McDonald's China, together with its four major suppliers announced the launch of an industrial park in Xiaogan city, Central China's Hubei Province on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of Chinese market in terms of supply chain for food business. With a combined investment of 1.5 billion yuan ($206 million), the park, named Hubei Smart Food Industrial Park, is a joint project with Bimbo QSR, XH Supply Chain, Tyson Foods Inc, and Zidan, according to information provided to the Global Times. The park is expected to produce 34,000 tons of meat products, 270 million buns, 30 million pastries, and 2 billion packaged products annually. It also features a 25,000-square-meter high-standard automated warehouse for frozen, refrigerated, and dry goods, reducing logistics time by 90 percent from manufacturing to arriving at the destination. Leveraging local geographical advantages, the park will become a supply hub for McDonald's in central and western China, enhancing supply efficiency and stability for its outlets there, the company said. "McDonald's has been deeply rooted in China for over 30 years, and the park is an echo of our long-term development in China," said Phyllis Cheung, CEO of McDonald's China. "Without any long-term strategy, we don't have any structural advantage in China," Cheung noted. The US food giant continues to expand its business map in China. As of the end of June in 2024, there were over 6,000 restaurants and over 200,000 employees in the market. China has become the second largest and fastest-growing market of McDonald's. In 2023, McDonald's China unveiled the ambition of operating 10,000 restaurants by 2028. To support this, McDonald's and its suppliers have invested over 12 billion yuan from between 2018 to 2023 to develop new production capacities and enhance supply chain sustainability. Observers said that the industrial park reflect foreign companies' confidence in operating in China as the country takes concrete measures in furthering reform and opening-up. China's foreign direct investment from January to May 2024 reached 412.51 billion yuan, with the number of newly-established foreign-backed companies reaching 21,764, rising by 17.4 percent year-on-year, data from China's Ministry of Commerce revealed. According to a recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, the majority of US companies saw improved profitability in China in 2023, and half of the survey participants put China as their first choice or within their top three investment destinations globally. Olaf Korzinovski, EVP of Volkswagen China, who is responsible for production and components, also shared his understanding of supply chains in China with the Global Times. Volkswagen has been operating in China for about 40 years. "In order to seize greater value for our customers," Volkswagen Group is stepping up pace of innovation in China, and systematically purshing forward the digitalization process, Korzinovski noted, adding the company is strengthening local capabilities with accelerated decision-making efficiency. Global Times

The latest trade monitor released recently by the World Trade Organization shows that between mid-October 2023 and mid-May 2024, WTO members continued to introduce more trade promotion measures than trade restrictive measures. The WTO said it was an important signal of members' commitment to keep trade flowing amid the current geopolitical uncertainty. According to WTO statistics, during the monitoring period, WTO members adopted 169 trade promotion measures on commodities, more than the 99 trade restrictive measures introduced. Most of the measures are aimed at imports. Commenting on the findings, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that despite the challenging geopolitical environment, this latest trade monitoring report highlights the resilience of world trade. Even against the backdrop of rising protectionist pressures and signs of economic fragmentation, governments around the world are taking meaningful steps to liberalize and boost trade. This demonstrates the benefits of trade on people's purchasing power, business competitiveness and price stability. The WTO monitoring also identified significant new developments in economic support measures. Subsidies as part of industrial policy are increasing rapidly, especially in areas related to climate change and national security.

