#until the tech ecosystem returns to balance

[cantsayidont]

It makes me really mad that no search engine I've used in the past six months correctly, reliably processes Boolean search operators (even if their help pages and technical support people insist they still do).

[sonicasura]

{In An Adjacent Monsterverse}

Chittering to herself, Mothra encouraged the growth of particular flora to replenish what the rising population of a herbivore herd ate. Nature was such a delicate balance in some areas that she pondered why it hadn’t returned to the larger species it used to grow… Regardless, she would do her innate duty to help it along.

Godzilla handled the larger aspects of the ecosystem keeping more—unsavory types from being as overeager. She handled the smaller less innately descriptive aspects. A balance as old as the planet itself though she was younger. Sometimes memories blurred between the eggs, but she made sure to never forget him.

…

…

…

One of the insects who always gravitated toward her when she landed warned her of something coming closer. Mothra faintly registered the beating of similar wings although more solid? How curious. She was smart enough to continue spreading her spores and scales. Soon enough, the mysterious crea—that was a machine. The life infused moth became more alert due to past experiences with tech.

Except this certainly didn’t look like anything the humans made. The mosquito-esc machine zipped around in odd patterns drawing her eyes. Until she felt a faint presence on one of her wings, then the mosquito machine flew up quickly collecting a much smaller version.

Both soon escaped leaving Mothra perplexed.

…

…

…

[Titanus Mosura DNA sample acquired.]

——————————————

Temporarily, Dart didn’t feel guilty over the almost permanent storm cells they accidentally caused when first becoming Hydragen. One particular storm ended up in a low traffic area for boats and a satellite blind spot. The Omnitrix user got to work digging into the ocean via Grimstone. Once lava/magma was brought up, they rapidly cooled it using Frostsmite. Then—came the “exciting” part.

Laying down the literal foundation for an suspense large enough to house several various Mutations who needed varied living conditions. In, on, and below the island itself would need several biomes to accommodate the eventual prey of the Mutations themselves. There was soooooo much work to be done it wasn’t funny.

At least they could transport some of Crustaceous Rex’s preferred food giant tar-spitting squid into the underwater ravines. Those squids had been absolute menaces to the coastline without the Mutation around.

As for where they got the material?

Well. Mutant Bee island had been very thoroughly wiped of all life so no one in would miss the slagged over island, right???

Dart made sure no traits of the Bee or Plant mutation existed before transplanting things.

—————————————

This island was going to be much larger than Worldshaker’s had been and even the current Monster Island the mutations were housed on. If anything, Dart was creating a proper Kaiju Island in the matter of a few days or at least the base of which on could form. They didn’t want to bother Azmuth soon after calling him to help Chameleon. So, they were stuck attempting to transplant every bit of flora by themself.

Most plants didn’t take well to being teleported.

Dart had to resort to the painfully slow process of coaxing some seeds to grow a bit faster as Pipeline. Which again was very, very sedate. The Omnitrix user couldn’t even get past budding grass to grow fast enough for their likes on trying to give the Mutations’ homes…

‘Really feeling the absences of Wildvine and Swampfire here.’

‘I am aware of that, Dart. It’s my subroutines that determine which aliens or species you unlock . Perhaps if you keep up at this it will unlock either of those two. You unlocked Lodestar in a similar fashion cleaning up the ocean floor of shipping containers, right?’

Dart sighed tiredly, resting on a rock they had purposely shaped on the budding island in order to be comfortable to sit on. The Omnitrix user knew something would give in eventually—either the subroutines or they’d get distracted. Contrary to popular perception, even the human teen grew tired of focusing on certain projects for months at a time. They had only been dead set on Kaiju Island for a week.

An on and off week due to spending time with Chameleon, Godzilla Jr, and Godzilla Sr who broke out of HEAT’s care to return crankily.

The Omnitrix user hit the faceplate once the device finally recharged and—found themself growing larger than they intended to. A more unique set of wings than Dart was expecting fluttered. Eyes similar to when they became Spewpa or Nanomech yet largely different stared out from a new perspective. Antenna? Yes, antennas began automatically transmitting the smells in the air to them though it took the Omnitrix filtering to help them realize this.

Grass started to shoot up when they tried fluttering their wings on command—mainly due to the glowing powder or scales falling from it.

‘…I’m Mothra, aren’t I?’

‘You did want a form that could help speed up the plant growth.’

‘I have never had a flying insect form outside of Nanomech though and they’re techorganic. Lethrall has the closest approximation, but they’re a dragon. How am I supposed to fly?’

‘Practice makes perfect.’

Dart now regretted the storm cell’s presence.

—ROB’d Anon.

Another Kaiju entry gets added to the roster. No, I don’t have a name for this yet—working on it. Mashing a few implied abilities since Monsterverse Mothra doesn’t exactly show the ability to accelerate plant growth. But, plants and insects tend to grow around her egg/cocoon.

Can only imagine the confusion if Mothra ever meets this new form. At least Dart can make some actual progress for the island's plant life. I suggest looking at different moths or their symbolism for name ideas.

[aion-rsa]

Godzilla vs. Kong: Inside the Monster Fight of the Century

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

By now you’ve probably seen the Godzilla vs. Kong trailer. You know, the one where a giant ape not only punches a giant lizard in the face (and does what almost looks like the Henry Cavill arm-cocking maneuver) suggesting there’s a new contender for the title of “King of the Monsters.” Audiences will find out who wins when the film drops on HBO Max and in theaters on Mar. 26, 2021, but in a 2019 visit to the Australian production, Den of Geek learned there is more to the movie than a mere clash of Titans.

Instead, executive producer Alex Garcia teases a film about the duality of the “primordial and the technological” elements that pervade the film narratively and aesthetically. Of course there will be throwdowns between two marquee monsters — and possibly a mechanized one — who might just have some history together.

The Monsterverse Main Event

The screams are noticeable on the Godzilla vs. Kong production in Gold Coast, Queensland. Rather than emanating from victims of a monster rampage, it’s the sound of roller coaster passengers at the Warner Bros. Movie World right next door. But there be monsters in the Village Roadshow Studio offices. In a conference room filled with journalists, the walls are adorned with concept art of creatures, including the titular prizefighters duking it out.

“This is obviously the title event in our MonsterVerse series,” says Garcia. Directed by Adam Wingard (Blair Witch; You’re Next) for Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., and starring Alexander Skarsgård and Millie Bobby Brown (reprising her role of Madison Russell from Godzilla: King of Monsters), Garcia says the upcoming movie has even more scope beyond the “central bout” of Godzilla and Kong.

In a separate interview with Wingard, conducted via Zoom this February, the director — who watched every single Godzilla movie as preparation — described the film as an exploration of monsters past and future, with two concurrent storylines organized into Team Godzilla and Team Kong.

Setting the Stage

Set roughly five years after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the world is changed. The genie is out of the bottle, and mankind knows monsters exist. Life goes on, despite it being an uneasy existence. But the balance that existed before 2014’s Godzilla is re-established. Godzilla himself has been reinstated as the alpha predator, and the other monsters, aka “Titans,” have remained largely dormant.

“There are creatures who are on the surface,” says Garcia. “They aren’t roaming around, destroying things, but they exist; there are occasional landings, issues, and bouts of destruction.”

Responding to this new reality, humanity enacts safeguards and defense mechanisms. And there has been much rebuilding thanks to Apex, which Garcia describes as a “megalithic, technological conglomerate — think the extreme version of an Amazon or Apple.”

To complicate matters, Godzilla has been acting a little erratically, attacking certain cities and facilities, seemingly at random. That drives the Titan-focused organization Monarch to undertake its first mission into the Hollow Earth via its base camp on Skull Island, where the movie begins.

“They’re going to take a device, the ORCA-Z, into the center of the earth to draw the creatures slowly back into the center of the planet, and they’ll seal it,” Garcia says of the adventure led by Nathan Lind, played by Skarsgård.

Since this is the beginning of the film, it’s not a spoiler to reveal that the mission goes “catastrophically wrong,” according to Garcia, and the world is left in even greater disarray.

Return to Skull Island

Skull Island has changed quite a bit in 40 years (since audiences last saw it in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island), and so has its boss, Kong. He was only an adolescent in the previous film, but is now a much bigger boy of about 350-feet tall, compared to Godzilla’s 400 feet, and has seen some action in the ensuing decades.

“It is a tough existence on Skull Island,” says Garcia. “So he’s a little weathered … he has some battle scars.”

Kong has also gained a friend in a young Skull Island native Jia (Kaylee Hottle), with whom Kong can directly communicate via a “spiritual bond,” according to Wingard. And he has learned some new skills. Garcia promises he remains the Kong audiences know (“he doesn’t breathe fire”) but has a few tricks up his sleeve by virtue of being in a modern world. That may include the Thor-worthy battle axe he wields in the trailer.

The First Battle

Garcia calls the large-scale action sequence behind that first Godzilla and Kong battle at sea one of the first ideas Wingard pitched when he boarded the project in 2017, nearly two years after the project was announced, and after Legendary moved it from Universal to Warner Bros.

The fight is the first of at least two meetings of the main monsters. Another is the “massive third act battle” set in a slightly futuristic Hong Kong, says Garcia, where Kong parkours through the city on skyscrapers, a definite step up from merely scaling the Empire State Building.

As for who comes out on top in the end, that remains to be seen, but at least the first one is expected to end in a draw.

Journey to the Center of Hollow Earth 

The Monarch will explore the setting of Hollow Earth, aided by sci-fi anti-gravity vehicles called HEAVs (Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicles). Garcia says Hollow Earth is 10 times the scope of what we’ve seen on Skull Island, with “rich varied ecosystems” filled with life and a diversity of terrain. Aesthetically, it takes inspiration from Hawaii’s lava fields, as well as the greenery of Waimea on the island. And it’s in Hollow Earth where we see those hints of other Titans that were first glimpsed in the trailer.

“[They] find, in the center of the earth, an ancient site that suggests eons ago, there was a balance between humans and creatures, and a kind of reverence … a greater connection” he adds. “With Kong, he is the last of his kind, and in Hollow Earth, there is hope he will find another; he discovers these environments and ancient evidence of other Kongs, but there aren’t any.”

Production designer Owen Patterson says Wingard and Garcia discussed with him the notion that the Iwi tribe seen in Kong: Skull Island may have made their way into Hollow Earth thousands of years in the past, and remnants of that culture may exist. As hinted at in the mid-credits scene in King of the Monsters — which featured cave paintings of Kong and Godzilla species fighting one another — he said Kong’s species and Godzilla had once lived in the same environment before something occurred that led to a destructive battle, and the latter ultimately went to sleep until the events of the 2014 film.

Production Designer Tom Hammock says they also drew inspiration for Hollow Earth from ancient human civilizations, such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, and the Assyrians of Mesopotamia. Architecturally, he adds they went for a look where the buildings are carved into stone, like the early peoples did in India and Ethiopia.

“We carried those looks with the idea that ancient humans all over the world were interacting with these creatures, and forming that bit of civilization with Kong in Hollow Earth.”

For his part, Garcia doesn’t explicitly say Kong and Godzilla have history together, but does acknowledge, “there are some ancient histories and discoveries in the Hollow Earth, and a deeper backstory to the characters.” 

Kong has an emotional journey in the film but Godzilla similarly has his reasons for behaving the way he does. Wingard said Kong is also a “human conduit,” that allows the audience to experience things through him.

“One of the most important things going into this film was treating Godzilla and King Kong like actual characters, that they’re not just these big props that are kind of in the background,” Wingard says. “It’s like they have personalities and they have definitive things that they will and won’t do.”

The Human Element

Following the events of King of the Monsters, and her mother’s belief the Titans are meant to heal the earth from mankind’s damage, Brown’s character Madison becomes an advocate for the creature and serves as the emotional proxy for him.

“Godzilla is the misunderstood hero fighting for us even though we are afraid of things greater than us, and we are constantly fighting against him,” says Garcia. “[Madison] believes he is not necessarily benevolent but what Godzilla wants is also good for mankind, and there must be some reason he’s doing this.”

Brown calls Madison “basically a badass” as the character has grown up since the last movie, and is following in the footsteps of her mother (a Monarch paleobiologist-turned-environmental extremist who believes Godzilla is a savior for the planet, played by Vera Farmiga). She wears her mother’s jacket everywhere she goes, and studies what makes Godzilla tick. 

“It’s much more about the technical side of it, learning about the data of him as a Titan,” Brown says.

Madison’s father Mark (again played by Kyle Chandler) is a director at Monarch, and while he’s on the Kong mission, she comes to believe Apex is involved in a conspiracy behind Godzilla’s bizarre behavior.

Titanic monsters aside, if a tech conglomerate’s secret agenda and hollow earth theories sound like the YouTube videos shared on Facebook by an eccentric relative, that’s not a coincidence. Garcia says conspiracy theories are a through line in the movie as a way of exploring why people come up with these ideas, and how a theory speaks to the things we’re afraid of.

As Madison sets out to investigate, she is joined by her friend Josh (Julian Dennison) and Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), a former Apex employee who lost his wife, and runs a podcast seeking to expose his former bosses. Together, the misfit trio tries to uncover the mystery at the center of Apex and the sci-fi environs of the company.

This includes a scene filmed on a soundstage set dominated by a 60-foot-long Ghidorah skull wired into a hi-tech control station. It is unclear whether it belongs to King Ghidorah, who lost one of his heads in King of the Monsters, but Wingard did confirm, “In a subtle way, Ghidorah kind of haunts this movie.”

The skull was connected with multicolored cables to a computer terminal — and an artificial brain. Along with signs reading “psionic output” and “biomech,” there was a command seat and headset on a platform accessible by a ramp leading up the kaiju’s mouth. In the scene, Madison leads Josh and Bernie into the mouth to infiltrate the station.

Mecha-Godzilla?

Connected to this is Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri) — the son of Ken Watanabe’s Monarch scientist character from the previous two Legendary Godzilla films. Seen in the trailer against a mech schematic, Oguri says Ren’s means of protecting the earth is very different from his pro-Titans father.

Based on other glimpses in the trailer of a suited-up Godzilla, and the toy images that leaked at the beginning of 2020, it seems a mech will arrive in the new movie. Although, it remains to be seen if it’s an Apex-controlled Mecha-Godzilla, Mecha-King Ghidorah, or something else entirely. Or perhaps all three are in play, and Godzilla and Kong will eventually have a reason to team up, and fight together.

According to the production designers on the film, another sci-fi inspired element, or perhaps something out of a James Bond film, will be present in Apex’s headquarters atop Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak with an installation built deep within, reaching down into the earth. As well as the mech control room, that base will be the setting for another monster showdown. Cotter explains “our heroes” arrive in Hong Kong via a shuttle transporting Skullcrawler eggs (belonging to the creature introduced in Kong: Skull Island) and end up in an arena confronted by one of Kong’s hometown foes.

