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Home TECHNOLOGY Artificial Intelligence Evaluating Automation: A Lesson in Technological Advancement
Evaluating Automation: A Lesson in Technological Advancement
Few topics in the business world evoke quite as much discourse as automation. The rapid pace of technological change has brought about a new paradigm in industry – that of automation. The ramifications of introducing breakthrough new technologies into the workplace are far-reaching, particularly where income and jobs are concerned. Automation is being fuelled by a multi-pronged approach to technological advancement, including developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, and cloud-based computing systems. Opinions are sharply divided in this realm, with proponents and opponents on opposite ends of the spectrum. Many employees are fearful of the repercussions of introducing automation in the workforce. They are worried that they may be made redundant by machines. True to form, this nascent technology has not reached its full potential, and when that time comes, it's difficult to ascertain how workforces will be impacted. This ongoing field of study is peppered with pros and cons, much like any other.
In the US for example, unemployment levels have reached multi-decade lows, and workers across all industries have fears – some valid, some not – about how increased automation will impact their lives. Will the introduction of robotic processes, automated software, and industrial robots adversely affect the labor market? Or, will it improve efficiency and lead to new employment opportunities for market participants? The answer probably lies somewhere in between these extremes, as with any newly introduced technology, there are pros and cons.
Factory workers remain cautiously optimistic about this technology. It is worth pointing out that over the past decade, manufacturing jobs across the US have increased at a steady clip, despite industrial robots being deployed across the spectrum. in May 2019, there were 12.84 million manufacturing jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics) up 1.5% year-on-year. Coupled with low unemployment, workers have much more leeway when it comes to choosing their preferred vocation.
The Dreaded T-2 Automation Syndrome
Much of the confusion about robotics and automation is a skewed perception of what it actually means. Terminator 2 did for automation what Jaws did for Great White sharks; it poisoned our collective mindset against what is potentially the greatest workplace resource of modern times. Monotonous tasks are the first to get automated with robotic processes. These include racking, stacking, and packing boxes, materials, supplies, inventories et cetera.
By freeing up human resources from these repetitive tasks, they can be put to better use and be of greater benefit to the organization. It's not only physical tasks that automation processes can assist with; it's online activities too. Emails, invoices, inventory management, customer service operations, and other associated activities are easily automated with high-tech software. Technicians typically benefit the most from the implementation of robotic software, since they are tasked with managing, servicing, and operating this type of equipment.
On a macroeconomic level, robotic systems allow companies to remain highly competitive in the global workforce. This is true in manufacturing industries, retail industries, and wholesale industries alike. The Robotic Industries Association (RIA) indicated that industrial robot shipments to Canadian and US companies increased by 7% in 2018. Equally impressive is the fact that there was a 40% increase in robotic shipments of consumer goods and food, while electronics spiked 22%, and life sciences jumped 31%.
The rampant growth of industrial robots across the US and Canada reached a value of $1.8 billion in 2018, particularly in materials handling, welding, assembly, dispensing, and coating. Machine-style robots are ideal for strenuous and repetitive physical labor activities such as lifting bags of cement, sand, bricks, cinderblocks, and the like. Robots are also highly effective at detecting defects, quicker to perform physical activities, and they don't require overtime pay.
Disruptive Impact of Automation Technology
Automation will upend existing transportation systems and networks by way of self-driving vehicles using AI technology. Powerful learning algorithms and inexpensive sensors exist and they will be brought to market in short order. As we move towards driverless vehicles, cities and their systems will change to accommodate these brand-new technologies. Redundant frameworks and infrastructures will have to be overhauled and new opportunities will be created in the process. Robotics also creates a tremendous divide between those countries embracing technology and those slumbering in backward isolation.
It is clear that countries like China will race ahead with robotic automation and leave many African and Latin American countries languishing. The concept of a 'Co-Bot' has been bandied about in the literature. These coworkers will assist human workers to make their jobs easier. The rate of change for technological innovation and automation is dependent upon the industry. While driverless vehicles may be years away, automation technology in the office is already available and being deployed across the board.
Should We Fear Automation Technology?
There are certain aspects of technology that are worrisome, but they are typically restricted to military applications and government spying agencies. For run-of-the-mill office applications, there is no need to fear the introduction of more efficient ways of managing the workflow. Erstwhile military systems were designed to relay threats, targets, and information to teams of experts who would then interpret the data at Central Command. Now, these autonomous robots are capable of performing all of these activities the spot.
These include detecting and recognizing targets, classifying them, identifying them, and even targeting them if required. There is widespread consensus among respondents that AI will have a positive effect on economic growth, with 70% of respondents attesting to allocating budgets for AI adoption (International Quality and Productivity Centre). Smart technologies certainly have a disruptive effect on enterprise, from rudimentary tasks like speech recognition to call centre management, natural language processing, and machine learning.
When it comes to job creation, an interesting fact emerged from the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs report of January 2018. The report found that 33% of children starting school in 2018 would end up in a job which doesn't currently exist. Much of the focus will be on algorithms, data, AI readiness, and a veritable fusion of 'man and machine' in the workplace. This naturally brings us to Robotic Process Automation – an area of particular interest for those following the impact of automation in 2020 and beyond. RPA is expected to reach a value of $5 billion within the next four years. The implementation of RPA software at company level delivers tremendous benefits to the bottom line. Kryon RPA software is one such solution that is making big waves in the industry and its wide range of solutions are being implemented at SMEs across the board.
Companies are increasingly adopting RPA technology to bolster their capabilities, cut down costs, and dramatically increase the performance. In 2018, the impact of RPA was substantial. It grew by 63%, with the United States and Canada making up 50% plus of the global market. Next in line is Europe at 23%, and Australia in a distant third. With RPA processing technology, automation software combines with artificial intelligence to manage high-volume, repetitive tasks. While RPA is not part of an IT infrastructure, it's simply sitting atop them and can be trained to perform specific processes within existing software applications.
RPA is not designed to replace humans and cut down the number of jobs in play; human judgment will always be an integral component of the process. This automated system is geared towards handling menial tasks that take up too much of an employee's time. A report issued by Deloitte in 2019 confirms that US unemployment remained at its lowest level in 50 years and yet the RPA technology is actually credited with generating as many jobs as it replaces, for a net zero impact on the market.
This points in one direction: RPA will change the nature of jobs, it will not eliminate jobs entirely. Naturally, organizations must be receptive to these changes and implement systems, networks, and frameworks that are conducive to RPA adoption alongside the traditional labor force. RPA engineers have a critical role to play in the process, and assist in creating opportunities for different types of jobs within organisations.
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text:
\subsection*{SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION}

\subsection*{The firewall argument recast}

Let us express the key entropic strong subadditivity inequality,
Eq.~(\ref{SS}), from the firewall paper \cite{AMPS} in terms of our
notation from Fig.~\ref{Hawking_process}b. We immediately obtain
\begin{equation}
S(R,R') +S(C,R')\ge S(R')+S(C,R',R),
\end{equation}
or equivalently as
\begin{equation}
S(R':R)\le S(C,R':R).
\label{firewall}
\end{equation}
The argument then goes that with regard to the specific mechanism of
pair creation into vacuum, the joint subsystem $(C,R')$ should be pure,
signaling the so-called ``no drama'' scenario of an infalling observer,
and hence the right-hand-side of Eq.~(\ref{firewall}) should be zero.
However, the left-hand-side of this equation can be as large as
the black hole's initial entropy, $S_{\rm BH}$, implying a contradiction.

Crucially, this argument relies explicitly on i) pair creation into
vacuum as the mechanism of radiation; and hence ii) ignoring any
explicit role of the external neighboring degrees-of-freedom, $N$ and
$N'$, from participating in the long-term dynamics of the evaporating
black hole.  As we noted in our introduction, wanting to escape from the
former assumption was the motivation for the present paper. It is the
latter assumption, however, which reveals a critical flaw in the
firewall argument.

In particular, we now know that entanglement across any boundary (such
as the horizon) is the natural consequence of the quantum fields across
that boundary being in any non-singular (finite-energy) configuration
\cite{Braunstein13}. Further, it is now widely accepted that the
trans-horizon entanglement of any quantum fields whose quantum state is
not too far from the vacuum will scale as the area of the horizon
\cite{Eisert10}. Thus, as a black hole evaporates, part-and-parcel of
a complete description of the overall dynamics {\it must\/} include
the dynamics that proportionally decreases the trans-horizon entanglement.
The Hawking process fails to do this. Therefore, we cannot have confidence
that it alone describes the long-term dynamics of an evaporating
black hole.

