Item No. 6442 Level 5 Top Secret Containment Class Domual Disruption Class Blam Risk Class Critical Special Containment Procedures Due to the anomaly's role in preventative containment efforts and maintaining Foundation The protection of SCP-6442 is to be ensured via any means necessary. Access to containment facility ██ is granted solely by the SCP Foundation's Counter-Intelligence Agency. In efforts to conceal the geographical location of the facility, personnel assigned to the site are to not have access to geo-positioning tools and Class B amnestics are to be administered upon arrival. All on-site are neither expected nor encouraged to familiarize themselves with the layout of the facility due to the possibility of compromising containment, save for designated emergency zones and to perform necessary maintenance of the site. Any unauthorized attempt to exit or gain access to the facility will be met with immediate detainment, and the offender will be subsequently amnesticized, demoted, and or terminated. The facility ██ exterior is guarded by a collection of Foundation-made automatons specializing in covert anti-infiltration tactics. In line with General Concealment Protocols, the automatons are designed to covertly terminate infiltrators, silently destroy hostile aircraft, and conduct biometric counterspells against anomalous weaponry. SCP-6442 itself is located within one of 16 identical spherical containment chambers, located at least 50 meters apart, and connected through maze-like narrow structures designed to ostracize navigation. Each chamber is entirely featureless and has a single entrance, possessing no distinguishing marks that could differentiate it from other chambers. The exact location of SCP-6442 is not to be known by any personnel in the Foundation. The interior of each containment chamber houses a sphere of tungsten alloy containing either SCP-6442 or a near-identical but non-anomalous replica inside. Each sphere is suspended in the center of the corresponding containment chamber to ensure access requires significant coordination and effort to achieve. Furthermore, the interior of the containment facility is to contain multiple layers of protection against individuals attempting to neutralize and or retrieve SCP-6442 via force. Current measures taken include, but are not limited to, anti-nuclear and eigenweapon defense protocols, aerosolized class I amnestics throughout each chamber, six scranton reality anchors, SRAs, per chamber to prevent ontological attacks from harming SCP-6442, a Zanx Anastasako's Constant Temporal Sink, X-Ax, per chamber to prevent temporal manipulation, 36 experimental Randall Yossary and Akiva nullifiers per chamber to prevent and discourage divine intervention, one set of Mobile Task Force TAL5-SAMSARA construction tanks per chamber, in the event the above procedures are insufficient or on-site security is overwhelmed by hostile forces. In the unlikely event that extraction of SCP-6442 is necessary for an unforeseeable reason, all decoys are to be extracted from the facility, alongside SCP-6442. Once a solution is provided to the problem, SCP-6442 is to be returned to one of the main chambers at random. Should the United Nations Global Occult Coalition be successful in retrieving SCP-6442, all attempts are to be made to neutralize the object, to prevent the organization from developing hypothetical inoculation. Memetic inoculation against SCP-6442 would place the SCP Foundation at a severe disadvantage in terms of espionage and covert warfare. As all of SCP-6442's training data and construction materials have been incinerated to prevent reverse engineering, the protection of the object is considered a high priority. Due to tensions within the wider anomalous community, and de-escalation meetings performing poorly, the above special containment procedures are to be continued indefinitely. The procedures must be re-approved or updated at least once per three months by the Counter-Intelligence Agency, as per order of the O5 Council. This document has been altered to exclude an undetermined portion of the full containment procedures for security concerns. Description SCP-6442 refers to an inscription created by the SCP Foundation Counter-Intelligence Agency and Memetics Division. SCP-6442 is in grade, within a sphere constructed with a classified carbon fiber-based elastomer. Upon perceiving at least 73% of the inscription, exposed subjects experience a complete cessation of all neurological functions instantaneously. This effect occurs in any sentient being, including non-organic lifeworms. To date, it is the most potent cognitohatter produced by the organization. It is estimated it will require a cognitive resistance value of 742 or higher to survive. Note, the CRV scale is logarithmic. Since its creation and containment in 2023, SCP-6442 has successfully neutralized at least 8,000 omniscient entities, at least 2,000 of which were employed by the Global Occult Coalition. SCP-6442 is in grade, within a sphere constructed with a classified carbon fiber-based elastomer. It is estimated it will require a cognitive resistance value of 742 or higher to survive. It is estimated it will require a cognitive resistance value of 742 or higher to survive.


