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Microsoft has unveiled its latest gadget in the “controller wars” a motion-sensing device codenamed “Project Natal” which promises to give hands-free control to a wide variety of games. The product demonstration from creative director Kudo Tsunoda at E3 certainly seemed to impress the crowd.
At first glance, the device – a black box that sits by your TV and watches your movements – could be likened to a next-generation cross between Sony’s “Eye Toy” and Nintendo’s Wii controller. Making use of state-of-the-art 3D motion-capture technology, Natal can translate the user’s movements into those of an on-screen 3D avatar, with no need for wearable components and no user manipulation of a physical controller of any kind. Microsoft even boast that Natal can handle multiple players at the same time using facial recognition technology to identify individual players in a room and even log them into Xbox Live automatically.
While publicly stating that all of the Natal software was developed in-house, Microsoft has been more coy about where the hardware comes from. However, as Microsoft recently purchased a 43% stake in 3DV Systems, an Israeli technology outfit with cool 3D motion-sensor technology, it doesn’t take a genius to join the dots. Indeed, there had been plenty of previous speculation that Microsoft might be interested in 3DV precisely in order to create a Wii-busting next-gen control system.
The Natal hardware incorporates several key components: an RGB camera, an infrared camera and a multi-array microphone. The two cameras combined give the system the ability to identify players and track their movements. The microphone is there to allow voice commands or other audio input without the need for a headset. Whilst this seemed to work fine in the demonstration, one has to wonder how well this might work in a noisy environment with background music or other sounds in the room.
The crowd certainly seemed impressed and the technology does indeed seem to be a real step forward from existing console control mechanisms. Tsunoda was keen to stress that the system is pretty fault-tolerant and will be able to handle occlusions (e.g. someone walking in front of the sensor and obscuring part of a player), changes of player (by recognizing the shape and face of the new player) and varied lighting conditions. It sounds a little too good to be true, but if Microsoft can pull it off, they could have a winner on their hands. Feedback from journalists who tried the device at E3 has been largely positive; the message seems to be “believe the hype”. Tsunoda indicated that 3rd party developers have just received their Natal development kits, but so far there is no word from Microsoft on when we should expect to see the final Natal hardware, or any Natal-capable games available for sale.
Read more at CNet


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Almost a year ago, the People’s Car Project launched in China to garner ideas for concepts that would further be developed by German automaker, Volkswagen. Continue Reading...
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Laden with power yet light with carbon fiber, the Lamborghini Urus debuted ahead of the Beijing Auto Show yesterday much to many people’s delight. Bragging an impressive 600 hp from an undisclosed engine, the company says its SUV concept will be priced less than the Gallardo and Aventador and aimed to sell around 3,000 units per year. Continue Reading...
The Lamborghini Urus SUV Concept couldn’t remain a mystery for very long. Just a couple of days ago, photos of the exotic SUV leaked onto the Internet and we even got treated to a teaser video ahead of its 2012 Beijing Motor Show debut. Now the Italian exotic automaker has made the Urus official, with the Lamborghini… Continue Reading...
The Volkswagen E-Bugster Concept debuted back at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show, showing off an electric, modified Beetle that could be getting closer to reality. Now the E-Bugster Concept is dropping its top, revealing a Speedster variant that is heading to the 2012 Auto China Show in Beijing. The topless E-Bugster Concept shows off the… Continue Reading...
Toyota will be heading to this year’s Auto China Beijing show with a new concept car, releasing two teaser images prior to its debut. The popular blue shade that Toyota normally associates to its hybrid vehicles hints that the upcoming concept will either be a hybrid or electric vehicle. In fact, it’s believed to be… Continue Reading...
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Apple stock recovers
Apple (AAPL) stock rose 4.27% on Friday and closed at $148.26. Friday’s gain of more than 4% follows the significant decline of around 10% on January 3 after the company announced waning iPhone sales in China (MCHI) (FXI) and slashed its revenue and gross margin guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2019, which ended in December.
According to IHS analyst Samuel Pierson, Apple’s stock price rebounded due to panic-buying as investors with short positions in the stock wanted to make profits from Thursday’s decline. Apple’s stock gain was driven by the overall market rally on Friday after encouraging employment reports and the Fed’s patience related to rate hikes.