In particular, although for a static horizon, such as the Rindler
horizon, these external neighborhood modes completely decouple from the
Hawking radiation, this is simply not possible for a non-static,
shrinking horizon, such as in the scenario of an evaporating black hole.
In this case, we can no longer rely on the intuition from the Hawking
process that $N$ and $N'$ will remain unentangled from the joint
subsystem $(C,R')$. Thus, the existence of a firewall at the horizon
would appear to require extra assumptions such as an initially finite
Hilbert space dimensionality for the black hole interior which
consequently shrinks during the evaporation process \cite{Braunstein13}.

Despite this difficulty, let us recast the firewall argument in a manner
that overcomes both of the limiting assumptions mentioned above. Relying
on the left-hand circuit of Fig.~\ref{Hawking_process}b only we easily
see that
\begin{equation}
S(R':R)\le S(B,N:R),
\label{newfirewall}
\end{equation}
where we use Eq.~(\ref{decQMI}) and the fact that the joint subsystems
$(B',N',R')$ and $(B,N)$ are unitarily related, so that
$S(B',N',R':R)\equiv S(B,N:R)$ (see Fig.~\ref{Hawking_process}b).  Now
taking the conditions leading to Eq.~(\ref{RadENT}), we find that the
near maximal entanglement between post- and pre-Page time radiation,
$R'$ and $R$, respectively, must have come from near maximal
entanglement between early epoch radiation, $R$, and the joint subsystem
$(B,N)$ describing the degrees-of-freedom {\it within and surrounding\/}
the black hole at the Page time. Note that unlike
Eq.~(\ref{MainResult}), Eq.~(\ref{newfirewall}) does not require that
the horizon be classically causal as it does {\it not\/} impose the
no-communication decomposition.

Combining Eqs.~(\ref{RadENT}) and~(\ref{newfirewall}) would then imply
that the joint subsystem $(B,N)$ (i.e., when tracing out early epoch
radiation, $R$) must be in an incredibly mixed state (e.g., a near
uniform mixture of roughly $10^{10^{77}}$ orthogonal quantum states for
an initially stellar mass black hole). Thus, an infalling observer will
necessarily encounter significant ``drama''. However, the problem is
that this analysis cannot specify the location of this drama; it may
occur anywhere in the joint $(B,N)$ subsystem. The most natural
assumption would be that it occurs near the metric singularity well
within the black hole interior; where an infalling observer into even a
theoretical classical black hole fully expects to encounter drama; and
presumably where the infalling partners to the Hawking radiation have
ended up.  Thus, when we explicitly incorporate the external
degrees-of-freedom surrounding the black hole, $N$ and $N'$, the force
behind the generic firewall argument is dissipated.

\subsection*{Generalizing weak correspondence}

We may extend the weak correspondence principle to read, there exists a
parameter $\eta\ll 1$ such that
\begin{equation}
S(N:{\text {Ref}})\le \eta\, S_{\rm BH},
\end{equation}
where `Ref' denotes any distant reference subsystem and $S_{\rm BH}$ is
the black hole's initial thermodynamic entropy. The reasoning is
identical to that used to support Eq.~(\ref{EPeqn}). As an example of
the utility of this generalization let us use it to examine any theory
which claims that information about infallen matter may be stored
externally of the event horizon
\cite{Hooft,Susskind93,Raine94,Susskind95,Mathur09b}.

To do so, let us first recall that for an initially collapsed large
black hole, the information content of the matter that formed it can be
as high as $O(S_{\rm BH}^{3/4})$ from 't Hooft's entropic bound
\cite{Hooft}. Let us further consider a scenario where as the black hole
slowly evaporates we replace each Hawking quanta with another quanta of
infallen information. We may keep this process up for a duration as long
as the Page time without the information about the infallen matter being
radiated away \cite{Braunstein13,Page93}.  By this procedure, we have
created a black hole with the same thermodynamic entropy, $S_{\rm BH}$,
as the original black hole, yet where the infallen matter itself has
entropy $O(S_{\rm BH})$.

Without loss of generality, we may suppose that the infallen matter's
entropy comes from it being entangled with some distant external
reference subsystem `Ref'. In this case, we may immediately invoke our
generalized weak statement of the correspondence principle to argue that
the black hole so constructed, cannot look anything like a classical
black hole in any theory where information about the infallen matter is
stored (or accessible) externally. Thus, for example, black hole
complementarity proposes to have two copies of the information about
infallen matter; one that is accessible only internally and a second
copy externally \cite{Susskind93,Susskind95}. Similarly, fuzzball
complementarity assumes that the information about infalling matter
resides in a fuzzball structure that lies outside the horizon
\cite{Mathur09b}.  However, for black holes as constructed above, the
information content is so large that the external region carrying this
information can only consist of a super-entropic exotic matter or more
likely the horizon must expand to encompass this information.  Thus,
{\it any\/} theory which claims to store information about infallen
matter externally \cite{Hooft,Susskind93,Raine94,Susskind95,Mathur09b}
will necessarily imply an extreme failure of the correspondence between
quantum and classical black holes; presumably violating its whole {\it
raison d'\^{e}tre}.

\subsection*{Generics of black hole radiation}

In the manuscript we considered a black hole with thermodynamic entropy
$S_{\text{BH}}$ which can completely evaporate into a net pure state of
radiation. As discussed, the generic evaporative dynamics of such a
black hole may be captured by the random sampling of subsystems from an
initially pure state consisting of $S_{\text{BH}}$ qubits
\cite{Page93,Braunstein13}. This either neglects infallen matter or
assumes it is pure.

In order to extend our analysis to include infallen matter carrying some
(von Neumann) entropy $S_{\text{matter}}$, we need only take the
initially pure state used above and replace it with a bipartite pure
state consisting of two subsystems: $S_{\text{BH}}$ qubits to represent
the degrees-of-freedom that evaporate away as radiation; and a reference
subsystem. Without loss of generality, the matter's entropy may be
treated as entanglement between these two subsystems, however, here we
shall simplify our analysis by assuming uniform entanglement between the
black hole subsystem and $S_{\text{matter}}$ reference qubits. The
generic properties of the radiation may then again be studied by random
sampling the former subsystem to simulate the ejection of radiation
\cite{Braunstein13}.

The behavior is generic and for our purposes may be summarized in terms
of the radiation's von Neumann entropy, $S(R)$, as a function of the
number of qubits in this radiation subsystem. One finds
\cite{Braunstein13} that $S(R)$ initially increases by one qubit for
every extra qubit in $R$, until it contains
$\frac{1}{2}(S_{\text{BH}}+S_{\text{matter}})$ qubits. From that stage
on it decreases by one qubit for every extra qubit in $R$ until it drops
to $S_{\text{matter}}$ when $R$ contains $S_{\text{BH}}$ qubits and the
black hole has completely evaporated.

Because the von Neumann entropy of a randomly selected subsystem only
depends on the size of that subsystem, the same behavior is found whether
$R$ above represents the early or late epoch radiation with respect
to any arbitrary split. Further, in the simplest case where we choose
the joint radiation $(R,R')$ to correspond to the net radiation from
a completely evaporated black hole we may immediately write down the
generic behavior for the quantum mutual information $S(R':R)$.

In particular, $S(R':R)$ starts from zero when $R$ consists of zero
qubits.  From then on, it increases by two qubits for every extra qubit
in $R$ until $S(R':R)$ reaches $S_{\text{BH}}-S_{\text{matter}}$ when
$R$ contains $\frac{1}{2}(S_{\text{BH}}-S_{\text{matter}})$ qubits. From
that stage on until $R$ contains
$\frac{1}{2}(S_{\text{BH}}+S_{\text{matter}})$ qubits $S(R':R)$ remains
constant, after which $S(R':R)$ decreases by two qubits for every extra
qubit in $R$ until it drops to zero once the $R$ contains the full
$S_{\text{BH}}$ qubits of the completely evaporated black hole
\cite{Braunstein13}. Interestingly, it is during region where $S(R':R)$
is constant that the information about the infallen matter becomes
encoded into $R$ for the first time \cite{Braunstein13}. Finally, setting
$S_{\text{matter}}$ to zero gives the `standard' behavior for $S(R)$ and
$S(R':R)$ upon which the results in the manuscript are derived.

