text:
Looking for 800-CEO-READ? That's us! Learn more here.
Porchlight Porchlight
ChangeThis
The 2019 Porchlight Business Book Awards Shortlist
We are proud to announce the shortlist for the 13th annual Porchlight Business Book Awards! The eight books on the shortlist help readers make sense of the times in which we live, the events that shaped them, and how we—as individuals, organizations, and a society—can meet the challenges we face today to build a better future.
View the list
Business Bestsellers
100 Best Business Books of All Time
November 2019 Business Bestsellers
We move books and ideas in bulk into the business world every single day. See which which we moved the most last month.
For Book Buyers
For Publicists & Agents
Book Customization
Whether it's part of training someone for a job, an add-on at a conference, or a holiday gift, we can customize books to make a lasting impression.
Business Book Awards 2019
More About Awards
We changed our name!
After more than two decades of doing business as 800-CEO-READ, we changed the name of our company to Porchlight. So what's changing, what's not, and why?
Bulk Book Pricing
Bestseller Reporting
Custom Checkout
Mass Book Mailing
Pre-Order Campaigns
Delivery Logistics
We understand that every order is unique, and often needs the flexibility that only a dedicated personal representative can provide.
Shortcut Your Startup: Speed Up Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches
/ Excerpts
In this excerpt, brothers Courtney and Carter Reum discuss five critical factors are fueling the rapid scaling of consumer brands in today's market
From former Goldman Sachs investment bankers turned entrepreneurs, and stars of the syndicated television show, Hatched, comes a practical playbook for aspiring business innovators, filled with nontraditional yet accessible advice for making the most of your business—Shortcut Your Startup: Speed Up Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches (Gallery/Jeter Publishing, January 16, 2018, $26.00 Hardcover).
The Reum brothers have learned personally from every triumph and tribulation over the years. Whether it was through building their own spirits brand, VEEV, or founding their newly successful brand development and investment firm, M13, Courtney and Carter have streamlined an effective and easy-to-understand method for maximizing business ventures. From products, and services, to technology and media, these methods can be applied across the board.
Shortcut Your Startup is filled with personal anecdotes and real-life advice from the playing field. Broken down into ten key "Startup Switchups," the Reums flip traditional advice on its head and guide readers through pre-launch investigation tips ranging from strategies for running and scaling your business, to if, how, and when to exit your business.
The following excerpt, from the Introduction to the book, discusses…
5 CRITICAL FACTORS OF RAPID BRAND BUILDING
Just as startup companies are both emerging and failing at unprecedented rates, brand building is no longer a decade-plus process. The amount of time that it takes to build a recognizable brand, a "household name," has been dramatically reduced. One key indicator of this is the rate at which today's companies are scaling. (See the chart below.)
As Mary Meeker pointed out in her 2016 Internet Trends Report, it took Nike fourteen years to reach $100 million in sales, Lululemon nine years, and Under Armour eight. At the time, those brands were some of the fastest-growing consumer brands around. They were—and remain—massive successes. However, in the last few years, we've seen tech-enabled consumer brands such as ClassPass, Dollar Shave Club, Casper, and the Honest Company reach the same heights in significantly less time. (And fall equally fast—Beepi, established in 2013, was out of business by 2017.)
We believe that five critical factors are fueling the rapid scaling of consumer brands in today's market. They combine to act as a flywheel, accelerating business life cycles.
1. Personal computers in our pockets are creating new behaviors.
It's easy to take for granted the extent to which these devices have worked their way into our waking and sleeping lives. What we used to call "smartphones" are now portable computers that we carry around with us and touch on average 2,600 times per day. Americans spend 71 percent of their total digital minutes on smartphones, and as the growth of desktops slowly plateaus, smartphone usage continues to rise. In fact, mobile Internet usage is growing at over 11 percent each year and recently hit a new high of 220 minutes per day. In contrast, in 2011, usage was under 50 minutes. In 2016, US smartphone users spent 90 percent of their time on mobile devices interacting with apps. More and more, people are able to do almost everything on their phones, from purchasing goods to ordering dry cleaning or massages.
The implications? First, people are more reachable than they have ever been, and they have the ability to make purchases conveniently without entering stores. Second, startups have easier and cheaper access to the market than ever before. As opposed to the past, when entrepreneurs faced expensive distribution networks, today vendors can easily get their products in front of consumers anywhere, anytime. Any vendor can sell through a platform such as Amazon, taking power away from the giant retailers that used to control the market. This dynamic shift has placed more power in the hands of technology platforms across industries such as gym membership (e.g., ClassPass) and ride-sharing services (Uber and Lyft).
2. Brands are speaking less to consumers and more through consumers.
As a result of the increased time spent on mobile platforms and social media, consumers in the United States, especially Millennials, have led the charge on a developing trend: sharing. Though "sharing economy" often refers to peer-to-peer platforms, there is no doubt that social media provide a medium for people to express their opinions on the goods and services they consume. Take entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, for instance. We met him fairly early on when he was creating his Wine Library. It's not every day we meet another adult beverage alum who has transcended the category, but he's found tremendous success across various social and entertainment channels: his YouTube show, the #AskGaryVee show; and The Gary Vaynerchuk Audio Experience podcast. Across those channels, Gary has been able to interact with millions of customers and fans by responding to their Tweets and Instagram posts and covering topics ranging from gadgets, trends, and new products, to wine.
Whereas in the old days, if you tried a product and loved it, you might have recommended it to a few friends; today, if you post it to your Facebook or Instagram account, thousands of your friends and followers can see it in a matter of seconds. That is also why a product's ratings on Amazon or a restaurant's Yelp reviews are so impactful: consumers are making decisions based not only on what their friends post but on aggregated product reviews.
You've probably seen "growth hacks," where brands offer everything from discounts to cash rewards when you share a product or service with people in your network. Companies have picked up on the fact that more than 80 percent of consumers in today's market trust recommendations from individuals over brands. Consumers are looking more and more to friends and influencers on social media to learn about brands, products, and experiences. In fact, it is projected that in 2017, brands will increase their influencer marketing expenditures by more than 60 percent. Consumers are looking to share information and learn from one another, as opposed to directly from companies—and brands are beginning to react.
3. Tools are available to market in an increasingly targeted way.
In the old days, billboards, magazines, and previews dominated advertising strategies as companies took a "splatter" approach to advertising: they found high-traffic channels and spent their marketing budgets on those channels. Today, as companies collect massive amounts of data on their consumers, brands are increasingly able to market to very specific groups of people. Platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram are a marketer's dream. They provide companies with access to specific types of customers and collect data on those individuals based on their activity. For example, Facebook retargeting allows an advertiser to target people who visited its website with different messages, depending on where they stopped in the buying process. Retargeting tends to have a much higher success rate than advertisements targeting customers for the first time. It's an obvious point, because retargeting is reaching a more qualified lead. These tools either didn't exist in the past or were prohibitively expensive and/or harder to track.
Similarly, look-alike targeting has proven to be very effective in our experience of scaling and growing brands at M13. Platforms such as Facebook allow digital marketers to define their target audiences based on previous user behavior and to compare existing customers to the Facebook universe in order to find similar users. Other companies are following suit, including Pinterest, which has its own act-alike audience targeting options. By using such tools to target customers strategically, you will develop increased deliverability, higher performance, and less list fatigue.