The next item of business is the consideration of business motion number 11981, in the name of Jofits Patrick, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting out a revision to the business programme for today. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request-to-speak button now. I call on Jofits Patrick to move motion number 11981. Minister. Moved. Thank you. No member has asked to speak against the motion therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 11981, in the name of Jofits Patrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. We now move to topical questions. Question number one, Jenny Marra. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how the NHS is dealing with Ebola. Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison. The First Minister will be making a statement on this matter shortly. I am sure that the whole chamber will be holding Pauline Caffee and her family and their thoughts at this difficult time. We will wish to join me in thanking all of the health professionals who have been involved in her care. Jenny Marra. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer and we do indeed echo those sentiments in Kezia Dugdale. We will respond to the First Minister to those sentiments later. I would like to ask the health secretary, Presiding Officer. The health secretary in England and Wales has procured an additional 75,000 PPE Ebola suits for safety of their workers. I would like to ask the health secretary how many of those PPE Ebola suits we have in Scotland and how many isolation beds we have in Scotland. I say to Jenny Marra and the rest of the chamber that, of course, we are in very close contact with all NHS boards regarding their stocks of personal protective equipment to ensure that it is available and accessible. In addition, we have a national stockpile that boards can draw on as a reserve. We will continue to ensure that boards have access to personal protective equipment for safe Ebola preparedness and will maintain our national stockpile. In terms of the availability of support in Scotland for any cases, we have established three regional units for the management of possible or confirmed Ebola in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. There are 14 negative pressure rooms across those units and more than 50 isolation rooms. Of course, the reason that Pauline Carverky was transferred to the Royal Free was because it provides a high-level isolation unit. It is regarded as being the best facility for the whole of the UK with the high-level of expertise in treating patients with this type of disease, but we should be assured that, certainly within Scotland, as was the case at the Brownlee hospital, we have the ability to care for Ebola patients. However, it was quite right that the patient was referred and transferred to the Royal Free hospital for her on-going care. I am sure that we all wish to join together in offering our deepest sympathies to all involved in this terrible tragedy and thank the emergency services for all that they have done. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on events following the bin lorry crash in George Square on 22 December. I would like to express my condolences to the families, friends and loved ones of the six people who lost their lives. Jacqueline Morton, Stephanie Tate, Gillian Ewing, Erin McQuaid, Llyrain Sweeney and Jack Sweeney, who our thoughts are with them at this difficult time. Although nothing can provide comfort in such tragic circumstances, I can advise the chamber that a full police investigation under direction of the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service began immediately after the incident occurred. Interim reports to the Crown Office were received on 24 and 28 December. A formal report on the emerging findings of the investigation is due to be submitted by Police Scotland to the Crown Office by the end of January. The Crown Office must wait for all of the necessary inquiries to be completed before it can come to a final decision. I have been advised that the Crown Office will consider that report and, by the end of February, it will provide further details as to its timescale for any further investigations that may be required. My finish is by thanking all those who helped in response to this terrible incident. The response of the emergency services was exemplary. NHS staff have provided injured with the best care and attention possible. St Andrew's first aid volunteers and members of the public administered first aid and local cafes and restaurants provided food and drink to those caught up in this terrible incident. We have yet again seen the incredible spirit of the people of Glasgow. The city, and indeed the whole of Scotland, has pulled together to support those who have been most affected by this incident. Thank you, cabinet secretary, and I echo what the cabinet secretary has said in regard to the emergency services and others, not just in Glasgow, but throughout Scotland who came forward with their help. I welcome the fact that the initial report will be produced short as the cabinet secretary has said. Can I also ask the cabinet secretary if this report will be made public and whether a fatal accident inquiry will follow? I recognise the member's particular interest in this matter, given her constituency interest in the issue. The initial report by the police to the procurator fiscal will not be within the public domain as it requires to be considered confidentially by the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal service. With relation to the possibility of a fatal accident inquiry, any decision on whether there should be a fatal accident inquiry is a matter solely for the Lord Advocate, and it would not be appropriate for the Government to comment on that matter. The other thing that I want to reassure the member and other members in the chamber is that special staff from the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal service will keep the families advised on progress with regard to the investigation and will provide them with support at every stage of the investigation as it moves forward. I appreciate the cabinet secretary's response and reply to the families that was kept fully up-to-date on what is happening in relation to the fatal accident inquiry. If a fatal accident inquiry was granted, what action the Scottish Government would take to ensure that it is undertaken as expediently as possible? As I mentioned, the decision on holding a fatal accident inquiry is a matter solely for the Lord Advocate and it would also be for the procurator fiscal to apply to the sheriff to hold an FEI when investigations are complete. The Scottish Government does not have a role to play in setting down the timeframe for any fatal accident inquiry. I am sure that the member and others in the chamber will recognise that it is essential that a proper and thorough investigation is carried out so that the brief families do find out what happened and that it would be counterproductive to introduce an artificial deadline, which could mean that the investigation does not reach a satisfactory conclusion in establishing the facts around the incident itself. I can assure the member that the families will be kept informed of this whole matter moving forward and that the current office will continue to provide them with the support and assistance that they require. Liam McArthur Thank you very much to ask the Scottish Government what involvement it will have in the investigation into the sinking of the cargo vessel Semfjord in the Pentland Firth. Cabinet Secretary, Richard Lochhead As the Parliament will be aware, the upturned Semfjord was discovered on Saturday afternoon by the MV Rossi Ferry on route to Aberdeen. Unfortunately, despite an extensive search on land and at sea, the eight crewmen from the vessel have not been found. The maritime and coast guard agency has indicated that the search will not be resumed unless new information comes to light. I would like to extend our appreciation to the crews of the aircraft, lifeboats and naval vessel that undertook the initial search and rescue, in addition to the MV Rossi and her passengers and crew who were first on the scene and also the Northern Lighthouse Board vessel Farros. Also, I would like to note the efforts of the volunteer coast guard teams involved in the search operation as well. The vessel has now been located lying in the seabed in the eastern approaches to the Pentland Firth. The investigation into the sinking of the Semfjord is a matter for the marine accident investigation branch who we understand are undertaking their initial assessments at this stage. Circle North Link, as operators of the ferry, are already fully cooperating with the MAIB in the early stages of the investigation. Of course, our thoughts at this time remain with the families of the missing crew. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. I believe that the whole chamber will want to send its condolences to the families of the seven Poles and one Filipino who appear to have lost their lives in this awful tragedy. We should, as the cabinet secretary said, acknowledge and thank all those involved in the search operation over the weekend, including the RNLI coast guard and, of course, the crew of the North Link ferry, the Rossi. We have spotted the capsized vessel and indeed avoided a potentially nasty collision. The MAIB has begun its investigations and it is, as the cabinet secretary acknowledged, early dates. Does he accept that many of my constituency and elsewhere are asking why it took so long to establish that a ship of this size entering a busy stretch of water like the Pentland Firth had run into serious difficulties? Does he agree that the initial delay and the apparent lack of an EPIRB signal inevitably hampered the search and rescue efforts? Further, does he believe that it may be time to look at enhancing the vessel traffic system covering those important and busy waters? Well, due to some of the issues that Liam McArthur quite rightly raises in the chamber, the Scottish Government are in close contact with the maritime and coast guard agency to discuss with them the progress that the investigation will make and what issues will be taken into account. Of course, I am sure that everyone in the chamber will want to ensure that any lessons that can be learnt are learnt, but until we know the outcome of the investigation, of course, we are not really in a position to comment on the exact circumstances surrounding the tragic loss of this vessel. Thank you. I thank the cabinet secretary for that further response and I realise that he is constrained in what he can say with the MAIB investigation under way. Does he agree with me that every reasonable effort should be made in due course to retrieve the bodies of those who appear to have perished on board the chemfjord? If so, will he make appropriate representation to the vessel's owners to that effect? I thank Liam McArthur for raising that important point. At the moment, those are some of the issues that we are discussing with the maritime and coast guard agency. I understand today that the discussions that will be taking place between the owner of the vessel, the insurers and the various agencies involved will be considering such issues and we await the outcome of those deliberations. I wonder if the cabinet secretary shares my concerns regarding claims that have been made that the emergency towing vessel, the tug Heracles, took two and a half hours to respond to the sinking of the chemfjord. Will he join me in calling on UK ministers to investigate those claims? Of course, we all recognise the important role that the emergency towing vessels play in Scottish waters. The question raised by Mike McKenzie is also a question that we have asked the maritime and coast guard agency to clarify. I would remind the chamber and Mike McKenzie that many rescue services were deployed very quickly and took part in the search and rescue operation. However, if there are questions to be asked, it is really important that we ask those questions and get satisfactory answers. To ask the Scottish Government what contact it has had with the administrators of CityLink Ltd. I spoke with the administrators, Ernst and Young, at the earliest possible opportunity to offer support from the Scottish Government for the business and for employees who may be facing redundancy. I again spoke with the administrators yesterday when they advised that there was no future for the business as a going concern. I reaffirmed our offer of support for affected employees through our PACE initiative. I met representatives of the RMT union this morning to discuss how best we might support affected employees. I have asked both verbally and in writing that the administrators assist us in contacting affected employees directly to provide a programme of tailored support. PACE will, as soon as practical, hold four or five events in the areas where the company operated depots. I have also written to Joe Swinson MP, Minister in the UK Government's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to seek her support in progressing claims for the workforce redundancy payments as speedily as possible through the Edinburgh office of the insolvency service. I thank the minister for that positive reply. I wonder what his or the Government's considerations of the timing of the announcement if it had to be at Christmas, which seemed very unfortunate for the workers. Minister? Well, there is probably no good time for a worker to learn that he or she has been made redundant, but I must say, Presiding Officer, that having dealt with a very large number of cases over the last few years, this case is particularly shocking that the news broke on Christmas Eve, and I think that is something that we very much all regret. That is why it is extremely important that the administrators obtemper the undertaking that they said in a press release that they were to fulfil, namely that employees affected by redundancy will be offered appropriate advice and support on making claims for redundancy and notice pay. This morning, I was advised by the RMT representatives, Gordon Martin, McHog and McWard, that no advice or support of any practical sort was provided individually to any of the workers, which of course means that those forms are likely, in some cases, to have been filled in incorrectly. That, in turn, will lead to delays. Therefore, I am grateful that Mr Mason has raised that for his constituents, but also for all of the city-link staff of nearly 200 in Scotland, so that they can receive the support that they have promised from the administrators and, indeed, from their former managers of city-link themselves. Mr Mason? I thank the minister again for that. Does he have any view as to why this company has been unsuccessful when other companies in what is quite a competitive market area have been more successful? There are suggestions that this company has really has been badly run for quite a long time. Minister? That certainly is the suggestion clearly conveyed to me by the RMT, who mentioned several layers of management. It is not really for me to form a judgment. That will not particularly help those who have lost their jobs. However, I am determined, as the Minister for Business, to make sure that our PACE, which is a task force, provides the support that is very often of productive and constructive nature, resulting in more than two-thirds of workers who are made redundant in finding other jobs within six months. That is why I discussed, for about 90 minutes this morning, with Mick Mc and Gordon, the appropriate arrangements that PACE will make, and Margaret Souter and Callum McLean attended the meeting as well. They will be held in four or five areas in Scotland, we hope, in the third or fourth week in January. Intimation will be given to as many of the workers concerned. However, the practicality is that, unless we know the names and addresses of the workforce and self-employed people of whom there were several driving vans for which they paid, it will be difficult for us to make sure that each of those individuals is able to attend these events convened for them. That, too, is why I re-emphasised the support that we need from Ernst and Young to ensure that this job is done properly and done without further delay. The situation with CityLink has had a knock-on effect on some small to medium-sized businesses, including a recruitment business within my own region. That is all the considerable amount of money by CityLink. What action can the Scottish Government take to ensure that those businesses are supported at this time? I am very happy if Siobhan McMahon wants to write to me about any individual case to look at it as carefully as I can. Plainly, if credit has been