\subsection*{Including infallen matter}

In the main body of the manuscript we did not explicitly include entropy
associated with infallen matter.  Fig.~\ref{Fig2} shows the most general
scenario. Subsystem $I$ denotes the matter that falls into the region
surrounding the black hole where radiation is produced. Thus, we suppose
that late epoch radiation can in principle come from the joint subsystem
$(N,I)$. In this figure we also include subsystem $I_{\text{early}}$
which denotes matter that has fallen into the region surrounding the
black hole at an earlier epoch or indeed matter that may have collapsed
to form the black hole in the first place.

\begin{figure}[h!]
\includegraphics[width=50mm]{Fig2.pdf}
\vskip -0.1in
  \caption{
Quantum circuit diagram for evaporation of a quantum black hole with
causal horizon and infallen matter.  Subsystem $I$ denotes infallen
matter that falls into the region surrounding the black hole to
participate in late epoch radiation generation.  (This does not exclude
the possibility that the matter falls directly into the black hole.)
Subsystem $I_{\text{early}}$ denotes matter infalling at earlier times
or even that collapses to form the original black hole.
\label{Fig2}
}
\end{figure}

We start as before applying strong subadditivity expressed in terms
of quantum mutual information
\begin{equation}
S(R':R) \le S(C,N',R':R)
= S(N,I:R) = S(N:R),
\label{NewMain}
\end{equation}
Here, we use the fact that joint subsystems $(C,N',R')$ and $(N,I)$ are
unitarily related. Finally, the most natural assumption is that the
infallen matter $I$ is independent of the quantum state of the black
hole, $(B,N)$, or its early epoch radiation $R$. The originally
derived inequality of Eq.~(\ref{MainResult}) is therefore found to still
hold in the presence of infallen matter.