This is only one of the ways Godzilla vs. Kong ties together elements from each of the MonsterVerse movies. Garcia also hints the film digs deep into the “mythic past” of Godzilla creator Toho studio, and speaks to new creatures and “other creatures” in the film. He also says both lead monsters are fighting for something, and neither is an antagonist in the movie, and that “there is a complexity” to their motivations.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Despite the potential nuance of the monster-on-monster violence, there does not appear to be a shortage of it in Godzilla vs. Kong, with Hammock saying the two main beasts meet several times. And it’s a good bet Godzilla will get a chance to return that sucker punch Kong delivers in the trailer when Godzilla vs. Kong premieres on HBO Max and streaming this March.

The post Godzilla vs. Kong: Inside the Monster Fight of the Century appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3dBrYjd

[shirlleycoyle]

OAN Is So Dangerous Because It Looks Like a Real News Channel

It’s the president’s favorite “news” channel, and a cornerstone of America’s growing disinformation problem. It’s One America News (OAN), a rotating collection of wobbly conspiracies and gibberish that has more in common with a state-run disinformation network than a credible news organization. 

OAN’s definition of “news” has included false claims of electoral fraud, baseless Kremlin-backed conspiracy theories, false claims that the novel coronavirus was developed in a North Carolina lab as part of a vast government conspiracy, and accusations that last summer’s protests over the police killing of George Floyd were part of a diabolical “coup.”

“According to the mainstream media, the riots and extreme violence are completely unorganized,” the network proclaimed last August. “However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well-funded network of anarchists trying to take down the president.”

Last June, 75-year-old Martin Gugino had his skull fractured after being shoved to the ground by Buffalo police officers. Video clearly showed the elderly Gugino doing nothing wrong, but OAN insisted he was an “Antifa provocateur” using sophisticated tech to target the police.

“Newly released video appeared to show Gugino using a police tracker on his phone trying to scan police communications during the protest,” the network falsely claimed.

Tuesday, YouTube suspended the OAN channel for a week after the company uploaded a video promoting a bogus cure for COVID-19.

In seven years OAN has gone from completely unknown to being routinely amplified by Trump, catering in many ways to an audience of one. It is a symbiotic relationship, in which Trump can point to what vaguely look like news reports to buttress his own conspiracy theorizing, and the network, by providing them, can access his massive and loyal audience.

This relationship, like so much about Trump's presidency, is seemingly unique and aberrant. But while experts say OAN’s impact is overstated and future success unsure, they also warn that without a major course correction, the channel’s modest success is a troubling harbinger of dumber and more dangerous things to come.

OAN is the brainchild of millionaire Robert Herring, who ran a chain of Los Angeles pet stores before making his fortune printing circuit boards. In 2003, Herring created Herring Networks, which includes WealthTV, a self-proclaimed “lifestyle and entertainment cable network,” and OAN, which was launched in 2013.

Few gave OAN a second glance until it became a network exclusively dedicated to pandering to Donald Trump’s insatiable ego. Dating back to 2015, Trump touted the network and its coverage of his presidential bid, and throughout his presidency, he has praised and promoted it to his tens of millions of followers. Throughout election season, OAN heaped lavish praise on the president, even pulling polls that dared suggest Trump might not win his reelection bid.  And post-election, both Herring and the channel he founded have pivoted to parroting false Trump claims of rampant electoral fraud.

Much like the alternative-reality contemporaries OAN hopes to compete with, the channel’s unbridled dedication to Trumpism—and the relentless repetition of every conspiratorial MAGA brain fart—is routinely portrayed as objective journalism by company executives.

“We’re a no-fluff, very fast-paced live news service meant to inform,” Robert’s son Charles Herring told the Washington Post in 2017. “News anchors are not allowed to express opinions. They simply deliver the news and we leave it up to the viewers to decide. It’s not our family’s mission to determine the news.”

The president’s adoration of OAN means that despite being banned from briefings by the White House Correspondents’ Association for ignoring CDC safety protocols, the channel has been allowed to simply ignore the ban, and on any given week can still be found amplifying ludicrous claims from White House grounds with a quality reminiscent of high school A/V clubs.

Last week, OAN received yet another signal boost when Trump tweeted out a segment featuring bogus claim of electoral fraud propped up by “expert analysis” by Ron Watkins—son of 8kun (formerly 8chan) owner Jim Watkins—who is alleged to be a cornerstone of the QAnon conspiracy cult, where the false claim first originated:

But even with daily free marketing from the president, OAN’s real-world influence has been largely overstated.

OAN doesn’t subscribe to industry-standard Nielsen estimates, so accurately measuring its viewership has proven to be a guessing game for TV ratings firms. (OAN claims to reach around 35 million potential homes, little more than a quarter of the total number of U.S. homes that currently own a television set.) Research firms like Kagan estimate OAN’s reach to be 23 million cable subscribers, a significantly smaller potential footprint than right-wing outlets like Newsmax TV (58.2 million) or Fox News (78.6 million). When Nielsen attempted to more accurately measure how many of those users actually watch the channel last year, it wasn’t pretty:

OAN’s ambitions have been challenged by the fact that numerous major cable outlets, including Comcast, Spectrum, and Dish Network have refused to carry the channel. A June Bloomberg report attributed this reluctance to stringent OAN contract requirements, an asking price out of line with the channel’s quality, or a lack of interest in being associated with controversy.

OAN’s biggest cable distributor, AT&T/DirecTV, has been trimming costs due to sustained TV subscriber losses from cord cutting and mismanagement. Reports earlier this year indicated that OAN’s contract with AT&T is up for renewal next year, potentially removing AT&T’s 19 million potential viewers from the equation if a new deal can’t be reached.

Neither OAN nor AT&T responded to inquiries about the status of the contract.

While OAN may not be brainwashing a massive audience; it is providing plausible-seeming props and set dressing for Trump as he uses social media to create an alternate reality in which he won the election, defeated the coronavirus, and is unfairly besieged on all sides by mean journalists and the “deep state.” It’s a false reality OAN hopes to take to the mainstream.

The MAGA set has become furious at Fox’s failure to more fully embrace false claims of election fraud, and for (accurately) calling Arizona for Joe Biden before other outlets on election night. A recent Morning Consult poll found that Fox News’ favorability among Republicans dropped from 67 to 54 percent post-election—simply for occasionally telling viewers the truth.

But without free daily advertising from the president, overtaking Fox will be a steep uphill climb for the fledgling network—especially if OAN continues to double down on conspiracies and nonsense, Stanford professor of political economics Greg Martin told Motherboard.

“Fox News in some sense created the market for OAN, by building up the taste for conservative-slanted TV news in a large audience,” Martin said. But he added that Fox maintains its massive audience by including just enough hard news (like a legitimate election data team willing to call Arizona early for Biden) to keep at least the illusion of integrity intact.

Martin’s research has found that in terms of gaining cable TV market share, there are diminishing returns when it comes toward pushing extremism at your target audience, suggesting that OAN’s quest to out-conspiracy Fox might not be a winning formula.

“One of the points we make in the paper is that there is a tradeoff in moving farther towards the ideological extreme: if people watch, you'll have greater influence on their beliefs, but you also increase the risk that they are turned off by it and don't watch at all,” Martin said.

Martin added that Fox has been very successful at this balancing act to create the illusion of mainstream respectability, but a network like OAN positioning itself even further to the right of Fox is likely to be drawing viewers from a limited pool of total viewers.

“Fox has already pushed the envelope about as far as you can go before the returns to additional ideological extremity start to turn negative,” he said. “So I am skeptical that OAN will achieve anything like Fox's influence on public policy and politics in the US, even if its ratings were to continue to grow.”

While OAN may never see the same level of success as Fox News, it doesn't have to: It has had, and could continue to have, real effects on the public discourse just by inverting the usual formula by which powerful people reach a mass audience via news outlets. And other media scholars say the success it has seen is a troubling omen for the future of U.S. journalism and America’s accelerating battle with disinformation and propaganda.

Victor Pickard, an American media studies scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, told Motherboard OAN’s rise comes at a major inflection point for U.S. media. With U.S. journalism facing an existential and financial crisis—and so many bad faith actors looking to fill the vacuum created—OAN will likely be the least of our problems. 

“It's difficult to imagine a surefire way to undo the damage to our media ecosystem, but one key piece of any solution must be to rebuild local journalism, whose dissolution has created the vacuum into which all manner of conspiratorial nonsense and disinformation has rushed in,” Pickard said. 

Decades of corporate consolidation and layoffs have hit local journalism particularly hard, replacing quality local reporting with a troubling combination of Facebook conspiracies, Trump-loyal disinformation empires like Sinclair Broadcasting, and a flood of even more malicious actors looking to disguise corporate and political propaganda as legitimate local news. 

Researchers have shown repeatedly that as local journalism is replaced with homogenized fluff and nonsense, Americans not only become less informed and more divided, but local corruption reporting falls through the cracks. In some instances, a lack of quality reporting has been directly linked to a measurable impact on election results.

Pickard noted that without addressing the underlying rot that fertilized the rise of the U.S. disinformation problem in the first place, things are likely to only get worse.

“Several structural conditions enabled the rise of OAN,” Pickard said. “First are the commercial values that incentivize media outlets to privilege profits above all else,” he said. “The proven formula of outrage-driven commentary is both cheap to produce and captures audiences' attention, which advertisers covet.”

In short, we’ve created an entire information ecosystem that prioritizes engagement above accuracy or insight, one in which it’s often not as profitable to tell the sometimes-boring but important truth.

Pickard has been a consistent advocate of providing more public funding for U.S. journalism as an antidote to the corrosive impact of engagement-based advertising. He also advocates for stronger “public interest protections that mandate social responsibilities such as maintaining ideological balance and fact-based coverage in our news media.”

In the 1940s the FCC passed the Fairness Doctrine, which required that broadcast news outlets cover issues of public interest fairly. But the rules were demolished in 1987 after Republicans spent years demonizing them, insisting they violated the First Amendment. Even if still around today, the rules would have only applied to broadcast television, not cable TV.

With inflammatory nonsense so profitable and Congress increasingly divided, a more modern proposal seems all but doomed. In its place, U.S. media policy has consisted of rubber stamping problematic mergers, eliminating decades-old media consolidation rules, and doubling down on an ad-based media environment that only tends to reward the inflammatory.

Without a major funding boost for real journalism and a massive rethinking of U.S. media policy, “news” empires like OAN will continue to see outsized influence on U.S. discourse, Pickard said—and it's not hard to imagine the possibilities for more sophisticated actors creating bespoke fake news for powerful politicians and political movements. Media experts also argue more mainstream journalists and outlets need to rethink their role in amplifying or validating bad faith viewpoints in a misguided quest for artificial balance. 

“I predict that our news media in general will continue to worsen because there's less and less actual journalism,” Pickard said. “Meanwhile, the rightwing, fact-free media model is a proven money maker with no countervailing force.”

As trust in institutions is eroded, the public tends to turn to dubious, sometimes terrible alternatives to reinforce their shaken worldview. OAN wasn’t the first “news” outlet to exploit our failure to prevent conspiratorial thinking from being mainlined into the American bloodstream, and without a dramatic shift in U.S. media policy and funding, it certainly won’t be the last.

OAN Is So Dangerous Because It Looks Like a Real News Channel syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[opportunitywow]

Mediterranean Dialogues (MED) Youth Forum Contest 2020 (€2,500 Prize)

Submission Deadline: 30 October 2020 MED – MEDITERRANEAN DIALOGUES is the annual, high-level initiative promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and ISPI (the Italian Institute for International Political Studies) as an opportunity to rethink traditional approaches to the area, to complement analyses of current challenges with new ideas and suggestions, and to draft a new “positive agenda” addressing shared challenges at the regional and international levels.

The 6th edition of MED Mediterranean Dialogues will be held from November 25 to December 4. Over the past five years, MED Mediterranean Dialogues has established itself as a hub for in-person meetings among high-level representatives of governments, international organisations and civil society. This year, the MED Conference will adopt a “hybrid format” (with virtual and in-person events) to ensure conformity to the highest standards of personal health and safety.

Following on the success of last year’s event, MED Mediterranean Dialogues 2020 is proud to announce a second edition of the “Youth Forum Contest – Ideas and Projects at Work”, implemented in cooperation with the Representation of the European Commission in Italy, the Boston Consulting Group, the European Training Foundation, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The purpose of the contest is to give a selected number of young Mediterranean people the chance to present innovative ideas and projects to a high-level audience in order to promote their work and enhance their visibility.

Participants will have a unique opportunity to present projects that could facilitate dialogue and foster development and cooperation in the broader Mediterranean region. With this in mind, this year’s Youth Forum Contest will promote young leaders whose ideas and projects focus on finding innovative and creative responses to the current pandemic crisis in the MENA region and on supporting post-pandemic recovery.

How the competition works

In 2020, the world has come together to face the global challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, the Mediterranean region is not exempted from action. With its long history as a creative and pioneering hub, the Mediterranean could well reaffirm its role as a region capable of innovation and inclusiveness. The 2020 MED Youth Forum Contest is therefore looking for proposals that offer innovative solutions to help manage the crisis and to support post-pandemic recovery. In line with the purpose of the contest, all the projects presented should cover topics related to one of the following two areas:

Culture and Civil society:

Culture and Education (Inclusive and Equitable Education; the Promotion of Remote Learning; Innovation in Museums and Art Exhibitions; Future Art Ecosystems; the Promotion of Tourism and the Recovery of the Tourism Industry)

Civil society (Social Protection; Gender Equality; the Prevention of Domestic Violence)

Health (Immunisation; Prevention and Control; Healthcare Recovery; Mental Health Recovery; Technologies, Biotechnologies and Medical Equipment)

Business and New Economic Models:

Employment and Business: (Remote Working and Digital Business Transformation; Reorganization of the Workforce; Reshaping the Customer Experience; Youth and Gender Employment; Work-Life Balance; Financial Inclusion; Poverty Reduction)

Food and Water Security (Food Logistics and Distribution; the Recovery of Small-Medium Food Production; Agri-Tech Innovation; Social and Economic Access to Food and/or Water)

Urban Innovation: Rethinking Public and Private Spaces; Travel, Logistics & Transport Infrastructure; Returning to the Workplace; Rethinking Urban Regeneration; Safe and Sustainable Urban Mobility)

The MED 2020 Youth Forum Contest office will accept applications until 30 October [UPDATED from 11 October]. The office will then select the best 20 submissions, 10 for each group. The MED secretariat will announce the results of the selection process to those applicants selected to participate in the Youth Forum Contest in the first half of November.

During the contest:

All participants will be given a maximum of 5-minutes to present their projects and ideas to a selected audience and to an international panel of experts. The working language is English.

Once all presentations have finished, the professional jury and the audience attending the event will vote to select a winner for each group.

