with present-day broadcasters like OTTs and other digital media. So to address all these issues, the central government has enacted the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023. Through this bill, the government aims to consolidate the legal framework for the broadcasting sector. Apart from this, the bill also aims to replace the three-decade-old cable television networks Regulation Act of 1995 that was enacted to regulate the operation of cable television networks in the country, okay? So to put it simply, the central government enacted the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023 to deal with regulation of broadcasting sector. Now with this basic information, let us see the key provisions of the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023. Firstly, as I said earlier, the bill aims to consolidate and update the regulatory provisions for various broadcasting services under a single legislative framework. This helps the government to streamline the regulatory process by making it more efficient. Apart from this, the bill also extend its regulatory purview by including OTT content and digital news and current affairs. So this helps the government to regulate digital contents as well. This is the first important provision. The second important provision is the introduction of comprehensive definitions and future-ready provisions. As we all know, technologies and services tend to evolve continuously. So to keep up with the pace of evolution, the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill introduces comprehensive definitions for broadcasting terms. The bill also incorporates provisions for emerging broadcasting technologies. Okay, so this is the second important provision. The third important provision of the bill is strengthening of the self-regulation regime. See, each broadcaster is required to maintain self-regulation mechanisms to uphold the quality of content. The new bill enhances this self-regulation mechanism by introducing the content evaluation committees. This internal committee will cover the quality and authenticity of the content. Apart from this, the bill also proposes to upgrade the existing inter-departmental committee by introducing a more participative and broader body called Broadcast Advisory Council. This advisory council would have a chairperson and 10 members. The chairperson should be an eminent, independent person with at least 25 years of experience in the fields of media, entertainment, broadcasting or other relevant fields. If we take members among 10 members, five are nominated by the union government. They represent the five union ministries such as information and broadcasting, human and child development, home affairs, external affairs and social justice and empowerment. These five members will function as ex-officio members of the Broadcast Advisory Council. The remaining five members should be eminent, independent members from the fields of media, entertainment, broadcasting, child rights, disability rights, human rights, et cetera. This is all about the composition. See the Broadcast Advisory Council will hear complaints regarding the violation of program code and advertisement code by the broadcasters. After examining complaints, the council will make recommendations to the government for further action. Okay, so this is the third important portion. Then the fourth important portion of the bill is accessibility for persons with disabilities. See the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023 addresses the specific needs of persons with disabilities by providing comprehensive accessibility guidelines. Some of the guidelines proposed by the bill include recommending subtitles, inclusion of audio descriptions in video content and translation of content into sign language. See these guidelines will help the disabled persons to assess information from the media effectively. Okay, this is the fourth important portion. The fifth important provision is the introduction of statutory penalties and fines. The draft bill introduces statutory penalties such as warning, censure, or monetary penalties for operators and broadcasters who violate the government rules. The bill also introduces provision for imprisonment. But imprisonment can be granted only for very serious offenses. This ensures a balanced approach to the regulation. Also note that the bill provides for equitable penalties. The bill states that monetary penalties and fines are linked to the financial capacity of the broadcasting entity by taking into account their investment and turnover. So this provision ensures fairness and equity in providing punishments. Okay, this is the fifth important provision. And the final important provision is the introduction of program and advertisement codes across various services. The bill aims to create differentiated codes to deal with programs and advertisements in the broadcasting sector. See any person who broadcasts news and current affairs program through an online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or any other similar mediums, they need to adhere to program code and advertising code. So this provision allows the government to regulate content more easily. So these are all some of the important provisions of the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023. Now moving on to see about the issues surrounding the bill. Firstly, the bill will affect the independence of the media. See, over-regulation may result in the increased government control over the digital infrastructure. This in turn threatens the freedom of broadcasters or operators. Secondly, there's an issue with the Broadcast Advisory Council. As we saw earlier, the council also consists of representatives from the ministries who are nominated by the central government. So the government is having an indirect influence on the