From the analysis including infallen matter given in the
previous section we have enough to complete our analysis.  As in the
manuscript, we take $R$ to be all the early epoch radiation until the
Page time, and we let $R'$ denote all the radiation generated from the
Page time onwards until the black hole has shrunk to a size much smaller
than the original black hole, but still much larger than the Planck
scale. In this case, instead of Eq.~(\ref{RadENT}), we suppose that
there exists a parameter $\varepsilon\ll 1$ such that
\begin{equation}
S(R':R)\ge (1-\varepsilon) \, S_{\text{BH}}-S_{\text{matter}},
\end{equation}
where $S_{\text{matter}}\equiv S(I_{\text{early}},I)$ is the net entropy
contained in all the infallen matter.  Next, combining this with our
weak correspondence principle, Eq.~(\ref{EPeqn}), we find
\begin{equation}
1 -\frac{S_{\text{matter}}}{S_{\text{BH}}} \le \epsilon + \eta \ll 1.
\end{equation}
Once again we obtain a contradiction except in the extreme and
unphysical case of a black hole whose infallen matter contains virtually
as much entropy as the entire black hole's Bekenstein-Hawking entropy
$S_{\text{BH}}$. Thus, the conclusions given in the manuscript hold
even when the analysis is extended to include infallen matter.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
[d.] the deductible.
curating the health care system
July 18, 2019 October 2, 2019 scripthacker
The Next Big Thing is You
By JUAN CABALLERO (1)
An optimistic introduction to what could come after the VC funded cycle of disruptions and consolidations.
Various new kinds of software, we are endlessly being told, are the Next Big Thing, just about to disrupt like a volcano of New e-Things that will certainly upend all of the things in the next X years. After you've read enough in this genre, it turns into a guessing game: will they put X at 5 years, or 9, or 7? You can usually tell by the adjectives in the first three sentences, as the rhetoric is at best overblown Ciceronian pomp and at worst Ted Talk runoff. I like to fill out a bingo card seeing how many rhetorical and ideological crimes I can identify in a given breathless Medium "article" promoting a new startup, written by someone literally overleveraged in the success of its product offering. Here's a partial list, in case you want to make up bingo cards of your own:
Misappropriated macroeconomic jargon
Consequences of disruption and other economic violence naturalized and downplayed via bastardized theories by Darwin or Malthus
Milton Friedman-esque swipes at central banks as irredeemable cabals that hate freedom
The word "gamechanger"
Endruns around anti-trust law dressed up as Quantum Leaps for Mankind
Any pricepoint under $150/month dismissed as "less than you spend on your coffee every morning"
A photo of a "founder" or two standing on a stage at a trade show, preferably wearing a cordless mic
Market prolepsis
Smarmy appeals to how obviously governments can't be trusted with the task of regulation, or with "data" itself
Venture capital is the real audience of these missives, and, as Mike Judge's blunt, Aspie CEO seminally quips on the HBO comedy, Silicon Valley, "The stock is the product." The winner of this debate tournament is whoever promises the most disruption, since that is what the gamblers came to bet on. As we say in Spanish, "A río revuelto, ganancia de pescadores"—when the waters are choppy, [only] the fisherman comes out ahead. (And no, there are not fisherwomen in this analogy.)
These mammoth disruptions very rarely correspond to giant technical leaps, however; most of them are results of the tiniest of innovations in user experience design, marketing, or convenience engineering. From a computer science point of view, these disruptive apps are apex predators on many levels. They centralize or repackage the data traces left by human experience in a tidy, privatized bureaucracy of monetizable information, but to do so, they stand on the shoulders of data processing giants, mammoth infrastructural investments, decades-long collective refinements funding by private-public partnerships and backroom deals with national-security agencies. In just a few short decades, to the tune of neoliberalism's mantra ("but who will pay for it, surely not me, or us?"), all of this mammoth infrastructural apparatus was rapidly and irrevocably privatized in both legal substance and public perception. The casino of speculative finance not only wrested away from government any control or even regulatory power over the internet "industry," but in the process it has also convinced the public that many new, dangerous economic practices and social structures are permanent, natural, and inherent to "the internet age".
Increasingly, access to monetizable data is distributed even less fairly than access to capital or to credit, while we keep being told ad nauseum that this is just how the internet works, end of story. As public distrust and even anger grows towards the ever-consolidating data traps holding our baby photos and high school acquaintances hostage, we are told that there is no alternative to trading privacy and anonymity for access to a public sphere hosted on private servers and monetized for shareholders. The internet has been defined as a giant machine trading us convenience for our data, which it must necessarily convert into fodder for "machine learning" (aka job-eviscerating automation) and dividends for shareholders (offshored and undertaxed, if taxed at all). We are told that our private thoughts and personal details are the lifeblood of the whole system, that without our data there is no there there, that no business or information technology or convenience is imaginable without it.
I am here to tell you, dear reader, that the next big thing in software is the opposite of all that naturalized and coercive data profiteering. The Next Big Thing is granular and total control over all the data pertaining to your "account" anywhere you open one, with no other data held there, and none of that data shared with anyone else. The next internet will not be a giant pyramid scheme devised to pry your data from you and then sell it to third parties. The Next Big Thing is not privacy or anonymity, although it includes a systematic right to exercise both a lot more easily and often. The Next Big Thing is granular data sovereignty and more sophisticated interactions of the public and private spheres. The Next Big Thing is Self-Sovereign Identity, as it is called among its devoted nerds. You are the Next Big Thing.
To the non-technical, but politically savvy reader, "sovereignty" might seem a hyperbolic term to use for better data controls, but there is a crucial distinction to be made between having the "right" to have your data "forgotten" by request (a right enforced by government regulation and by after-the-fact fines) on the one hand, and on the other, having the power to easily and conveniently delete your own data anywhere it's stored (a power guaranteed by the design of, and exerted directly through, the data structures themselves). The latter power is sovereignty; the former right is a 19th century form of liberalism held limply in check by shaky, contingent regulation, the kinks in which are still very much being worked out. And supply-side regulation at that, not the most historically effective or popular at time of press.
But speaking of unpopular supply-side regulations, the European Union has recently started enforcing an ambitious set of supply-side data protections, limits, and regulations, a mammoth piece of continental legislature commonly referred to as GDPR ("General Data Protection Regulation"). It was the result of millions of hours of research and multiparty negotiations, a finely-engineered Great Wall of a law, which basically set out to update aging legal concepts around privacy and consumer protections, disincentivizing coercive and secretive business practices rather than banning them outright.
No one in the industry missed this epochal challenge, particularly no one reading quarter call reports. The data industry was, and remains, shook. Every internet business entangled in the ecosystem of data capture and data processing is currently scrambling to shut down a whole continent of its data harvesting operations, rewriting their already-baroque, hundred-page terms of service contracts and privacy policies statements to reflect newly-obligatory protections of the end-user's rights. Other than a global tidal wave of emails notifying these end-users about updates to those contracts, a less legally-savvy internet dweller could totally miss the importance of this legal paradigm shift. But lawyers and accountants at massive conglomerates like Google have put serious resources behind simultaneously fighting against and planning for this sea-change for years, even if it could seem they're still playing catchup today. In fact, most of the key players in the data industry will need many more years of retooling to come into full compliance, and in the meantime they have no choice but to budget in massive non-compliance fines levied by the day. Middle-sized data concerns have, so far, been the hardest hit (relative to their operating budgets), but the future of these legal battles is hard to predict, given the amounts of money and jobs at play, much less the politics. At least insofar as the same was said of the Big Banks after the speculation crisis of 2008, perhaps the Big Data concerns are too big to fail, or at least, so big that their failing in the near future would be a hassle to the interests that the EU represents.
But focusing too much on how GDPR affects the big players in today's data economy is giving far too little credit to the EU's long-term vision of competition and protectionism. I, an optimist, see the real long game of GDPR to be one of distracting and slowing Big Data, buying some time for the little guys to keep trying radically new things. In my opinion, an understudied positive outcome of GDPR is that it stacks the investment and licensing cards in favor of any business minimizing its reliance on re-appropriated personal data and psychological manipulation. GDPR is a godsend for everyone trying to build slower tech, more ethical tech, tactical tech that Silicon Valley would not only never invest in, but has historically tried to strangle in the crib to protect its deep investments in the most nefarious forms of surveillance capitalism. (Full disclosure: I live in Berlin and I contribute in small ways to various non-profit and commercial projects, in addition to doing paid research and consulting for an SSI-specialized research firm called The Purple Tornado.)
One thing that GDPR seems specifically geared towards encouraging is new kinds of networking and services built on a foundation of Self-Sovereign Identity, which many glibly (and perhaps inaccurately) summarize as "GDPR-compliant by design" at a time when GDPR compliance seems a distant fever-dream to every large internet company operating in Europe. Much like the nerdier, more public-sector-oriented corners of the broader blockchain ecosystem, or the peer-to-peer networking scene, self-sovereign identity is currently more of a community than an industry, with engineers and ideologues heavily represented at conferences without much of the smell of money in the air. There are a few standards organizations working out the interoperability of future large-scale platforms and infrastructure projects, and these have, to date, been relatively good about keeping a place at the table for smaller, non-profit players and government initiatives. There are conferences and whitepapers, there are roundtables at Davos and reports by industry futurists and public-good technologists. There are small, closely-watch trials being run of government systems built on a foundation of SSI in Northern Europe, Switzerland, and Canada.
For obvious reasons, there aren't huge pots of speculative capital rushing this or that specific initiative to market; for the most part, SSI is starting small and open-source, mostly funded by government grants and long-view R&D investments from industry giants. Of the few companies incorporated and running a payroll already, a surprisingly high portion are B-corps, "social enterprises," and true, independent non-profits. SSI tech is not coming soon to the walled garden of a cellphone app store near you. But if you follow the weirder, more cutting-edge trade papers and tech conferences, you might hear whispers blowing through the trees.
In many ways, SSI is not a bold new vision of the internet, but a return to the foundations of the internet, when the costs of building new infrastructure were still openly shared and the Sharing Economy hadn't been patented and monetized yet. (To those that would challenge such a linear intellectual history, I would perhaps caveat this reference to the "foundational" vision of the internet as perhaps a tad more indebted to Ted Nelsonthan to Tim Berners-Lee.) If anything, GDPR crystallized and acted on decades of mounting unease with which the global middle class watched an increasingly homogenous and overtly neoliberal software industry bully all other industries and governments worldwide. GDPR is hardly a perfect law and I would hate to come across as a cheerleader for it, but it has proven a decisive move to shift the ground under the most powerful industry on earth, disincentivizing business models that it implicitly designated as toxic and protecting a space in which to experiment with new ones. At its best, that space will foment scrappy, righteous alternatives (and yes, more startups, for better or worse) that no one will tell you about on pay-to-play information platforms like Facebook or Google News. Or, to put it another way, that no one has borrowed enough venture capital to pay Facebook and Instagram to spread the word about, at their current rates.
Back to brass tacks: what does an internet built on the basis of self-sovereign identity actually look like? How can you retain "sovereign" control over your data if it's still being stored on a company's servers and processed to do cool stuff with it?
First off, there is far less of your data going to each company and the companies aren't sharing it between them, so there is a lot less data at play in any given transaction. Indeed, limiting each transaction or account's data access to the "minimum data necessary" is a kind of mantra to the most hard-line SSI thinkers. And to be clear, these hard-liners have a pretty solid point about "SSO" (single sign-on), the user-friendly password workaround that give the google/facebook duopoly access to the lion's share of personal data on earth. Every account you access "through" a facebook or google account gets lumped in with all the data facebook or google already got from you directly, making the "files" that data brokers legally gather on each of us massive archives by comparison to what the East German secret police kept in filing cabinets on its most suspicious and free-thinking citizens.
Why is it so easy for shady data brokerage companies to collate all your data from diverse sources and sell those composites on the open market legally? Why are there copies of your address and social security number on every server and cloud on earth, if all you really need to prove is age here, address there, valid driver's license or car insurance in a few cases? How did we get to a place in history where it is so terrifyingly easy to track the location of anyone by their mobile phone number? Not by using the minimum data necessary, for starters, and for the profits to outweigh the costs of misusing data, lying to the people that generate it, and selling it to the highest bidder.
Secondly, your "sovereignty" over the valuable and scarce data you do choose to give out hinges on complex systems of cryptography: the shift in power on the social level is effected by a shift in data structures whereby the access you grant others to your data is enforced by the lending, granting, and changing of "keys" and "locks". (For the highly non-technical, just remember the worst breakup of your life, whether personal or professional, and that moment when you think to yourself: "What if I change the locks while they're out?").
In a cryptographically-enforced data sovereignty model, you prove your identity each time you sign in by presenting a one-time cryptographic "key" that the site then uses to encrypt your data anywhere it is stored or transmitted, aka, anywhere it could be hacked or breached. Your data is meaningless without temporary and revocable access to a key that lives in your private wallet. In the case of most current SSI pilots and betas, that key lives in a MetaMask wallet or something similar– a browser add-on or app that securely stores your key to various accounts. Alternative storage methods exist as well, for more complicated security situations. To put it another way, every time you log off, you pull your key out of the lock and all the core, protected data of your account gets instantly encrypted back into gobbledygook; until you log back in, no one, not even the site itself, should be able to read, much less change or sell, any of it.
The "attack surfaces" for malfeasance or unauthorized access to your data are not reduced to zero, but they are smaller, and enforcing fair play on the remaining ones might only be possible if the core code is, if not completely open, at least periodically reviewed by neutral third parties, be they governments, competitors, or white-hats. From the end-user's point of view, all this translates to a simpler social contract: you have at no point traded or "sold" your data to a company that doesn't have powerful access to it even while it's processing it. You have rented your data out to one party, and you can effectively erase it yourself without logging in to that party's platform, simply by revoking the access credentials you issued to the site.
This might seem like an overzealously individualistic foundation for a new digital economy, but many see it as more akin to double-entry bookkeeping, forcing the designers and builders of data systems to factor user privacy and more thoughtful data design into their core architecture rather than dismissing data breaches and complex user needs as "externalities" or "corner-cases" for the lawyers to worry about later. As anyone who has worked in information security can tell you, the vast majority of data systems were not (and are still not) designed with security or privacy as core functions; instead, they are built insecurely, shown to investors, and then at the last minute, just before rushing them to market, they have flimsy security and privacy controls "bolted on" after the fact.
This organizational dysfunction within the industry might have been less consequential in earlier moment in the history of capitalism, but in this one, there is a worldwide shortage of qualified information security professionals keeping those controls bolted on, and a rapidly growing black market for, shall we say, informal information security professionals trying to loosen those bolts day in and day out. "Web 2.0", as some people call our current dominant model of social media and other platforms powered by personal data and surveillance, has evolved from a global village to a hacker's paradise, a data broker's fire-sale, and a private, cautious person's hellscape in less than two decades.
Scrapping it all and starting over is starting to sound like a good idea to whole swathes of the world's population. If we get lucky, Web 3.0 will be a lot less vertically-consolidated, powered by collectively-governed systems and peer-to-peer networks, with a lot less robber-barons and stock-rich oligopolies moving fast and breaking shit. Maybe the coming internet will be a much smaller, quieter, slower, and more humble internet that, plainly put, just does less and disrupts nothing at all. I can almost guarantee it will be drastically less convenient, at least for the first generation or two. But if that's the price of getting the teeth of the data vampires out of our necks, it might be worth a shot. Maybe we're drunk on seemingly boundless convenience, and it would do us some good to build something a little more slowly and empathetically for a change.
Juan Caballero is a technologist and researcher based in Berlin. For information on writings and projects follow him on Twitter @by_caballero . This post was first posted on Medium and appears in the Deductible by special agreement with the author.
Tagged automation, Data, Entrepreneurship, European Union, Funding, Open Source, Sovereignty, SSI, VCLeave a comment
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Toronto – Red Bull 381 Projects
Trouble-fête
Gabrielle Moser
photo : courtesy of the artist and Red Bull 381 Projects
[Texte en anglais]
Jon Sasaki & Jessica Vallentin, The Old College Try
Red Bull 381 Projects, Toronto, July 8–August 8, 2009
A paradoxical combination of enthusiasm and futility, slapstick and sincerity, has become a hallmark of Jon Sasaki's practice. In "The Old College Try," a show of the artist's recent work in Toronto, Sasaki's infectious eagerness is shared with emerging artist Jessica Vallentin: an undergraduate student whose promise as an artist resulted in a university award and the opportunity to exhibit with Sasaki. The exhibition marks a turn in Sasaki's practice and suggests, through Vallentin's work, the legacy his œuvre may have on future artists.
Sasaki is represented by several new pieces in the show, including Untitled (2009), an unoccupied and deflated mascot costume that now slumps against the gallery wall and floor. The costume is a familiar character from I Promise It Will Always Be This Way (2008), a performance created for last year's Nuit Blanche that challenged twenty-six costumed mascots to maintain a stadium crowd's enthusiasm over the twelve hours of the event. The snowman-shaped figure is Nork, the retired mascot of the city of North York (which was amalgamated into Toronto in 1998) who now looks hopelessly dated and anachronistic. As curator Nicholas Brown puts it in one of the wall texts, "Now, [Nork] must once again face his obsolescence—out of the limelight and out of place in this temporary gallery setting."
Anachronism and renewal are also at play in the nearby video Cycle (2009), a short looped scene that documents an unknown bicyclist, dressed in Sasaki's standard "everyman" wardrobe, as he madly pedals down Queen Street. As the cyclist's legs continue to desperately pump and cars whizz by, the streetscape in the background moves incongruously slowly and the viewer suddenly realizes that the track bike (an older model that has recently enjoyed a renaissance in the messenger community) has been altered to be as inefficient as possible and that the rider is unlikely to ever reach his destination.
Vallentin's Smithissauga (2007-09) installation depicts another kind of journey, this time through the suburban neighbourhood of Mississauga, where she currently lives. Using a phone book to locate every resident with the last name Smith, Vallentin photographed the occupants' cookie cutter houses and then conducted phone interviews with them to probe their feelings about the region. While the project immediately brings to mind Dan Graham's landmark Homes for America (1966-67) series, Vallentin's installation is distinct in its adaptation of conceptual art strategies alongside genuine sincerity and personal investment in the landscape she documents. While Sasaki often plays the anonymous everyman in his works, Vallentin continuously outs herself in her phone interviews as a student doing work for school. This purposeful declaration of her social and economic positioning is a refreshing reminder of the ways enthusiasm is often appropriated for ideological ends that lends an unexpected critical dimension to much of Sasaki's previous work.
Jon Sasaki
Jessica Vallentin
Bill Fontana, Kunsthaus Graz


