Monday, 24th August ’20
Good morning, welcome to another great morning. As you start your week, we wish the force is with you. Stay fit in your minds, hearts, and health and you will be up for an awesome week ahead. These COVID times were tough for the economy, except for a few outliers. One of them is the gaming industry. The gaming industry saw a YOY growth of 30%. The Indian online gaming market is poised to rise to $1 billion by 2021. We hope you had your fair share of gaming these months.
Let’s start this week with a quote from George Bernhard Shaw
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
MIND MONK
How to get out of a rut?
We all feel dragging through our days every now and then. I’ve scrolled through YouTube for a few days and wished to throw my phone from the top of my building afterward.
But getting back on track is the only thing that we should know how to do. Teach a man to fish as they say. If we’re able to do it once, the next time we hit a rut – it would be easy to get out of.
Do things to change how you feel – The key to changing how you feel is to change what you do. That breaks the vicious cycle of “Oh why do I do this every time? I feel miserable afterward.”
Follow happiness and achievement – look for the deeper satisfaction you get from truly meaningful, noble activities like relationships, exercise, and reading. Achievement can be learning the same thing for a prolonged period of time to be better at it than you were yesterday.
Follow the plan not your whim – Schedule what’s important. Schedule your pleasure and achievement. It’s easy to lose track of time chasing dopamine on social media or a draining binge. Keep these as treats and you’ll feel less guilty at the end of the day.
MARKETS
Markets: A few indicators like traffic, car sales, and property searches have increased signaling an improvement in the economy. Dow finished the session 190 points higher at 27,930, while S&P 500 advanced 0.34 percent as the US markets bounced back on Friday. Strong FII inflows and US stimulus package is driving the bulls.
Trade: India-US to sign a trade deal which is much awaited since 2018. This is expected to cover tariff-related concessions for US farm products, dairy items, pricing of pharmaceutical products such as stents and knee implants, and information and communication technology products. In return, the US is expected to restore the benefits for Indian exporters under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
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- Apple on Friday alleged that Epic Games had asked it for a “side letter” to create its own game store within the iPhone maker’s App Store, which would have upended Apple store’s commission-based business model. This was in response to the case filed by Epic after Fortnite was removed from the App Store.
- NPCI is taking RuPay and UPI to other countries to transform these services from a purely domestic network to a regional network. They are helping other countries develop their domestic networks and then collaborating with them to enable cross-border payments to provide an alternative to Visa and MasterCard.
- A new trend of drivecation is becoming popular wherein tourists are picked up from their doorstep. ITC’s ‘Welcombreak’ lets travelers opt for a pickup in the hotel’s car. Leela is also offering the services of its four- to seven-seater charter planes from Mumbai and Delhi airports to Goa and Udaipur.
WHAT ELSE IS COOKING
- Covid-19 proves to be a boon for Indian gaming start-ups: The Indian online gaming market is poised to grow to $1 billion by 2021, according to a Google-KPMG report. Gaming as a category in India has seen a year-on-year growth of nearly 30%. Startups such as Nazara Technologies, PocketAces, and Paytm First Games saw a huge spike in user engagement and traffic during the lockdown, as gaming became a popular option for stay-at-home entertainment. A young population, access to the internet, and entertainment-seeking behavior are key factors driving online gaming in a country.
- Trump campaign releases first commercial for Indian-Americans featuring PM Modi: Titled “Four More Years”, the 107-second video starts with the iconic footage of Modi and Trump walking hand in hand at the NRG Stadium in Houston during the former’s visit to the US last year wherein the leaders made a joint address before a strong crowd of Indian-Americans. The video aims to woo the influential Indian-American voters numbering over 2 million, and has become viral on social media with over 66,000 views on Twitter in the first few hours.
- RINL, POSCO to form JWG for AP steel project: The South Korean steel major POSCO and state-owned RINL have been in talks for quite some time over their plans to set up a joint venture (JV) for manufacturing value-added special grade of steel as a green-field project in Andhra Pradesh. Factors like having land of over approximately 22,000 acres of its own and access to Gangavaram Port, where raw materials such as coking coal etc arrive, have been suitable for the fructification of the venture.
BUSINESS LOUNGE
All Day I Dream About Sports
In 1920, Adi Dassler, a son of a cobbler invented spiked shoes for track and field. 4 years later, along with his brother Rudolph, Adi founded a company, Gebrüder Dassler, later known as Adidas.
In the 1928 Olympics, the Adidas shoes began gaining popularity. Sales spiked when Adi convinced Jesse Owens to wear Adidas shoes in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Jesse Owens proceeded to win 4 Olympic golds in front of a hostile crowd.
During World War 2, the Dassler brothers were part of NSDAP (The National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and supplied shoes to the Hitler Youth Movement. They also went on to make their first weapon, an anti-tank bazooka.
Adidas started what has become an intense promotional and influencer culture. For instance, in the 1970s, Adidas was the top athletic shoe brand sold in the US. Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were both wearing Adidas boxing shoes in their “Fight of the Century” in 1971.
Eventually, Nike followed on these footsteps and targeted the sportspeople at the top of their game for the decades to follow
In 1949, following a breakdown in the relationship between the brothers, Adolf officially created Adidas, and Rudolf established another sports apparel giant, Puma.
TMT VARSITY
Cryptography
Human beings have 2 inherent needs, to share information, and to communicate discreetly. This led to a rise in the techniques for secrecy in information security and this is called cryptography.
Origin: Cryptography began as early as the origins of civilizations and the art of written communication. With the fueling of ideas and the battle for power and supremacy, it became imperative to conceal the communication.
Hieroglyph is one of the older cryptographic technique used by the Egyptians in 600 BC. Only, the king’s scribe knew the key to retrieve the message. Caesar shift cipher was used by the Romans. Here the letters were shifted by an agreed number to obtain the message.
Steganography is another popular technique where not just the message but the evidence of the information is also concealed.
Classic Cryptography: It manipulated the letters or digits directly and is based on security through obscurity. The methods deployed were kept a secret and only the concerned parties knew it. Hence, it was based on the confidentiality of the entire crypt system.
Modern Cryptography: It works with binary data and is highly mathematical. Algorithms use a secret key to extract the message. Only the relevant recipients know the secret key and the message remains immune from attackers.
Written by Kumar Sourav Mohanty, Akansh Bhatt, and Shashank Dobhal
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