Apple guidance slashed
On Wednesday, Apple’s CEO reduced its guidance and stated that it now expects sales of approximately $84 billion for the holiday quarter, lower than the Wall Street consensus of $91.3 billion. On November 1, Apple gave a sales outlook in the range of $89 billion to $93 billion for the December quarter.
The iPhone maker has also trimmed its forecast for the gross margin and operating expenses for the first quarter. The company now expects margins to be ~38%, which is on the low end of the previous guidance range of 38% to 38.5%. Similarly, operating expenses are projected to be approximately $8.7 billion, which is at the lower end of the earlier guided range of $8.7 billion to $8.8 billion for the quarter ending in December.
Apple has been struggling for the past few months amid weakening demand for iPhones, which is the primary driver of the company’s revenues. Also, US (SPY)-China trade war concerns, the $29 iPhone battery replacement program, and fewer iPhone upgrades than anticipated have also dented iPhone sales. Apple also expects foreign exchange costs and weakness in emerging markets to hurt the sales in the holiday quarter. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, iPhone sales grew 29% YoY to $37.2 billion.


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More music-download sites are beginning to offer music encoded in the high-resolution MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) format, the companies announced at CES.
Beginning Jan. 11, 7digital’s web store will offer indie-label content to consumers, and on Jan. 8, Onkyomusic.com will offer the content. Onkyomusic.com uses 7digital’s download platform. 7digital also promises to make MQA content available for download and streaming to all of its 46 platform users in 33 countries.
The 7digital MQA catalog consists initially of hundreds of songs available a la carte from Nordic label 2L, but 7digital “expects thousands within the first few months as we will be adding labels weekly,” a spokesperson told TWICE.
For its part, 2L itself began offering MQA downloads on Monday from its web store to consumers worldwide. The label specializes in classical, jazz, art music, chorale music, and folk and has offered SACD and Blu-ray audio discs. The label’s download store, available in the U.S., offers more than 120 MQA albums, 80 originating in DXD resolution.
The MQA end-to-end technology is promoted as delivering master-quality audio performance in files that are smaller than today’s high-resolution music files. The technology is also said to make high-resolution music streaming practical.
Music from analog, PCM and DSD masters can be MQA-encoded and placed inside any lossless-audio “container” such as FLAC, ALAC or WAV.
MQA inventor MQA Ltd., led by Meridian’s Bob Stuart, earlier this week announced that the Jay Z-led Tidal streaming service is expected to launch MQA streaming in the first half. And in product developments, MQA Ltd. said Auralic, Aurender and Lenbrook’s Bluesound and NAD are joining the list of companies planning MQA-decoding audio products.


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By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS
Saturated fats found in butter, fatty meats and tropical oils raise LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, which contributes to heart disease, and they should be replaced with healthier options.
It seems a simple statement. But reaction to it – and the American Heart Association advisory issued last month reaffirming that longstanding advice – has been anything but simple. Headlines, blogs and social media posts have run the gamut on how the recommendations are being interpreted.
“[The reaction has] gotten so many people confused, and that’s unfortunate,” said Penny M. Kris-Etherton, Ph.D., R.D., Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at Penn State University who serves as a volunteer on the AHA’s Nutrition Committee.
The advisory, an analysis of more than 100 published research studies dating as far back as the 1950s, pointed out there are great benefits to replacing saturated fats – such as coconut oil, butter, beef fat or palm oil – with healthier polyunsaturated fats. Some studies found this could help lower cardiovascular disease risk as much as some cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, the advisory authors noted.
The AHA has been issuing dietary recommendations for decades. In 1961, it recommended for the first time that vegetable oils replace saturated fats. Governments, including in the United States and internationally, as well as other nonprofits have been cautioning about saturated fats, too, said Kris-Etherton.
“With saturated fats,” she said, “it’s not just the American Heart Association, but the American College of Cardiology and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”
The U.S. government issued guidelines discouraging saturated fats as far back as 1980, and every five years thereafter. And a review of many years of evidence of the link between heart disease and saturated fats was published in 2012. The authors of the analysis published in the independent not-for-profit Cochrane Reviews concluded that people should continue to limit saturated fats for health reasons. Another such report with a similar conclusion was published in 2015.