council. This threatens the autonomy of the Broadcast Advisory Council. Okay, this is the second issue. And finally, there is a problem with program code and advertising code. See by using the program and advertising code, the central government may impose content restrictions. This affects the autonomy of digital media. Okay, so these are all some of the issues surrounding the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023. And that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw about the key provisions of the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2023. And we saw about the issues surrounding the bill. See, this topic is very much important for your main exam. So revise all the facts that we discussed. Now with these points in mind, let us move on to the next news article discussion. Look at this news article. This article is taken from 15th November in the Express newspaper. This article provides us with nine measures to tackle air pollution. This article was written in the backdrop of high air pollution in Delhi. The author points out that air pollution is the fifth largest cause of deaths in India. He said that in 2019, air pollution led to 1.6 million premature deaths in India. The author also highlighted that poor air is causing about rupees 7 lakh crore of economic loss annually, which is more than one-third of India's GST collection. By highlighting these points, the author discusses the problems associated with combating air pollution in India. And he also discusses some nine steps to tackle air pollution. So in this discussion, we'll understand these points in detail. Now first, let us see the problems associated with combating air pollution. See, air pollution is a complex problem that persists across state and regional boundaries and it spans across rural and urban areas. The air pollution is caused from multiple sources of emissions and it is linked to interconnected economic factors and interests. So we can say that the problem of air pollution is widespread across the country. Despite this fact, the responses in tackling air pollution are often fragmented. This means that there is no integrated and coordinated approach in addressing air pollution. Okay, so this is the first problem associated with combating air pollution. Secondly, most of the measures taken by the government are only addressing the symptoms of air pollution. But there is no significant measure to address the root cause of air pollution. For example, the government has taken some measures like creation of a few smoke towers, then dust suppression by spraying roads with water, construction bans, odd even restrictions on traffic, and shutting down schools. See, these activities only provide temporary relief from air pollution. And it does not focus on addressing root causes of air pollution, okay? So these are the two problems associated with combating air pollution in India. Now moving on to say about nine steps given by the author to tackle air pollution. Firstly, the author advocates an integrated approach to limit emissions. As we saw earlier, the air pollution is occurring from multiple sources of emissions. They include emissions from coal-fired power plants, polluting industries, brick clings, and burning of wood and cow dung for cooking purposes in rural areas. The author says that the government should follow an integrated approach to limit the emissions coming from these multiple sources. On one hand, it will help to address air pollution. And on the other hand, it will reduce the costs in limiting air pollution. Simultaneously, the author also advocates to limit crop residue burning by effectively implementing very well-known solutions. The solutions include shifting to less water intensive crops, altering irrigation arrangements, then altering timing and harvesting practices, and building a wider year-round market for straws. See, these activities will help to limit crop residue burning, which in turn reduces air pollution, okay? This is the first step. Secondly, the author says to increase the availability of affordable green urban public transport. See, green public transport means running the public transport using energy obtained from the green sources. So this helps to reduce pollution in the urban areas. So this is the second step. Thirdly, the author advocates for widespread electrification of buildings, vehicles, and production process. The author also advocates switching to renewables. See, both these activities can curb air pollution, and it also helps to meet climate goals, okay? This is the third step. Fourthly, the author asks to adopt a regional approach to address pollution sources and impacts. He said that the focus should be given to the entire region rather than individual cities and towns. The author points out that India faces big challenges in tackling air pollution due to fragmented governance. So following a regional approach will help to address air pollution effectively. Okay, this is the fourth step. Fifthly, the author asks to scale up end-to-end construction and waste management activities. He says that recycling concrete, brick, and stone from existing buildings will reduce the pollution from demolition activities. It will also limit the mining of rivers for sand, and it will limit the expansion of illegal queries across the country. Okay, this is the fifth step. Sixthly, the author advocates for the enforcement of regulations throughout the year, not just around Diwali. See, around Diwali, the government imposes strict restrictions on firing crackers in order to reduce pollution. So the author says that this stricter regulation should be followed throughout the year. Seventhly, the author says that the government should create a wide-scale awareness and education regarding air pollution and its effects. This in turn can influence the lifestyle choices