Google Wallet can help you store your IDs, driving license, loyalty cards, concert tickets and more. You can also store your payment cards and use tap to pay to pay anywhere Google Pay is accepted. Google wallet is available in various countries but Google never launched it in India. Google let indian users stick with the Gpay which facilitates UPI payments. Tap to pay is not part of it. Also we can not store things such as IDs and Passes in indian version of Gpay. This might change and Google may launch Google Wallet in India. With the recent version of Google Wallet and Google Play Services, Google has added some flags and code which indicate that Google is working on something for Indian users regarding wallet. The first change I noticed recently when going through the Google Play Services apk was addition of two new flags Both flags are part of com.google.android.gms.pay package in the Google Play Services. This package contains all the flags for features of Gpay/Wallet. Google does server side flipping of flags to enable/disable features for users. So both these flags doesn't really provide any info about what features enabling these flags is going to bring. But the point here is that Google Wallet is not launched in India so why Google added these flags inside Play Services ? The answer could be that Google may be working on bringing Google Wallet to India. It can enable tap to pay, store payments and various other features for Indian users which we don't have in the current Gpay for India. I found similar flags in the analysis Google Wallet APK - These flags are also disabled by default. But this is again a clear indication of Google working towards something for Indian users. In both cases, enabling the flags doesn't bring anything noticeable UI or feature because there is nothing much added besides flags. Google has dogfood/testing versions internally, so the code will show up slowly in upcoming versions. The last piece of code I found is also from Google Play Services. In case you don't know, Google was working on Digilocker integration in the Google Files app which was supposed to bring your digital document inside the app such as driving license, COVID certificates, aadhar card. But Google has ditched the effort of bringing these features and they removed the "Important" tab (where digilocker was supposed to be integrated) from the Google Files app completely. So things are going to change and here is how. This is the code which I found in the Google Play Services - So the word "PASS" along with PAN, DRIVERS LICENCE, VACC CERTIFICATE & AADHAR CARD, is clear indication of the possibility of Google adding support for these directly through Google Wallet using Digilocker, just like Samsung Pass does it. This code is not old as I have checked older beta versions of Play Services where this code is not present. Here is a string which was added in a previous beta version a few weeks ago but I completely ignored it because it didn't make any sense without flags and the other code - This addition was surprising because there was nothing regarding digilocker before in the Play Services. In the words "pay_valuable", the "pay" to Wallet/Gpay and "valuable" refers to the things like Passes, loyalty cards and transit cards. Since we are talking about digilocker, these "valuable" are driving license, vaccination certificate, PAN card and Aadhar card which can be store in Google Wallet after digilocker integration. That's all about it. We will know more about it in upcoming app updates or maybe Google can itself annouce something about this.

Incredible space photos like those from NASA don't look as stunning straight out of the telescope. They need significant processing, and a crucial part of that is sharpening. Coming to you from Unmesh Dinda with PiXimperfect, this fascinating video explores the APF-R plugin, developed by award-winning astrophotographer Christoph Kaltseis. APF-R stands for Absolute Point of Focus, and it's designed to enhance photo details without creating halos or artifacts. This technology has been used by space agencies with telescopes like the James Webb, and now, you can use it in Photoshop. The plugin allows for non-destructive editing, meaning you can adjust the radius and detail level without permanently altering your image. This feature is crucial for astrophotography, where preserving original details is vital. The video shows how APF-R compares to Photoshop's built-in sharpening tools. The plugin offers multiple rendering methods, each suited for different types of images. For instance, the "Center Weighted" method provides a balanced sharpening effect without making the image look overprocessed. Dinda explains how to fine-tune these settings to achieve the best results, making it clear why this plugin is a game-changer for photographers looking to enhance their images with precision. One notable feature of APF-R is its ability to work with different image types. The video demonstrates how the plugin enhances not just space photos but also landscapes and portraits. For portraits, APF-R can bring out skin textures and eye details without creating the unwanted halos that traditional sharpening methods often produce. Dinda also shows how to combine APF-R with other Photoshop tools, like Smart Sharpen, for even better results. This versatility makes APF-R a valuable addition to any photographer's toolkit. The plugin's cost is $50, which Dinda considers a bargain given its advanced capabilities. There's also a Creative Bundle subscription that includes APF-R and 20 other tools, offering great value for those looking to expand their editing options. Dinda provides discount codes in the video description, making this sophisticated tool more accessible. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Dinda.

Chat means chat, and GPT is the acronym for Gene Rate Pre trained Transformer. Genrative means generation, and its function is to create or produce something new; Pre trained refers to a model of artificial intelligence that is learned from a large amount of textual materials, while Transformer refers to a model of artificial intelligence. Don't worry about T, just focus on the words G and P. We mainly use its Generative function to generate various types of content; But we need to know why it can produce various types of content, and the reason lies in P. Only by learning a large amount of content can we proceed with reproduction. And this kind of learning actually has limitations, which is very natural. For example, if you have learned a lot of knowledge since childhood, can you guarantee that your answer to a question is completely correct? Almost impossible, firstly due to the limitations of knowledge, ChatGPT is no exception, as it is impossible to master all knowledge; The second is the accuracy of knowledge, how to ensure that all knowledge is accurate and error free; The third aspect is the complexity of knowledge, where the same concept is manifested differently in different contexts, making it difficult for even humans to grasp it perfectly, let alone AI. So when we use ChatGPT, we also need to monitor the accuracy of the output content of ChatGPT. It is likely not a problem, but if you want to use it on critical issues, you will need to manually review it again. And now ChatGPT has actually been upgraded twice, one is GPT4 with more accurate answering ability, and the other is the recent GPT Turbo. The current ChatGPT is a large model called multimodality, which differs from the first generation in that it can not only receive and output text, but also other types of input, such as images, documents, videos, etc. The output is also more diverse. In addition to text, it can also output images or files, and so on.