The two winners will be awarded a prize of € 2,500 to develop their projects further. In addition to greater visibility and the said monetary reward, participants will also have full access to the MED2020 conference to explore business opportunities and to connect with experts, investors, venture capitalists, and fellow entrepreneurs. They will also be given an opportunity to present the development of their projects to a dedicated panel at MED2021 Mediterranean Dialogues next year.

How to apply

High-potential candidates aged under 35, from North Africa[1] and the Middle East[2] may apply to enter the contest. Applicants must have an excellent command of English (the event’s working language) and a keen interest in Mediterranean cooperation. To ensure a fairer and more inclusive procedure, candidates from Mediterranean Europe[3] may apply if their projects are run in partnership with institutions and or individuals based in the Middle Eastern or North African countries listed.

Applications must be made using the online form. All applicants should include the following information:

A short letter of motivation (explaining why they wish to participate in the MED2020 Youth Forum Contest, no longer than 200 words, in pdf format)

A complete description of their project (using the attached PowerPoint format).

An updated CV (in pdf format)

Disclaimer: Applicants will be selected at the sole discretion of the MED Youth Forum Contest office, which is staffed by representatives of all partner organisations.

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Mediterranean Dialogues (MED) Youth Forum Contest 2020

from WordPress https://ift.tt/3dDCowA via IFTTT

[bulletbrain-blog2]

TRUE LIVIDTYY

A raw form that is in a state of flux/liquidity: any single viewer/chronologically stangnant records and perspectives captures its constituencies // medium & disturb entities so observation must be naturalistic // double blind to prevent viewer interference in which external alteration of the signal or frequency of the user group and/or individual that may difficulty in being percieved. As new forms proclaimate gel and diversify we can poliate these spiritual creatures by envisioning flocks, schools, and swarms of life arising from the subconscious into tangible form, oprotoindegenious species conceptual abnormalities mutations & permutations will ooze from our gathered loins; allow for gestation, temporal zones/ethereal gullies and trenches that can be utilized to balance toon like spectacles lenses that lead us intö hellzones that divert true earth growth of progeny to fickle pickles and/or per: paraphrases, assemblages, rough drafts, noodles, doodles, sketches, aneurysms, calcification, mediums that disrupt sodium channels and/or inhibits the transference of neurotransmitters or side channels TRUE_FLOW. Please refrain from substitutions, additives, preservatives, unless they are branches and extensions and/or noninvasive in which negative spaces can remain neutral and fertile to enable germination of the flux form of the OI and the ecosystem can expand / evolve from its primordial forms and raw grand design. This OI is designed for naturallly occurring terrafirma, cosmic and /or regulatory purposes primarily for anything that has the capability to receive transmission communication sensation reactive protoactive positronic+ with nonhominids(guests) kept in high regard. In this vein the formation of these neo-conceptual bodies, fleeting animal havoon form can be generated from acclimating animal like creatures to cleanse of skin, heal our wounds diseases and Alements making our living and collective body an ecosystem of tangble living forms that strengthen and Reformulate our nude form. Envisionsing these spiritual creatures work as Basic immersion path Into a Post-Physical body where the body can die and regenerate while remaining conscious with the ability to dither density become imbedded with a greater technologically advancing species past-present-future. Native and synthetic stellar fauna, animal/havoon/evolving forms and post-plant life Fireshine, starbits, with common sense ethics morality and basic virtues tacitly imbedded. A tangible ecosystem embedded within modern tech, comforts luxuries and delicacies and new sensations close at hand. This is the basic noodle/string of vibration for this operating index. Humble Hyperidealization & Hyperbolic Harmonies.

Beep.

Leptons to Lilly pad, boson to bosoms, subatoms to substratisphere, neutrino to nebula we can be can be liberated from the negative and penetrate into the hyper realm of Neologisms digitalisms and hover through our days and Milliseconds. HOOVER ON THE CROSSHAIRS OF INFINITY. This a rough nomenclature to sociostellar formation , new forms of consciousness /remote senses ect; expanding our conductive a for our factory senses delicately and thoughtfully expanding parameters and reducing the broad undercurrent which weighs down modern thinkers & ancient lay-lines & true forms. and Prototonic form.

The axiom must be accurate on the microscopic and macroscopic form. The pyramid must flow in all directions while remaining in constant flux in the TRUE_FLOW keeping our pejorative streams pure from brackish pollutants.

He (masculine pejorative) must always come first in the sequence; heteronormative reality based stride on a literal pragmatic methodical, idealistic but most importantly empirical stride and strike. When used with accurate and proper groupings tried and true measures & standards the user can wield more power within the lines of the operating index; there are many seemingly misanthropic misprints but allocations//freedoms flexibility/leniency are given to those that strengthen and purify our surge and torrent.

Technocratic bigwigs, robber barons earths shakers oligarchs czars dictators, Hardliners headliners trendsetters Agenda centres with a naturalistically based utopian Freescape in which a combination of freeforms & darwinistic pathways Can crack dissect and give clarity to new lines of atomic perspective

THE DARWINIAN LENSE HAS CRACKED as we abolish the one-viewer POV and view collective as a species. Our inherited experiential divots and dimples in our LUSTRIOUS BODY LIVIDITIES that PERPETUALLY SELFCLEANSING SYMBIOTIC HOST SPECIES.. As arbiters of our precious minerals we must refrain from taking mismatched discord’s. Return the best bits back into pure and raw forms. Be it in thoughts or truthform. Procure and proliferate the most dextrous pliable quality / dynamic of materials that are available until more desirable and malleable forms come to fruition. With cost+ expenditures available, ONLY THE MOST ADAPTIVE/ REINCARNATING/ BIRTHING FORM/ FERTILE FOR NEW SPECIES / BIOTiC // ROOM for multi generational ancestral offspring of different symbiotic cohabitating plant and animal forms. UTLIZATION of parties and The new forms that spring will speak with its sheer reinvention and renewables presence its voracity alone will be self perpetuating. When we train our living cells in this fashion our skin/bones become a winter type of a coat once these symbiotic supercharged neohumaniod assimilations’ take when the ubermench becomes realised.

io.SLØAN

www.soundclick.com/io.sloan

www.instagram.com/io.sloan

www.reverbnation.com/sloan666

io.sloan@protonmail.ch

sloan666@tuta.io

io.sloan@icloud.com

[weekinethereum]

July 16, 2017

Ethereum News and Links

Top

Latest Core Dev meeting video.  Agenda. Decisions per Hudson Jameson:

Splitting Metropolis into 2 hard forks.

Delaying EIP 86 until Metro HF 2.

Likely adding miner block reward deduction to Metro HF 1.

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is now the largest open source blockchain initiative

Rebooting the EEA Technical Steering Committee

Protocol

Vitalik: The core principle of Casper incentivization.  Plus Reddit thread.

Gavin Wood: "> 50% chance that a modest PoS solution is at least 12 months from release"

Gavin comment on PolkaDot development

ConsenSys is funding research for a different approach to scalability

Stuff for developers

How to develop on Ethereum in scala.js

Building dapps on Ethereum tutorial, pt 4: decentralised hosting using Swarm

Setting up a bug bounty contract with OpenZeppelin

Vitalik now considers Serpent to be "outdated tech"

Releases

Geth v1.6.7

imToken v1.3

WALLETH 0.17

FirstBlood beta release to token sale participants

Ecosystem

ETH Gas Station: helping users understand the time-cost tradeoff

VentureBeat interviews FunFair's Jez San

Their version of Roulette is live on Ropsten with Metamask

Joe Lubin on ConsenSys and Mauritius

the F*** token (bleeped so Google doesn't get the wrong idea) raised 80k for a tipbot

Jordan Leigh video on ERC-223

Coindash had someone hijack their site and get $7m.  This is the same project that won the Ether.camp hackathon under rather controversial circumstances.

Ujo and RAC -- the future of licensing?

Buy the RAC album. Pretty much unanimously has good reviews.

Project Announcements & White papers

Stox -- building a prediction market using Bancor's token.  A coin on a coin on a coin. White paper

Everdant -- a protocol for financing across the value chain for small farmers. white paper

HelloGold -- tokenized gold aimed at low-medium income people in Asia  White paper.

Project Updates

Golem and Steamr to work together on shared parts of tech stack

Aragon's Community Governance model

The first Melon manager competition

How Melonport balances competing stakeholder interests

Interviews and Talks

Linda Xie and Jordan Clifford from Coinbase on Software Engineering Daily

Plus SED episodes on anti-fraud and security at Coinbase

Swap protocol on FutureTechPodcast

Token Sale Projects

Mark D'Agostino:  Why Grid+ is built on the public Ethereum chain

The Decentraland white paper and What would centralized VR look like?

Decentraland team

0x Development Roadmap

Decentraland & district0x

A prediction market project doing a token sale tried to get attention with crazy attacks on Augur and Gnosis, yet apparently just copied and pasted code.  

Indorse: Real Identity and Real Value from professional social networking site

Token Sales

Evolving the Cofound.it Priority Pass for the Musiconomi Crowdsale

VC Albert Wenger says founders shouldn't try to get the best terms in pre-sale rounds.

One glaring problem with TenX tokens

Blockchain... The End of All Corporate Business Models?

RocketPool: Automated Sale Agents for token sales

"U.S. ICOs shouldn’t be scared of the SEC"  Pretty much all of this is the diametric opposite of my view, and I'd wager lots of money that it was not written by a lawyer. Government is often slow to act, but a lack of current action does not indicate a lack of future action.

General

Disrupting the trust business - The Economist

The rumors are true: USV's Joel Monegro and Chris Burniske are starting a crypto fund

Mougayar: "The token itself is not your new business model. What the token enables for you and for your users is the key part to focus on"

Podcast about ZCash's "Ceremony"

Dan Romero's Digital Currency reading list

CNBC: "This hot digital currency trend is minting millions, but US investors aren't allowed to play"

Dates of note

From Token Sale Calendar:

Upcoming token sale start dates:

July 20 -- Propy

July 24 -- Everex

July 24 -- TribeToken

July 31 -- RexMLS

August 1 -- Harbour DAO

August 8 -- Decentraland

August 8 -- Indorse

August 15 -- Ox Protocol (mandatory registration Aug 9-12)

August 15 -- BitDice

August 28 -- HelloGold

August 31 - Monetha

September 5 -- Viberate

September 13 -- Unikoin

Ongoing token sales:

Fund Yourself Now

Blocktix

Macroverse

NeverDie

Dentacoin

DAO.casino

Suretly

Dent

district0x

Delphi

Agrello

Coindash

ACT

MyBit

You can find this calendar updated daily-ish at TokenSaleCalendar.com

[I aim for a relatively comprehensive list of Ethereum sales, but make no warranty as to even whether they are legit; as such, I thus likewise warrant nothing about whether any will produce a satisfactory return. I have passed the CFA exams, but this is not investment advice. If you're interested in what I do, you can find my somewhat out-of-date investing thesis and token sale appreciation strategies in previous newsletters.]

Listings: [first name] @ticketleap.com  or tweet @evan_van_ness. Please provide: 1) your URL, 2) sale date and 3) a brief description of how you are using Ethereum.

Newsletter housekeeping

Some time in early August, there will be an announcement that I've joined ConsenSys.  Here's a logo to draw your eye in case you were going to skip over this section:

I'm very excited about this move and will have significantly more to say in the future.  The newsletters should become more regular again! In the meantime, I wanted to make it clear so that you can judge whether I favor ConsenSys projects.

My charge from Joe Lubin is pretty similar to what Status has told me: keep telling the truth and covering the space objectively, even if the truth hurts.

This section is (almost?) always the link for sharing

The best compliment you can give this is to share or upvote: http://www.weekinethereum.com/post/163166486333/july-16-2017 Follow me on Twitter? @evan_van_ness

This newsletter is supported by Status.im.  But in case you still want to send Ether (or tokens?):  0x96d4F0E75ae86e4c46cD8e9D4AE2F2309bD6Ec45

Sign up to receive the weekly email.

[maxihealth]

How Philips Has Pivoted In the COVID-19 Pandemic: Connected Care From Hospital to Home

What a difference 90 days makes.

I was scheduled to meet with Roy Jakobs, Chief Business Leader of Connected Care at Philips, at HIMSS in Orlando on 9th March 2020. I’d interviewed Roy at CES 2020 in Las Vegas in January to catch up on consumer health developments, and the March meeting was going to cover Philips’ innovations on the hospital and acute care side of the business, as well as to learn more about Roy’s new role as head of Connected Care.

HIMSS cancelled the conference just days before it was to commence….due to the great disruption of COVID-19.

Philips’ business, plans and projects had already been reshaping and deploying in Asia and Europe by then, Roy explained to me when we were finally able to convene by phone in late May.

“We feel compelled to deliver on our purpose more than ever,” Roy told me in the first minutes of our call. “People are going out of their way to make it happen,” noting “extraordinary efforts” and teams mobilizing in the pandemic to meet the moment.

Philips continues on its “journey into connected care,” as Roy described the current trajectory as the company has pivoted directly into the heart of the coronavirus pandemic with health care systems around the world.

“COVID is a terrible pandemic,” he noted as his team is, “learning our way through it. It’s also an enormous stress test of the [health care] system. And with any stress test, you see where the limits are in what you have been building to-date,” he humbly confessed.

In the immediate term, as Roy coined it the “extreme short term,” Philips has been working on ventilators, monitors, installing equipment and servicing and supporting health system clients.

But the company is also working on solutions for the longer term, learning through the pandemic.

Philips, recently named as one of the largest Fortune Global Companies in 2020 (#385, up 46 spots and ranking in the top 10 largest public health care companies in the world), has been working globally with health systems since the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China in 2019.

Philips was involved early on in responding to health system demands in the ASEAN region, discussed here in Healthcare IT News.

The company quickly learned that scaling in a pandemic can’t just be a physical phenomenon – the need to ramp up, so much so quickly, had to be grounded in digital solutions versus only physical ones (e.g., equipment and hardware).

Roy and I discussed Philips’ journey to this moment, starting in 2015—that doubling-down to becoming a health-tech company, a vision of digital health on both the hospital/professional and consumer sides of the equation. At that point, the company left behind other businesses not core to health. In that initial vision, Philips already envisioned care settings outside of hospitals. The signal for me was being served a smoothie from a Philips-branded food truck parked in front of the Austin Convention Center at South-by-Southwest in March 2015 as the sentinel event in my mind’s eye when Philips pivoted to digital health: positioned as, “Philips Connect to Healthy.” [For a blast-from-the-past nostalgic read, here’s the post I wrote at the time here in Health Populi].

Fast forward to the COVID-19 era: an ecosystem where you take care settings outside the walls of hospitals into homes. Now, this is a reality not a vision as health citizens around the world have complied with government mandates to #StayHome, shelter-in-place, from Chinese provinces to Madrid, to northern Italy and westward to the hotspot of New York City.

In this pandemic, “People could not leave their houses and could not, or would not, go to hospitals,” Roy observed. “We had to reinvent how to engage, monitor, and treat” patients with new approaches both in and outside the acute care setting.