extended to a company such as CityLink and it has gone into liquidation, then, sadly, all too often is that the reality is that the small company is left in the lurch and the debt must be written off. Sadly, that is the reality of the situation. It raises questions as to what exactly occurred in the last few months of the operation of CityLink. Those are matters that I believe the RMT believes should be investigated and I have urged them to raise specific concerns with the administrator. Finally, it is, of course, the duty of the administrator inter alia to carry out such investigations as may be appropriate into the circumstances that led to so many people, whether they be employees, contractors or small businesses, being left in the lurch on Christmas eve. John Pentland? I understand that, in some areas such as London, CityLink workers are being offered jobs by other delivery firms who will be picking up businesses as a result of CityLink's demise. Can the minister advise what contact the Scottish Government has had with firms in Scotland to encourage them to do likewise? I am very sorry, but I am not sure that I caught all of Mr Pentland's question, and I undertake to look again at it after the debate and to speak to the member, of course, if he wishes to be so to do. I would say that we are not making efforts working with the Job Centre to make sure that, at each of the events that I have described, there will be appropriate presence of those who may be in a position to offer alternative work or jobs to those drivers who find themselves on the dole as a result of the CityLink decision. Thank you. We now move to the next item of business, which is a statement by the First Minister on Ebola. The First Minister will take questions at the end of her statement, and there should therefore be


In the last video we looked at balls and strikes and we touched on the main element that allows a baseball game to continue to move forward even without a clock. This event is called an out. If you want to get technical about it the rulebook lists over 30 different types of outs but the majority of them occur in one of just three ways and each of these ways has a few minor variations on them. So for this video we'll take a look at these three main ways that you can be put out and as a matter of fact we already talked about a few in the balls and strikes video so if you've seen that video you're already ahead of the game. And from that video you'll recall this flow chart. When the pitcher makes the pitch a few different things can happen. If the batter does not swing you the umpire is going to call a ball or a strike but if the batter does hit the ball into fair territory a lot of different things can happen a few of which will result in outs. So let's go to those now. If you hit a ball with a bat either the ball is going to roll along the ground or it's going to fly up into the air. In baseball a ball that stays in the air is called a fly ball and a ball that rolls along the ground is called a ground ball. The simplest out will occur when a fly ball is caught by the defensive team before it hits the ground. It's that simple. We would call this a fly out. So if the batter hits the ball and it flies through the air out to left field and our left fielder runs in and catches the ball before it hits the ground the batter has we would say flown out to left field. And like any player who is out the batter will return to his dugout and wait for the other eight players on his team to take their turns at bat and when his spot in the line up comes back around he will have another chance to bat. A fly out is the only play in baseball that can occur in foul territory as well as fair territory. So had a fly ball been hit out here in the foul territory and the left fielder ran over and caught it before it hit the ground it still would have been an out. Because it was in foul territory this is called a foul out but whatever you call it it's still an out. Our second type of out is called a ground out. This is when the batter hits a ground ball and let's say it rolls to our second baseman. As soon as the ball is hit the batter is going to run towards first base. Now at this point there are a few different ways to get the batter out. Because the batter is not touching a base one of the players on the defense can tag him out and this means that the second baseman would pick the ball up and run over to the batter and touch him with the ball or if he has the ball in his glove if he can touch him with his glove. This would mean that the batter has been tagged out and he would be out. Although you can probably tell this would be inconvenient for the second baseman to pick the ball up and run the whole way over here and tag him because remember the batter is also trying to run towards first base at the same time. And so indeed there is an easier way. Now in the original rules of baseball you are allowed to just chuck the ball at the runner and if the ball hit him he was out. I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time and people in the 1800s were probably a bit tougher than we are now but it probably didn't take getting hit in the face with the ball very many times until they did away with that rule. And so they developed something called a force out. This means that instead of touching the batter with the ball the defense can instead touch the base that he is running to. For example our batter grounds the ball to our second baseman and he runs toward first base. At this point the first baseman will run over to first base and put his foot on first base. The second baseman will then throw the ball to the first baseman and at the moment that the first baseman has the ball and he is touching first base the batter is out. However if the batter is able to run and touch first base before the first baseman can get the ball and touch the base he would not be out. To not be out is to be safe. So this is the job of the first base umpire to watch and see whether the ball or the runner reaches the base first. And so again if the runner is out he will have to return to the dugout and wait for his spot in the order to come back around. If he is safe at first base though he will become a base runner and he will stand on first base while the next player on his team takes his it back. Now the vast majority of ground outs you will see will occur just like that example that we looked at where the batter rounds out to one of the infielders but hitting the ball into the outfield does not mean that you automatically become a base runner. So if a batter were to hit a pitch into right field and maybe he trips while he is running toward first base and he hurts his ankle. Even if the ball hits the ground before the right fielder gets to it he can still throw the ball to first base to get that force out. This would definitely be an exception though most of the time when the ball is hit into the outfield and it's not a fly out it will result in the batter becoming a base runner. So finally let's recap what we learned in the last video about strikeouts. Remember three strikes and the batter is out but the third strike cannot come on a foul ball. It must either be a swing and a miss or a strike that is called by the umpire. And the other aspect of this third strike is that the catcher must actually catch the pitch in his glove. If the batter were to swing and miss and the catcher misses the ball the batter is allowed to run toward first base and the play becomes very much like a ground ball. So the catcher has the option either to pick the ball up and tag the batter out or he can throw the ball to first base and get the force out there. And again bunting a pitch with two strikes is also considered a strikeout. So to recap the most common ways to be put out three strikes is an out as long as the final strike is called or swung at and missed and the catcher catches the ball. If the ball is hit into the air it is called a fly ball and if a fly ball is caught before it hits the ground it is an out. If a fly ball touches the ground it becomes a ground ball. And if the defense picks up this ground ball they can either tag the batter or first base before the batter can touch the base himself. And if the defense can do this then the batter is out. If the batter gets to first base though before the defense can tag him or the base then he becomes a base runner and the next batter will come to the plate to pass.