of the people over decades. Eighthly, the author advises increasing the funding to tackle air pollution. The author points out that the amount of funds needed to implement the air pollution reduction activities is not sufficient. So he says that the government should increase the funding mechanism. The author also says that the upcoming 16th Finance Commission should extend its recommendation to finance climate change and air pollution reduction interventions. Okay. And ninthly, the author asks the government to deploy the best science and technology to establish real-time monitoring systems. These systems can provide advanced weekly forecasts on air pollution. This in turn can help the government to make rational decisions, interventions, and investments to tackle air pollution. Okay. So these are the nine steps provided by the author to tackle air pollution in India. So you can use these points in your main sensor when a main question about air pollution comes in the exam. Okay. And that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion we saw about the problems associated with combating air pollution in India. Then we saw about the nine steps that can be taken to reduce air pollution in India. Now, these points in mind, let us move on to the next news article discussion. Look at this news article, this article is taken from 16th November Indian Express newspaper. This article is speaking about Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, that is APEC. Recently, the leaders of the APEC group met in San Francisco in the United States. On the sidelines of the APEC summit, US President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping had their in-person meeting on 15th November. Both the leaders have discussed the relationship between two countries. See, India is not a member of the APEC. However, India's union minister for commerce and industry had attended the meeting. Okay. This is the crux of the news article given here. In this context, let us understand some important points about Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, which is in short called as APEC, is a regional economic forum that was established in 1989. It is headquartered in Singapore. This forum aims to promote trade investment and economic development in the Asia Pacific region. Note that the APEC accounts for about 62% of global GDP and almost half of global trade. The APEC forum operates based on non-binding commitments. This means that the decisions in the APEC forum are reached by consensus. Also, the commitments are undertaken voluntarily and it is not binding on the members of the APEC forum. Okay. Now, coming to the objectives of APEC forum, the main objective of APEC forum is to strengthen the growing economic interdependence of the Asia Pacific region. The APEC forum also aims to create greater prosperity for people of the Asia Pacific region through regional economic integration. Basically, the APEC aims to achieve economic integration of the member countries. Okay. Now, talking about the member countries, the APEC consists of 21 nations that are located geographically around the Pacific Ocean. Some of the main members include the USA, China, Russia and Canada. See the 21 member states of APEC are displayed here, pause the video and just give a glance. Note that the 21 members of APEC are termed economies rather than countries or member states. This is because trade and economic issues are the main focus of the APEC grouping. Okay. Now, coming to India-specific information, see India is not a member of the APEC forum. India has expressed its interest in joining APEC and it made a formal request in 1991. A majority of the members of APEC grouping were in favor of India's inclusion, but some members opposed it. The opposing members are concerned about India's protectionist economic policy. Since 2015, India and the US jointly issued US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean region. That particular statement states that the United States welcomes India's interest in joining the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. The US stated that the Indian economy is a dynamic part of the Asian economy, so that the US welcomed India's interest in joining the APEC forum. So we can say that the US is also supporting India's interest in joining APEC, but due to various reasons, like freeze on membership and opposition by members, India wasn't able to join the APEC forum. So as of now, India remains as an observer of the APEC forum. This is all about the members of APEC forum. Now finally, let us see the important roles played by the APEC. The APEC grouping has been championed for free trade, the lowering of trade tariffs and economic liberalization. In this line in 1991, the Seoul Declaration was jointly issued by the APEC members. Through this declaration, the APEC member countries proclaimed the creation of a liberalized free trade area around the Pacific Rim. So this initiative is now driving the APEC's goal of free trade and economic liberalization. So this is the first important role played by the APEC. Secondly, some of the initiatives taken by the APEC have contributed significantly to the development of middle-class people in the Asia-Pacific region, okay? So these are all some of the roles played by the APEC. And that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw about the basics of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. Then we saw about the objectives of the APEC forum. Then we saw about the member countries of the APEC forum. And finally, we saw some points regarding the roles played by the APEC. And with this, we have come to the end of the video. If you found our video to be useful, do like, comment, and share it with your friends. And don't forget to subscribe, Shankarai's Academy YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.