The basis for the AHA’s advice about nutrition is a systematic review of the best available scientific information, conducted by volunteer committees of expert researchers and physicians. More information on the AHA’s statements and guidelines development is available online.
Healthy living guidelines issued by the AHA and the American College of Cardiology in November 2013 were a major scientific undertaking, involving some of the nation’s top scientists. For five years, they studied existing research and then issued recommendations that help healthcare professionals treat patients.
The scientists concluded that saturated fat should be no more than 5 percent to 6 percent of daily calories. So, for a diet of 2,000 calories a day, that would mean no more than 120 of them should come from saturated fats. That’s about 13 grams of saturated fats a day.
“It’s one thing to ignore the science, but not paying attention to saturated fats ignores the reality of how consumers are eating today and how having excess saturated fat in the diet does not leave room for healthy foods,” Kris-Etherton said.
American diets are filled with staples of pizza, burgers and sandwiches, she said. “It’s not about suggesting they switch to a deprivation diet, but looking at healthy alternatives for the saturated fats in their diet — foods with fats that meet current dietary guidelines, such as avocados, hummus and nut butters,” she said.
The 2013 AHA/ACC guidelines recommend limiting saturated fats as part of an overall healthy diet. It advises consumers to focus on a diet that emphasizes vegetables, fruits and whole grains; includes low-fat dairy products, poultry, fish, legumes, non-tropical vegetable oils and nuts; and limits intake of saturated fats, sodium, sweets, sugar-sweetened beverages and red meats.
The most recent advisory, the one causing a not-so-new wave of attention, reaffirms that longstanding advice. Here are some of the scientific highlights:
— Randomized controlled trials that lowered intake of dietary saturated fat and replaced it with polyunsaturated vegetable oil reduced cardiovascular disease by about 30 percent – similar to results achieved by some cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins.
— Prospective observational studies in many populations showed that a lower intake of saturated fat with a higher intake of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat is associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
— Several studies found that coconut oil – which is predominantly saturated fat but has been widely touted recently as healthy – raised LDL cholesterol to the same degree as other saturated fats found in butter, beef fat and palm oil.
— Replacing saturated fat with mostly refined carbohydrate and sugars does not lower rates of heart disease, but replacing these fats with whole grains is associated with lower rates. This indicates that saturated fat and refined carbohydrate are equally bad relative to heart disease risk, Kris-Etherton said.
- American Heart Association Presidential Advisory on Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease
- Advisory: Replacing saturated fat with healthier fat could lower cardiovascular risks
- Saturated fats: Why all the hubbub over coconuts?
- Recommended Dietary Pattern to Achieve Adherence to the AHA/ACC Guidelines
- AHA experts reiterate importance of limiting saturated fats
- Saturated fat facts
What about the high level of trans fat in vegetable oils? This increases bad cholesterol and decreases good cholesterol, which increases heart desease. Vegetable oil is over very processed, that can’t be healthy for you.
Please link the studies for coconut oil. You mentioned it raises LDL cholesterol but you said nothing about cholesterol ratio which is probably a better measure?
The AMA should be recommending a full plant based diet. Animal products in any form are link to heart disease and cancer, as well as many other conditions, such as diabetes, and even asthma. Of course with financial ties to large pharmaceutical companies, you wouldn’t want to give advice that may keep people healthy, as that’s not advantageous to the AHA. Lets face it, greed takes presedence over the health of a nation.
MIS INFORMATION AS EXPECTED.
Why would they suggest limiting saturated fats instead of eliminating them? Seems like they are keenly aware that Americans would freak out if they were told to stop eating saturated fats from animal and tropical oils.
Very interesting!!..None of the health and medical professionals are saying how dairy and meat products are not healthy in the long run!…they want to load you up on meds to cause one side effect after another…so sad…


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John Lewis is looking to double sales growth in its fashion division this year, on the back of a 9.1% rise reported this week.
Fashion was one of the strongest components of John Lewis’ 13.5% rise in gross sales, to £3.05bn in the year to January 26, powering particularly in online and click and collect channels. Fashion outperformed the market overall, with brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren performing particularly well and collaborations including Somerset by Alice Temperley driving growth.