The study uses Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the effect of reversible sacrificial binding sites on the mechanical properties of single linear polymer chains based on load-bearing metalloproteins found in muscle biceps, revealing that the topology of the bonds determines the position and spacing of sacrificial force peaks, while the height of these peaks is dependent on effective chain length. This article was authored by S. Soren Nabavi, Matthew J. Harrington, Oscar Paris, and others.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. On August 20th, raids were conducted on the homes of human rights activists across India by the Pune Police, who claimed they had links with Maoists. Attempts were also made to arrest five of these activists, and these attempts were stated by various courts. Now these activists are under house arrest, and protests have broken out across the country. At the same time, certain issues have also come up after these incidents on digital safety and data protection. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Parkayastha, Editor-in-Chief NewsClick. Hello Prabir. Prabir, to start with, as we know, of almost all the activists who were raided and arrested. All their mobile phones and their computers were seized. And some of them, like Sudha Bharadwaj, have also said that there might be data tempering. How do you see the risks and possibilities here? I think there are two sets of issues that are involved. By the way, even those who have not been arrested, their computers, hard drives seem to have been seized. Satya Narayana in Flu, he said that his equipment has been seized. So we are talking about two sets of issues here. One is tampering. If you plant evidence later on, and then, of course, how do you protect as an individual against data, false data being planted on your equipment? And the second is, of course, what are the rights you have in protecting your privacy or data privacy against intrusive searches, which may go far beyond what is supposed to be the crime that you are accused of becoming committed. So there are two sets of issues here. The first set of issues, let's talk about the possibility of tampering. Now, this has come up based on a letter which the Pune police is claiming has been recovered from one of the person's computer, which claims that there is a assassination possibility, et cetera, et cetera. Now, apart from the outlandish nature of this accusation, it's also clear that the Pune police doesn't seem to have taken it that seriously, or the government of India, because the national NIA has not been involved in this. Even the state CID has not been involved in this. If it was such a serious issue as they're claiming to be, how come this has not happened? This is a question that I think a citizen is entitled to ask. But the question is, if you do plant electronic evidence, what is the protection that we have? Now, when a normal search and seizure takes place, the police makes a record of all the things being seized. So you know, if there's a difference of inventory between what has been seized and what the police finally produced, you have the protection that, hey, this is what I have signed. But here, when you seize a laptop and you can have terabytes of data on it, when you take a hard drive, it's a terabytes of data on it, how do the individuals protect themselves? Therefore, digital seizure has far more intrusive properties than a normal search and seizure in a house in which tangible evidence is actually taken into custody by the police. And I think this is becoming a gray area in law because I could have also information which is protected, it's professional information, my medical information, the whole bunch of things. And because this personal data, for instance, take my case, I have something called a Fitbit and it transfers all my health data onto the computer, say, or my Android phone. So this is not subject to search and seizure. But if the police get hold of all of this, of course, in this case, it doesn't really matter. But this whole bunch of such data, which is supposed to be private, then becomes open to the state authorities. I think this is what Sri Krishna commission's also its recommendations have been, that we need to create laws. And this is also another jurisdiction, this issue has come up, that digital search and seizure go far beyond normal search and seizure. And therefore, there has to be two sets of standards, one for normal search and seizure, and the second when you're talking digital search and seizure. And I think that we need to create, therefore, some basic, shall we say, protection for the individual against such kind of seizures. But the tampering issue also becomes, in a certain way, a similar kind. How do I protect my equipment from being tampered? Because backdated information being created on a file is not difficult for the police. How do you prevent that from happening? So I think that how do we protect the individual from such things is a very, very major issue and a very major cause of concern. We also know that police when pressed do violate laws. We have enough evidence of, shall we say, forced pressurization, beating up people in custody, forcing them to confess. And we have our jurisprudence is replete with such incidences. So how do you prevent digital invasion of this kind? I think the major issue that we have to worry about I think that we need to look now very seriously at laws because without that, we are really, we have no protection. Once your phone and your computer gets seized, lots of evidence can be planted and there does not seem to be any electronic or legal protection against it. It's very difficult for police to present this evidence credibly and at the same time it's very difficult for us to credibly say this is not ours. And even if you're able to actually prove it by that time, the narrative is already created and then it becomes... That of course is a separate one as we're seeing right now that the narrative is being created and we do not know that how such a flimsy letter which is on the face of it, reading it doesn't seem to be credible. And even if it's supposedly a concocted letter or it's even a letter that somebody wrote in order to implicate them before the search and seizure took place, all of these are conjectures now, we don't know. And I don't think either side will be able to prove that it did or didn't happen. And I think that's the problem with this digital issues that we are facing. It allows the police to set the narrative without having to prove it. Exactly. And another key question is also with regard to passwords for instance. I think Sudha Bharadwaj's daughter also mentioned that they were forced to give all their passwords for Facebook, Twitter, other social media as well. And there's also very dangerous trend because it goes far beyond just the individual actually. You know, that's the other part. There are two sets of issues again here. One is that your, if for instance, there is a warrant for ceasing your personal equipment, et cetera. The question is a lot of this data is not on the computer. It's supposedly on the cloud, which means it's a separate service for which no search and seizure warrants have been issued. So your password, forcing you to give your password is essentially ceasing the data which is not resident on your equipment. Now that again brings up the issue. Can you be forced to give up your passwords? Is it like incriminating yourself? Again, I think under current law, there is this problem that it does not define clearly. What is the extent of information we can hold secret? And if we are forced to give up our password, should there be a separate search and seizure of shall we say our cloud records which the court has to then issue or the police might have to issue or the court might have to issue whatever the legal procedure is. But it must be the magistrates, orders of search and seizure should not take automatically, extend automatically to also social media accounts. The second part of it, and I think that's also important, is a lot of this data is of our personal data. It's communication which can be in a group who owns this data and therefore can any person be asked to give this information which belongs to the group as such and give it because it's, we are supposed to give our personal property up for search and seizure. What happens to which personal property? It's not personal property, but it's property of other people as well. I think these are again gray areas. What it does bring out is with the digital communications that we now have, there's a need to look very seriously at the law itself. And how do you protect us, the people, other people against the invasion of the state of our rights? And how do we also create digital rights? I think because there are new issues that are coming up which are not adequately covered under law. And I think that's something we have to look again, particularly in the light of what we now see that Srikram Krishna commission's report, I think we should be examined very carefully with respect to what he has advised, what he has said or not said and how these issues then come up with respect to his recommendations. I do think he has, for what reading, I remember of Srikram Krishna commission's report, it does appear that he has made certain recommendations, but I don't think they're fleshed out adequately at this point for us to see how they play out with respect to what we have seen in this particular case that you have talked about. And also I suspect there are a lot of the current discourse on this issue deals with individuals as users and consumers, but does not really look into the risks when the state is actually persecuting people who are fighting against it or human rights activists are struggling against it. So that section actually is actually even less fleshed out than your normal average user or customer for that matter. Yes, and I think also that a lot of this data doesn't really belong to a particular individual. So essentially what you do is by trying to take over this data, you can without search and seizure of others, you are actually seizing other people's data because we always held that it's the digital data that we are talking about, email to social media and so on, it's not individual data. It's really data which is collectively the data of a group of people. But I would call the data of the social network. If you remember social network is what Facebook called itself. This is really the data of the network. Who does it belong to? Should have this tie on under what condition state? Should have the right to see it or not see it? Is a different question from opening a letter which is really written to people. So I think that is something which we have to think about because this allows people to create in the state to create narratives which just by association A is guilty of X and all the people in contact is also guilty of X. It's the kind of social narrative that you can build using this kind of network data, shall we say. So I think yes, it does expose us to much greater risks. I don't think the risks at the end of it will stand up in the court of law by the way. I think that the Pune Police, for instance, in this case, whatever they're arguing, if it had any touch with reality, it would have been a much bigger issue. As I said, the NIA would have been involved. Other investigative agencies would have been involved. At least the documents would have been better drafted. They have been sort of called into question by all the courts. So all of this indicates that I don't think that they will really stand up in a court of law. Real issue is not the court of law. Real issue is the court of public opinion where these are being used or shall be misused by channels which are being increasingly called troll TV. And I think that it's at that bench or that bar that we will have to sort of arena ourselves. And I'm hoping that increasingly, this is going to fail there too. Thank you, Prabir. That's all we have time for a news click today. Keep watching.