I require 2 product blister card package designs; one for marine fender lines, and one for marine dock lines. My style preference is modern minimalist and the majority of my branding utilises monochrome colours. I can provide a copy of my logo as a AI file.
these does not really appeal to me. I have included them for reference as to what my product is.
eye catching and original than this, which is why i want to hire a graphic designer.
A brief detailing to wording to be included on the fender line packaging including card size.
Once i find a designer i will provide a brief for the dock lines similar to the one for fender lines.
I would prefer an experienced Australian graphic designer, however are open to all offers.
Of additional benefit to me would be a graphic designer capable of designing a shopify website in the future.


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Twelve men took to the course to in very windy conditions to play 18 holes of Stableford. The winner, John Nankervis, (h/c 19) came in with 36 points and won on a countback from Colin Coleman (h/c11). No players managed to get on the green in one stroke to win a nearest the pin.


The 7-526's sturdiness simultaneously increases engine response time and improves torque transfer efficiency.
The Chevrolet Corvette is one of the most iconic sports cars on the market. High performance and a sleek profile have kept the Corvette in high demand since it's creation. But the power contained within the Corvette's V8 engine can wear down some of those OE components over the years. One of the most vulnerable components are the motor mounts themselves. When you're looking at a Corvette from the early to mid-1990's you can bet that those OE motor mounts have been worn down. At that point, the only real question is how badly it needs repairing.
The original motor mounts in the Corvette are hydraulic. The mounts themselves are hollow and use oil and electronic hardware to regulate engine vibration and performance. Once these mounts wear out the oil leaks from the mounts and leave the engine loose, potentially causing additional damage. Since you have to take the entire engine out to replace the motor mounts this job won't be easy or cheap. Combine that with the added difficulty and cost of locating OE replacements, and you could be looking a couple of long and expensive weeks. But there is good news!
Solid, both literally and figuratively.
This is the 7-526, Prothane's complete motor mount set for the 1992 - 1996 Chevrolet Corvette. These motor mounts utilize Prothane's polyurethane bushings combined with billet aluminum casings. The polyurethane bushings offer a much sturdier, and more durable, surface than the OE hydraulic mounts had. This sturdiness increases engine response time and improves torque transfer efficiency. The billet aluminum casings offer great protection for these new mounts and help keep your ride's weight low.
While the OE replacements are very expensive and will most likely fail just as fast as the old set, the 7-526 polyurethane bushings will take anything your Corvette can dish out. Additionally, the 7-526 is covered with Prothane's Lifetime Warranty handled in house here at DST. Get your Corvette back on track without breaking your bank by installing Prothane's 7-526.
Will the 7526 increase my noise and vibration into the cab?
Yes, The solid poly mounts 7526 will increase noise vibration and harshness, but will also provide a more secure mount on your motor.


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You are here: Home / Gold Coast Window Cleaning / Lowest number of fatalities in Australian workplaces in 11 years recorded
Lowest number of fatalities in Australian workplaces in 11 years recorded
July 22, 2014 by Glenn Griffin
The following article appears on the WorkSafe Australia website
Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities Australia 2013
This report is the ninth in a series that estimates the number of workers and bystanders killed each year due to work-related injury. Because there is no single national data collection system that identifies all work-related injury fatalities, the exact number of people who die in any year as a result of work-related injuries in Australia is difficult to establish. To achieve the best estimate, Safe Work Australia examines three datasets that contain information on work-related fatalities.
Key findings from the report include:
The decrease in the number of work-related deaths from previous years can be attributed to fewer crashes on public roads, particularly involving workers in cars.
The worker fatality rate in 2013 was 1.64 fatalities per 100 000 workers. Male workers had a fatality rate of 2.80 while female workers had a rate of 0.28.
Over the 11 years of the series, one-third of workers who were killed while working died in vehicle collisions on public roads, one-third in vehicle incidents at workplaces and the remaining one-third of fatalities did not involve a vehicle.
The Agriculture, forestry and fishing industry recorded the highest number of fatalities in 2013 (48) followed by the Transport, postal and warehousing (46), and Construction (19) industries.
66 members of the public died as bystanders to someone else's work activity in 2013.
Topic: Fatalities
Type: Statistical reports
Industry: General
Title / Download
Filed Under: Gold Coast Window Cleaning
©2019 All Clear Windows. All rights reserved.