Thus, the company continues on its journey of Connected Care — driven by the dramatic demands of a very tricky and infectious virus. Philips had already developed and was in the process of building new modules and solutions with customers before the COVID disruption. “But for hospitals to scale these was very difficult…the necessity to change wasn’t felt,” until….COVID-19.

“The downside of digital is that it is hard to change a legacy software system,” Roy explained. If a health system has built up a ten-year legacy with a system, cannot completely change in the short run. That’s the hospital side of the challenge of digital disruption.

Then consider the patient/consumer perspective. In many countries and in peoples’ minds, the only “real” way to get proper treatment is to go to a doctor and,  in some countries, head to a hospital or a specialist clinic. “That is an intense and costly way to treat patients,” Roy said.

“For change to happen, it takes two parties willing to change. The willingness is there now,” Roy found, due to the disruption of COVID-19.

Philips has been intensively working on these challenges in real-time. In one case, the company has been collaborating with a health system operating 23 hospitals. Each institution had their own workflows and so Philips had to coordinate and develop an approach baking in interoperability and a cloud-based solution – consistent with the connected care journey the company had embarked on. As part of this project, the team asked, “How can we make this a more open environment for data flow, with analytics on top?”

Philips has seen a surge in demand for such solutions, with fast-growing demand for telehealth that helps to scale care outside of the hospital walls. The company has also responded to requests for specific modules, such as supporting patient engagement solutions that enable consumers to ask questions, triage and diagnose severity of an illness.

Another facet of telehealth is in helping to scale intensive care units (ICUs). In health systems with high-demand for COVID care, Philips has seen intense demand to extend care via “eICUs” which enhance productivity in scarce resource situations. Philips worked with UK Healthcare, part of the University of Kentucky academic health system, to deploy this as part of the organization’s response to the pandemic.

As part of the connected care patient journey, and also to enable hospitals to balance scarce capital and labor resources, Philips imagined how patients dealing with COVID-19 could step-down from intensive care to lower-intensity settings. The company pioneered a new disposable sensor to track vital signs that, as Roy described, “watches over you independent of a hospital bed.” This wearable technology is part of the remote monitoring environment that clinically surveils patients for signs of deterioration which can then allow clinicians to intervene early and improve patient outcomes. In the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals want patients to be (appropriately) discharged home from hospital as soon as possible.

This biosensor will be able to support patients beyond COVID-19 who are on different care pathways such as cardiac patients who need to be observed over time for heart function improvement or deterioration. This will further Philips’ vision for Evolution of Care Settings from hospital to home and self-care modes.

So we came full-circle in this conversation, which began at CES in Las Vegas as we brainstormed consumers at home, keen on prevention, self-care and caring for chronic conditions as much as can be done in the home setting. In the COVID-19 era, my consumer research has revealed new workflows by people at home, seeking more empowerment, health literacy, and control by staying away from health care settings to limit personal exposure to the virus.

The second trend coming from the opposite direction is a push from the hospital to the home. A year ago when we spoke about this concept, it was early on the adoption curve. In the post-pandemic landscape, hospital-to-home for acute care is more salient as hospitals deal with balancing scarce resources.

“This is a journey that starts with awareness,” Roy said. The pandemic has surely switched on that awareness for both hospitals and clinicians as well as consumers, patients and caregivers. “It’s changed the adoption curve” across health systems, Roy noted, as the coronavirus has provided momentum to truly plan for and implement digital transformation in health care.

“This is an exciting phase we’re in,” Roy said. “We haven’t solved everything yet, but we’re working strongly, hand in hand, with hospitals. There’s a lot to take care of.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  As of late May 2020, U.S. patients still hesitated to return to hospitals, emergency rooms, outpatient surgery centers and urgent care. This last chart details a question from the latest Kaufman Hall COVID-19 Consumer Survey conducted in late May 2020.

Telehealth has fast-morphed into a much-demanded virtual visit platform for millions of patients, now consumers making proactive decisions about just where and how they want to participate in health care.

People have grown new health literacy muscles — about viruses, contagion, prevention, immunity, the power of food-as-medicine, the risks of mental health and loneliness — a host of learnings over a few months among hundreds of millions of people with growing awareness of individual and public health.

Philips’ work evolving the Evolution of Care Settings will be part of a growing landscape of platforms that bridge care from hospital to community to home. Watch for more pioneering health systems to provide hospital-level care at home for patients and caregivers who want to take this on. Remote patient monitoring, wearable sensors, and consumer-facing digital health tech (like smartwatches, smart rings and Internet of Healthy Things for the home) will become common as more people have evolved into home-health consumers in the era of COVID. The new medical home is…home.

The post How Philips Has Pivoted In the COVID-19 Pandemic: Connected Care From Hospital to Home appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

How Philips Has Pivoted In the COVID-19 Pandemic: Connected Care From Hospital to Home posted first on https://carilloncitydental.blogspot.com

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

5 Nov 2019: Cities and boxes. Health data. Political ads.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Brittainy Newman/NYT]

Cities and boxes: convenient delivery is a growing problem

It’s all in the delivery: Amazon makes grocery delivery free with Prime, ends $15/month fee under pressure from Walmart, whose rival click and collect service was cheaper. Wider picture: the first map of America’s food supply chain.

This is a great read, and shows you what online shopping does to cities: 15% of New York City households receive a package every day - that’s 1.5 million packages, and it’s putting the city under a lot of stress.  

“In some neighborhoods, Amazon’s ubiquitous boxes are stacked and sorted on the sidewalk, sometimes on top of coverings spread out like picnic blankets. ‘They are using public space as their private warehouse [...] That is not what the sidewalk is for.’” 

The delivery networks (Amazon, Fedex etc) are building warehouses closer to customers, to cover the “last mile” more efficiently. But even so there are traffic, carbon/pollution emissions and safety arguments in favour of click and collect, as long as the collect bit reduces the number of car and van journeys.

It feels as if internet-era retailing is now back to being a last-man-standing game of tremendous capital spending and lowered gross margin to win and keep customers who want speed and convenience. You wonder if all of this can ever be sustained.

Health data

Google is buying fitness-tracker company Fitbit, the second-largest product in the “wearables” sector (and the company would probably still be independent and thriving had Apple not done so well with its Watch). There’s an interesting question about the data though. 

“Similar to our other products, with wearables, we will be transparent about the data we collect and why. We will never sell personal information to anyone. Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads. And we will give Fitbit users the choice to review, move, or delete their data.”

Now, some readers might be suspicious about that. There’s history of arms-length health tech acquisitions eventually being absorbed into the corporate parent (see Deepmind, though maybe they’ve been diligent about keeping the Deepmind data separated, you cannot know). 

There are wider health concerns because Fitbits are used by some insurance companies to provide proof of activity, which makes your insurance premia lower. Here’s a UK/US example: Vitality. It isn’t crystal clear what data Fitbit sends to Vitality, but their page for a different device says “The Vitality Member app takes your step and heart rate workout data from Apple Health and uses that data to reward Vitality activity points [...] Opening and refreshing your Vitality Member app is the only way to send Apple Health data to Vitality to sync your activity.” (There were also some concerns a few years ago about a Facebook-owned app getting access to Vitality data.)

But you’d hope that the potential reputational risk would be really significant if it later came out that Google just scooped up the Fitbit data and used it to target you with ads for hedge trimmers and retirement planning. Significant enough that it wouldn’t be worth doing, you’d hope! Maybe this whole thing is just a big tech company fearful that it might miss the next big thing, so it’s trying a bit of... everything. Or preventing someone else buying Fitbit.

The wider context for Google is that it’s about search: Google is “looking to make it easier for doctors to search medical records, and to improve the quality of health-related search results for consumers across Google and YouTube”.

Is anything else happening in Big Tech x Health Data? Yes.

Amazon is buying Health Navigator, which does “online symptom checking and triage tools to companies that are looking to route patients to the right place”. Amzn will offer Health Navigator to employees as part of its internal pilot of Amazon Care clinics.

Facebook vows strict privacy safeguards as it rolls out preventive-health tool.

Sustainable John Lewis

“John Lewis has stopped selling 5p single-use plastic carrier bags at its Oxford store as part of a major trial to test and change shoppers’ behaviour. The sustainability initiatives, which were unveiled on Monday, are aimed at encouraging a “reduce, reuse and return” culture among customers and could provide a model for its other shops.”

Facebook and political advertising

Following on from last week, Facebook decided to leave all political speech and ads up [1] and said it’s about free speech and debate, and “it’s not about the money”. It probably *isn’t* about the money - it’s that Facebook are culturally allergic to activities that don’t scale or aren’t algorithmable (so eg effective content moderation will always be resisted at some level).

Twitter took a better position, and one that’s a decent swipe at FB, Twitboss pointing out that “it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad… well… they can say whatever they want! ””.

[1] There are exceptions though. Someone made some pro-Brexit ads that FB rejected because the ads didn’t say who were promoting them. And in the US someone announced they’d stand as a candidate and deliberately use fake ads - FB didn’t like that. 

(Also from Facebook: a new logo for the parent company, to distinguish the company from the product. The logo has both a shouty ALL-CAPS style and a retro all-of-the-colours 2014 feel. 2014 was a simpler, easier time for FACEBOOK.)

Money

Perhaps all platforms eventually expand until they include financial services? Facebook has a patent for a method of comparing a user’s financial transactions to their peers. If you own several social platforms that are about performative showing-off communicating with friends, it probably makes business sense to lean in to “keeping up with the joneses”.

And Uber announces deeper push into financial services with Uber Money.

Other news

Co-op Bank starts trial of Good Loop’s ethical ad tech.

Tesco and Co-op bosses join forces with plan to fix unfair system: Our solution to reform business rates and save the High Street - “First, cut business rates for all retailers by 20 per cent. Second, level the playing field on tax between online and high street shops by introducing an online sales levy of 2 per cent on the sale of physical goods.”

Why internet-era CTOs hire developers (rather than outsourcing).

News for all of Office365’s fans! Microsoft is combining Word, Excel and Powerpoint into a single mobile app for Android users. And Yammer is being updated and integrated more closely with Outlook, Sharepoint etc.

“The farm has both left- and right-wing troll accounts. That makes their smear and support campaigns more believable: instead of just taking one position for a client, it sends trolls to work both sides, blowing hot air into a discussion, generating conflict and traffic” - life working on a troll farm.

History of the design of the Bloomberg keyboard (the Bloomberg terminal is the Wall Street trader’s computing workhorse). This story is surprisingly interesting as it goes from mad, custom designs to something more like a standard computer keyboard.

Previous newsletters:

Most opened newsletter in the last month: Uber buys grocery delivery co. Most clicked story: Workshop Tactics kit.

News 1 year ago: Just walk out - unintended consequences in checkoutless stores.

News 2 years ago: Politically weaponised social media and election influence.

Co-op Digital news and events

Co-operate: why we prioritised ‘What’s happening’ - “Balancing and satisfying user needs and commercial needs is our top priority in Co-op Digital. But in Co-operate’s case, it was more efficient for us to lay some groundwork first. Choosing to focus on What’s happening as the first product meant we could move quickly and boost team and stakeholder morale, and thinking ahead about what would be sensible and beneficial to us in the future influenced what we built first.”

Public events, most of them at Federation House:

Human values in software production - Tue 5 Nov 6pm.

SenseMaker workshop: exploring the potential for sensor journalism - Wed 6 Nov 6pm.

Practitioners Forum: vital lessons for key co-operators - Thu 7 Nov at the Studio, Manchester.

Northern Azure User Group November Meetup - Tue 12 Nov 6pm.

Content Design Manchester Public Meet-up - Wed 13 Nov 6.30pm. 

Pods Up North , an event for podcasters - Sat 23 Nov 9am..

Mind the Product - MTP Engage - Fri 7 Feb 2020 - you can get early bird tickets now.

Internal events:

All hands - Tue 5 Nov 2pm at Fed defiant.

Co-operate show & tell - Wed 6 Nov 3pm at Fed 6.

Data management show & tell - Thu 7 Nov 2.30pm at Angel Sq 13th floor breakout.

Membership show & tell - Fri 8 Nov 3pm at Fed 6 kitchen.

Food ecommerce show & tell - Mon 11 Nov 10.15am at Fed 5.

Delivery community of practice - Mon 11 Nov 1.30pm at Fed house.

Health show & tell - Tue 12 Nov 2.30pm at Fed 5 kitchen.

Targeted marketing and data ecosystem show & tell - Wed 13 Nov at Angel Sq 13th floor breakout.

Membership show & tell - Fri 15 Nov 3pm at Fed 6 kitchen.

More events at Federation House - and you can contact the events team at  federation.events@coopdigital.co.uk. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West. 

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s keyboard gerbil @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[brassring2020]

AYA Analytica financial health memo July 2019

As of July 2019, this regular podcast is available on our Andy Yeh Alpha fintech network platform.

All the 18 systemically important banks pass the annual Federal Reserve stress tests. Many of the largest lenders announce higher cash payouts to shareholders in the wake of the stress test results as of mid-2019. The total cash dividends and share repurchases can exceed $150 billion. In response, Deutsche Bank experiences 4%+ share price gains, and JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs each reap sharp share price increases about 2%. All these banks now maintain more than 4.5% common equity Tier 1 capital ratios, and their supplemental leverage ratios are well above the 3% regulatory minimum requirement. As the annual Federal Reserve stress test results indicate, all of the systemically important banks hold sufficient core capital to safeguard against extreme losses that might arise in rare times of severe financial stress. As a result, the Federal Reserve expects these banks to remain profitable with better survival likelihood to disgorge cash distributions to their shareholders in adverse macroeconomic scenarios. Specific macroeconomic scenarios include a 30% decline in real estate prices and a high unemployment rate with double digits. Overall, all of the systemically important banks can absorb severe post-crisis losses with sufficient cash capital utilization for subsequent shareholder payout.

Blackrock asset research director Andrew Ang shares his economic insights into fundamental factors for global asset management. As Ang indicates in a recent interview with Ritholtz Wealth Management, fundamental factor investors seek to manage macroeconomic risk to enhance their average returns. Ang focuses on 5 systematic factors: size, value, momentum, low volatility, and high quality of profit margins. Also, Ang oversees a broad basket of assets such as stocks, bonds, commodities, and currencies. The consistent application of both big data and technology helps scale total assets under management with lower transaction costs. At BlackRock, Ang decomposes his favorite fundamental factors across macro and style factors. The 3 major macro factors are economic growth, inflation, and the real interest rate, in accordance with the standard Taylor interest rate that depicts the highly non-linear Phillips curve. Ang empirically finds that these 3 major macro factors account for 85% of stock market returns. Stock portfolio analysis helps achieve higher average returns (after risk and fee adjustments) when the active fund manager focuses on size, value, momentum, low volatility, and corporate profitability. Moreover, value occasionally becomes more cost-effective relative to its own history, and momentum factor returns often cluster together in specific time periods. This factor investment methodology accords with our proprietary alpha investment model that focuses on 6 core fundamental factors (size, value, momentum, asset growth, operating profitability, and market risk exposure).