My name is Alex Wu. I worked for Intel. I mostly do the work about media processing and deep learning acceleration for Intel hardware. I and my colleague implemented OpenCL acceleration for the OpenCV DNM module. Today I'm going to talk about the deep learning in OpenCV. Firstly, we are going to cover something about the OpenCV project and the deep learning. And then we are going to talk about the details of the OpenCV DNM module, as well as its OpenCL acceleration. I will also introduce my current work on Vulkan backend. At last, I will show a sample using DNM module. So what is OpenCV? OpenCV stands for open source computation library. It's used for image processing, analysis and image manipulation. The library has more than 2,500 optimized algorithms used for computation and machine learning. You can use the library in C++ Python on various operating systems. The library has more than 20,000 folks in GitHub. Many would agree that OpenCV is the most well-known computation library nowadays. Several weeks ago, OpenCV 4.0 was released and the Gold version is planned to release in the end of this month. OpenCV 4.0 has many new features. It's switched to C++ 11 and has no longer binary compatibility to previous version. And better performance on CPU with AVX2 in chain six. Compact footprint and bigger vision of DNM module. For those who are not familiar with deep learning, I would like to talk a little bit about the key concepts of deep neural networks. Before going deep dive into our topic, the primitive unit of a neural network is node or neuron or perception. These three words represent the same thing. A node is just a place where the computer happens. A node combines inputs with a set of weights. These input weights products sound and the sound is passed through a so-called activation function. You get the final results of a node computation after the activation function. Nodes make up of layers. Each layer's output is simultaneously the subsequent layer's input. The first layer of the neural network is input layer and the last layer is the output layer. There between them are the hidden layer. Deep neural networks are distinguished from the more commonplace single hidden layer neural networks by their depth. That is, there are more than one hidden layer in the network architecture. Chaining. Chaining is a process to make your network capable of an inference task. The typical chain process has four steps. Step one, initialize weights. Step two, set input data, for example, an image and compute the network output. Step three, compare the output and ground choose and calculate the error. Step four, modify the weights and go to step two until the error is small enough. This process is a little bit complicated, right? But don't worry, deep learning frameworks will do that for you. Inference. You have a chain model that is a set of weights and other parameters. Set input data and compute the network output using deep learning library. Down. Inference is pretty simple compared to the chaining. Here are some scenarios that applies from the deep neural network to the field of compute vision. You can do face recognition, pixel segmentation, object detection, and a lot of other interesting things. Okay, let's start our topic today, OpenCVDN module. In recent years and in many areas, the deep learning has shown results far exceeding loads of classical algorithms. This also applies to the field of compute vision, where the mass of problem is solved using neural networks. Since OpenCV 3.3, DN module is included in the main OpenCV repository. It implements inference only and is compatible to many popular deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow, Caffe, Toge, .NET. That means you can use the net model pre-chained from this framework directly without any model transformation. So why we need a new wheel of DNN in OpenCV? Since we have already so many deep learning libraries, I think there are many reasons here. Firstly, the lightness. It's possible to achieve the lightness of the solution, leaving the only ability to perform a forward pass over the network. This can simplify the code, speed up the installation and compilation process. Secondly, the convenience. DN module is a safe content. It's possible to reduce the external dependency to a minimum. This will simplify the distribution of applications. And if the project previously used OpenCV library, it's not difficult to add support for the neural network to such a project. And universally, DN module provides a unified interface to manipulate net models from different deep learning frameworks. It supports multiple target devices like CPU, GPU, and VPU. It can run on Linux, Windows, Android, and Mac OS. It's possible to make your application right-wise and run everywhere. DN module supports all the basic layers from the basic convolution fully connected to more specialized ones. In addition to support individual layers, support for specific neural network architecture is also important. AlexNet, GoogleNet, ResNet, and SqueezeNet, FCN, Enet, and SSD architecture are well tested in DN module. And more support will be added on the later. Let's go through the technical details of the DN module. This is the architecture. From the top to bottom, the first layer is language bindings. Python and Java are supported. Other components in this layer are accuracy test, performance test, and samples. The next layer is C++ API. This provides the high-level interface to DN module. You can use this interface to load a dead model, run it, and retrieve network outputs. The next layer is implementation layer. It includes model importers, which convert the prechained net model from different planning framework into the internal representation. This layer also includes DN engine and the layer implementations, which implement the general logic of the neural network. At the bottom is the acceleration layer. DN module implemented CPU acceleration, OpenCR acceleration, and highlight acceleration by itself. For the CPU acceleration, SSE and AVX inches in chain six and multistread are heavily used. For the OpenCR acceleration, some highly optimized kernels are implemented. And for the highlight acceleration, highlight language is used to implement layer computations. Besides its own implementation, DN module also uses Intel inference engine library to do the acceleration. Intel inference engine is a part of Intel OpenVINO toolkit, which is a set of tools and libraries for computer vision application. DN module defines backend and target to manage these different acceleration methods. It provides users with flexibility to choose the proper acceleration method according to their software