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Huntsville International Airport
Booking / Flight Map
FBO / Signature
The Department of Public Safety at the Port of Huntsville (POH) strives to provide world-class police, fire and first response EMS services and protection to the Port of Huntsville community. Those we serve include passengers and visitors to Huntsville International Airport (HSV), those doing business at the International Intermodal Center and Jetplex Industrial Park, and the many tenants and employees involved on the Port of Huntsville campus every day.
Originally organized as the airport police, the POH Department of Public Safety was formed in 1996. This transformed our agency into the only one in the State of Alabama that fully cross trains sworn members as both certified police officers and career firefighters.
It is our belief that honesty, excellent public service and effective community partnerships are the cornerstones of a professional public safety organization.
Ask HSV Public Safety – Frequently Asked Questions
For a list of airport-related questions, visit the HSV FAQs page.
I need to file a police report.
Call the Airport Communications Center at 256-461-1116.
How can I obtain a copy of an accident report?
Accident reports may be requested by calling 256-258-1240. You will need to provide the following information when you request a copy:.
Valid ID
Accident report number
Date and location of the incident
If your accident was investigated by the City of Huntsville Police Department, call (256) 427-7020.
If your accident was investigated by the Alabama State Troopers, call (256) 539-0681.
I received a citation. What should I do now?
Follow the instructions on your citation. For additional information, please contact the Huntsville Municipal Court at (256) 427-7810.
Suspicious activity: See Something. Say Something.
If you believe you have witnessed suspicious drug or criminal activity on HSV property, please call
I want to anonymously share information about a crime.
Crime tips may be reported to the Airport Communications Center at (256) 461-1116. You are not required to give your name. Tips may also be submitted by email to ccenter@hsvairport.org. Do not use email to report emergencies.
What items can I bring on a flight?
Visit the TSA web site for a complete listing of items approved for flight.
My car was towed. What should I do now?
Call the Airport Communications Center at (256) 461-1116 to confirm your vehicle was towed. They will provide guidance on which wrecker service impounded your vehicle and provide a contact number for all impound information.
My car won't start or I have a flat tire in your parking facility. Whom can I call?
Emergency call boxes are located across from the elevators inside the parking deck at HSV. Push the red button for help. Or, at any time you need emergency assistance while at the Port of Huntsville, call
I would like to register a compliment or complaint regarding a ticket, citation, warning, or other public safety action.
Compliments: If you see a Huntsville International Airport Public Safety Officer perform outstanding work,
tell us about it.
Complaints: The Port of Huntsville Public Safety Department accepts all complaints alleging an act or acts that, if proven true, would be a violation of departmental regulations, procedures, rules or a violation of any applicable state law or court decisions. Any person who is the affected party and believes the law or department policy has been violated may file a complaint. Complaints will be forwarded to the Chief of Public Safety for initiation of a professional standards review. Maintaining public confidence demands that the department investigate and properly adjudicate complaints against its employees.
Allegations may be submitted in person, by mail, by phone or e-mail.
• In person, please call the comm center at 256-258-1246 to have an officer come to you wherever you are on the HSV property.
• By mail: Port of Huntsville, 1000 Glenn Hearn Blvd, Huntsville AL, 35801 ATTN: Public Safety
• By phone: 256-258-1246
• By email: CScott@hsvairport.org
Contact the Public Safety Department
Our public safety officers provide 24-hour on site service for police, fire, and emergency medical services.
For assistance or to file
a Police Report:
ccenter@hsvairport.org
Chief Chris Scott
Ask the Chief »


text:
Ciepły Żleb, dolina Jaworzynka lub Jaworowy Żleb () – orograficznie prawe odgałęzienie Doliny Zuberskiej w słowackich Tatrach Zachodnich.

Nazewnictwo
Nazwy Ciepły Żleb i dolina Jaworzynka podaje przewodnik Tatry Zachodnie. Słowacja, Józef Nyka używa nazwy Jaworowy Żleb, na mapie słowackiej jest to Teplý žľab, na polskiej Ciepły Żleb. Józef Nyka uważa, że nazwa Jaworzynka pochodzi od rosnących w niej jaworów. Pochodzenie nazwy Ciepły Żleb jest nieznane.

Opis doliny i żlebu
W dolnej części ma charakter doliny, w górnej jest to już typowy żleb. Opada spod Przełęczy pod Osobitą (1521 m), początkowo w zachodnim, później północno-zachodnim kierunku, uchodząc do Doliny Zuberskiej na wysokości około 980 m, poniżej Zwierówki, naprzeciwko zalesionego wzniesienia Kopa. Orograficznie prawe zbocza Ciepłego Żlebu tworzy północno-zachodnia grań Osobitej, która poprzez Okolik i Kocie Skały ciągnie się po Maniową Przehybę, natomiast lewe – północno-zachodnia grzęda Jaworzyny.

W dolnej części Ciepłego Żlebu znajduje się niewielka polana Puczatina, a jego dnem spływa potok Jaworzynka. Prowadzi tędy znakowany szlak turystyczny. Żleb jest całkowicie zalesiony, ale w jego górnej części znajdują się między drzewami duże prześwity i nasłonecznione trawniki z bujnymi ziołoroślami, a las w otoczeniu żlebu zawalony jest starymi, powalonymi drzewami. Jest to już obszar ochrony ścisłej Rezervácia Osobitá.

Szlaki turystyczne
  – Zwierówka – Przełęcz pod Osobitą – Grześ:
 Czas przejścia ze Zwierówki na Przełęcz pod Osobitą: 2:05 h, ↓ 1:30 h
 Czas przejścia z przełęczy na Grzesia: 2 h, ↓ 1:50 h

Przypisy

Doliny słowackich Tatr
Doliny Tatr Zachodnich
Żleby słowackich Tatr
Żleby Tatr Zachodnich

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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'The music industry kills artists': Damso, Belgium's biggest rap star
Iman Amrani
With multi-platinum No 1 albums confronting edgy topics that other rappers shy away from, the Congolese-Belgian MC has carved his own lane with total determination
'How can we be absent from our own lives?' ... Damso. Photograph: OJOZ
Wed 13 Jan 2021 05.30 EST
Last modified on Fri 15 Jan 2021 07.23 EST
'The questions that I ask myself about death aren't about dying, they're about death in this life." Damso doesn't really do small talk. Engaging and magnetic even through a computer screen, the 28-year-old Congolese-Belgian rapper is sporting a flamboyant shirt and a considerable amount of jewellery as he ponders the nature of existence. "There are people who are alive, but live like they're dead," he says. "They don't strive to go further. But I know life is really short because I've seen people die just like that, in the street. So this question speaks to me: how can we be absent from our own lives?"
This is Damso's first interview for an English-speaking audience, but we barely mention any of the achievements his team send over to illustrate how successful he is. When his fourth album, QALF, dropped in September 2020 without a whisper of promotion, it generated 14m streams in 24 hours, making him the most streamed artist in the world that day. "The music won," he says simply.
Damso makes hip-hop for grownups as well as their kids; each of his four albums is easy to listen to, but also melancholy, stimulating and experimental. In francophone countries he is seen as someone in his own lane, each release devoured by an audience hungry for substance beyond rap cliche. An anglophone listener might recognise standard rap terminology such as "drogue" or "sexe" in the lyrics, but each of his songs reflects deeply on love, life and death. "I'm an archaeologist of sound," he says. "I like to research and go into extraordinary themes. There are people who don't like that and will say, 'He's not OK in the head.' But I'm an artist, and we are all a bit sick, I think."
One song that comes to mind here is Amnesie, about a girl he was in an intimate relationship with who killed herself. The chorus is: "I smoke to forget I killed her." It is one of his most popular songs, but he prefers not to speak about it, though he did confirm in one interview that it is mostly based on a true story. Another song that comes to mind is the unsettling Julien, about the psychology of a paedophile and how society doesn't deal with the issue. It includes the lines, "Julien is your neighbour, Julien is your husband."
Damso's intention is less about shocking his audience and more about confronting traumatic or illicit themes by bringing them into the light. "Having taboo subjects and things we can't talk about is pointless," he says, "because you just stay in a state of unhappiness. If we don't talk we can't develop anything, and it is through development that we can come up with solutions to advance and break the chains and cycles. Often a child who is abused repeats the same action, and it continues and continues. We do research for things like cancer, and lots of illnesses that we consider to be mental illnesses, but for something so serious, we do very little work around it." A YouTube video with nearly a million views has psychiatrists analysing the Julien lyrics, so he is certainly opening up a conversation.
'If we don't talk we can't develop anything' … Damso. Photograph: OJOZ
Covid-19 has forced many of us to grapple with existential questions, but Damso has been dealing with them throughout much of his life. Born in 1992 in Kinshasa during a civil war, he remembers having to take refuge from rebels when he was about eight. "It was like a game," he says. "You could be celebrating a birthday in the day, and in the evening you could hear shooting. That's just how it was for a long time, so that's why it was a sort of game. But there were corpses, so it was a weird game."
His family fled to Belgium when he was about 10, and the dislocation was a shock: "There were nice people, there were racists, but everything was totally different even down to how people expressed themselves." Throughout his adolescence, Damso played basketball while mastering beat-making and rap, but it was while studying psychology at university that he decided to seriously dedicate himself to music. "The life being offered didn't speak to me: waking up at eight in the morning, coming home at five or later, and waiting for retirement. So I made a 10-year plan to be successful, and then leave." The final year is 2022.
I'm struck by his unusually clear vision of the world, and perhaps it wouldn't have germinated in a calmer context. His parents were unimpressed with the 10-year plan and kicked him out of the family home. "For them, it was nonsense, so I was in the streets for six months," he says. "I just continued with the plan: I wrote, I signed to a record label, I did my first project, then the second album, third, fourth." He says he had the titles of each album before he even began.
So far, he has exceeded even his own plans for commercial success – all four of his albums have gone platinum in France, some many times over, and three have reached No 1 – and from QALF onwards, he is releasing his music independently. "It's a bit of a battle, because you get the impression that, in the music industry today, we kill artists," he says. "In the sense that you have to come up with an idea that creates a buzz automatically, which puts a brake on creativity."
This is where the final step of the plan comes into play: a camper van kitted out with recording equipment, driven far away from the influence of the outside world. He moots Ireland, Iceland or the middle of a forest. "For me, it is about making music for myself, going to the mountains," he says, excitement audibly building. "I could sleep peacefully with everything I need to make sound."
'I know I have a dark side, but that isn't a problem' … Damso. Photograph: OJOZ
Meanwhile, there is other work to be done. One of the big steps in the plan was returning to Kinshasa, where he decided to launch QALF last year, keen to put a spotlight on the city he was born in and on the Democratic Republic of Congo generally. "I can't go on about Africa without going there and giving something back," he says, explaining that, while many artists in the diaspora mine African sounds for their work, back on the continent it is still hard for people to access their music, let alone see them perform: "All fans are equal, wherever they come from, and I want them to experience the music in the same way." He is also involved in supporting miners in Congo who are risking death for the resources needed to make mobile phones.
This month he has released his first music video in two years, for the QALF track 911. It's about a gangster dealing with his feelings, and the video features French model and actor Noémie Lenoir as his love interest. Along with the rest of the album it shows a slightly softer, lighter perspective on life compared with his previous work, and he speaks frankly about what love means to him now.
Like life, we tend to understand love at the end
"It doesn't make me uncomfortable; it's just difficult to understand. Like life, we tend to understand love at the end. Old people understand love better than young people, because they understand life more; life and love are pretty much the same thing. Before, if I went out with a woman that I had sexual chemistry with, that was desire, but for me real love is when we build."
That extends to himself, too, following years of relative chaos. "When one loves oneself, we have the courage to do things, we are free of our fears." Was it difficult for him to learn that lesson? "It was very tough. It's only in the past few months, not even a year, that I can say that I love myself … I could never see the good side of things. I had a perverse view of the world that spoiled whatever I saw."
He says he is only now inching towards peace. "I made the plan not just for fun, but so that in the end I would have my success," he says. "If I want to leave and go away, I'll go, just me and my music, peacefully. Little by little the dark side …" He pauses. "Well, it will never really go away, because it is part of me, part of my internal balance. But I will be able to live with it a lot better. Before, I repressed it but now, no. I know that I have a dark side to me, but that isn't a problem – it is just who I am."