Capital gravitates toward profitable active mutual funds until the marginal asset return equilibrates near the stock market benchmark. As Stanford finance professor Jonathan Berk suggests, capital flows equilibrate persistent active mutual fund returns relative to the stock market benchmarks. Since investors first direct capital to the best active mutual fund managers, these fund managers receive so much money that it affects their ability to generate superior returns. Their average return declines to match the average return for the second-best fund managers. At this stage, investors become indifferent to investing with the first-best and second-best fund managers, so capital flows equilibrate until their average return declines to match the average return for the third-best fund managers. This process continues until the average return of investing in most active mutual funds declines to match the stock market benchmark. Capital flows may reflect persistent asset returns in the transition toward the dynamic equilibrium outcome. Only high-skill active mutual fund managers can consistently earn superior average returns when numerous fund managers compete for scarce capital flows. This rationale suggests that investors who choose to invest with active fund managers cannot expect to receive positive excess returns after we apply appropriate risk and fee adjustments.

Harvard economic platform researcher Dipayan Ghosh proposes alternative solutions to breaking up Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon. As Ghosh suggests, breaking up tech titans would only serve to punish innovative tech enterprises that have already created tremendous economic value. These tech titans have become quasi-monopolies that necessitate a stringent set of *utility regulations* for better privacy protection and personal data usage. These regulations should obstruct the capitalistic overreaches of tech titans in order to protect the public against economic exploitation. Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon reap substantive mercenary gains from their network services when more people use these services. Their current infrastructure makes it extraordinarily difficult for new entrants to offer competitive levels of consumer utility. The tech titans extract consumer currency on the basis of personal data and attention. Moreover, these tech pioneers extract consumer currency on one side of the platform, and then exchange such currency for monetary revenue at high margins on the other side of the same platform. This subtle but corrosive form of economic exploitation seems most objectionable to U.S. Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, and European Commission. Ghosh thus advocates an alternative case for utility regulations in lieu of breaking up the tech titans.

Platforms often benefit from network effects, scale economies, and information cascades. There are at least 2 types of highly valuable platforms: innovation platforms empower third-party firms to add complementary products and services to some core technology (e.g. Google Android, Apple iPhone operating system, and Amazon Web Services), and transaction platforms facilitate the positive exchange of information, goods, or services (e.g. Amazon Marketplace, Airbnb, and Uber). In the empirical analysis of 20-year Forbes Global 2000 data, the top 43 public platform corporations generate about $4.5 billion annual sales with only half the number of employees at their non-platform counterparts. These public platform corporations also yield twice operating profits, market values, and bottom-line growth rates. There are several key generic lessons for modern platform corporations. First, founders and managers need to learn fast from failures for better lean startup optimization. Despite the huge upside platform opportunities, the simple pursuit of a platform strategy may not necessarily improve the odds of success as a long-term sustainable business.

Second, most platforms need to boost exponential user demand with network effects and scale economies, so platform firms should set prices near their relatively low marginal costs with adequate buyer-or-seller subsidies. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Alibaba, and Tencent start their lean enterprises by aggressively subsidizing at least one side of the market before they sustain profitable platforms. In comparison, Netflix, Uber, Lyft, Slack, and Zoom etc still struggle to fine-tune their business models toward maximum sustainable platforms.

Third, it is important for platform firms to clearly explain why they strive to accomplish a great deal for better customer trust and loyalty. Many platforms should build customer rapport to inspire active users via positive information cascades. For instance, Alibaba Taobao and Tmall leverage Alipay as the sleek third-party payment mechanism to ease the transactional frictions of e-commerce in China (whereas, eBay fails to attract customer trust and rapport there due to the mere absence of a credible and verifiable third-party payment system).

Fourth, most platforms enjoy and maintain their first-mover competitive advantages with formidable barriers to entry. A good example is Microsoft: the software tech titan remains competitive with its Windows operating system, Office software suite, and Edge Internet browser; however, Microsoft gradually loses unique business niches to Apple iOS, Google Android, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. On balance, platform corporations need to deploy these key strategies for better network effects, scale economies, and information cascades.

Facebook introduces a new cryptocurrency Libra as a fresh medium of exchange for e-commerce. Libra will be available to 2.5 billion active users on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This new cryptocurrency has tremendous potential to change how people save, spend, and send money. As a new medium of exchange, Libra helps facilitate e-commerce auctions and other transactions within the current Facebook social network ecosystem. As a new store of value, Libra exhibits less extreme price volatility than other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Facebook launches the digital wallet company Calibra as a key third-party payment gateway in collaboration with PayPal, Stripe, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, eBay, Spotify, Uber, and Lyft etc. At its inception, Calibra records Libra digital transactions on a public blockchain. This blockchain serves as a tamper-proof ledger that runs across multiple computer servers to preserve consumer privacy. When cryptocurrencies become more mainstream, aggregate money supply growth may decline to the extent that the central bank can better curb price inflation and wage growth in a cashless society. In terms of macroeconomic implications, the central bank and fiscal authority can better manage the myriad trade-offs among price stability, economic growth, employment, capital accumulation, and financial market stabilization.

We can decipher valuable lessons from the annual letters to shareholders written by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon is highly customer-centric because the word variants of *customer* and *customers* attain the highest word count in each annual letter to shareholders in 1997-2003, 2008-2009, and 2012-2017. In addition to this customer focus, each letter indicates a clear concern with robust financial health. As Bezos reiterates in his letter to Amazon shareholders back in 2004, he emphasizes that the *ultimate long-term financial measure [for Amazon] is free cash flow per share*. This distinct focus sheds fresh light on Amazon corporate value creation via cash capital utilization that drives steady free cash flow growth in the long run. Another major aspect of Amazon business focus from 2007 to present relates to planting seeds of firm expansion into new ventures such as Kindle e-reader devices, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and self-service e-commerce platform improvements for cost-effective sales and fast delivery services. At Amazon, the most transformative inventions empower authors, third-party sellers, and other network members to unleash their creativity. On balance, Bezos believes in an optimal level of customer centricity, and he cares for other stakeholders such as blue-collar employees, content providers, and third-party sellers etc.

Gold prices surge above $1400 per ounce amid global trade tension and economic policy uncertainty. Both the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan may consider expanding additional monetary stimulus if the global economy continues to weaken in the next few months. Greenback depreciates quite a bit as the Federal Reserve switches to a dovish tone. The current stock market investor sentiments manifest in the negative correlation between U.S. dollar strength and gold appreciation. The precious metal accrues zero interest as a steady store of value over time, and so gold prices often serve as a negative-beta countercyclical indicator of international economic stability. Meanwhile, the Sino-U.S. trade impasse calls for both Trump and Xi to show courage with some reconciliatory gestures at the G20 summit. Also, the British Labour Party may back a second referendum on Brexit despite substantial economic policy uncertainty.  British Conservatives now need a new prime minister to lead the next round of E.U. withdrawal conditions, trade negotiations, and other regional economic affairs. Moreover, the recent accidental drone collision between Iran and the U.S. adds to the current global trade escalation. As a result, both gold and oil prices surge as stock market investors seek capital safety.

President of US-China Business Council Craig Allen suggests that a trade deal should be within reach if Trump and Xi show courage at the G20 summit. A landmark trade agreement between China and the U.S. should be attainable insofar as Trump and Xi have the courage to compromise on specific aspects of the trade deal. This compromise can be difficult for both leaders, whereas, both sides signal the positive intent that Sino-U.S. trade negotiations should get back on track. Allen indicates that setbacks are quite normal in most bilateral trade negotiations. Perhaps the China-U.S. trade envoys, Liu He and Robert Lighthizer, seem to agree to a major trade deal *in principle*. However, the legal details may not fully reflect mutual agreement for both presidential leaders. The U.S. Trump administration calls for significant bilateral trade deficit eradication and better intellectual property protection and enforcement in China. The Chinese Xi administration expects all future fair trade practices to be realistic with appropriate goods and services procurement, market access, and technology transfer etc. Respecting these fundamental interests can help both sides reach a tractable solution. In essence, Allen emphasizes that addressing these concerns helps China achieve sustainable economic growth in the long run.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe outlines the key economic priorities for the G20 summit in Osaka. First, Asian countries need to forge the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) for free and fair trade in China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). This Asian bloc promotes sound and efficient trade relations as China, India, and Japan lead the mainstream consensus views on economic integration, financial stabilization, and intellectual property protection. Second, Asian countries should help ensure the safe and free flows of data via digital networks. With respect to this recent digitization, the socioeconomic ramifications of data flows can rival, or may even surpass, the broad impact of petroleum and the internal combustion engine in the previous century. Third, Japan leads many Asian countries in terms of disruptive innovation that helps tackle global environmental degradation. In the new era of beautiful harmony, the Japanese Abe administration seeks to reduce carbon emissions with better artificial photosynthesis. This innovative technology contributes to maximum sustainable employment, economic growth, and capital investment accumulation. Overall, the Japanese Abe administration hosts the next G20 summit for better international trade, data, and environmental protection.

France and Germany are the biggest beneficiaries of Sino-U.S. trade escalation, whereas, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan suffer from the current trade standoff. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reiterates that President Trump can impose tariffs on all of the other $325 billion Chinese imports if the Chinese Xi administration fails to agree with the U.S. to deliver a bilateral trade deal. Barclays economic research head Christian Keller emphasizes in his recent report that the additional U.S. tariffs may lead to trade substitution with fresh opportunities for France and Germany to garner greater export market shares worldwide. Eurozone exposure concentrates in Chinese computer and electronic exports and U.S. transport equipment exports.  As France and Germany choose to accommodate Chinese export diversions, this transition may result in important economic repercussions in light of U.S.-E.U. trade negotiations. On the other hand, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan rely heavily on trade linkages with the Chinese economy. As Asia Pacific chief economist Steve Cochrane suggests, these industrial economies face substantive exposure to Chinese consumers and electronic supply chains. In recent times, these East Asian economies experience hefty stock market losses due to the current trade standoff between China and the U.S. amid trade deal uncertainty.

The Chinese new star board launches for tech companies to list at home. The Nasdaq-equivalent new star board serves as a key avenue for Chinese tech companies to raise funds as the stock exchange criteria are less stringent than other domestic boards. In recent years, the Chinese government encourages local tech firms to become more self-reliant in producing microchips and other core components. This new star board arises amid the current Sino-American trade escalation and recent U.S. embargo on the HuaWei supply chain of electronic imports. As of mid-2019, the new star board has received applications from 122 tech firms. Tech companies with at least RMB$300 million ($43 million) net income can list on the new star board insofar as these companies maintain the minimum stock market capitalization of RMB$2 billion with RMB$100 million cash flows in the prior 3 years. The board is the first registration-driven IPO system that streamlines the price flotation restrictions. Like Facebook, Google, Alibaba, and JD etc, Chinese tech companies with a dual-class shareholding structure are eligible to apply for registration. Alibaba continues to mull over its next proposal to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange several years after its blockbuster IPO on NYSE.

The Chinese central bank has to circumvent offshore imports-driven inflation due to Renminbi currency misalignment. Even though China maintains substantial foreign reserves in U.S. government bonds, traders may speculate about whether the People Bank of China (PBOC) can manage to fix the Dollar-Renminbi exchange rate below 7.0x. This current exchange rate has substantially declined about 9.3% since April 2018 and now hovers in the stable range of 6.89x to 6.92x.  PBOC Governor Yi Gang indicates that there is no asymmetric red line for the Sino-U.S. exchange rate. However, Chinese economic policymakers may be hesitant to let their currency depreciate past RMB$7-to-USD$1. Any expectations of short-term currency misalignment can spur capital flight out of the Chinese economy. Chinese public companies that list abroad have to make cash dividend payments in June every year; so foreign exchange order flows reveal substantive short-term pressure for these Chinese public companies to sell the offshore Renminbi. As China maintains a near-zero current account surplus in mid-2019, the Renminbi faces downward pressure. Renminbi depreciation has long been a major source of tremendous competitive advantage for China. It is important for the Sino-U.S. trade negotiations to level the playing field with respect to potential Renminbi currency misalignment.

Warwick economic researcher Roger Farmer proposes paying for social welfare programs with no tax hikes. The current U.S. government pension and Medicare liabilities are almost $47 trillion in total. As Farmer suggests, national treasuries should establish social care funds, and these public funds borrow money at low interest rates and invest the proceeds in many international stock markets. A recent study analyzes data from OECD economies over a century and empirically shows that the average stock return is about 7% above the return on government bonds. The average equity premium ranges from 3.8% in Denmark to 9.9% in Japan. Stock market idiosyncratic volatility may not fully accord with economic fundamental factors such as size, value, momentum, asset growth, operating profitability, and market risk etc. Instead, this volatility reflects the animal spirits and sentiments of investors who often buy and sell shares on the basis of self-fulfilling prophecies of greed and fear. When the government institutes social care funds, these public funds can smooth out short-term stock price gyrations to invest in the long-term fundamental health of the global economy. The Farmer proposal may work well in practice as most public funds can earn an average 4%-7% equity premium per annum.

U.S. regulatory agencies may consider broader socioeconomic issues in their antitrust probe into tech titans such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The House Judiciary Committee expects to hold the inaugural session on anti-competitive practices among these tech companies. The investigation represents the first congressional probe into allegations that these tech companies may abuse their quasi-monopoly power with suspicious anti-competitive behaviors. House Democrats back this landmark investigation, and Republicans also have huge concerns around the potential abuse of tech monopoly power (although most conservatives intend to avoid excessive government intervention). Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department focus on how Facebook and Google affect consumer privacy and competitor survival across the news media landscape. The regulatory agencies also probe into whether Apple abuses its market power in collaboration with Spotify to dominate digital music and the iOS app ecosystem. Moreover, the regulatory agencies examine whether Amazon not only drives down retail prices but also conducts collusive schemes in e-commerce. Antitrust scrutiny remains one of the biggest bipartisan tech issues. The regulatory agencies may impose punitive fines to diminish the market power of these tech companies, or may break up some of these tech titans for better consumer welfare and competitor survival.

Apple releases the new iOS 13 smartphone features. These features include Dark Mode, Audio Share, Memoji, better privacy protection, smart photo collection, and a fresh app dashboard. Switching the iPhone to Dark Mode can turn the typically bright screen design elements black and grey. This switch draws less electric power and helps ease eye strain. The iOS 13 software update facilitates sharing music between Apple mobile devices. Audio Share allows 2 AirPod users to listen to the same song with stereo sound at once. Apple refreshes the first-party apps in terms of both usability and functionality. These apps help track health trends, gallery views, notes, maps, reminders, and text messages with natural language entry. Apple gives iPhone lovers more control over their location data, social login service for iOS 13 *Sign In With Apple*, and random email address generation for better privacy protection. The new iOS 13 photo collection app uses machine-learning algorithms to ditch duplicate images and blurry screenshots. All iOS 13 users can edit photos and video clips with new tools to beautify both vertical and horizontal masterpieces. Memoji allows iOS 13 users to customize their FaceTime, Camera, and Messages with eyeshadow, jewelry, hats, glasses, and additional hairstyles.