and hardware environment. OpenCV backend is the default backend. It supports CPU acceleration and OpenCR acceleration. These accelerations are built-in implementations without external dependency, so you can use them out of box. Highlight backend also supports CPU acceleration and OpenCR acceleration. That depends on the highlight compiler and runtime. If you have Intel OpenVINO SDK installed, you can choose Intel inference engine backend. It supports CPU OpenCR and mid-read acceleration by using the MKL-DN, CR-DN, and Movidius-VPU respectively underneath. Use the set-preferable backend and the set-preferable target to choose what acceleration method you want. For example, if you want to use Movidius-VPU to acceleration, set the backend to the inference engine and the target to mid-read. DN module will fall back to the default backend if it failed to detect the backend and target you set to it. Network optimizations. DN module has some general optimizations on network level. Thanks to its internal implementation of different network, these optimization are not tied to any specific deep-learning frameworks. That means these optimizations benefit all the net models no matter what their original framework is. I will introduce these optimizations. Layer Fusion. When DN module set up its internal representation of network, it analyses the network structure, and if possible, merge some layers into other layer. This can reduce network complexity and computation workload. There are three Fusion types currently in DN module. In this case, a convolution layer fills the subsequent batch-normal layer, scale layer, and value layer. You can find this structure in ResNet 50 architecture. And in this case, a convolution layer fills the subsequent element-wise layer and value layer. And take another convolution layer as its input. And in this case, the concat layer is eliminated. This is a typical case in SSD architecture. Another optimization is memory reuse. This is the normal case without any memory reuse. The red box represents the allocated memory and the green box represents the reference memory. In this case, each layer allocates its own output memory and the subsequent layer references this output memory as its input memory. DN module analyses the memory lifecycle and reuse the previously allocated memory if possible. The first case is to reuse the input memory. For example, if the layer 2 supports in-place computation, it has no need to allocate the output memory. Instead, it reuse its input memory like this. The second case is more general. Considering that the inference process is sequential and it tends to top, only one layer works at a time. That means the higher layer has a chance to reuse the memory allocated at the lower layer. In this case, the layer 3 don't allocate its own output layer. Instead, it reuse the output memory of the layer 1. With this memory optimization, the output print of a net model can be significantly reduced. OpenCIA acceleration. The OpenCIA acceleration is built-in implementation. It has no external dependency except for the OpenCIA runtime. It supports float.32 and float.16 data format. If you want to enable OpenCIA acceleration, just set the back end to OpenCV and the target to OpenCL or OpenCLFP16 if you want to use the float.16 data format. OpenCIA acceleration has some highly optimized convolution kernels. We took an auto-tuning approach to find the best kernel configurations for a specific GPU. There are a set of pre-tuned kernel configurations built-in in the library. DNN module will use them by default. But if you want to get the best performance for your GPU, try to run auto-tuning instead of using the default one. It's easy to enable auto-tuning. Just set the environment variable. OpenCVOCL for DNN config paths to the directory to store your config files. If you enable auto-tuning, the first time running a net model will be a little bit long. Next time, DNN module will use the cached configurations directly and no need to tune again. For bad performance on Intel GPU, use NeoJiva. Neo is the open source OpenCL Java for Intel GPU. It supports Gen8 graphics and beyond. The best practice is to use the version as new as possible. According to our experience, new version always has bad performance. These are inference time in milliseconds for CPU acceleration and OpenCL acceleration. The test machine has Intel Core i7 CPU with 8 cores. And Intel iRest Pro GPU with 72 execution units. In this case, the OpenCL performance is far exceeding CPU performance. You can find more performance data in this page. Vulkan Backend. Vulkan is the next generation graphics and computer API from Kronos. The same cross-industry group that maintains OpenGL. Vulkan Backend can extend the usage of GPU acceleration for DNN module. For example, the Android has no support for OpenCL, but it supports Vulkan. So you can leverage GPU acceleration using Vulkan Backend on Android. And Vulkan Backend uses computer shader to implement layer computation. I have been working on Vulkan Backend for some time. This is the PR in review. If you have any interest, don't hesitate to give your comments there. Okay, the sample. This is a Python program to do the real-time object detection with MobileNet SSD. The first thing is to import the OpenCV Python module and then define the path to NetModel files. Image size this model can accept. Confidence, threshold, mean value, and the class name list. Of course, you can pass in this information, use command line arguments. On the line 16, open a camera device, and actually you just need a few lines of code to introduce DNN functionality. On line 19, load the NetModel, and on line 23 and 24, pre-process the captured image. On line 26, set the image as the network input, and on line 27, forward the network, and it will return you the detection result. The rest of the code are for visualizing the detection result. They are filtering the candidates according to the confidence threshold. Join bounding box, class name, and confidence, and displayed image. You can find more sample codes in this page. Okay, I will run the program and see what happened. What's your screen? Sorry. I used 20 classes MobileNet model. You can use another model. For example, 90 classes model to detect more objects. On the left top is the class name and the confidence. Okay, that's all. Anybody has any questions? Okay, thanks. This is okay. The native API is the C++. It's okay. But for the demo, I use the Python. It's easy for proper type. Front-Race. Okay. In my machine, the front-race can reach more than 60 FPS. 30 FPS. That depends on your machine. And depends on what backend you choose. Okay, thank you very much.