4. (Online) traffic is cheap.
What one considers to be cheap is of course relative, but the fact that mom-and-pop brands can now easily access specific customers and afford to advertise to them is a massive change in the marketing world. Whereas advertising used to be dominated by larger, well-capitalized brands, today smaller brands can afford to get their products in front of hundreds of thousands of qualified leads around the globe at a fraction of the historical cost and in much less time. The advantages in terms of capital efficiency and speed are tremendous, because getting your product or service in front of customers is no longer predicated on getting into retail or being able to afford prime advertising.
5. Abundant capital is available.
Today there's more capital available for venture growth than at any other time in history. There's actually over five times as much capital today earmarked for venture investment as there was in the late 1990s. Part of the increasing investment in venture capital is being led by "angels," corporations and individuals who, through crowdfunding and other methods, make early investments in startup companies. Since angels have joined the venture capital game, they have poured more and more money into the VC industry each year. Starting in 2009, the US angel investment market grew from $17 billion to $24 billion. This abundance of capital has made it easier for brands to expand and grow while incurring significant operating losses, with the goal of scaling faster and acquiring market share. However, the abundant capital that makes the funding environment more favorable for entrepreneurs is also making the world much more competitive. It's easier than ever to get out there but harder than ever to stick.
Excerpted rom Shortcut Your Startup: Speed Up Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches by Courtney Reum and Carter Reum.
Published by arrangement with Gallery Books/Jeter Publishing, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Copyright (c) 2018 by M13, LLC.
Courtney and Carter Reum are brothers, former investment bankers, entrepreneurs, operators, and investors. They started their careers at Goldman Sachs working on deals ranging from Under Armour to Vitamin Water and have since left to pursue careers as both Entrepreneurs and new age VCs. After co-founding and eventually successfully selling VEEV Spirits, Courtney and Carter started M13, a 21st century investing platform that seeks to affect outcomes for founders, partners, and investors by institutionalizing the process of scaling consumer-centric brands. Courtney and Carter currently live in Los Angeles, where they run day-to-day operations at M13.
544 South 1st Street
info@porchlightbooks.com
© 2019 Porchlight. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use
We have updated our privacy policy. Click here to read our full policy.
Acknowledge & Close


Traders haven't been this bearish on Snap since the period immediately following its initial public offering.
The ratio of bearish put contracts on Snap's stock to bullish calls is 1.7-to-1, the highest since March 17, only the fifth day that Snap options were available to be traded.
After an initial shorting frenzy that pushed the ratio as high as 3-to-1, bearishness leveled off for a couple of months. But now that Snap has been drawing the ire of analysts across Wall Street because of concerns over user growth, pessimism is once again mounting.
The most recent criticism came from Nomura on Wednesday. Looking at data around downloads on the Snapchat app, analyst Anthony DiClemente highlighted slowing daily-average user growth through the first two months of the second quarter.
DiClemente doesn't expect near-term monetization growth to pick back up, and he also noted an acceleration in downloads for Instagram. He warned against competitor growth at a time when Snap's user expansion is slowing.
JPMorgan got in on the action on Monday, lowering its price target on the company. The firm also has concerns over fewer people flocking to the platform than expected. It estimated that only 8 million users will join Snapchat in the second quarter of 2017, missing the previous forecast of 10 million.
Of all the underwriters that participated in Snap's IPO, none have been more downbeat than JPMorgan, which received the third-biggest share of stock to sell in the offering. The firm lowered its price target on the stock after a disappointing first-quarter earnings report last month.


Compiling a fascinating body of landscape photography, Into the Wild documents the development of. The Aurora Chaser's Handbook. $34.95... Brendan Davey - Photographer, Hobart, TAS. 619 likes. The Aurora Chaser's Handbook. Book. Jhon Entrop Photography. Photographer. Jonathan Esling Photography. Artist.
The Aurora Chaser's Handbook. Movies. Four Horsemen. Television. Tom and Jerry. Other. Confucianism,... Latest News. Contents Nella Dan news Aurora and night sky photo course Midwinter dinner update author of The Aurora Chaser's Handbook.


He obtained his medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Dr. DeConti completed a general surgery residency at the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation in New Orleans, LA. He received his plastic surgery training at the University of Virginia. He is board certified with the American Board of Plastic Surgery and a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Besides a deep interest in breast augmentation, liposuction, and cosmetic surgery of the face and body, Dr. DeConti's surgical expertise includes pediatric plastic surgery, breast and total body reconstruction, maxillofacial, microvascular, hand, peripheral nerve, and endoscopic and laser surgery.
See the reviews and testimonials.


An unnamed senior manager of the LTA has been suspended pending investigation by FICAC.
This was confirmed to FBC News by LTA Board Chair Vijay Maharaj.
Maharaj says an internal audit conducted by the Land Transport Authority earlier this year revealed around twenty-two audit reports which had discrepancies.
He says one of the biggest discrepancy alleged was the unnamed senior manager over-paying his own wages by more than one hundred thousand dollars.
Maharaj says the matter will be forwarded to FICAC.
Meanwhile, he added that the twenty-two audit reports with discrepancies had been forwarded to former LTA CEO Carmine Piantedosi for action, however, he failed to do so.
The board has also denied claims that Piantedosi was coerced into resigning.
Paintedosi's six month contract ended two weeks ago, before he resigned from his post last week.
Meanwhile, the board says they expect to appoint a new Chief executive in the next three to four months.


Sunday March 24th 2019, Libertarias (Vicente Aranda, 1996), 131 minutes, in Spanish with English subtitles. Doors open at 20.00, film at 20.30.
Spain, 19 July 1936. The revolution has begun in a city near Barcelona. María, an innocent young nun, flees her convent when revolutionaries invade the area and finds refuge in a brothel. Here she meets a group of "Libertarias," anarchist militia women who are fighting not only Franco, but also the conservative attitudes toward women that prevail as well in the revolutionary ranks. The group is led by hard-liner Pilar, whose seconds-in-command are the clairvoyent Floren and the big-hearted prostitute Concha. Pilar quickly feels a strange fascination for this young nun whose father is a fascist. On their way to the front, the group runs into a defrocked priest who joins up with them and falls in love with María. There are three main locations: the vicinity of Barcelona, the trenches, and Saragossa. Aranda describes the daily existence of these anarchist freedom fighters, not without a touch of humor, as in the scene when Floren does an imitation of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. When the protagonists arrive in Saragossa, the streets are strewn with bodies and weeping women. María catches her first glimpse of the face of war and her sympathies, despite her background, go out to the freedom fighters. The defrocked priest arrive with the strange news that the anarchist leader Durutti has forbidden women to go to the front: the militarisation of politics has won out over utopian ideals.
Libertarias is an epic of sorts that mixes documentary, tragedy, romance, comedy, objectivity and introspection in order to dramatize not only a war for freedom, but also a more underground struggle, the war between the sexes.
"The 9 from Vilanova" are a group of 9 people that have been arrested in Vilanova i la G., Spain. They face sentences of 4 to 8 years, plus fines up to 3.000€ (in total 29years and 10.000€ in fines).