text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using FLS.Data.WebApi.Accounting;
using FLS.Server.Data.DbEntities;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace FLS.Server.Service.Accounting
{
    internal class RuleBasedDeliveryDetails : DeliveryDetails
    {
        [JsonIgnore]
        public Guid ClubId { get; set; }

        //logical fields for simplifying rules
        [JsonIgnore]
        public bool IsChargedToClubInternal { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public long ActiveFlightTimeInSeconds { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public long ActiveEngineTimeInSeconds { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public bool NoLandingTaxForTowFlight { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public bool NoLandingTaxForGliderFlight { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public bool NoLandingTaxForFlight { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public List<PersonFlightTimeCredit> PersonFlightTimeCredits { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public PersonFlightTimeCredit MatchedPersonFlightTimeCredit { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public PersonFlightTimeCreditTransaction NewPersonFlightTimeCreditTransaction { get; set; }

        [JsonIgnore]
        public PersonFlightTimeCreditTransaction OldPersonFlightTimeCreditTransaction { get; set; }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Sigma Media
Blog for Businesses & Entrepreneurs
Britain's Best Business People: The Leaders Who Stand Out
May 2, 2018 by SigmaMedia
In business, personality can carry you a long way – but it's your actions that truly stand out. The most famous people in business are those who have led their companies to success by redefining how business is done while also helping their employees find happiness. By showing aspiring businesses how to succeed and setting a great example, these are the entrepreneurs who will always be remembered for their British business brilliance.
1. Sir Richard Branson
An unsurprising entry in terms of his sheer contribution to business, Richard Branson began his career selling a magazine called Student. He began selling records through the magazine, undercutting the prices of high street retailers. This was the birth of Virgin, named for being new to business and now a name synonymous with British business.
Branson may have grown up with dyslexia and poor academic performance, but he has went on to successfully launch Virgin Records, Virgin Airways and Virgin Mobile. He has performed a huge number of publicity stunts that include driving a tank through New York and attempting to navigate the globe in a hot air balloon. Whether he succeeded or failed, Sir Richard Branson's efforts have always been noted and admired by the public. For good reason too, as staff at Virgin get unlimited holidays and longer paternity leave.
Net Worth: Approximately 5 billion USD.
Lesson: Be daring, attract attention and reward your employees.
2. Alan Sugar
While he may be famous for celebrity appearances on The Apprentice, Lord Alan Sugar is a recent billionaire who built his empire from virtually nothing. He comes from a working class background and began selling electrical goods from a van. However, after founding Amstrad in 1968, he began to experience rapid success by manufacturing electrical equipment. Despite difficulties, a series of smart investments including Tottenham Hotspur, Amscreen and Amprop now puts Alan Sugar at a net worth of over a billion pounds.
Despite controversy around his business attitude and poor technology predictions (Sugar once famously speculated that the iPod would be dead by Christmas 2005), he remains one of the greatest examples of a self-made man in modern business.
Net Worth: Approximately £1.4 billion.
Lesson: The opportunity is there for anyone who has the desire to succeed.
3. Peter Jones
Another celebrity you might recognise from a TV show, Peter Jones is also one of the UK's most progressive entrepreneurs, having founded the first enterprise academy in the country to support other entrepreneurs and help them achieve their dreams. Jones has managed to establish himself as a leading businessman despite some early failures, which saw him lose £200,000 on the sale of his cocktail bar and have to move back in with his parents.
After setting up Phones International Group in 1998, Peter Jones went on to a number of successful ventures and set up the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy in 2009. His place on Dragon's Den helped increase public interest in his activities and in 2013 he bought Jessops.
Net Worth: Approximately £475 million.
Lesson: Failures don't mean you should give up. Support other people's ventures as you never know what might also benefit you.
4. Victoria Beckham
While you may assume that Victoria Beckham's fame precludes her from this list, she's still arguably one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs, completing rebranding herself and becoming one of the world's most influential fashion icons.
Despite getting a famous head start as a member of The Spice Girls, Victoria has gone on to launch the Victoria Beckham label, which was the designer brand of the year in 2011. She completely defied expectations, with many branding her a WAG that would not succeed in the fashion industry.
Lesson: Never be afraid to reinvent yourself. If an idea or plan doesn't come to fruition, you can move on to the next one.
5. Theo Paphitis
The son of Cypriot parents who immigrated to England at 9 years of age, Theo Paphitisa true self-made man who has risen from obscurity to both business success and the public eye. After starting the school tuck shop at 15, Paphitis discovered his love for entrepreneurship and went on to work for Legal & General, where he learned how to read business balance sheets. His first venture was a property finance company, but he spotted a gap in the emerging mobile phone business and bought into NAG Telecom.
From there, he managed to take advantage of the failing Ryman stationary store by buying it out and turning it around. Since, Theo Paphitis has been responsible for changing the fortunes of Robert Dyas, Ryman and Red Letter Days. He also successfully launched lingerie retailer Boux Avenue and was the chairman of Millwall Football Club between 1997 and 2005.
Lesson: Making smart investments can pay off big time. A product that looks like its failing can be turned around with sensible decisions and enthusiasm.
Do you want to turn your entrepreneurial skills into true success? Maybe you just need some enthusiasm to help you transform that idea into a reality. Enrol on a leadership development course with Impact International to help uncover your worth.
Filed Under: Blog for Businesses & Entrepreneurs Tagged With: entrepreneurs
© Copyright 2015 Sigma Media · All Rights Reserved · Admin