Hello and welcome to the session in which we would look at the traditional approach versus the expected cash flow approach when it comes to discounting. This topic has a prerequisite and the prerequisite is knowing how to find the present value of a single amount and the present value of an annuity. In other words, you are comfortable with the concept of discounting, which is finding the present value. This topic is important because it's covered on the CPA exam and it's covered in your intermediate accounting courses. Whether you are an accounting student or a CPA candidate, I strongly suggest you take a look at my website farhatlectures.com. I don't replace your CPA review course. I am a useful addition. I provide alternative backup explanation so you'll be able to understand the material better. Your risk is one month of subscription. I will be able to improve your grade by helping you understand the material better. Your potential gain is passing the exam. Take a look at my website to find out how well or not well your university doing on the CPA exam. I do have resources for other accounting courses such as intermediate, managerial, advanced, governmental, so on and so forth. My CPA supplemental resources are aligned with your backer, Wiley, Roger, Gleam, so it's very easy to go back and forth between your CPA review course and my material. Also, I have all the AI CPA previously released questions. Approximately 1500 CPA previously released exam questions in their original format plus detailed explanation. If you have not connected with me on LinkedIn, please do so. Take a look at my LinkedIn recommendation, like this recording, share it with others, connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. So when do we use the discount? When do we discount cash flows? That's the first thing. When do we use this? Well, generally speaking, we use it to find the fair value of things, either the fair value of an asset, the fair value of a privately held stock, the fair value of an obligation. In other words, what's the obligation for us today? We need to discount the future cash flow. So if we have an investment in a private company, we want to find the stock price of that company. Well, we use discounted cash flow. We might have to value an asset for impairment test, the price of a bond. Many, many assets and many liabilities would require that discounting. For example, if we have a notes receivable, we have to discount it at the present value. Every time we have a future inflow or outflow of cash, it has to be discounted at the present value. Now, how do we, how do we discount? There are two ways to do the discount. The two ways are the traditional method versus the expected cash flow method. And here's what you need to know about those two methods. The traditional method is when you have a single estimate cash flows value. When I mean single, it doesn't mean one. It means single means the estimate. You have one estimate in a sense is in a sense that it is known in a sense that your cash flow is known. You know how much cash flow you're going to be getting under those circumstances. If the cash flow is known, then you would use the risk adjusted rate or simply put the market rate. A good example of this is bonds. When you have a bond, your future cash flows are known. How are they known? Because from the coupon payment every time, every six months, the bond will pay six percent, seven percent, eight percent times the face value. So the interest or the coupon payments are known. Also, when you have a bond, the face value, which is the face value of the bond is already known. So the bond is an example where you would use the market rate. And remember, I told you when you're discounting bond, I believe in the prior session, we looked at how to find the value of a bond. We use the market rate. And the reason we use the market rate, the reason why we do this is because the cash flow is known. So the risk must be in the rate. Therefore, the risk is embedded in the rate, not in the cash flow because the cash flows are known. So every time the cash flow is known, then you would use the market rate because the risk is embedded in the market rate versus the expected cash flow approach. When do you use the expected cash flow approach is when you have a range of possible cash flows. It means you don't know exactly what the cash flow is, what you're going to be doing. You're going to be preparing a probability weighted cash flows. Under those circumstances, what we're saying is the risk of these cash flows is embedded in the probability. So simply put, the risk of the payment, you're already factoring the risk when you do the probability. Therefore, when it comes to the rate, you would use the risk free rate. Risk free rate, that means, first of all, risk free rate is lower than the market rate because the market rate will add inflation, will add premium risk. So it will be lower than the market rate. Why do we use the risk free rate? Because the risk is embedded in the cash flows. So the risk has to be either in the rate itself or in the cash flows. In the first method, the traditional approach, the risk is in the rate itself. In the second approach, the risk is embedded in the probability. So the risk embedded in the variability of the cash flow, a good example will be warranty obligation or warranty liability for a company that sells big screen TVs. Now, there's no ready market for these contracts. So they cannot say, well, we know how much it's going to cost us for these obligations. So what would the company do? They will have to have a range of cash flow with probabilities because they don't know how much it's going to cost them. And we're going to assume a risk free rate of 5%. So here's what's going to happen. In year one, they think that the probability of paying for these warranties could be 4,000, could be 6,000, could be 8,000. The probability of 4,000 is 30%. The probability of 6,000 is 50%. The probability of 8,000 is 20%. Always the probabilities will have to weigh to 100%. Now, we will take 4,000 times 30%, 1,200, 6,000 times 50%, 3,000, 8,000 times 2%, 1,600. So we weigh the probability and the expected cash flow. Notice it's expected. It's not like known like the bond payment, 5,800. In year two, we'll do the same thing. We estimate the cash flow and we estimate probabilities. Year two, 5,000 times 10% chance of us paying 5,000. 7,000, there's a 60% chance. 9,000, there's a 30% chance. And when we add all the probability for year two, it adds up to be 7,400. So for year one, the expected cash flow is 5,800. For year two, the expected cash flow is 7,400. Now, once we know the expected cash flow for year one in year two, we are ready to do the discounting. Which interest rate are we going to use? Well, we're going to use the risk-free rate of 5%. Now, if you are giving the market, you can ignore that. Or if you are giving the premium rate, you can ignore that. Because the variability, the risk of these payments is embedded here. And notice, these are all estimate. Okay, so we are dealing with estimates. So, you know, we are dealing with estimates here. So, we could be wrong. Okay? So, now we are ready to compute the present value of this obligation. Well, what do we do? Well, we have year one and year two and the rate is 5%. For year one, we're going to take the 5,800 and multiply it by the present value factor 9, 5, 2. We're going to take 7,400 multiplied by the present value factor for year two, 0.907. Now, your tables might be a little bit different than mine. You might have more decimal points. That's fine. But this is what you do, 5,800 times 0.95238, which is, we're going a little bit more in decimals, 7,400 times 0.90703. So, the obligation is 12,236. So, for the warranty, we use the expected cash flows. The expected cash flow method, why? Because we had to estimate our future obligation. It was not known, like in the first example. And when that's the case, simply put, we use the risk-free rate.  I strongly suggest you take a look at my website, farhatlectures.com. Once again, I don't replace your beloved CPA review course. I'm a useful addition to your CPA review course. I help you understand the material better. And this is how I can add value. This is how I can add 10 to 15 points to your exam. You're going to study once for the exam, take it seriously, invest in yourself, invest in your career. Good luck. And of course, stay safe.