They were arrested after an action where the citizens were giving a less than warm welcome to the Minister of the Economy and Treasury (head of the tax office) from the PP (populist party), when he paid a visit to the city, during the European elections.
The popular demonstration will be in June, as well as the court case.
Sunday March 6th 2016, Black Cat Cine presents Land and Freedom (Tierra y Libertad) by Ken Loach, UK 1995, 109 minutes, English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begin at 9pm. Free admission.
A fascinating depiction of the Spanish Civil War and the internal struggle between different factions (Stalinist, Marxist, anarchist). David Carr from Liverpool, the protagonist, wants to join the International Brigades but coincidentally ends up enlisted in an anti-soviet POUM militia on the Aragon front.
Master of social engagement movie director Ken Loach creates a strong and deeply moving portrait of young people involved in the horrors of civil war and shows how a clash of convictions can destroy a movement from within.
Interesting to know: according to Ken Loach, the most important scene of the film is the debate in an assembly of a village successfully liberated by the militia. People from the actual village where the film was shot play peasant parts and express their thoughts freely (despite language difficulties), and a debate ensues about whether or not to collectivize the village land and that of a recently shot priest.
19:00 Door opens, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.
At 21:00 short talk about why this benefit and some bizarre state repression examples in Spain from the last months.
On March 17th 2012, Javier, a member of the 15-M movement and the CNT Union, was arrested while filming a racist round-up in Lavapiés, Madrid.
In the coming weeks we will know the exact date of the trial, scheduled for the spring, in which the state prosecutor and the private attorney of one of the officers who assaulted him during his detention charge our comrade with resisting arrest and assault & battery, crimes punishable with two years in prison and civil penalty of more than €7,500.
The events for which he will go to trial occurred almost four years ago, when a spontaneous demonstration of neighbors tried to publicly denounce the umpteenth racist police raid in the streets of Lavapiés. Peaceful demonstrations like this had already occurred several times in that neighborhood and other quarters with high migrant populations such as Carabanchel, showing that residents had grown weary of the constant police harassment of migrant workers, who suffer identity checks on a daily basis merely for having a dark skin color. Although successive Spanish governments have been reproached for these raids by organizations which are far from revolutionary, such as the EU, the UN, and Amnesty International, they are still occurring every day in the public spaces of our city, with the active collaboration of the Madrid municipal police and private security agents on the subway, commuter trains, etc. They intend to fill the quota for people without residence permits which the Spanish Interior Ministry requires of police department to satisfy their goal of human bodies in their cells, their Immigrant Detention Centers and on their deportation flights, and at the same time, to incite to hatred and divide the native and foreign sections of the working class.
March 17, 2012 was a turning point in escalating repression against neighborhood anti-racist self-organization. An unprecedented police deployment and the subsequent police set-up of our comrade Javier tried to put an end to these spontaneous and peaceful demonstrations of solidarity which were marked by chants of "No human being is illegal!". The authorities want to put an end to the emerging solidarity movement against the scourge of ethnic identity checks and subsequent arrests (kidnapping) of neighbors whose only "crime" was to be migrants, poor and to have lost or failed to complete the administrative process to establish their legal residence in our neighborhoods.
The Assembly of Lavapies is taking the opportunity of this new political trial to appeal for solidarity with our comrade and to renew the fight against racist police controls and raids. Watch out for updated information on the trial and support grassroots organizing, without leaders. Don't let the police continue to undermine coexistence in our neighborhoods with their racist practices.
Racists aren't welcome in our neighborhoods!!
Thursday September 17th 2015, Benefit for the legal costs for the 6 arrested people on June 13th 2015. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.
Call for solidarity! In recent months a wave of repression has hit Spain. A package of laws, limiting basic human rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of assembly has been passed, the so-called 'Ley Mordaza' ('gag law'). Two massive police operations, ironically named 'Pandora' and 'Piñata' have resulted in multiple arrests, house raids, confiscation of electronic equipment and several charges of terrorism. As a response, several anti-repression demonstrations have taken place, with the most recent resulting in 6 arrests and charges including civil disobedience and possession of explosives.
In addition to this, there has been a series of evictions of social centers and harassment from police, which has made fund raising all the more difficult. The situation has reached extremes in which, for example, anti-repression fund-raising accounts have been blocked. International solidarity is needed, especially at a financial level.
Nuestra mejor arma: La Solidaridad!


If so does this affect the acceptance rate or anything in AMA?
The anchor text that I use for each link is the keyword that I target for the corresponding page that I link to.
they way I have mine done is 1 link to an article, one link to the product review for the product I am prmoting with that article and one to a squeeze page.
If you use a unique pen name with your AMA articles, you can do a Google search for the name, and find all your articles. The next time you submit and article you can link to your previous AMA articles too.
It is important to build some links to your home page though, that looks natural to Google. You can link to your money pages from your home page too.
In short I keep all my link juice flowing in the direction of my money pages.


text:
Tech Accelerator Flash Memory Summit 2020
Storage as the Driver of Change: Rethinking Data Infrastructure
This keynote presentation from Western Digital's President Siva Sivaram explores the advancements in semiconductors, flash technologies and data architectures.
Siva Sivaram, Yan Li, Richard New and Ihab HamadiGuest Contributor
00:14 Dr. Siva Sivaram: Hello all. It is wonderful to be back at the Flash Memory Summit talking to you all about the advancements in semiconductors, in flash technologies and in data architectures.
People have been talking a lot about the profusion of data, the amount of data that is flowing in from the edges, from the endpoints up into the cloud. The big battleground that is in front of us is how do we get the maximum value out of this data? We at Western Digital are particular that we give you an ability, an infrastructure to store and access the data in a secure fashion. We're going to be talking to several key Western Digital executives on what they are doing with respect to this ability to take the data, curate the data, and be able to deliver it in a fashion that you can get the maximum value out of this data.
01:15 DS: Conventional thinking is that compute dominates the data architecture. We've been seeing this over time as Moore's Law slows down in both compute and in DRAM. Purpose-built architectures are showing up everywhere. Purpose-built for different workloads, whether it is for search, whether it is for video, whether it is for database acceleration. Many, many such workloads require additional specific semiconductor solutions in the compute space. That's because overall, you can increase the number of cores, but you are not able to shrink the transistor much further rapidly.
02:02 DS: Similarly, in DRAM, the density of DRAM is not growing up. But there is one place where Moore's Law is alive, well and kicking, where we have not hit the Moore's wall, and that's in flash. In flash, that's happening because we have these two new additional ways of scaling. We are not just scaling in one direction. We are not just scaling in the Y direction, we are also scaling in the Z direction. X, Y, and Z scaling allows for rapid scaling of flash as we saw with the 3D NAND revolution that happened in the earlier part of this decade.
This article is part of
Flash Memory Summit 2020
Which also includes:
Today's Trends in Cloud and the Future Enterprise
DNN Accelerator for the High-Performing Space Computing Program
What goes in association with that is logical scaling. The ability to get from two to three to four, now we are talking about 5 bits per cell from that same die. That allows for this rapid scaling of flash. We have to keep in mind that this amount of data is useful if it is stored. Stored literally means at the end of it a bit has to flip somewhere. We at Western Digital feel morally responsible for being able to provide you with that ability to store and secure and access that data.
