Month: June 2021

Facebook’s ‘Supreme Court’

Shabbir Chunawalla

At Facebook, there is an Oversight Board consisting of a panel of experts who deal with crucial content moderation decisions. These experts have 20 lawyers, scholars and former politicians. Though Zuckerberg is the Facebook supremo, he is shielded by the decisions of the Board about the most contentious decisions. It is akin to the Supreme Court of the Facebook.

The Oversight Board is funded by a legally independent trust consisting of experts of good credentials. However, these are selected by the Facebook and the company pays for them. Whether the Brand has teeth or not is a moot point. It does not have legally enforceable powers of oversight.

At the same time, Oversight Board is not a useless exercise. They do have members with sincerity of purpose.

Recently after the incident at the US Capitol, the account of Trump was suspended indefinitely. However, it is not a permanent suspension. The Board expects the supremo to take the final call within six months. It has not decided about Trump’s future.

The Board is an appellate body for the users, and makes the working of Facebook democratic.

Crypto Transactions

Shabbir Chunawalla

Moving funds with cryptos such as Britcoin, Fedcoin and such other blockchain tokens is an interesting area. Here the movement is faster and stretches its worth.

Tuition fees of foreign universities can be paid in cryptos. Cryptos will facilitate exports and imports. They are useful in crossborder payments. Here an intermediary called correspondent bank plays a role.

Distributed ledgers are used to reach final and instantaneous settlement.

5G Trials in India

Shabbir Chunawalla

In May 2021, the Department of Telecommunications permitted telecom operators to conduct 5G trials in the country in collaboration with equipment manufacturers such as Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and the C-DOT. Reliance Jio will conduct its own trials. To facilitate this, experimental spectrum is being given in various bands, which include the mid-band (3.2GHz to 3.67GHz), millimetre wave band ( 24.25GHz to 28.5GHz) and sub-gigahertz band (700GHz). The operators will be permitted to use their existing spectrum (800MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2500 MHz).

The objectives are to make the companies innovative in developing apps. They can validate their technology. They can test uses in IoT and Industry 4.0.

The duration of trials will be six months, including two months for procuring and setting up the equipment . In addition to urban areas, they should conduct trials in rural and semi-urban areas. The trials will be non-commercial.

There is a view that such trials are not necessary as the technology has already been tested by several hundred operators after launching 5G elsewhere in the world. This has already proven the technology. It would have made sense earlier when 5G was being introduced globally. India is using the same bands — 3500 MHz — as countries like the US and Europe.

At the most the proposed trial can be used to establish India-specific cases.

Targeted Therapy and AI

Shabbir Chunawalla

To see how the drugs affect pathogens, lab cultures have been used by the researchers. However, the process is time consuming. Instead, the DNA sequence of the pathogenic organism is used. There are mutants too whose sequencing can be done. They develop algorithms for different drugs. They try to see how they best match the organism. The AI system quickly identifies the form of organism and the drug which best acts against it. Traditionally, it is a trial and error method. And this is done faster than the existing gold standard of lab cultures. It takes a few months to do lab culture. Here we arrive at the solution in a few hours.

The technique helps the oncologists to target the malignant cells accurately. AI is also used in neurology to process brain signals. It is used to diagnose dementia and its progress. It points to whether the psychosis patient is progressing to schizophrenia.

The therapy can also be used in antibiotic resistant pathogens.

Memory Chips : NAND and DRAM

Shabbir Chunawalla

NAND is short for Not-AND. It is used to store data (it is a replacement for spinning hard drives). It stores photos and videos on the cell phones. NAND demand will boost up due to streaming content and music, 5G’s roll out, and increasing demand of laptops.

DRAM is the world’s most ubiquitous chip. It temporarily stores information to accelerate processing. It was used in desk top PCs and servers. Even today, these two consume DRAM. The additional demand comes from smartphones, games’ consoles and high-end TVs.

Pharmacopoeias

Shabbir Chunawalla

About 20 countries have Pharmacopoeias out of the 200 countries. They operate with varying degrees of autonomy with their regulatory agencies. Many are part of the government, and work in close association with their regulatory agency, e.g. Japan, China, Brazil, Mexico and the Russian Federation. The European Pharmacopoeia in Europe is elaborated by the European Pharmacopoeia Commission, which draws its membership from the countries participating in the Council of Europe (and not the European Union). The British Pharmacopoeia may be able to remain in the Council of Europe. The US Pharmacopoeial Convention operates as a private non-profit body in the US (separate from the FDA). The USP was created in 1820 whereas the FDA was created in the early 20th Century. Pharmacopoeias began working together in harmony in the early 1990s.