AYA finbuzz podcast July 2019

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[raystart]

Bleak Time, Bold Moves: The State of the Digital Nation 2020

Jules Ehrhardt made waves in 2016 when he published State of the Digital Nation, a raw and honest look at the major forces threatening the digital consultancy industry. Two years later, the seasoned digital exec has done it again with State of the Digital Nation 2020, painting a bleak picture of the agency landscape, pointing out flaws in the model, and urging creatives to consider their options.

The new publication coincides with change in his own life. After leaving his post as co-owner of ustwo, the digital product studio behind the wildly popular mobile game Monument Valley, Ehrhardt launched FCTRY in May. A “creative capital studio,” the company acts as an advisory for early-stage technology companies in return for equity.

In the interview below, Ehrhardt shares his views on why now is the time for new thinking in digital. So are we all doomed? Nah. Amid change, there is always opportunity.

What led you to write a new State of the Digital Nation?

I wrote the first State of the Digital Nation in 2016. It was a point in which I was reflecting deeply on what I’d seen over the previous four years and where I saw things going. It was an expression about the journey to try to evolve the typical consultancy model, or try to build the future phase of the studio.

In 2017, I was closing a chapter in my life and starting a new chapter. I had the freedom to do what I wanted. The fundamental question that came to me was, “If you could start again, completely fresh without serving any legacy, what would you do?” State of the Digital Nation 2020 is basically me ripping apart my journey, closing a chapter and beginning a new chapter and trying to organize all the thinking and inputs and outputs that would lead me to decide to build a new type of studio. So, that’s in a nutshell why I wrote it.

You say that the “death of the agency” drum is beating louder and louder. What went wrong and what’s happening now?

We’ve all been watching the epic battle between the consultancies and the ad holding groups. That’s led to a few issues. One is that design is being homogenized. If you look at how so many independent studios are being acquired and brought in to consultancies, you’re seeing what I think is a fundamental problem with how the ecosystem is designed. To use a metaphor, if you mix all the vibrant colors of the rainbow together, you get a chromatic neutral. And that’s a concern to me. What does that trend do for our ecosystem?

Another issue is that, as more work goes in-house, and fewer agencies are fighting over the remainder of the work, they’re beginning to underbid and trying to reduce their cost to secure the work. Many agencies have moved to offshoring, and what you’re seeing is the agency ecosystem begin to cannibalize itself.

For me, that’s pushing everything to a quite logical conclusion that, for an agency, what was once double-digit profit is now going to be single-digit profit, or a sea of red.

Until the last decade or so, it made a lot of sense to open an agency. It was profitable, and you could do good work. What we’d see was big brands nurturing a wider ecosystem than would provide healthy grounds and a system for new talent to emerge. But what you’re seeing, I think, is this kind of ecosystem collapse: there’s such a pressure on pricing and a procurement-department mindset that, actually, this ecosystem in which the next generation of talent should develop isn’t being sustained.

The fundamental challenge faced by the creative class is being paid for time. And that’s what’s leading to the consolidation, that’s what’s leading to the downward pricing, that’s what’s leading to the degraded environment in which we do our work.

Bleak. If that’s the case, what needs to happen?

The only way for us to escape and build a new prosperous place, a new happy place, is to basically break that model, break that bond which I call a form of “prison island” that we built ourselves decades ago—the “paid for time” client service model.

You say being paid for hourly work is at the core of the industry’s problems. Tell us more.

I believe that actual human creative output is limited to five hours a day, therefore keeping people late is creating unhealthy working conditions and is counterproductive. I recently went to a conference with some very high-level design leaders in the tech space. I asked everyone “Look, how many hours of creativity do you think a human has in a day?” I counted down the hours from 10. No one put their hands up. When I got down to six and five that’s when the majority of the hands went up. Of course this is definitely not applicable to rote tasks like outputting a hundred variations of an image. But the real creativity tops out at five hours. I believe in building a working environment around that.

So what would you recommend? How can there be a better pay model, not necessarily related to hourly work?

As it’s happening is it’s going to get harder and harder to have an agency with healthy profits. I still think that there are studios that are great, that do really good work, and they’re going to prosper. Those people usually have a good process—they agree on high-level requirements based on ‘Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have’ (or “MoSCoW”) rather than fixed cost and scope arrangements. They’re focused on product rather than marketing.

But for the agency structure—the only way we’re going to escape that is for the creative class to begin to define new models—new vessels within which we can do our work and prosper.

In your case, you decided that the best next step for you was to do venture-only work?

Yes, I guess the point is for me it doesn’t really matter what model you choose. For me, the path I chose was to explore venture where the model is funded. Funded models allow us to do the work we want to do. It doesn’t mean there’s no pressure. It just means it’s a different dynamic.

You say the talent drain is already well under way. Where are people going?

Agencies—and very good ones—are increasingly losing people to Google, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. I think that trend is going to grow. It’s almost impossible for agencies to match a tech company’s packages and benefits. If you were working at an agency doing 70 hours a week on a campaign or for a bleach brand at 30 percent or 40 percent less salary than you’d get paid at Google or Facebook, then why on earth wouldn’t you leave? I’m not saying it’s easy working in a tech company, but to work fewer hours and have a better work-life balance and be working with a bit more purpose, at significantly better benefits? It’s something to think about.

You’ve put together a big proposal and shared it out in the open. Have you received comments from anybody who’s like “I completely disagree with this and here’s where I think you’re missing the mark?”

In the week since it went out, I’ve had overwhelmingly positive comments. I’ve also had people pull me aside and go, “I’ve tried this. It doesn’t work.” And that’s fine. The point for me is I don’t have as much care for the industry as I do for the creative class within it. So if you do read the piece, you’ll see a lot of it comes from a place of care for the creative class. That has always been my mission. If you’re an individual in the creative class, there are some important questions we need to be asking ourselves. I believe that by having a more open-source mentality, by sharing what works and what doesn’t work, publishing contracts and as much information as we can, then we can get everyone to a better place. And a more healthy ecosystem for everyone is what I want. I am completely committed to that philosophy.

I remember starting the piece thinking, “We’re all doomed.” And by the time I got to the end I felt surprisingly positive about everything because you had shared. Did you mean for it to be encouraging in that way?

Yes, the feedback I’ve had, especially from younger people in the industry, is that they’re really excited after the reading the piece. I was trying to give a systematic exploration of what I see, what’s wrong with it and what the new avenues are for the creative class. The beauty is you can really have an opinion and be forthright about it. I think the problem in our industry as a whole is that that the emperor has been naked for the last five to eight years. That’s how we got here. 

If somebody is at an earlier point in their career and they haven’t committed to a path yet, what advice would you give to them in terms of the path they might consider?

I’m not really in the advice-giving game, but I think I’d definitely be weighing up which industries have longevity, which areas in the industry have too many people with a certain age and mindset who are more vested in the status quo than not. The way I like to phrase it at the moment is this: you’re either revolutionary, or you’re not. And I think that’s the moment we have to be in now. We have to be revolutionary because if we don’t know how to build these opportunities then we’ll go down with the ship.

For more, check out Ehrhardt’s full 60-minute read: State of the Digital Nation 2020.

[theinvinciblenoob]

In 2014, it seemed like pretty much anyone with a pulse and pitch deck was capable of raising huge amounts of capital from prestigious venture capital firms at sky-high valuations. Here we are four years later and times have changed. VCs inked a little more than 3,100 deals in the last quarter of 2017, according to Crunchbase — about 500 fewer than the previous quarter.

For aspiring startup founders, it’s a “confusing time in the so-called Unicorn story,” as Erin Griffith put it in a column last May — an asset bubble that never really popped, but which at the very least is deflating. In the confirmation hearing for new SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, lawmakers lamented the dearth of initial public offerings as companies that thrived in private markets — from Snap to Blue Apron — have struggled to deliver meaningful returns to investors.

This all creates a number of dilemmas for founders looking to raise capital and scale businesses in 2018. VCs remain an integral part of the innovation ecosystem. But what happens when the changing dynamics of financial markets collide with VCs’ expectations regarding growth? VCs may not always be aligned with founders and companies in this new environment. A recent study commissioned by Eric Paley at Founder Collective found that by pressuring companies to scale prematurely, venture capitalists are indirectly responsible for more startup deaths than founder infighting, technical debt and slow customer adoption — combined.

The new landscape requires that founders in particular be judicious in the way they seek out new sources of capital, structure cap tables and ownership and the types of concessions made to their new backers in exchange for that much-needed cash. Here are three ways founders can ensure they’re looking out for what’s best for their companies — and themselves — in the long run.

Take time to backchannel

Venture capitalists are arguably in the business of due diligence. Before they sign the dotted line, they can be expected to call your competitors, your customers, your former employers, your business school classmates — they will ask everyone and their mother about you.

It goes without saying that differences of opinion regarding your business strategy can lead to big conflict down the road.

A first-time founder is also new to the pressures of entrepreneurship, of having employees rely on you for their livelihoods. Whether you are desperate for cash because you need to make payroll, or you’re anxious for the validation of a headline-worthy investment, few founders take the time to properly backchannel their investors. Until you can say you’ve done due diligence of your own, your opinion of your VCs is going to be based on the size of their fund, the deals they’ve done or the press they’ve gotten. In short, it will likely be based on what they’ve done right.

On the other hand, you likely don’t know anything about the actual partner that will join your board. Are they intelligent in your space? Do they have a meaningful network? Or do they just know a few headhunters? Are they value creators? What is their political standing in their firm? Before you sign a term sheet, you need to take the time to contextualize the profile of the person who is taking a board seat. It gives you foresight on the actions your investment partner will likely take down the road.

Think beyond your first raise

If you do decide to raise capital, make sure you are in alignment with your board regarding your business plan, the pursuit of profit at the expense of revenue growth, or vice versa, and how it will steer your decision making as the market changes. It goes without saying that differences of opinion regarding your business strategy can lead to big conflict down the road.

As you think about these trade-offs, remember that as an entrepreneur, your obligation is to the existing shareholders: the employees and you. As the pack of potential unicorns has thinned, VCs in particular have turned to unconventional deal structures, like the use of common and preferred shares. For the founder who needs to raise cash, a dual ownership structure seems like a fair compromise to make, but remember that it may be at the expense of your employees’ option pool. The interests of preferred and common shareholders are not perfectly aligned, particularly when it comes time to make difficult decisions in the future.

Is VC money right for you?

VCs frequently share information, board decks and investor presentations with members of the press and the tech community, sometimes in support of their own personal agendas or to get perspective on whether to invest or not. That’s why it’s particularly important to backchannel, and more importantly, that you have allies that you can call on and people who can ensure some measure of goodwill. A good company board cannot be made up of just the investors and you: You need advocates that are balanced and on your side.

Venture capital is far from the only way to finance an early-stage business.

These prescriptions can sound paranoid, particularly to the founder whose business is growing nicely. But anything can cause a sea change and put you at odds with the people funding your company — who now own a piece of the company that you’re trying to build. When disagreements arise, it can get tense. They might say that you are a first-time founder, and therefore a novice. They will make your weaknesses known and say you’ll never be able to raise again if you ignore their invaluable advice. It’s important that you don’t fall into the fear trap. If you create a product or service that solves an undeniable problem, the money will come — and you will get funded again.

The term founder-friendly VC was always perhaps a bit of a misnomer. The people building the business and the people planning on cashing in on your efforts are imperfect allies. As a founder and business owner, your primary responsibilities are to your clients, to the company you’re building and, most importantly, to the employees who are helping you do it. As founders we like to think that we have all the answers, especially in bad times. Making sure you have alignment with your investors in challenging and unpredictable situations is critical. It’s important to anticipate how your investors will problem-solve before you give up control.

Venture capital is far from the only way to finance an early-stage business. Founders looking to jump-start their business have a number of alternatives, from debt financing and bootstrapping to crowdfunding, angel investors and ICOs. There are indeed still many advantages to having experienced investors on your side, not simply the cash but also the access to hiring and industry knowledge. But the relationship can only benefit both parties when founders go in eyes wide open.

via TechCrunch

[smartoptionsio]

[ICO SCOOP] MIDAS PROTOCOL – Unified Gateway To Multi-Exchange

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Disclaimer

This article is for educational purposes only. We are no financial advisors. Do not make investment decisions based on this informations. The information provided from Smart Options is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered legal or financial advice. You should consult with a financial advisor or other professional to find out what may be best for your individual needs and risk tolerance. Please do your own research and let never anyone trade for you. Please read this disclaimer and leave the website if you disagree with it.

Did you ever wonder about trading the probable future of currencies, but the tech you find everywhere seems somewhat stone age? We are pioneers of the future – but what we get is exchanges with crappy UIs and only rudimentary features, right? It is time for a Next-Gen Exchange, the next step of evolution after Binance. Binance dethroned Bittrex (like we anticipated here long ago), though we know they left still much upside for others to do better. And finally, someone is grabbing that opportunity by the balls by working on a better trading exchange with more features and futuristic capabilities that are currently not offered by existing ones. Midas Protocol is in the oven – baking the advanced decentralized exchange of the future! Binance first to give us at least a slightly more feature-rich trading experience and an unrivaled coin list. Now Midas Protocol looks to take it a step further by giving us the advanced possibilities, freedom and mobility that we clamor for! This is a star-studded pack of trading abilities that will have you salivating at your computer screens. Starting with the ability to trade directly with others in a decentralized manner and then switch back to trading through centralized brokers/exchanges, all from the same Midas Protocol Wallet.

Now they don’t leave it by this, along with those groundbreaking features, you get smart order routing built into the platform, so if you wish to layer different order types on various coins, you will be able to set conditional values out in the future.  If you think the party stops there, well you would be mistaken.

Lastly, we have the built-in social trading aspect of the Midasprotocol, to which you can copy trades of others and follow a whole ecosystem of traders, which includes a built-in leaderboard (e.g. like the Bitmex one) for you to choose the future warriors to battle the markets on your behalf. The Midas Protocol Team also states they will look to do so with ever tighter spreads for lower costs to you as the trader and high speeds so you executions won’t lag as they do on many current platforms.