03:30 DS: So when we have X, Y, and Z scaling and Moore's Law continues to work for 3D NAND, and we are able to provide you with this 256 gigabytes, 512 gigabytes, 1 terabyte, 2 terabytes die, and we are able to provide systems, solid-state drives, small die for edge applications, large die for cloud applications, these are happening, what happens next?
What happens when these are put into systems? What is needed to make this data be accessible, for instance? How do we marry an operating system to the characteristics of the media, what we call Zone Name Storages, ZNS? What happens when we can build controllers with open source architectures such as RISC-V? What are these controllers going to be able to provide in terms of ECC, or in terms of the front- and back-end host controllers? What can we do with security?
We know that security threats against data are proliferating. What do we need to have, a root of trust established around the flash? What does it take to network the storage? What does it take to put it in a NVMe over Fabrics?
04:54 DS: What does it take to make sure that there is accelerators, AI accelerators that can seamlessly sit on that same fabric? So, that we can now, instead of moving all the data back and forth through the processor, can now do it in the appliance itself, where some command from the host, make sure that the data and its processing happens in the storage appliance? What happens with video? Smart edge video sensors to make sure that we do local inferences. How do we make sure that edge intelligence makes this happens?
All of these and many more such as these are important developments in and around the core strength of storage. Western Digital revolutionizes and takes the core storage strength and then applies to all of these additional applications that go around the data. We are going to be talking to several experts today on each of these applications. I'm looking forward to these conversations.
06:02 DS: Let me introduce to you Dr. Yan Li. She is the vice president of silicon technology and manufacturing. She has over 200 patents and is a distinguished member of the IEEE. Yan, you and I have worked together now for the better part of a decade. 3D NAND and its scaling have been pushing Moore's Law further and further along. What are the new things that are happening in flash that are keeping it scaling so very well?
06:38 Dr. Yan Li: So, 3D NAND is indeed scaling very well. We have a two aspect of scaling: physical scaling as well as logical scaling. Let me talk about the physical scaling first.
The physical scaling, we are in a very good position to avoid the lithography limitation. So, we build the 3D NAND so that can continue scale according to Moore's Law. And we're not only growing the layers from 48 layers to above 100 layers in production now. We are going to go to 200 layers pretty soon. We are also going to shrink the X-Y dimension to pack in more memory cells in each layer, so this actually multiply the scaling effect. Not only that we're also hiding the peripheral circuits underneath and above the array to get the full benefit of the scaling.
07:29 DL: On the logical scaling side, we have the TLC, 3D TLC, 3 bits per cell is already replacing the 2D NAND MLC, completely in lots of product. This is because the 3D NAND is a very good cell, a very big cell. And then now we are going for QLC, the 4 bits per cell. The 4 bits per cell will go to mainstream SSD pretty soon because of the four-plane architecture we are starting with sixth generation. So, people already work on the 5 bits per cell, we have PLC cord. And we have a system side -- architectural wise -- a Zoned Namespace, so called. And also helping out the QLC into production into a lots of SSD product. With all that, our scaling basically propel all these larger capacity and in the small footprint, is a very good scaling path.
08:26 DS: Now, we think of storage as a static thing. You think of it as a fixed, "Hey, this is what a block storage device is going to be." But you now are making it very dynamic. What's happening with this level of active, dynamic scaling and active dynamic characteristics of 3D NAND?
08:49 DL: So, the key is that we have wide applications, from edge device to all the way to data centers. For example, the edge device needs a low power, high performance, but data center needs a high capacity and high endurance. So, we have a very wide applications, we design one NAND chip, but we design so many different variations to tradeoff power, energy, endurance together. So, you know we also, we scaling the I/O speed. Our I/O speed goes from 400 megabytes to 2 gigabytes, five-fold in four generations. So, all these innovations actually propels, drive the innovation in the NAND. NAND is never static, it's everything -- have lots of things going on every year.
09:43 DS: I also learn from you more and more that we're adding a lot more intelligence to the NAND device. What do you mean by that? I mean, I thought it was just read and write and erase. That's all we used to do with NAND device. What's this intelligence doing?
10:01 DL: So, you know, the big data grows by the second, dramatically, every second we generate so much data. The data analysis suffers from the convention of von Neumann computer architecture nowadays. The conventional architecture basically brings all the data from storage and moves to the central location of the CPU, GPU to get processed.
But this moving, it takes lots of energy, and the latency takes time. So, this is something we have to break for the big data problem. Big data requires a new solution. So, we want to move the compute as close to the storage as possible, even inside the NAND. So, as we are scaling the NAND, we also improve the CMOS. There is a potential in the future we actually build the intelligence inside the NAND. So, NAND not only can store the data, we can also compute, encrypt for security, and ECC for data integrity, even adding AI functions. So, this could be a game-changer in the future and completely changing the architecture and the functionality of the NAND.
11:11 DS: So, you're telling me, this simple block device, the flash memory is scaling on X, Y, Z, and logic. It is very dynamic in that you're designing for the edge. You are designing for the core with characteristics of high endurance or and low power, while at the same time figuring out how to add more logic, more intelligence into the CMOS circuitry under or above.
11:37 DL: Absolutely, we can do that in the future.
11:40 DS: Thank you.
11:41 DL: Thank you.
11:43 DS: It's my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Richard New. He is the vice president of research at Western Digital. He was one of the inventors of the shingled magnetic recording architecture, and now on to ZNS, the Zoned Namespace architecture.
Richard, we've been talking about computational storage, the idea of bringing compute ever closer to storage. What's new in the field of computational storage? What is exciting about it? Why should we care about it?
12:17 Dr. Richard New: Thanks, Siva. So, that's a great question. So, I think it's probably fair to say that one of the significant trends in compute during the last decade has been this idea of moving compute from a central processing unit out to some other device that can do the compute more efficiently. So, for example, think back to graphics accelerator card, later GPGPU, accelerating machine learning functions. You know other types of inference and machine learning accelerators, so these are all DPUs. These are all ideas of, you know, you have a specific kind of compute that instead of doing it on a CPU, you can do it more effectively in a custom architecture.
So, computational storage extends that idea. And the idea there is to take compute function that would be in the CPU and move it down to a storage device. And if you think about it a little bit, you can figure out what kinds of applications or compute functions might make sense in that context.
13:14 DN: So, if you think about, for example, a box of SSDs connected to other servers through a network. You can imagine that the aggregate bandwidth of all of the NAND die and all of the SSDs is much greater than the network connection. And so you could propose, for example, that there might be some compute functions that you could do that require very high throughput to the storage device and maybe not that complex, the compute function, that you could execute on that platform very effectively.
So, a classic example would be a pattern match function. So, if you want to scan through all the data just looking for a particular pattern, that's something that is computationally very easy but requires very high throughput to the storage device. So, that would be sort of a candidate application. Maybe for databases, you would think of row filtering or column filtering. So, these are all ideas that potentially have application in the computational storage space.
14:13 DN: The other aspect of these types of computation, it's really good if you can, for a pattern match function, if the amount of data that you need to return back to the server is much less than the amount of data that you would need to scan. So, if you're trying to find a particular pattern in a large pool of data, you can scan through and you only have to return the match locations, for example.
So, this gives you some idea of the types of compute functions, a column like the basic compute elements or primitives that you could use for computational storage. And then the problem is to find a larger, a more general-purpose application, let's say, a database, you want to find an application where a significant amount of the compute, let's say, in a general-purpose query is, is really executing these primitives.