Well, they're the same just because of the nature of them, because they're form choices. That's what makes them the same. So you might say that in a world of choices, there is a different order of choice, or a higher order of choice, but that's a choice of purpose in mind, and that's not a form choice. You might just say it's like attempting to choose where no choice is possible. So, you know, it's kind of like some of you have seen those movies, Planet Physics, Down the Rabbit Hole, and What the Bleak Do We Know, and I think at one point in there, I think he's talking about, like, he's a physicist and he's saying something like, what is the marital status of the number five or something like that? What is the marital status of the number five? And he's going, we go for that. That's not a real question. That's just not a real question, because number five doesn't have a marital status. Is it single, or is it married? We don't ask that. But we would look at a lot of questions in this world, like, do you like Coker Pepsi better as being a real question? But from the higher perspective, that's like asking, what is the marital status of the number five? It doesn't really, it doesn't make sense, because it doesn't have a reality. It doesn't matter what we choose in the world, like if we choose one marriage partner or divorce somebody else, or take one job, it'll have consequences in the world, but it doesn't really matter. It only matters if it's inspired or not inspired. Exactly, so we could, you know, when sometimes people will say, oh, divorce, like it has like a negative connotation, no, not necessarily. If it's an inspired divorce, and everyone knows what that is, whether it's with a relationship or whatever, you get this strong call that you're to kind of move on in some kind of situation, and you feel this just, this joy, and this ease, and this relief. It's not like divorce is bad and marriage is good. And it's the same thing, you know, it's like you could have an ego-guided marriage, and it's like getting married for all the wrong reasons, or for the wrong reason, which would be, you know, from an ego sense. So really, that's it. It comes down to is this a fear-based motivation or is this an inspiration from the Holy Spirit? And that is the only question. That's the only thing that matters. It's not so much the forms. So if you don't have that inspired feeling, it's probably better to wait till you have it. I would say that with the Holy Spirit, it just seems to be the more tuned into the Holy Spirit you get that it does get more and more obvious what decisions really are already made, but they seem to be on the surface of consciousness or yet to be made, and all decisions are already made, but it becomes more and more and more obvious. The more fine-tuned you become, the more guided, the more intuitive, these are not difficult choices at all. In fact, it's like decide for God for me.  Where would you have me go? You know, that starts to become like your mantra, and not that you have to take a conscious thought with every single decision. He even says that in the rules for decision that it's impractical to kind of, okay, what would you have me do? What would you have me do with every single decision? But you start to kind of, you get more in a mindset of surrender to the Holy Spirit and flowing with the Holy Spirit, and so, you know, you can actually have sets of decision, strings of decision that are with the Holy Spirit without individually making those decisions. And so, yeah, I think it's a pretty good general rule of thumb that if you're not sure, then, you know, you really have to come deeper inside because Jesus says there is one question that you can ask with any situation. What is it for? You hear the purpose sound of that? What is it for? That's the one question you can safely ask. And that's so different from like the ego trying to look at the form and say, okay, what are the pros and what are the cons? You know, it's really tuning into guidance. What would you have me do? And you get better at it. And yeah, you shouldn't feel a sense of pressure like, okay, I've got to make a decision about my wife tonight. When I'm in turmoil, that's painful and that's probably not a good place to decide from. Like, I'm in turmoil, so this must not be good so I should get out. Like, that's not inspired. Yeah, that's a good rule of thumb. Just like if you had two children that were fighting and screaming at each other, that's not a good decision-making state. You know, that's why we pull them apart. We say, you go in there, cool down. You go over there, you cool down. Time out. And it's time out to ponder, reflect, let the emotions come down. You're revved up into emotional states. That is not good to make a decision. Some of you have noticed that about politics where they become masters at making commercials that evoke emotions because they want you to make a decision based on that emotional state and it could even be hate or fear. Don't vote for this guy because of what he's done if she's done this and this. Bypassing cognition, bypassing reason and going for an emotional decision. So yeah, that's a big trick of the ego to try to rev it up. And how many of us in the heat of emotions say things that we regret saying, oh, I wish I could take that back. I didn't mean that, you know, it's like backpedaling. But you told me. I was in an emotional state. Please don't take that to be who I am.