MIDASPROTOCOL ICO Facts Sheet 

Website: midasprotocol.io Whitepaper: Whitepaper Social Media: Telegram| Twitter | Medium Info Channel: Announcement Channel on Telegram

Referrals:KYC: Yes Excluded Countries: US Citizen, Mainland China, Algeria, Morocco, Kyrgyzstan, Bolivia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia can not participate. Whitelist Process: YES, already started. Pre-Sale: currently running until 10th of June ’18 Token Sale: 1st to 15th of July ’18 Pre Sale Bonus Structure: 

25 May – 29 May 30% bonus 30 May – 04 June 25% bonus 05 June – 10 June 20% bonus 11 June – 30 June Prepare for ICO (No bonus) 1 July – 15 July No bonus

  ICO Plattform: ERC-20 Token Soft Cap: 5,000 ETH Hard Cap: 18,000 ETH Individual Investment Cap: 0.5 – 10 ETH Maximum Supply: 500,000,000 MAS ICO Funds Allocations: Product Development and R&D – 50% | Marketing and business development – 15% | Legal expenses – 5% | Operations – 25% | Contingency buffer – 5% Token: MAS Solved Problem: MidasProtocol offers users a new era Exchange, that allows both decentralized and centralized trading from a mobile Wallet, with built-in Smart order routing and Social Trading integration.

Video Review

The Features of MIDAS PROTOCOL

What we find here is a treasure chest of value for the average ICO holder and a great platform for the end user to trade with. Add a fantastic team, who both have the technical expertise and business know how to usher in this futuristic crypto trading platform. The list of features below is very extensive, which shows the sheer robustness and vision of the Midas team, which is nothing less then GOLDEN!

Decentralized and Centralized trading from the same wallet, which holds both API and Private keys. This will feature an  instant tokens conversion with multiple decentralized exchanges and enable you to control and manage funds on multiple centralized exchanges right within Midas.

Smart Order Routing, with a simple programming language to take advantage of this from the start, thus allowing for trailing stop loss orders, conditional trailing stop-loss orders, multiple standby orders. DSL language adoptions for flexible order entry and creation.

Second to none security with Midas wallet protecting your keys and data for both DEX and CEX usage.

Built-in Social Trading, have fun and make money following the leaderboard of prospective traders, use their advanced analytics to both track these traders and analyze which ones would best suit your cryptocurrency investment needs!

Market Monitor to detect sentiments like big trends/moves and general up to date news headlines associated with the various coins you hold, be in the know of the markets goings on and don’t get caught blindsided!

ICO news, alerts and featured content in the latest and greatest new coin offering from around the world.

Open API for 3rd Party apps or add-ons for the Midas Protocol, to which will extend the feature set of this already prolific platform.  The API will provide add-on functionalities for Midas Protocol platform like prominent news curation, market sentiments analysis, AI bot trading, entries/exit recommendations.

Midas wallet will support in the future, Bitcoin, Ethereum, ERC-20 tokens, Dash, EOS, NEO, NEP-5 tokens, Stellar, Waves, Decred, Lisk, Zcoin and PIVX. With the possibility of future offerings in time.

Deterministic key generation: if a user loses the wallet, they can recover it from its seed key.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning for advanced portfolio management to gain cutting-edge returns, along with integration all built in, giving the average trader access to the power of machine learning, which already outperforms most traditional quant or generalized funds on Wallstreet, and even seems to be doing this globally now. Midas Protocol will offer breakdown pie chart and history chart, portfolio performance evaluation & report, daily/weekly/monthly profit & loss report of each token and in total portfolio, portfolio re-balancing periodically with AI & deep-learning

Built-in extensibility/open and usable on all major platforms: Windows, Unix, IOS, Android, Web.

A social trade leaderboard, with a built-in reward system to reward high performing traders in the sharing of trades.

Privacy: The servers do not store the users account data, unless they are sharing their portfolio and trading rules to earn leaderboard rewards, and even in such a case, user’s private keys would still be safe, thus preventing one from stealing their funds.

A word on “Smart Order Routing”

Where Binance is slacking, we have Midas stacking!

With the advancement of cryptocurrency trading platforms, we have many choices to choose from, though of those choices there is a great deal lacking universal feature sets to be common across the board with these trading platforms, the Midas team wishes to overcome this by giving a wide field viewpoint in their technological scope.

They have not only implemented the most wanted order types as an example: Trailing stops/Conditional Trailing stops/Multiple standby orders, but also a simplified approach on two fronts in order to utilize these key features. One being DSL or “Domain Specific Language” and it’s popular characteristics of allowing for more global variable handling to allow for domain-specific modeling, in short, a fancy term for a more flexible/easy to use language for those who wish to build advanced order entry parameters for their trades.

‘The Midas Wallet’ and a New Way to Unify Trades.

The team at the MidasProtocol, with their technically rich pool of both engineers and business acumen alike, were able to come together and plan/develop a next generation wallet design, with both powerful backend functionality and deep frontend usability. It is a profound statement we witness here of both technical excellence and visionary foresight.

This wallet is designed with both hardened security layers and extensible functionality in how it’s code is routed, with extreme elegance. Allowing the traders to have greater simplification and mobility in their order execution, along with rock-solid security, be they trading through a CEX like Bittrex/Binance or a DEX like Kyber or NEX. These pathways are not just for Centralized trading or decentralized trading, but as well have modularity in design directly through the wallet in order to take advantage of 3rd party trading services/social trading/smart portfolio management/real-time alerts all from an electronic command center; calling it a wallet seems all but lacking, but then again it is not just any wallet, it is the Midas Wallet…

A word about ‘Backend Systems and the Trading Dashboard

In programming, one needs to centralize usable data and create good logic/flow of a programs main components for one to use. It seems with the engineering/development team that the MidasProtocol has, they have left no stone unturned in their quest to cover each and all of the proverbial bases. They seem to have a unified point of view to make their trading platform not only trader friendly but a game changer as well. From encryption to the most minor details in logic, from this point, I am left thinking they need only execute all of these ideas and create what will leave all the other exchanges scrambling to play catchup.

That Team, oh my God – that team!

One of the first things when investing into ICOs is to have a look at the team. The Midas team is quite big, but let’s get over some highlights we want to stress and put into the spotlight:

Minh Chu – The CEO is the cloud architect of VCCloud and Co-Founder of Tomochain

CTO Ngoc Nguyen is the core developer of ZCoin

Philip Phung, Chief Marketing Officer, has been in Marketing for 16 years and spent 6 years alone a Google Country Consultant

CFO and Chairman Dr. David Nguyen has double MBA in Strategy & Marketing and has been ICO advisor for several ventures

Dr. Thuc Vu, a serial entrepreneur, with built companies, with multiple company acquisitions, the last one by Google. Dr. Thuc is currently leading Kambria – a decentralized open AI & robotics platform

Victor Tran as Advisor, who is the co-founder of the KYBER Network, will take care for the DEX integration

Other names from the advisory board: AI/ML from Dr. Thuc Vu (Kambria Founder), Dr. Long Vuong (Tomochain Founder)

The Token Structure & Supply

The MAS token is thought as on-platform device and will be used to pay for several possible subscriptions. The subscription model reads as follows, and the only way to pay for it will be the MAS token:

● Free subscription: Limited functionality, basically storage of cryptocurrencies and simple buy/sell order. ● Lite subscription: Average functionality from storage, trading with some level of analysis and automated tools as well as the ability to follow top traders but not copying order. ● Pro subscription: Full functionality from storage, sophisticated trading, curated market information and critical alert, follow and copy buy/sell orders directly by subscribing to top traders.

The MAS token will be priorly used to pay for subscription fees and to subscribe to traders. Traders leading the board will be rewarded in these tokens as well as referrals. Coming straight to the point: I like the idea of the token usage, but the supply of the tokens is at the upper end with 500,000,000 MAS (comparison with Binance’s BNB: ~200.000.000 BNB). What we have to consider is that it will be likely that the circulating supply might be significantly lower. By keeping 50% of the available supply for the core team, operations and marketing, there is much power in the hand of the team – so you must check for yourself if you are confident in the guys behind Midas.

To summarize is this ICO a worthy investment?

The Binances of the world should take a page out of the book of these guys to get an idea of what the platform of tomorrow will look like. The ICO is underhyped on one hand but on the other, they sold out already ~80% in the seed sale phase, which lets us anticipate that there are really big guys trusting them with this project. Given the high supply of available tokens, we will sell off a good portion of our total MAS holdings once it hits the markets and keep around 30% for the long run – trading and investing is always about risk management, as you know. And yes, there is some risk involved – they have huge roadmap ahead with much things to do and the MVP is not yet ready (comes in Q3 ’18), so we are speaking about a larger timeframe for this investment, but we guess this long hodl will be pretty rewarding once the first people start using their platform. We are still in bear mode and if you are like us and believe the next bull run is right around the corner, this might be an excellent opportunity to park some ETH. Without the MVP it would have been prolly too much of risk for me personally, but with that team behind, it flips to a no-brainer to me. I was already invested in KYBER and had some juicy profits, missed the Binance boat at ICO times and will not miss out this time with MAS.

I can’t help but think as I research more and more into this that they could potentially produce something that will disrupt the whole trading community, and really hope they do! Some of the elements they are focusing on are ones that big house financial tech companies such as Goldman Sachs do. Their dashboard is a backend system integration as they laid it out line by line just from talking points and logic alone seems to become exceptional in its vision point by point navigation. This vision coupled with the superior engineering and straightforward business directive has all the hallmarks of a winning future. Take the time to read through their white paper along with the site to connect the dots. I am sure after reading it, you would tend to agree. I think because of the nature of the team they have put together along with the engineering talent they have behind it, well one can’t help but be in awwww and I can easily see why and how they are able to raise the amount of funds they have so quickly as they have. I think it is a future star and really can’t wait to use it for my own trading!

If you are interested to join, the whitelist is yet open.

The post [ICO SCOOP] MIDAS PROTOCOL – Unified Gateway To Multi-Exchange appeared first on Smart Options.

[fuelcut]

Notes on venture studios

The conventional logic in tech has been that new market cap is most effectively generated by the venture ecosystem or big tech companies pursuing adjacencies to a “sticky” core business. While this has largely been true, I’ve felt it hard to accept without questioning — particularly when considering 75%+ of VC funds fail to return capital beyond their hurdle rate or that incremental R&D productivity at big tech cos (except Amazon?) tends to be poorly measured.

So I (and many others) have attempted other models. Occasionally VCs including where I worked bring on EIRs and support them in thesis development. Corporates have tried various models to avoid disruption and/or expand into new markets. At Microsoft, I helped incubate products that had the potential to be transformative but also cannibalistic (e.g. Azure) — and thus we intentionally walled efforts off (separate mgmt/funding process) until later stages of development.

More recently, I co-founded Sidewalk Labs — funded by Alphabet/Google — to apply technology to the building and operation of cities. Because of vast differences with Google’s core business, Sidewalk operates as an independent entity — relying primarily on Alphabet’s ability to invest flexibly across VC, infrastructure and real estate asset classes to spearhead unique development efforts. Later at Sidewalk, we also saw the potential for software-driven innovations to address key urban challenges but found few startups pursuing these opportunities due to VC fear of / lack of familiarity with public sector dependencies. So we looked at approaches to catalyze activity — creating our own venture studio (e.g. Cityblock Health, Coord, Model.)

Venture studios have re-emerged with some fanfare (WSJ paywall) after disappearing (Idealab) post dot com bust. Often structured as small funds (~$10–40M), they provide “pre-seed” capital to startups created in-house — often bringing together an external EIR and recruited talent. They typically invest $500k — $2M per company (some of which can be in-kind services) initially — reserving capital to invest their pro-rata in “winners” in future rounds. Based on experience at Sidewalk and conversations with others running studios, I’ve observed several challenges and also paths for success.

Challenges of (standalone) venture studios

Difficult to fund overhead — The work that an incubator must do — if it builds from scratch — is more similar to a founder than an investor — and yet many operate with relatively low overhead akin to a passive investor (2% mgmt fee.) This makes it difficult for the incubator to invest in meaningful “staff” resources — unless they can be directly attributable to an incubated company. The mitigation can either be to consider non-fund structures (e.g. funding a StudioCo with equity capital that receives common shares in NewCos) or simply to have studio activities be part of a broader venture investing umbrella.

Capped ownership — Despite its founder-like role, there are limits to how much of a company the incubator can own — if it seeks traditional VC backing at Series A / etc. milestones. Later investors may be reticent to invest in companies that lack balanced investor ownership with meaningful equity for founders/employees. One mitigation is to reserve sufficient capital to be able to co-invest at A / B rounds — enabling new investors to come in while maintaining significant ownership.

Management attention — Every incubator struggles between “thin” (most talent is tied to a specific incubation — making it difficult to appropriately invest in vetting ideas internally) and “fat” / “shared” models (most talent is shared across incubations at least until the point of external funding — making it difficult to isolate concerns and thereby risking “orphan” entities particularly in the likely case where one entity is particularly successful.) This is arguably the most difficult challenge to mitigate.

Paths for success

There are not yet enough data points to generalize whether the studio model is more vs. less effective than the “traditional” venture ecosystem at creating successful companies. But the most intriguing venture studios have embedded in them a critique of the VC ecosystem that in turn suggests an arbitrage opportunity:

Geography — Entrepreneurs in 2nd or 3rd tier metros are less likely to be able to find the necessary complements (co-founders, investors) on their own for a successful venture. Therefore, incubators/studios (e.g. High Alpha in Midwest, EF in London for hard tech founders, Pioneer Square Labs in Seattle) may have an advantage vs. VCs.

Domain — Entrepreneurs and VCs in the valley have favored less regulated industries where success requires execution along one (often product/design- or engineering-) vector. Studios may be able to develop the necessary expertise (e.g. Sidewalk in urban tech, Accretive with healthcare payer relationships) to de-risk ventures that take on additional sources of risk — e.g. policy change, multi-party sales cycles etc.

Network/Technology Leverage — Entrepreneurs in certain markets may face challenges building and scaling wherein shared services provided by an incubator provide an advantage. There examples of this both in traditional VC contexts (e.g. data-driven talent sourcing at Village Global) and in studios (e.g. Playground’s expertise in offshore consumer HW manufacturing and on-device ML/CV.)

[cryptochurp]

Will Regulation Spark a New Crypto-Boom?

Rumors of regulatory crackdowns have dealt damaging blows to crypto-markets, but promising new tech is set to change the crypto-ecosystem completely.

Regulation is quickly becoming a hot topic in the crypto-world.

The unregulated, “Wild West” environment of the crypto market left investors wide open to fraudsters, scammers, and shady firms out to make a quick buck.

The technology of blockchain and Bitcoin is here to stay. But to bring value to investors, it’s going to need tighter rules and more responsible companies with their eyes on the future.

The crypto market, worth $450 billion, won’t disappear overnight. The next step will be figuring out how to establish rules, expectations, and regulations for making the market work smoothly.

And one company is positioned to meet that need: Hashchain Technology Inc. (TSX: KASH.V; OTC: HSSHF)

This is a blockchain company that can do it all: mine coins, diversify investment in a variety of different crypto-currencies, and navigate the crypto marketplace.