14:58 DS: This appears to be as big a software problem as it is a hardware accelerator. What is Western Digital doing about the software ecosystem that needs to go with this?
15:11 DN: We have a significant investment in Linux open source software in general, and Linux kernel in particular. And one of the things that we have learned is if you want to work on storage architecture, you need to have a minimum, a very good understanding of how things work on the whole software side.
And I think back to earlier in my career, one of the eye-openers for me, I remember, this is way back on hard disk drives, we wanted to change the block size from 512 bytes to 4 kilobytes. And, of course, this was a no-brainer if you were a hard disk drive guy -- you make the ECC more efficient, you gain 10% or more areal density very, very easily. But, of course, it took a decade or more, probably more than a decade, to get that accomplished in the industry and some people would probably say it's still not done. So, this gives you some idea that if you want to innovate on the storage architecture side, you need to be able to innovate also on the whole software side.
16:11 DN: And so, more recently, you mentioned Zoned Storage, so we've applied that principle there. So, Zoned Storage is an umbrella architecture or like a common architecture for SSDs and HDDs. On the HDD side, it's for shingled magnetic recording or SMR HDDs. On the SSD side, it's for Zoned Namespace SSDs or ZNS SSDs. And those two types of media share a common set of constraints. When you write to these media, you want to write sequentially within a zone.
So, we have worked recently and, I believe, led the industry in terms of defining this Zoned Storage architecture and also creating the software ecosystem to support that. And since you mentioned computational storage earlier, computational storage will be even more like that -- that's even more of a problem where the problem statement itself really comes from the application side. It's easy to make a device that performs a specific hardware function, but you really have to be able to support that in the software. So, that's a tremendous area of focus for us.
17:13 DS: I'm going to switch topics on you. Another important area in storage is security. How does Western Digital think about security? What are we doing about it?
17:25 DN: One thing we can say about security is that any data storage company today or any data processing company, whether they like it or not, they are a security company. So, I think that's commonly understood in the industry. And as far as security itself is concerned, let me focus on two different domains. One domain is the area of, I'll call it security building blocks. So, we're talking about cryptographic algorithms, security protocols, the industry-accepted procedures and policies for certification, etcetera. So, in this area, these security building blocks, our general view is that this is an area where you don't get a lot of points for style, or innovation really. I mean, this is a place for innovation, but if you innovate the next cryptographic algorithm, it takes 10 years for the industry to vet it. So, when you're talking about making a security product, the strategy there is to use these tried-and-true cryptographic algorithms and policies and procedures and protocols, etcetera. And our belief in that space is that the industry will move to open and inspectable architectures.
18:36 DN: So, this will take a while, but this is one of the reasons why we were co-founders of the OpenTitan project, along with Google and lowRISC and Nuvoton and G+D and others. And the idea here is that the most secure solutions will be built around open and inspectable architectures, where people can go in and examine the implementation and find problems, etcetera, and it's through that open vetting process that you end up with the best solutions. So, in the space of these security building blocks, that's the way we think the industry is going to head towards these open architectures.
19:14 DN: There's another area of security, of course, which is taking these building blocks and making something for your customer, providing a feature or a service, and of course, in that space, there's a lot more room for innovation. And so, I think fundamentally the message for security is that the differentiator, if you like, in security space is really more about the company culture, how you think about security. Do you take it seriously? Is it a burden? How do you handle that within your company? So, it's a matter of having the correct culture within the company, and also supported by policies and procedures to really create a strong security environment. So, that's the way that we think about it.
19:55 DS: Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it.
19:57 DS: I have the pleasure of talking with Ihab Hamadi. Ihab is a fellow of Western Digital. Ihab's past experience has been across the board in the semiconductor space, whether it is in networking, whether it is in compute or storage. So, let me take that question from there
Ihab, we have been proudly talking about the fact that we continue to scale in storage, but it is not quite as fast a scaling in both compute and in networking. What's the implications to overall architectures? What is this leading to in the industry?
20:39 Ihab Hamadi: Yeah, it's interesting, Siva. It's been a fascinating journey with Moore's Law, with the semiconductor industry at large. As we look at the CPU within a server today, the single-thread performance has been mostly stagnant for the past number of years, while everything around it has either been getting larger as in the case of storage of all kinds; getting faster, as in the case of networks; getting even more responsive, as in the case of lower latency interconnects, lower latency flash and so on and so forth. And moreover, the amount of data that the world continues to generate is continuing to go up.
The problems that we're trying to solve continues to actually go up in complexity, and the type of insights that we're trying to extract also continue to go up in complexity. So, the question is, "How do we drive the performance needed to get us to the next level of requirements that are presenting themselves?"
21:44 IH: Within the data center specifically, there are broadly three different areas that will help us get to the level of performance, actually drive performance through the next decades. And the three areas are, one, distributed compute being embraced broadly in all of its forms. And this is an exciting area. It has been around for a long time for things like HPC, but now it's making its way through the data center, to the edge, the micro-edge, and all the way to the end-user devices. Computational storage is a very interesting technology that is really at the heart of it, it's a form of distributed compute.
The second area is really the ability for us to match the workloads, the various workloads of today with a suitable set of infrastructure and this is where things like composable disaggregated infrastructure or composable infrastructure come in.
22:45 IH: The third area really is our ability to drive better performing applications and removing inefficiencies across the stack really on the server. So, whether this is starting with the operating systems, kernels, drivers, libraries, all the way to the applications. If you take SSDs, for example, they present traditionally a well abstracted and familiar block interface. And this block interface is great for end-user computing, laptops, even personal workstations and so on. But as you get into the data center, the scale really starts to matter a lot, and all these inefficiencies begin to really add up. So, the ability for us to remove duplications and reduce inefficiencies begin to yield improvements around things like durability, things like better endurance, and things like even higher performance that's consistent, whether you're doing reads and writes, for example, at the same time.
So, Zoned Storage, for example, is one technology we're very excited about that delivers all of these advancements. And we're excited to be announcing a new data center-class drive that is compatible with ZNS, which is now all part of NVMe -- it's all open standards.
24:15 DS: Very, very interesting. Now, you also mentioned going from the core cloud to the edge to the endpoint, to the end-user devices. Data architectures across this spectrum, what's new, what's happening from the core to the edge?
24:34 IH: It's very interesting the amount of change that the industry at-large is going through, Siva. Let's take video gaming as an example, and it's a very exciting time for gaming, especially as we look at things like cloud-hosted games.
Today, you can instantly gain access to the latest titles in cloud gaming from your mobile device. So, now, if we look at what's really enabling this experience, starting with the data center core, what you really see over there is a collection of console boards, in some cases there are all within what looks like a specialty server, it could be a 2U server housing as many as eight of these consoles. And right above that, you'll see a set of switches that are providing virtualization capabilities. Right on top of that, you'll see VMs or containers that are talking to these switches that are actually also connected to cloud storage, and this is where all the games are stored. We're seeing that being mostly flash due to performance reason and scalability reasons, and so on. Along with that, you also see control plane functionality there with the ability to spin things up and down to match the workloads and to match the needs of the specific games that you're playing.