Hi everybody, Joe for JasperJasperHakes.com, happy Thursday coming at you with 2021-22, Panini Crown Royal Basketball, eight box pick your team number three from JasperHakes.com. We did a filler that knocked out both three and four, so four is coming up right after this video. There it is, three comes from a fresh case. Big thanks everybody here for making it happen. If you have a little rooftop next to your name, that means you won that spot in the team random that we did. So we pulled the remaining teams out of breaks three and four and essentially made it a random break. Rob, you ended up with last spot mojo, that's why you have the star next to your name before we pulled all the teams for that random. All right, so now there's some crown royale. Let's pop this open and let's see which half we're going to do. So there's one, two, three, five, six, seven, eight over there. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight right here. So we'll go one, two, three for the back row and four, five, six for this front row. And three, one, two, three, that back row right there. This will save for, pick your team four and I'm going to leave these boxes just to the right of me over here and you'll see them on my face camera? No, maybe not. Well, they're over here. We'll come back. We'll come back at some point. Box number one. Good luck. Kevin Durant, Lamello ball, second year Lamello, 70 out of 99. All-card chip, of course, and then behind Giannis is a Jaden Springer heirs to the throne relic and that will be for the Sixers. That's going to be for Alifonzo. The auto is Elton Brand, Knights of the Roundtable Autograph, Jersey and Auto, 66 out of 99. Sixers getting dumped out of the playoffs today. Heat took care of business, won the series four or two. What's the postmortem for the Sixers? What do they got to do? I feel like they've got a good team. Maybe Giannis got banged up a little bit, missed the first, what, two games, right? So maybe that could have been the difference right there. Josh Christopher, John Wall to 25, Rob with the Rockets. Behind Damon Lillard is Heirs to the throne relic, another Jaden Springer. Rex is asking, remember when KFC tried chicken and waffles in a bomb? No, I did not. It must have been short lived. Behind Dame is Jay Sean Tate, not rookie, second-year autograph, 11 out of 99. Rob with the Rockets, last spot, Mojo. It's like when Burger King tried tacos, yeah Burger King, come on, King of Burgers. Not everyone is the jack of all trades, like Jack in the Box. They can do tacos. Burger King thought it was Jack in the Box. We've got Larry Bird's snow globe. These are kind of cool die cuts here, 26 out of 99. And then we've got a Jimmy Butler, 49. They're moving on. All right, behind Porzingis is a coat of arms, relic, Kendrick Perkins. Perk going to Sean Maddock and O.K. C. And the autograph behind Porzingis is, there you go. Auto die cut, 53 out of 99, Josh Giddy. Sean Maddock with Oklahoma City. Nice, there you go. Next box, there's Busavitch and we've got a six out of 49 rookie royalty, Evan Mobley.  Jared Butler is your heirs to the throne relic. That's Steve Herrick and the Utah Jazz. Behind Van Vliet is Keras Leverk, Pacers jersey and autograph, 69 out of 99, or is it 66 out of 69? No, I'm pretty almost certain it's out of 99. That'll be for Jeremy and the Pacers. All right, we are halfway through this half case break. Jane Springer, we've got a Trey Young snow globe, 555 out of 99. Keras of the throne, Kessler Edwards, Brooklyn Mets, that's going to be Zachary. And the behind Porzingis is LeBron James, behind Porzingis is the autograph and it will be Jason Terry, 32 out of 99. The distinctive headband, Dallas Matthew with the Dallas Maverick, Dallas beating the Suns pretty handily. So they're forcing a game seven in Phoenix. Tyrese Halliburton, Dejunta Murray to 25 for the Spurs, that'll be for David B. We've got for the Kings, we've got Namia's Queda, Kings Relic going two, Matt Daniels. Zachtown Bay Area and back down, we've got Ralph Samson, old rocket Ralph Samson, 32 out of 75. That's going to be for Rob Lastbop Mojo, last two, Juan Toscano Anderson, go and say Warriors. And we've got 99 out of 99, Rookie Rosie, Charles Bassey, Bassey. There's Marcus Smart, Knights of the Round Table, just some rough mistakes from Marcus Smart and the Celtics game, that goes to William, let's see how they bounce back. I think they got another game, right? And then Gordon Hayward is your Silhouettes jersey and autograph, 18 out of 49, Dan with the Hornets. There you go, Dan. All right, final box, eighth and final. Well, yeah, I agree, Rex, I can't imagine the Suns losing that game in Phoenix. Game seven in Phoenix, but it's a, I don't know, game sevens can be coin flips at that point. And that is a out of 49, I like the sort of wave pattern in the background, 26 out of 49, Rookie Royalty, Dicut, Scotty Lewis, Charlotte again, Dan, it's Davion Mitchell for the Kings, Dicut, OG Anno Obi, Toronto Raptors, piece of his jersey, going to David. And behind Jason Tatum is Ayo Dosunmu, 22 out of 75, Dicut autograph for Zachary and the Bulls. And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, that's the break. Eight box, half case, pick your team number three, second half of the case coming up in the next video, Shashmi'scasebreaks.com, bye-bye.