#X1 crumbs all over

[wyy-1257]

How WAKEONE sabotages Kep1er and creates solo-stans in lieu of actually doing their job

It's no secret that WAKEONE is doing a disastrous job at managing and promoting Kep1er. There have been plenty of posts and videos made recently and i will try my best not to just regurgitate what has been said a million times already, but I haven't seen anybody talk about this specifically and i believe i may be onto something.

After the rigging scandal with X1 and Iz*One, mnet chose to rebrand their produce series as Girls Planet 999. It's functionally the same show with a few cosmetic differences, but only one that actually matters - there couldn't be any vote rigging. This meant that mnet could manipulate the outcome only through video editing and storylines, you know, like the other normie reality shows.

Although this method is highly effective and i believe mnet got most of the contestants they wanted in the top 9, nothing was actually certain. With pre-rigged groups like Iz*One, the company had time to think the concept and sound of the group through and pick members accordingly. gp999 was super rushed in and of itself and since mnet had no guarantee that their picks would make it to the final lineup, they only had a vague idea for a concept and no concrete sound in mind.

Fast forward to today, WAKEONE hasn't found a proper direction for Kep1er over a year after their debut. The music feels haphazardly put together and their concept is in the middle of an identity crisis. WAKEONE can't sell the group to an audience that didn't follow gp999. But they have found a way to use the fans that did follow the show to keep Kep1er in the eyes of the general public.

Though most of this post will be focused on Huening Bahiyyih, this treatment applies to all of the members in some way. Her case is just the most exemplary of the company's strategy.

Bahiyyih had an interesting role on gp999. She, along with Choi Yujin, was the thing that sold the show and made people interested. Hiyyih came with a built-in fanbase and mnet m i l k e d her connection to her brother Kai every chance they got while giving her remarkably nonexistent screen time. She was put in gp to hype up the episodes but almost wasn't featured in them.

I think WAKEONE saw Bahiyyih as an opportunity to generate some outrage marketing. She has the most fans out of the group as well as the most haters. Furthermore, she has no experience in the industry prior to gp. These factors made WAKEONE comfortable with assigning her permanent ad-lib duty and openly putting her down.

Of course, this makes her fans mad, so they drum up noise on social media. All of that makes her haters mad, so they start replying. Non-fans/casual fans see the hate Bahiyyih is getting and start supporting her. Kep1er ends up trending with their most recent cb on twitter.

The case of Yujin is strange as well. She came into the show with the force of every cheshire behind her, was a centrepiece for the promotions and drew people into gp, only for her to be reduced to a little more than a backup dancer. Though mnet and WAKEONE don't dare mistreat her as openly, due to her status as a veteran in kpop, they still give her crumbs to work with. Yujin was arguably one of the best dancers in CLC, with experience as both vocalist and rapper, as well as an actress, and here she stands with the least amount of lines and centre time only second to Bahiyyih. You can imagine what that is doing to cheshire.

The girls have so much potential too, and absolutely none of it gets utilized. Xiaoting could be for Kep1er what Wonyoung was for Iz*One, but isn't allowed to. Yujin, for all the skill and experience she has as an idol, stands there as a formation placeholder. Mashiro and Yeoso are practically being hidden. Dayeon and Hikaru have the potential to be outstanding rappers, but only get talk-on-the-beat parts. Chaehyun and Youngeun don't get the challenging vocal parts they need to show off their skills. Bahiyyih's clean dance and vocals can't do much with 10s of total centre time.

WAKEONE doesn't care for Kep1er as a group. WAKEONE has no confidence in their music, concept, dynamics, anything. So they create a space for solo stans to fight, stream, shout into the void and let that generate them enough cash so they break even on the gp investment.

Please take care, my dear Kep1ians, and don't let yourself be exploited by a company so outstandingly uncaring, even for kpop entertainment company standards.

Special thanks to my dear friend Noe for helping me out and listening to me ramble nonsense at her💖

[dohyoniee]

They're slowly turning to be like two peas in a pod

+ bonus: vlive buffered and I captured this (priceless 🤣👌 )

[skippyv20]

This is so cool!  Thank you😊❤️❤️❤️❤️

Scientist bakes bread using 4,500-yr-old yeast from Egyptian pottery

“Would you eat bread made out of ancient yeast from the Bronze Age?  

Seamus Blackley, a video designer and scientist, recently got hold of some ancient yeast and decided to try baking a loaf, and chronicled the whole experience in a very 21st century fashion – he used his Twitter account. Blackley got samples of 4,500 year old yeast, with the help of two experts, and figured out how to help it mutate and become “bake-able” in a very modern loaf of sourdough in his own kitchen.