26:00 IH: So, what we're seeing there in terms of requirements for storage is more NVMe, again, due to its mostly performance reasons. We're seeing a lot of advanced telemetry that enables continuous tuning for the storage. We're seeing a variety of form factors from U.2 to E1.S, E1.L and so on.
And as we make our way out to the edge, and this is where, as a gamer, this is the first point of connection that you'll get. The first thing that you see is a CDN or a content delivery network, and this is where you get a lot of the data cached, specifically the static data and the data that doesn't require rendering, for example, and so on. This is a great area for some of the higher density flash like QLC and, in the future, maybe 5 bits per cell and beyond.
26:53 IH: And what we're seeing over there as well is, certain requirements around low power, a lot of these edge locations are very power-constrained. We're seeing requirements around performance with regards to consistency. You have a smaller overall number of storage units, so the ability to spread the load across many units becomes limited and, therefore, consistently being able to deliver performance becomes even more critical. We see a lot of dense form factors from EDSFF, E1.L and so on, and we also see a variety of environmental requirements. Temperatures ranging from minus 40o to plus 80 o Celsius are really commonplace in the edge in that case.
27:43 DS: So, we have covered a vast ground. You started with Moore's Law, scaling, and limitations and compute desegregation, and we have gone from the core to the edge architectures. We came back in and we talked about what's happening in the cloud itself with respect to the data architectures, and then we went ahead and talked about the networking part of it, with NVMe over Fabrics.
Pulling all this together is the centrality of data, the proliferation of data, and the fact that we are able to store -- and storage becomes the big part of the data center. Data center, data center footprint, data center capacity is driven by storage. The capital spending of large cloud data centers is dominated by how much they need to spend on storage, so this is what we call storage at the center of this data revolution.
28:46 DS: So, we heard from experts within Western Digital on the centrality of storage, the scaling of flash, how that is enabling this vast amount of data to be stored, the operating systems such as Zoned Storage, the security and the security operations that need to be done to maintain this data, and then all of the evolution in the architectures both at the core and at the edge to accommodate this volume of data.
This is an exciting period in storage industry. Western Digital is doing its part to take our moral responsibility to ensure that we are providing you with the solutions that you need to access and create value out of data.
Performance, Simplicity and Innovation: The Essentials of a Modern SAN –NetApp
Designing Powerful AI Systems with NVMe, PCIe® and Logical Volumes –Flash Memory Summit
Hands-on Testing of Persistent Memory's Effects on Analytics Performance –Flash Memory Summit
Analyzing the Effects of Storage on AI Workloads –Flash Memory Summit
Dig Deeper on Flash memory
Experts caution low NAND prices won't keep array prices down
By: Dave Raffo
IBM DS8882F converges array and mainframe in one rack
IBM DS8880 arrays lift mainframe archiving to the cloud
RRAM or ReRAM (resistive RAM)
Optimizing Storage Architectures for Edge Computing: 5 Design Considerations –Western Digital
Choosing a modern, flexible, simple infrastructure solution –Pure Storage
IBM fleshes out flash and looks to the next solid ... – ComputerWeekly.com
Hybrid flash array roundup 2016: The Big Six – ComputerWeekly.com
IBM all-flash family gets cloud and enterprise A9000 ... – ComputerWeekly.com

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Former President Abdullah Gül on April 28 ruled out running for the Turkish Presidency in June, dousing fevered speculation that he would challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
"There is no longer any question of my candidacy," Gül told reporters, citing a lack of "broad consensus" between opposition parties for the fact he will not stand.
Erdoğan announced early presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24 instead of November 2019 and rumors were rife that Gül would run against him.
Erdoğan and Gül founded the AKP with others in 2001. Gül was president between 2007 and 2014 during Erdoğan's time as prime minister, and after Gül stepped down in 2014 Erdoğan was elected as president.
Gül said Saadet (Felicity) Party leader Temel Karamollaoğlu had independently sought to rally supporters behind the former president.
"I had said that if there was a wide consensus, I would not shy away from doing my bit," he added.
Meanwhile, last week the main opposition Republian People's Party (CHP), with whom the Felicity Party have been holding talks for a possible alliance, denied rumors that it had ever considered Gül as a candidate.
"Enough. We are fed up with all the speculations," CHP parliamentary group chair Özgür Özel tweeted on April 25.
"The only objective here is to create debates and lower morale in the CHP. The CHP has never put Abdullah Gül's name on the table. It has not done so now and it will not do so in the future," the post read.
Gül has generally abstained from politics since 2014, a point he again stressed on April 28.
"We are too busy with reciprocal personal attacks and political maneuvering, rather than what is good for Turkey ... Turkey unfortunately does not have a positive agenda. And in this environment we are heading for elections," he said.


Never miss another great deal from your favorite store! Get an access to the latest promo code, top deals and special offers for sitbackandrelax.com.au. Always be ahead of the best offers as we list an up-to-date deals from sitbackandrelax.com.au. Simply click on the button to reveal the promo code and you'll be directed to a new window. Continue shopping, and when you picked the product you wish to purchase, checkout and don't forget to enter the promo code to enjoy your savings!
You can buy the Wing Mesh Office Chair for only $220. It is very comfortable and it is able to support your back properly. It also comes with a moulded seat form and armrests to make you feel more comfortable. You can use this for you office or at home and it is available in black, green, blue and red.
Make sure that the height of your desk is just right when you use the Straightline Wind-Up Height Adjustable Desk. It can be yours for only $510.00 and it is available in white. The height can be adjusted from 660 mm to 1060 mm and it also comes with a 10 year warranty on the frame. Multiple sizes for the top are also available and you would not need any power to be able to adjust or wind up the height.
Make sure that you do not strain your fingers while you type with the use of the Ergotight Wireless Compact Keyboard. It only costs $135.95 and you can use it with the numeric keyboard on the left, right or center of the keyboard.
Those who are in need of commercial equipment or furniture can easily find them at Sit Back & Relax. They have been offering there service for over 15 years and they manufacture and design their own products as well as sell iconic furniture from different brands. With the help of the 7 different manufacturing facilities in New Zealand and Australia, they are able to ship your orders in their best price and fast turnaround time. They have a team of physiotherapists and ergonomist who work with furniture designers to provide the best possible furniture. They offer free seating trials that will be delivered to your office as well as advice on what to get depending on your needs. They also have online videos that will guide and advice you on ergonomic chairs and you can find what they sell at sitbackandrelax.com.au. You can visit this site regularly to catch their latest sales, discounts and promos.
FAQ about Sit Back and Relax coupon codes.
Q: Where should I use my Sit Back and Relax coupons?
A: If we have codes listed for Sit Back and Relax at the moment, you can use them at sitbackandrelax.com.au.
Q: I'm unable to find a code to use at Sit Back and Relax. Is there anything I can do?
Q: I've come across a promotional code to use at Sit Back and Relax and it isn't listed on Oz-Coupons.com, what should I do?


When looking at a head, the stiffness, weight and durability are important elements. As with lacrosse sticks, completely different positions require custom-made tools. A defender will likely want a flatter scoop and stiffer head as a result of it is better for checking, whereas attackers and midfielders will need a extra rounded scoop and a flexible head that offers them more management for catching and passing. Goalies can have sticks with pockets which can be much deeper than the opposite gamers on the sphere.