E-Pharmacies

Shabbir Chunawalla

The global online pharmacy sector is almost $30 billion in 2014. It is growing at a CAGR of 17.7 percent, and would touch $130 billion by 2023.

The central government prepared draft rules for regulating e-pharmacies. They are called Drugs and Cosmetics Amendment Rules, 2017. They expect to govern the online pharmacies under the ambit of the Drugs and Cosmetic Rules, 1945, the IT Act, 2000 and the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.

According to the rules:

o the empharmacies have to register with the Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO)

o they should apply for license renewal every three years.

o there is a fee of Rs.50000 for every renewal of license.

o there will be two yearly inspections of the premises by the teams from Central Licensing Authority (CLA)

o the portals will be filling the prescriptions of scheduled drugs only against prescriptions.

o they would be barred from selling Schedule X drugs, tranquillisers and narcotic substances.

o they would maintain itemized records of the details of the patients, details of the prescriptions, details of the drugs supplied.

o they will declare the details of the owners, directors and partners.

o they should give the details of the pharmacist under whose supervision the drugs are dispensed.

o they should give details of the vendors and supply channels.

o advertisements are forbidden.

o privacy of the data of patients to be ensured.

There are grey zones in the draft but this is a good beginning.

The rules have been framed taking into consideration the marketplace model, where the pharmacy chooses an offline vendor to supply the medicine.

The draft is resisted by the brick-and-mortar stores. They feel they will be adversely affected. They also feel that pharmacy as a business is not suited for online operations.

Driverless Cars on the UK Roads

Shabbir Chunawalla

The UK’s motorways will have Automated Lane Keeping System (ALKS) with sensors and software to keep cars within a lane. Here they intend to allow driverless cars, the world’s first such experiment where these cars ply on public roads. The cars have the capability to accelerate and brake without the driver input. The speed allowed will be 60 km per hour maximum.

The UK expects that by 2035, around 40 per cent of the UK cars could have self-driving capabilities.

The UK will be in the vanguard of road safety and automative technology.

The drivers should be understand the limitations of self-driving cars and must not allow accidents to happen to avoid public backlash against this technology. This is an issue in the US and the UK will have to be careful.

Radio Requires Reinvention

Shabbir Chunawalla

Radio suffered due to pandemic, and its estimated revenues of Rs.2750 crore by 2023 would be smaller than Rs.3110 crore it earned in 2019. Though radio ad rates were just Rs.100 for a 10-second spot, advertisers felt regional TV gave them better reach. Thus even pre-pandemic radio was facing tough times. It is possible radio revenues may recover but the digital advertising is gaining mileage, and is giving tough competition to radio. Radio requires reinvention.

Besides, there is no credible evaluation of the effectiveness of radio advertising — there is absence of third party audit.

Radio was a preferred medium for small and local advertisers, but these have diverted to the digital media such as Google. Digital has the advantage of being targeted advertising. And the visibility of digital media is higher.

Radio should create live feeds and market them aggressively. They should experiment with podcasts on radio. Radio jockeys should promote radio listening on cell phones. They should focus on live events and content production. They can think of producing original audio/video content. Clients love solutions, and these are one third of radio’s total revenues, and two-third revenue comes from FM. This should be 50:50 in the coming years.

There are opportunities in online concepts, influencer marketing, brand advocacy, podcasts and audio solutions in smart speakers.

Non-advertising business could increase its share in years to come. Radio stations have survived by massive cost cuts and reductions in pays, infrastructure and overheads. However, the need of the hour is the reinvention of the medium itself sooner rather than later.

Browsers

Shabbir Chunawalla

The browser Windows users use is MS Edge. Apple users use Safari. Those who use Google devices may use Chrome. These days there are private browsers — DuckDuckGo and Brave. They collect the minimum data about the users. They use blocking technologies. Safari and Firefox too prevent tracking but the smaller brands are more focused on privacy protection. Private browsers use incognito mode or private mode, and thus omit the browsing history. They also use track blockers. Such browsers do not give access to our browsing history to the service provider.

In the category of private browsers, Firefox Focus is available for mobile devices only. At the end of the session, the trash icon erases the history. DuckDuckGo too is available for mobile devices. It prevents ad trackers from loading. At the end of the session, the flame icon is pressed to erase the session. Brave browser uses a private mode which must be turned on.

At times, these browsers break the elements of certain websites, e.g. Firefox Focus does this. At times, videos are not loaded. While using for e-commerce, the names of certain products may not load properly.

Though it is not necessary to make private browsers your default browser, these are useful for special purposes.