He was aided in his quixotic mission by Dr. Serena Love, an Egyptologist, and Richard Boman, a microbiologist. With their help, Blackley obtained pores from ancient pottery at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Blackley said recent on his Twitter account, “With the help of (Love and Boman) I went to…the Harvard Peabody Museum to attempt collecting 4,500 year old yeast from ancient Egyptian pottery. Today, I baked some of it. This crazy dough fermented and rose beautifully.”

And here is the result. The scoring is the Hieroglyph representing the “T” sound (Gardiner X1) which is a loaf of bread. The aroma is AMAZING and NEW. It’s much sweeter and more rich than the sourdough we are used to. It’s a big difference. 

…Using a nondestructive process and careful sterile technique, we believe we can actually capture dormant yeasts and bacteria from inside the ceramic pores of ancient pots. We sampled beer- and bread-making objects which had actually been in regular use in the Old Kingdom.

We took many samples and will continue to build our sample library over the next year or so. This is important as we need to learn which microorganisms are old and which are modern contaminants. Samples go to @rbowman1234 for rigorous analysis EXCEPT I was naughty and kept one…

  Using careful technique, UV sterilizers, autoclaved tools and containers, and sterilized, freshly milled Barley and Einkorn flour, I awoke and fed the sample organisms. Although this sample surely contains contaminants, it also likely contains actual ancient yeast strains.

  Today, after a week of feeding and careful culling, the sample was bubbly and ready to try baking with. All the grains used here are ancient, organic and milled fresh: barley and Einkorn and Kamut. Modern wheat was invented long after these organisms went to sleep.

  Here is a large batch of starter, carefully made from the Old Kingdom sample, added to water and some unfiltered olive oil. The idea is to make a dough with identical ingredients to what the yeast ate 4,500 years ago. The aroma of this yeast is unlike anything I’ve experienced.

  This crazy ancient dough fermented and rose beautifully. Here it is in the basket, just before being turned out to bake. The ancient Egyptians didn’t bake like this- you’ll see- but I need to get a feel for all this so I’m going conventional for now.

And here is the result. The scoring is the Hieroglyph representing the “T” sound (Gardiner X1) which is a loaf of bread. The aroma is AMAZING and NEW. It’s much sweeter and more rich than the sourdough we are used to. It’s a big difference. After this cools we will taste!

  the crumb is light and airy, especially for a 100% ancient grain loaf. The aroma and flavor are incredible. I’m emotional. It’s really different, and you can easily tell even if you’re not a bread nerd. This is incredibly exciting, and I’m so amazed that it worked.

  Today I kept practicing with the grain and microbe combination. This will be the last test we show before we head back to the bio lab, and before we start using proper Ancient Egyptian baking techniques. The Hieroglyphs are “Di” and “Ankh” meaning “Given Life.”

[componentplanet]

CES 2020: Highlights in Photos

With a nearly unimaginable array of products and concepts on display spread across all of Las Vegas, it is hard to pick out a final few each year for our wrap-up. But here are those we found of particular interest.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 “Many-in-1” Foldable

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is the world’s first folding display tablet. (There are obviously several designs that have separate displays on each section, but not a single folding display.) I got to demo one this week and I’m really impressed with the design. The display is protected front and back by an integrated leather cover. That prevents a lot of the issues that arose with the original Samsung Fold. You can’t get under the screen — neither can your sandwich crumbs — and the back of the hinge is solidly protected. I saw no evidence of a crease when folding and unfolding it. Lenovo rates the display for 3-4 years of life, as tested by their industrious robots. For the full specs, you can read our coverage of the announcement here.

Given concerns over the plastic screen scratching, I asked Lenovo about that. They said it is actually harder to scratch, and have been testing it in pockets with keys and other sharp objects. With the keyboard tucked inside, there really isn’t any room for something to get in once it is folded, but without the keyboard, there is a tiny gap. I offered to trade them my Surface Pro for one on the spot, but Lenovo was not amused. It looks like a great ultra-portable if you can afford the $2,499+ price when it ships later this year. Not everyone wants a Windows tablet, but it worked quite nicely as a 13-inch display with the optional Bluetooth keyboard that you can fold into the tablet.

On the lighter folding side, Lenovo’s new Razr features a fully functional retro mode that works exactly the way the original Razr phone did.

ShiftCam Aims To Put Another Nail in Camera Company Coffins

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of clip-on lenses and filters for smartphones. But unless they are specced very tightly for a particular model phone, they are hard to align. The problem is worsened if you need to swap between them for different effects. ShiftCam has come up with an ingenious solution: The company puts a number of lens and filter modules into a phone case that has a sliding section. So you can simply slide the correct lens or filter over your phone’s camera. Right now it is understandably iPhone-only, as the bewildering variety of form factors for Android phones makes building something like this for them difficult.