Lacrosse Goalie Gloves - You may have to improve to goalie gloves. The gloves you use to play attack won't provide the safety you will need when dealing with pictures. In addition to stronger padding to guard your palms, the goalie gloves have a reinforced thumb to stop damage. Worth:While it is true that the perfect lacrosse sticks tend to cost a bit extra, informal players can get away with a cheaper stick. In case you're new to the game and also you assume you are going to like it, we suggest choosing a reasonably priced stick that may see you through just a few seasons, after which you'll in all probability need to improve.
Apart from this premium-degree offensive stick, East Coast Dyes also offers a wide variety of different lacrosse sticks. Though a little bit expensive the Powell Lacrosse is a superb selection for all gamers from beginners to advanced gamers. We strive to offer you one of the best info out there about all lacrosse related matters including evaluations on prime coaching tools, tips about how to improve as a lacrosse player in addition to guides to assist newbies start playing lacrosse.
Girls's lacrosse and intercrosse are played with very minimal gear. Both variations of the game are played with very minimal contact so gamers solely wear trainers and gloves (choice), eye safety depending on the participant and naturally their stick. The important thing difference between men's lacrosse sticks and women's lacrosse sticks is that of the length and diameter of the shafts ( 5 ).
Is it legal?Highschool, youth, and school stage lacrosse leagues have completely different guidelines for legality If a lacrosse stick is labeled as common," it's authorized for all levels. NCAA authorized sticks are appropriate for faculty play however not for youth or highschool, and those labeled as authorized for all ranges besides NCAA are suitable for highschool and youth.
A lacrosse game starts with a face-off in the course of the field, area or flooring. Two players face to face who're attempting to win possession of the ball. Once the official blows the whistle the players battle it out using totally different techniques or simply energy their means over the opponent to realize possession. Once the ball is possessed, the workforce cradles, passes or dodges their way to the opposing groups web so as to get a objective. After each aim the ball is brought to the middle once more for one more face-off. Face-off additionally start each period of quarter.
Lacrosse is a quick-transferring, fun sport to play and watch. Though it's good to have the appropriate protective pads, eye gear, and uniform, your lacrosse stick is essentially the most of important piece of apparatus you'll own as a result of it is your weapon on the sphere. Your lacrosse stick is what lets you seize and cradle the ball so you can shield it from your opponents. Your stick can also be what permits you to be sure that you land the ball in the aim so you can rating winning points on your staff. Without a good lacrosse stick, you might be like a fish out of water.
Lacrosse is a sport performed by two opposing teams with a rubber ball and an extended stick referred to as crosse. Sporting a mouthpiece protects your jaw, mouth, and enamel when you occur to get hit within the face by a ball, stick, or player. Sphere: An imaginary area, roughly 18 cm (seven inches) which surrounds a player's head. No stick checks towards the head are allowed to break the sphere. The Brine Dynasty Rise lacrosse stick is the very best of two worlds for newcomers and some intermediate players. It not solely offers you the maintain and handle of a Brine Stick, but it surely also does not go heavy on the wallet both. This Brine stick offers a wider scoop space to allow for brand new players to get a feel for grabbing free balls.


text:
People's Balita Showbiz
Event, Movie, Showbiz
'Food Lore: Island of Dreams' Premieres Worldwide, 'Untrue' Debuts Internationally in Tokyo Int'l Film Fest
BY: Rohn Romulo
Two Filipino productions were screened for the first time internationally at the 32nd Tokyo International Film Festival in Japan (TIFFJP).
Erik Matti's "Food Lore: Island of Dreams" was part of the World Focus Powered by Aniplex Inc. lineup, while Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo's "Untrue" was included in The Japan Foundation Asia Center presents CROSSCUT ASIA #06: Fantastic Southeast Asia.
"Island of Dreams," which is part of HBO Asia's food anthology series "Food Lore," had its world premiere on October 30 with a subsequent screening the day after. The Matti-directed episode aims to showcase Philippine culture by highlighting local cuisine. It stars Angeli Bayani, Yul Servo, Ina Feleo, and Joey Marquez. Aside from "Island of Dreams," the Food Lore Vietnamese episode "He Serves Fish, She Eats Flower" of Phan Đăng Di was also shown at the TIFFJP. "Food Lore," with executive producer Eric Khoo at the helm, has started its run on HBO Asia. The Philippine episode was aired on November 3.
Meanwhile, "Untrue" by Bernardo was shown to international moviegoers on October 29, followed by another screening on October 31. The international debut of "Untrue" comes after its run at the QCinema International Film Festival in October where it was the opening film. The suspense thriller stars Cristine Reyes and Xian Lim.
"What I like is doing psychological thrillers, because you can see a person and kill that person. With horror, there are so many entities and demons, I don't know how to kill them," Bernardo commented during "The Discreet Charm of Girl's Horror Talk." Bernardo was a guest speaker together with fellow Filipina writer-director Antoinette Jadaone and Laotian-American director Mattie Do at the said CROSSCUT ASIA #06: Fantastic Southeast Asia symposium.
Aside from "Food Lore: Island of Dreams" and "Untrue," the other Filipino films that premiered globally at the TIFFJP 2019 were "Motel Acacia" by Bradley Liew in the Asian Future section and "Mañanita" by Paul Soriano as part of the Main Competition.
Four more Filipino movies were screened at this year's TIFFJP at the Toho Cinemas in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo. These are "The Halt (Ang Hupa)" by Lav Diaz, "Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay" by Jadaone, "Mindanao" by Brillante Ma Mendoza, and Matti's second TIFFJP 2019 production, "The Entity (Kuwaresma)."
The TIFFJP was held from October 28 to November 5.
peoplesbalitashowbiz Nov 8, 2019 Nov 8, 2019 Event, featured, Food Lore, Movie, Showbiz, Untrue
Previous Previous post: 'Mañanita' Star Bela Padilla Shines at Tokyo Film Fest
Next Next post: "Last Christmas" — A Romantic Comedy Set to the Songs of George Michael
Alden Richards Dingdong Dantes Event featured Hollywood Maine Mendoza Marian Rivera Movie Music News Politics Sharon Cuneta Showbiz TV Victor Magtanggol


text:
Voivod Lives: Michel "Away" Langevin on Lineups, Lemmy and Keeping the Band Alive
Left to right: Rocky, Chewy, Snake and Away of Voivod. (Photo courtesy of Century Media)
For nearly 35 years, Voivod has created some of the most esoteric sounds in Metal. As recently discussed at length on this site, the band's upcoming EP, Post Society (Century Media), is one of their strongest releases and an essential addition to a discography that has never once disappointed. Through lineup changes (including a stint with former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted in the 2000s), experiments in musical direction (the band's mid-to-late-'90s Hardcore trio phase) and even death (the tragic passing of original guitarist Denis "Piggy" D'Amour in 2005), Voivod continues to exceed expectations and guide listeners to new sonic territories.