text:
Land Council celebrated its 33rd anniversary
The Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council celebrated its 33rd anniversary on Tuesday, May 30.
The organisation held a morning tea for the whole community to celebrate the occasion.
When discussing the milestone, Darkinjung Chief Executive Officer, Mr Sean Gordon, said he was proud of the success the Land Council had achieved over the years.
"It has been a pleasure to be able to watch Darkinjung grow over the years,' Mr Gordon said.
"In my position as a CEO, which I have held since 2008, I have witnessed a number of truly historic achievements, and I am honoured to be a part of such a passionate and committed organisation," he said.
"The work we do is for the benefit of not only our members and our Aboriginal community, but also the wider Central Coast community, and we are constantly looking at ways to provide economic growth and sustainability for our region."
In the recent years, Darkinjung has celebrated many successes and achievements, including the rejection of the Calga Sand Quarry extension, following Darkinjung's long standing protests and the lodgement of a number objections to the Land and Environment Court.
The Land Council has successfully developed almost 110 lots and provided homes for dozens of families at Darkinjung's Menindee Ridge residential development at Blue Haven.
It has established a partnership with Lendlease, project managers for the Gosford Hospital redevelopment, to ensure Aboriginal participation in the project through the facilitation of apprenticeships and training.
The establishment of Darkinjung Barker College in 2016, which provides a safe and culturally appropriate learning environment for Aboriginal children on the Central Coast, was another significant achievement, Mr Gordon said.
The Land Council has successfully placed dozens of school-based and full-time trainees in Commonwealth Bank branches across the Central Coast through Darkinjung's partnership with CBA.
The proposal for new developments on the Central Coast, including a cultural facility at Mangrove Mountain, and a manufactured home estate at Halekulani, named Guruwarang Waters, are other achievements.
So too are a number of community initiatives to promote Aboriginal culture on the Central Coast, including the Painting of the Hoardings outdoor art exhibition at Terrigal.
Darkinjung Chairperson, Ms Tina West, commented on the organisation's vast history.
She said the Land Council had always been focused on improving the lives of its members and the community.
"Since 1984, Darkinjung's goal has been, and continues to be, enhancing the health and wellbeing of our community," Ms West said.
"We have achieved this by providing community participation events for our members to attend, focusing on economic development to allow us to be self-sustaining, and protecting our land, environment and culture through countless land claims," Ms West said.
Media release, May 29
Ashleigh Milne, Brilliant Logic


Gaidaros, Donkey beach in Zante Zakynthos, Greece.
Donkey or Gaidaros beach Zante Zakynthos. The beach remains astonishing even in spring.
Only 1km away from Tsilivi there is the beach of Donkey. The beach owes its name to the donkeys that used to be here a long time ago.
Nowadays it is a wonderful sandy beach with a small harbor at the left side of it. The locals prefer this beach, because of its clean waters and the quietness it offers.
The thing you will absolutely love here is the trees right above the beach that can replace the umbrellas in a natural way.
Not a lot of restaurants are located around the beach, but if you have your own vehicle you have possibilities to find really nice taverns in the surrounding area.


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Art, photography and all things visual
Black Future: Kay Rufai imagines a new reality through poetry and dance
NEUTOKYO on the intelligence of the Black figure and what art should look like after the revolution
Nature on screen: why we need to diversify environmental filmmaking
Music, podcasts, and all things audio
"BORIS, DON'T BE THE GUY WHO LET THE MUSIC DIE" – Save Our Scene
In conversation with Artan: "My music is basically just a diary that rhymes and sounds good"
Lockdown Listening with Atlantis Gandhi
Actions on the ground
"More Than Ever, We Need to Be Heard": The struggle to ensure internet access for all in Uganda
After four typhoons, a civil storm is brewing in the Philippines
"This is a war": the fight for abortion rights in Poland
"Our vision for the future is joyful, beautiful, liberatory": An interview with anti-capitalist art collective Autonomous Design Group
Unboxing Feminism and Queerness through B.G.U. Zine
How Chile's new constitution was forged in protest
Contemplating Justice at a Junction
From partition to present: Confronting intergenerational trauma
Rethinking the nature/culture divide in our cities
Illustration by Emilie Muszczak @emim.k
AllOpinion
The world's urban areas are expanding rapidly at a huge cost to our environment. By 2050 around 70% of the global population will live in cities. Although many researchers have stressed the importance of spending time with nature, green spaces are hard to come by within our neighbourhoods. Trees can improve air quality and provide shade in the summer, while parks have been shown to improve mental health and increase biodiversity. As our cities grow during an environmental crisis it is essential that we focus on both bringing nature back into our everyday lives and making sure that urbanisation is accompanied by the creation of accessible green spaces. In order to do so we need to breakdown the nature/culture divide that is so prevalent in our collective imagination.
Man's Dominance Over Nature
Since the birth of Christianity western cultures have increasingly viewed humanity as separate from nature. Paganism – a belief system that holds nature as sacred – was replaced by a religion in which God gave humans authority to rule over the earth. This idea had profound implications for how our framing of nature developed. Descartes claimed that our ability to attain knowledge made us masters over the natural world, while Francis Bacon coined the idea of man's conquest over nature. This notion of human exceptionalism has resulted in the destructive mentality responsible for the vast exploitation of natural resources which has brought us to the brink of the earth's sixth mass extinction. If we are the masters of nature, then we can do with it as we please.
Over the past few decades this exploitative mindset has been challenged on all fronts. From climate action groups to school children, progressive governments to small businesses, there are many who are fighting against the use of fossil fuels, deforestation, and the exploitation of animals. This is an area where at least some progress is being made. Promises of decarbonised economies and the huge stigma behind environmentally destructive practices offer glimmers of hope for our future. But how else does our ingrained belief that humans are distinct from nature affect our lives? By far the most far-reaching consequences of this mindset play out in Man's ultimate conquest over nature; the city.
The City vs Nature
We see cities as human creations that have overpowered nature. Hilary Angelo argues that cities are places where "nature is understood to be already subjugated to society––where no rehabilitation is possible because there is no 'environment' left to be rehabilitated". They exist in contrast to the wildernesses we see on our newsfeeds or on the latest David Attenborough film. Nature has become externalised – it is something that some of us choose to engage with as opposed to being part of our everyday lives. As a result, it has been largely shut out of our cities. Funding for London's councils has decreased dramatically over the past decade leaving local governments unable to invest in tree planting and green spaces. Some councils have reported having over £100m less to spend than in 2010. The money available is spent on more direct services while environmental improvements have been placed at the back of the queue. This is not to say that there is no public funding for green projects. Significant sums of money are being invested in green energy and rural tree planting projects to help mitigate the effects of climate change. The problem is that when we think of investing in 'nature' and our 'environment' the focus shifts away from our cities. Less than 16% of public investment in tree planting is spent on urban trees, while more than 80% of the UK live in cities.
As with many crises, it is BIPOC communities who are worst affected by a lack of green space. A recent report in the US found that people of colour are three times more likely to live in nature deprived neighbourhoods than white people. This has become even tougher during national lockdowns where access to nature is only possible if green spaces are close to where you live. Nature should be available to all, not just to those who can afford to live in more affluent areas. Nature should be a human right.
So how do we encourage greener urban areas? How can we make nature a priority in our cities as they expand? For this to change, we need to escape this nature/culture divide and remember a seemingly evident fact – human society has always been part of the natural world.
Reframing our Relationship with Nature
David Harvey once argued that 'there is nothing unnatural about New York City'. He wanted to show that cities were not just social and cultural places, but that they have undergone infinite natural processes to reach their current state. The transformation of sand and stone into cement, the flow of water through our taps and sewers, the fuel that is burnt in our cars. All of these were natural transformations that allowed cities to grow. He wanted to show that nature and society were one and the same, and that society could not exist without nature. This mentality was born out of a need to address both the rapid rate of global urbanisation and the increasing amount of environmental degradation caused by it. From this perspective, cities are the key to tackling the environmental crisis.
AllDo
4: Changemaker series
When the nature/culture divide is broken down, the distinction between city and countryside is also less meaningful as they both become natural and cultural. Without these distinctions, the idea of environmental protection involves cities and rural areas alike. Investment into nature equates to greening cities just as much as rural tree planting projects. Nature is no longer external; it belongs on our doorstep.
In a world where a growing population is fuelling relentless urban expansion, understanding cities as part of nature is vital for ensuring that living standards and access to green space are prioritised.
If we get it right, incorporating nature into cities will have the benefits of improving our urban environment while instilling a mentality which promotes environmental protection and climate action. If we carry on the way we are going, our cities will get ever larger while the areas we call nature shrink into insignificance.
See more of Emilie's work on her instagram
Ed Faulkner
Ed Faulkner is co-founder of Sapling Spirits and an environmental activist. He is committed to reforestation with a focus on urban areas and community involvement. Having completed an Msc in Environmental Politics he also writes articles promoting sustainable practices and ideas.' saplingspirits.com
Why Black Lives Matter in the Climate Movement: An Introduction to Environmental Racism.
info@shado-mag.com
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