Living Packets Sustainable e-Commerce

Our modern lives full of “1-click ordering” come with many costs. One is the huge amount of packaging required. Some, like cardboard boxes, are at least fairly easy to recycle. Others, like many foam peanuts or other petroleum-based packing materials, aren’t. Living Packets aims to totally up-end both the physical reality of product shipping and its economics. I can’t do the company’s aspirations justice in these few sentences, but they’ve constructed an easy-to-fold, reusable box that in the shipping version will be equipped with GPS, cellular connectivity, an inward-facing camera for inspecting package contents, an e-Ink display for addressing, and even temperature and humidity sensors for quality tracking.

Customers who get a product in one of the company’s boxes can use the box to return products, or donate or sell other items they own in a user-friendly way. Or they can return them to a participating retailer for a small credit. There is a lot more to the vision of Living Packets, but overall the team describes a utopian vision of how product shipments and returns almost certainly should work in a perfect world. So I’m happy to wish them every success, but making this vision a reality will be a long and challenging enterprise. The company has been doing testing with a French retailer, and is planning a broader European launch later this year. The US isn’t on their radar until next year.

The Massive Black Multi-Rotor Copters Are Now Friendlier-Looking

Last year, the Bell multi-rotor passenger helicopter prototype looked like it belonged in a dystopian science fiction movie: sheer black, accented with blue neon. Apparently the company got the message, as this year it was dolled up in much more reasonable garb. Hyundai also showed a massive prototype this year. The color is fine, but unlike the Bell that has shrouds around its props, the props on the Hyundai look like they could double as killing machines. Of course, they are quite high up, but the effect is still a little disconcerting.

Far From the Madding Crowds: Outside Las Vegas

It’s easy to forget that the neon and concrete of Las Vegas sits in the middle of one of the most beautiful areas anywhere. The immediate area is desert (the Mojave), but there are plenty of mountains. This is a view coming down from Sequoia National Forest past Lake Isabella on our drive to the show.

Finally: An Ultra-Short-Throw Projector for Consumers

Whether it is because you like the relative softness and easy-on-the-eye feel of a projected image, or because you can’t afford a zillion-dollar, super-big-screen TV, projectors are an obvious solution. Until now, though, they have required a large area and fancy mounting. Or, like the Sony ultra-short-throw on display a couple of years ago, cost as much as a low-end Tesla. Vava, better known for lower-end consumer electronics, has introduced a really impressive 4K (pixel-shifted using a TI DLP) UST that can project a 150-inch display. The model I demoed was projecting 100 inches onto a special UST-friendly ALR (Ambient Light Rejecting) screen. While it doesn’t have quite the color gamut of a similarly priced home cinema projector, it is a lot more convenient.

F1: The World’s Highest-Tech Sport

Top Formula 1 teams employ well over 1,000 people and spend as much as $400 million a year to field just two cars in about 20 races (21 last year, 22 this year). So, of course, F1 had an exhibit to hype the massive amount of data produced, transmitted, and consumed by the cars. Each race venue has to be fitted with about 60 km of fiber optic cables, for example. For show and tell, you could play F1 2019 in a really nice cockpit (review samples were unfortunately not available) and see Sebastian Vettel’s 2011 title-winning Red Bull car redecorated in the team’s 2019 livery.

GaN: The Secret to Fast Charging

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how EPC’s GaN semiconductor technology was the secret sauce to most high-speed lidar units. It turns out that GaN is also the secret to super-fast, high-power, compact USB-C chargers. If like me, you’d never heard of Navitas, you may still have used a charger powered by its chips. Well over a dozen brands use the company for its high-end USB-C chargers, including Aukey, Ravpower, Anker, and ASUS. The photo shows the size reduction possible by going from a traditional to GaN approach for a 300-watt power supply.

Jeep Combined VR With the Real World in This Ride

Finally, on the fun side, Jeep offered show-goers a turn in this hydraulically-lifted Jeep Rubicon as they traversed an off-road course in virtual reality — competing for the best time.

[Image Credit: David Cardinal]

Now Read:

CES 2020: A Breakthrough Year for Digital Health Wearables

For Self-Driving Cars, Lidar Amps Up at CES 2020

Intel at CES 2020: 10nm++ Tiger Lake, Comet Lake-H, and an Upgradeable NUC on Tap

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/304155-ces-2020-highlights-in-photos from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/01/ces-2020-highlights-in-photos.html