Since the very beginning, the band's aural assault has been anchored by drummer and artist Michel "Away" Langevin, the only member of the band to appear on every Voivod release. Currently, he is joined by original singer Denis "Snake" Bélanger (who returned to the band in 2002 after nearly a decade away), guitarist Dan "Chewy" Mongrain and new bassist Dominic "Rocky" Laroche (who replaced original bassist Jean-Yves "Blacky" Thériault after he left Voivod for a second time after returning for the band's previous effort, 2013's Target Earth.) In addition to his work with Voivod, Away released the intriguing 2013 field recordings CD Cities (Utech Records) and is currently involved in a variety of projects including the band Tau Cross with Rob "The Baron" Miller of Amebix.
I recently had the pleasure of connecting with Away to discuss Post Society, Voivod's current lineup, the band's debt to Motorhead and what has kept this underground institution alive and thriving for more than three decades.
It's been a couple of years since Target Earth was released. What led you guys to decide to do an EP now as opposed to doing a full-length album a little bit further down the road as the follow-up to the last record?
We had a lot of touring and didn't have much time to record, unfortunately. We had to write in the bus and record between tours. We had the idea of releasing split seven inches and an EP and such to sell at the merch booth and eventually write another batch of songs and compile everything into one album. It will probably be ready either at the end of this year or early next year, I would say.
How indicative is Post Society of what we can expect to hear on the next full-length album?
I think where we're heading for right now is probably a little more Prog Rock than the Jason years. We were already going towards Progressive Metal for Target Earth, but I think we seem to be pushing the limits of what we can do in terms of Progressive Metal for the new material. We don't really overthink the music we're writing; we try to create music that we want to play right now. It's definitely the ingredients of what we've learned along the way and what is on the [past] albums with a new touch from Rocky and Chewy.
Chewy's been with you for some time now. How has his addition to the band and his creative input enabled Voivod to carry on and move forward to this point?
It's really amazing because we knew he could perform the material we wrote with Piggy perfectly, but to write material and keep the spirit of Voivod intact is another thing. When we started to write Target Earth, we realized he was full-on Voivod in every way. It's so Voivodian, what he writes. Snake and I really feel at home. With the addition of Rocky, who is a childhood friend of Chewy's, it's the perfect team because Snake and I met when we were kids. It's a very good lineup right now; it's pretty efficient. With Rocky and Chewy, it's funny because their first show was Voivod, then they bought guitars – and now they are in Voivod! (laughs) They were like 13 back then.
Like many fans, I was really excited to see Blacky return a few years ago. Unfortunately, that wasn't meant to be. What led to that change in personnel?
A different point of view regarding how the band should be managed. Blacky is very much a do-it-yourself type of guy, which is very respectable, but the three other members in the band didn't agree on the fact that the band should be self-managed. Blacky parted ways with us; we hope for the best for the guy. It's sad, but we had a pretty good six years with him and did great stuff, a very good album and lots of touring. This is the fifth lineup right now; we just have to move on. It's really hard to keep a band together for decades. People leave the band, people unfortunately pass away and so on. But I think we're pretty lucky, actually. I've been on every album for, I don't know, 33 years, and every time we go on tour, people are very loyal to us and show up. It is great to have such a long career.
As you said, you're the only member who's been on every Voivod album. You experienced Voivod with Snake and of course without him as well. Having lived in the band in both situations, how would you compare the two incarnations? What do you think Snake brings to the band that is unique to that version of Voivod?
Definitely the Punk element in the voice. It's something of an interesting nature to Voivod that probably went missing when we were functioning as a Hardcore trio, so that's one thing. Also, mixing the Sci-Fi concept with street-oriented lyrics is his thing. That's something that really adds to the band, but I must say that I'm proud of every lineup and what we've released with those lineups. It was great to be with Jason, and it was great to be with [former bassist/vocalist] Eric [Forrest]. Whenever we cross paths, they come on stage and jam with us. It's like a big family; it's really great.
I really enjoyed your Cities solo album, which was actually on my Best of 2013 list. Do you have any plans to pursue other projects of that nature?
I still do a lot of field recordings. If I release another one, it's probably going to be on Utech, but it might be on vinyl because I'm not sure if Utech are doing CDs anymore. I do lots of field recordings on tour around the planet. I've always been obsessed with tapes, collage, field recording and random sounds. Piggy got me into it, actually, when we were teenagers. He was listening to a lot of Stockhausen and stuff like that. All the early intros of the shows and some of the interludes on the albums were made with tape manipulations by Piggy. He really got me into it, and I never stopped listening to that weird stuff.
One of the highlights of Post Society for me is your cover of "Silver Machine," which I know was recorded and announced before Lemmy's passing. Obviously, you guys toured with Motorhead, and you covered Motorhead in the early days. What was that band's greatest impact on you as a musician?
It's definitely the band that had the most impact on Voivod. We were fans of Discharge and Venom and all that, but Motorhead was really the focus of Voivod in the sense that I totally copied 'Philthy Animal' Taylor, and Snake's vocals are really influenced by Lemmy's vocals. Of course, Piggy was a huge fan of 'Fast' Eddie; actually, Piggy's first nickname was 'Fast Piggy.' (laughs) Motorhead was really the example for us. It was just heavier than everything, especially at the end of the '70s and very early '80s. It was the basis for everyone who wanted to be heavy. All of a sudden, everyone wanted to be heavier than Motorhead, then all of a sudden, everybody wanted to be heavier than Slayer and so on and so on. It turned into blast beats! (laughs)
How were you first introduced to Hawkwind?
Again, this is all stuff that Piggy was aware of in the '70s. We were two or three years younger than him, and he really introduced us to weird Progressive Rock and German Krautrock and all that. Hawkwind has definitely always been one of my favorites, along with Gong. When we did the last sessions for the new EP, we heard a lot about cancelations of shows on the Motorhead 40th Anniversary Tour. We started to worry about Lemmy. While in the studio, we decided to do 'Silver Machine.' We did it really quick; we learned it in the studio, winged it and tried our best. But it was definitely to pay homage to Lemmy. Of course, we were not expecting him to pass away; we just felt it was time to pay tribute to him.
Being in a band for nearly 35 years is quite an accomplishment, especially in today's business. What continues to make Voivod work?
It's a really tough question. One aspect that is probably still relevant is the dystopian concept. A lot of the lyrics were based on articles in either Omni or Discover from the '80s, and they were trying to project into the future. It turns out that, on many points, they were right. Not only that, we were really influenced by the anarchist Punk and Hardcore, like Crass, Discharge and Conflict. They also would write about the destruction of Earth and all that. I think a lot of attention is directed towards old school Thrash Metal nowadays because most of these people talked about the same nuclear fears and all that. In terms of having people being so loyal to us year after year, it's really hard to say. I'm in a tough position, because we'll show up to a city where people will tell us, 'You're the greatest band on Earth or in the universe,' but we're still underground. We just keep going in the parallel underground dimension year after year. It's really hard for me to take a step back and look at Voivod and think objectively about it; it's strange. But I'm very grateful because I have a great life in the sense that I spend half my time either touring or recording with Voivod and the other half doing art for other bands, so it's perfect.
*Portions of this interview were edited slightly for clarity.
Post Society is out February 26 on Century Media.
Voivod US Tour Dates
Permanent Youth: A Night in the Life of Michael Mo...
From Sabbath to Headspace: Inside Adam Wakeman's M...
"You're Not Alone:" Steve Zing Speaks Out on Depre...
Living outside the Lines: A Chat with YOUTH
Voivod Lives: Michel "Away" Langevin on Lineups, L...