But KASH is going a step further: it’s working on proprietary methods and new technologies to make compliance with new regulations easier.

At a time when state agencies are cracking down on the free-for-all within the crypto world, KASH is set to making earnings from crypto-currencies regulation.

Here’s five reasons to take a strong look at Hashchain Technology Inc.:

#1 Order to Chaos

Last year, Bitcoin and blockchain was on everyone’s mind. The value of cryptocurrencies was shooting through the roof, and everyone wanted in on the action.

Major papers ran multiple stories trying to explain what cryptos were, how the blockchain worked to facilitate crypto transactions without middlemen, and investors were offered dozens of opportunities to buy into new cryptos through initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Now, the view is a bit different.

Governments, banks, and investors are all worried that the frenzy over Bitcoin and other cryptos was fed by fraud.

South Korea and China began considering bans on crypto mining, which is immensely energy-intensive and difficult to monitor. South Korea specifically wants to start licensing cryptocurrency exchanges to bring trading under closer surveillance, in order to prevent fraud.

Authorities in the U.S. are worried about crypto-currencies being used to launder money and want investors to start ponying up their taxes.

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been accused of acting as a Ponzi scheme. Coinbase, the popular crypto market hub, has even been subpoenaed by the IRS to get information on its customers.

Both political parties have now called for tighter crypto regulations.

While a full ban on mining isn’t being seriously considered, it’s certain that the crypto marketplace is going to come under greater control in the coming months and years.

#2 The KASH Way

Hashchain Technology Inc is ready.

The company sees regulation of cryptocurrency as the logical next step for the industry, and it’s taking steps to meet the new business conditions.

The company, which began as a cryptocurrency miner, has acquired the assets of Node40, a blockchain technology, and accounting software firm, for $8 million and stock consideration. The acquisition indicates KASH is diversifying beyond its mining strategy.

The Node40 software, called Balance, reports transactions from major crypto-currency exchanges. Individuals on the blockchain trigger taxable events when they buy and sell crypto, but until now, no one was charting these events in a way that ensured regulatory transparency. The potential for fraud was huge.

With Balance at its disposal, KASH is providing tools to investors and regulators to account for transactions, providing up-to-date information on the crypto marketplace.

“The acquisition of the NODE40 Business,” said CEO Patrick Gray in the company’s press release, “is an important next step of creating a global blockchain technology company.”

Regulation is the company’s “niche,” and it’s what makes KASH “different from everyone else,” Gray told Oilprice.com.

#3 Mining for Crypto Gold

Outside of its new approach to crypto regulation compliance, KASH is a mining company with a fresh approach to the crypto marketplace.

The company currently has 870 rigs, with further acquisitions set to bring KASH to a total of 8.4 MW of cryptocurrency mining capacity by the end of Q2 of this year.

What does it mean to “mine” bitcoin? Well, companies like KASH use massive amounts of computer processing power to verify bitcoin transactions and gets paid in new “coins” which can then be bought and sold on the crypto market.

Even with the booms and busts in the price of Bitcoin, the profits from crypto mining can be immense. Where gold mining only yielded an 11 percent return last year, investment in certain cryptocurrencies can yield returns as high as 20,000 percent.

And KASH doesn’t put its eggs all in one basket. The company plans to diversify its crypto-mining operation, from the major coins like Bitcoin, Dash, and Ethereum to a host of smaller coins, which have the potential to bring significant returns.

That means that KASH can profit from the market, regardless of the ups and downs, and as mining difficulty increases for any particular crypto, the company plans to maximize profits by shifting its mining power to different types of crypto coins.

When KASH scales up from its humble beginnings, it has plans to be one of the biggest crypto mines in the business. And its close appreciation of regulation means it’ll be in an excellent position to work with government agencies who may start cracking down on the more undisciplined crypto firms.

With a small market cap, KASH could be set expand quickly.

#4 Quality Leadership

Hashchain Technology Inc. has a solid leadership team that will guide it through the transition in the crypto marketplace.

CEO Patrick Gray has already achieved tech success: his first start-up was sold to Xerox for $220 million. He was a recipient of Business Review’s “40 Under 40” award and he’s raised millions in start-up capital from investors.

Behind Gray, who provides the strategic vision for the company, there’s CTO Sean Ryan, co-founder of NODE40 and a blockchain expert. CCO George E. Kveton is a “lifelong dealmaker” with 20 years of experience in Fortune 500 companies. He’s signed deals in Israel, China, and Silicon Valley.

The team at KASH aren’t the millennial millionaires who caught the media’s attention when Bitcoin took off last year – these are professional tech innovators, blockchain specialists and crypto-currency insiders who are taking the crypto revolution to the next stage and are doing so in a responsible way.

#5 The Next Stage in Currency Evolution

While the price of Bitcoin may have dipped, the crypto-currency revolution has only just begun.

Investors learned that cryptocurrencies are super volatile, prone to dramatic booms and busts, and offer plenty of opportunity for fraud.

But that hasn’t stopped innovators from continuing to develop the market. Branded corporate coins are starting to take off, and blockchain technology has been introduced in real estate, banking, and shipping.

There are signs that even Wall Street is taking cryptocurrencies more seriously. The price of Bitcoin, which sank below $6,000, has now jumped back above $10,000, suggesting that interest is still very strong.

Regulation won’t kill cryptos. Instead, it will make them more reliable and more secure from fraud.

KASH is ready to take advantage of the need for order in the crypto market.

The company’s acquisition of Node40 means it’s positioning itself on the forefront of the regulatory swing in the crypto market, and the company’s mining vision truly sets it aside from the competition.

KASH is prepared for the next phase, and investors should take notice.

**IMPORTANT! BY READING OUR CONTENT YOU EXPLICITLY AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY**  Forward-Looking Information Certain disclosure in this release, including statements regarding the performance of the Company’s current and ordered Rigs, and expectations regarding future operations may constitute forward-looking statements. These include that KASH will dramatically increase operations,  that the 5,000 Rigs will be successfully ordered and delivered, the 5,000 Rigs will perform as expected by management and the timing, installation and performance of KASH’s current and ordered Rigs will be consistent with management’s expectations; that mining capacity will increase to 8.7 MW; that KASH will utilize its committed Montana facility space and increase capacity to mine 20 MW;  that KASH will hold a diverse portfolio of cryptocurrencies through mining and otherwise; and that KASH’s software can become part of a regulatory push for regulation of cryptocurrencies.  The forward-looking statements in this release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such risk factors may include, among others, the risk that the 5,000 Rigs will not be successfully ordered or delivered from the manufacturer or, if delivered, not when expected by management, and the risk that the Company’s current and ordered Rigs will not perform as expected by management or that expected capacity is not achieved; that KASH may not earn cryptocurrencies through mining and may not be able to purchase them;  risks related to changes in cryptocurrency prices, and the profitability of mining them; that cryptocurrencies will not increase in use as expected; the under-estimation of personnel and operating costs; that KASH will not receive required regulatory approvals for building new facilities, using power, or other aspects of its business; that cryptocurrency regulators don’t accept KASH’s accounting and other solutions; the availability of necessary financing; permitting of businesses that KASH intends to invest in; general global markets and economic conditions; uninsurable risks; risks associated with currency and cryptocurrency fluctuations; risks associated with competition offering better or cheaper solutions, attracting away employees or using tactics to drive out competition; risks associated with changes in the financial auditing and corporate governance standards applicable to cryptocurrencies; risks related to potential conflicts of interest; the reliance on key personnel; capitalization and liquidity risks including the risk that the financings necessary to fund continued development of KASH’s business plan may not be available on satisfactory terms, or at all; the risk of dilution through the issuance of additional common shares of KASH; the risk of litigation; the risk that KASH’s management and advisors may not contribute as much as expected to the company’s success; the risk and the risk that cyber-crime may severely damage the value of any or all of KASH’s investments. There may be many other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

The post Will Regulation Spark a New Crypto-Boom? appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[coindex]

Parity Multisig Wall

Parity Multisig Wallet Hacked or How Come? Security Background Multisignature wallets are smart-contracts designed to manage crypto assets by the consent of multiple wallet owners. This type of wallets usually allows to set daily withdrawal limits vote for withdrawals vote for ownership changes etc. With the big surge in crypto prices this year many people are now holding significant amounts of crypto assets. It is worth taking security more seriously and putting your assets or at least most of them into a multisig wallet is a good step toward that. That enhances security for a process that moves lots of funds quite quickly. If you own a multisig wallet you need multiple signatures to move funds out of the wallet. In fact these signatures mean multiple private keys. This alternative to holding value in simple user accounts appeared in 2012. Multisig wallets are especially favored by cryptocurrency startups and other groups as they are a safeguard against hacker attacks aimed at the asset holders. This is because they allow some of the owners' accounts to be compromised while retaining full control of the money. Of course it also helps against sneaky employees who might want to run off with the money. For this reason multisig wallets are also a popular way of storing cryptocurrency raised in ICO. Several years ago Gavin Wood Ethereum cofounder and CTO established EthCore a non-profit organization that develops software for Ethereum infrastructure which later changed its name to Parity Technologies. One of its products is Parity an Ethereum client that provides a web interface for the underlying Ethereum node software. It allows the user to access the basic Ether and token wallet functions and also to interact with smart-contracts deployed on the Ethereum Blockchain. The Parity wallet is designed to integrate seamlessly with all standard tokens as well as manage Ether transfers. It is compatible with Ubuntu OSX Docker and Windows. The vast array of options offered by Parity wallet made it extremely popular in the crypto community. Attack Multisigs are distributed to users as smart-contract source code: whenever someone wants to get one they take the current code from the repository deploy the contract onto the Ethereum Blockchain then set the owners place the funds etc. Each wallet is a separate instance of the code. In the case of Parity some of the essential elements of contract logic including the withdraw function that allows to take funds out was placed in a library. A library is an already deployed smart-contract that is used by every Parity Multisig in existence (starting from a particular version). Such code separation can theoretically be a good thing: for instance shaving off gas costs for users that have to deploy less code. Unfortunately it also means that should the library be broken in some way it will affect every contract depending on it. And no contingencies were included. On November 68 it was discovered that it was possible to initialize the library itself as a wallet claiming owner rights for it including the right to kill it altogether. All the deployed dependent contracts would then become useless. After killing the library the attacker probed several deployed multisigs in order to try and change the owner list and withdraw the funds retracing the steps of the July exploit. Between that and the GitHub issue claiming incompetence the question of the attackers motives remains unclear. According to crypto eli5 151 wallets have been frozen with their balances being 513743 ETH or $152 million in total. Parity Technologies announce that 573 wallets have been affected and their total balance is unknown. General reaction Disbelief was the first and most common feeling experienced by members of the crypto community. Oh they wished to unsee this amount of around $154 mln locked due to the allegedly random actions of some newbie! It has not only crushed Paritys steady recovery after the notorious hack in July but also made some users consider the limit of security fails and whether Parity has reached it. The first reaction to the funds being frozen was sheer panic only six months past the July hack the repetition seemed impossible although the most reasonable community members at least began to consider cryptocurrency safety as priority. As soon as Parity provided official explanations the panic gave place to distrust as affected users found themselves at a loss. Parity recently claimed that they treat safety and security issues seriously so how could such thing happen? One of the major concerns is that the bug had existed for some time before the crash. It affected the wallets created past 20 July 2017 i.e. after a hotfix driven by the hack. A vulnerability in the then-current version of the Parity Multisig wallet was exploited leading to $30 mln being stolen and another $180 mln rescued by a white hat hacker group then subsequently returned to the rightful owners. Following the attack Parity Tech deployed a new version of the wallet that as it turns out introduced another vulnerability. This led some users to complain on Paritys insouciance regarding their funds and botched debugging process prior to the update release. The fact that the exploit was probably initiated by a clumsy newbie (as he himself has claimed) doesnt give credit to the company either. Parity answers in the most careful way avoiding any certainty. Who can blame them for trying to calm the tumult? However a user seeing phrases like to the best of our knowledge believes that developers dont control the situation at all. As a result we see a whipped-up buoyancy among Parity and Ethereum opponents for example from Charlie Lee Litecoin creator. The attackers split into two almost equal parts: those who blame the developers of the smart-contract and those who believe the whole company to be guilty. Not to mention some voices claiming that the Ethereum architecture (such as immutable smart-contracts) is to blame. They are usually met with the counter-claim that it's rather the coding practices and the maturity of development cycle are at fault. Consequences About $154 mln remains stuck in the wallets that were affected. Since smart-contracts in Ethereum are immutable and no relief measures were included in the code the only way to reclaim the funds seems to be a hard fork of Ethereum network. Otherwise the Ether is going to remain in the affected contracts forever. This caused more discord in the Ethereum community. Unofficial twitter polls show approximately 50/50 division of supporters and opponents to the initiative as the previous fork eventually broke Ethereum into two warring networks. There are several technical possibilities of how such a hard fork can work including implementing EIP 156 or putting a fixed version of the library back in place. However this is a controversial issue bringing back everything that had been discussed in regards to the DAO Hack and subsequent bailout. Affected parties Major players dont rush in with take it or leave it propositions waiting for more details from Parity. As the funds were actually frozen not stolen the developer is not pressed by time limits though some will consider growing discontent of users to be the harder trial. However most companies affected by the exploit have already published statements to comfort clients and assure that one way or another the issue will be solved. The multisig used by the Web3 Foundation to accept contributions for Polkadot also established by Gavin Wood was the biggest of those affected putting the ETH in it beyond access. Luckily the affected multisig wallet didnt contain all the funds. Hence the company claims that their original roadmap has not been affected. They are still in the process of evaluating loss and looking for possible solutions but seem quite serene and confident about the future. The Iconomi platform and its storage system also claim to be secure. $35 m were stored using the affected Parity Multisig contract and will remain locked until the situation is resolved. But all users digital assets stored on the platform are completely safe and the functioning of the platform is unaffected. The developers of the platform stay positive. They state that the Ethereum ecosystem has already proven itself able to rapidly respond and adapt to unexpected challenges. The Cappasity platform also assures the users that the platform and the content stored there are secure and the functionality of the platform is unaffected. Although the funds raised so far during their crowdsale have been stored in an affected Parity multisig wallet the company retains confidence. The crowdsale has been resumed in regular mode having switched promptly to another multisig wallet after the attack. It looks like Cappasity was fully ready for the challenge: the existing partners of the company could compensate for the locked funds if necessary. The team has also conducted their own research on the attack arriving at a conclusion that there is a great probability of this being a deliberate hack (the evidence is provided at the end of the companys first official statement). In general we see that leading players were acting wisely as they didnt put all their eggs in one basket. This seems to be the best possible strategy as Blockchain is still a nascent industry and it has to pass through several ups and downs to elaborate the best and safest strategies. The article is written by Collis Aventinus a Blockchain expert at Modern Token. Follow us on Facebook

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