In the five weeks of its current financial year, the business has delivered 16% sales growth, or 13.7% on a like-for-like basis.
John Lewis managing director Andy Street said the department store had even performed well during the snow-filled fortnight that damaged Debenhams, recording a 4% like-for-like growth, which he attributed to its dominant omnichannel presence.
As a result of a strong start to 2013, Street said he believed he could “double our business in fashion”, continuing to outperform the wider market.
But he was modest about John Lewis’ potential for market leadership.
“At the moment we have a teen position in fashion,” he said. “The fact we grew at 9% meant we were well ahead of the market, so we have definitely gone up, but couldn’t say exactly where we stand.
“We believe we can double our business in fashion – but even at that level we wont be a market leader. But for that discerning customer who is after good design, we have strength through that.”
Omnichannel will play a strong part in that future growth, Street added, noting that fashion had outperformed the group-wide 40% rise of 2012.
Overall, online now makes up 25% of sales, which Street described as “an inflection point rather than a tipping point” regarding its store portfolio.
“We only have 39 shops, and they are big shops in strategic locations – we are not supporting 200-odd shops throughout the country, so we haven’t got the same issues as lots of our competitors,” he explained.


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Ripple is the latest in a retinue of challengers to bitcoin’s dominance, being by far the most commercially successful of any blockchain company.
This is largely thanks to its transformative offering to financial service institutions.
Despite this, many people inside and outside the cryptocurrency community have been left asking what the company Ripple actually is. What is fuelling the tremendous growth to a $151bn market capitalisation from nowhere, as recently as 2013?
The first wave of interest in the currency ripple, which uses the symbol XRP, came following its appreciation in value more than 38 times over, leaving online forums awash with a new class of not-so-humble bragging ripple millionaires – who purchased the cryptocurrency in its nascent stages and soon hit the cyber jackpot.
But why? Explanation lies in the fundamentals of the business: it provides a fast, cheap and scalable means of transaction.
Much like bitcoin, ripple provides a borderless payment mechanism for capital to flow from one party to another without the need for a financial intermediary.
Traditional global intermediary systems like Swift slow down transaction processes to a snail’s pace, usually forcing one or both parties involved in transactions to undergo expensive and time-consuming compliance processes that take days instead of seconds.
In an age of high-speed internet and instant telecommunications, such delays seem barely explicable, let alone permissible in the hyper-competitive global payments business.
Ripple’s enterprise solution, RippleNet, allows financial services institutions – and by proxy their customers – to transfer assets seamlessly to one another, reducing the time taken to transact from days to fractions of a second, for a sliver of the cost.
Ripple also has significantly greater capacity than close relative bitcoin, managing over 2,500 transactions per second, compared to bitcoin’s lethargic five per second. Its transaction fees are noticeably smaller too, pricing in at 1/1600 of costly bitcoin transactions.
In less than a month, ripple dethroned second-placing ethereum to challenge bitcoin as supreme leader of the digital asset universe, to the shock of those who monitor the digital marketplace. Its success can be linked back to the underlying RippleNet system, which has proven tantalising not just to investors, but to the entire payments industry.
Major credit card companies, including American Express, signed up in droves to ripple’s highspeed digital payment rail. These new clients of RippleNet demonstrate its interoperability with existing banking infrastructure. As its client book grows, Ripple bears the crown for being the largest of any blockchain business, boasting 250 staff and counting.
There is one catch to this apparently perfect alternative to bitcoin – banks don’t need a cryptocurrency to conduct transactions. XRP is, in fact, a digital token mostly owned by Ripple Labs Inc.
Transaction participants don’t need XRP to make a transaction, and most large financial services institutions will likely never use digital XRP tokens. It is, after all, just a token.
Ripple Labs has created a protocol that financial institutions can trade any asset on. XRP, however, remains an entirely separate entity and seemingly exists as a speculative tool in the highly speculative cryptocurrency market.
Each new customer announced by parent Ripple Labs drives XRP’s price further upward, and has ensured steady investor capital flows into the cryptocurrency.
The only problem is XRP prices ought to bear no semblance to companies using RippleNet, as they are separate entities under one roof. In the wild west of cryptocurrencies, this important detail is overlooked.
December saw XRP appreciate over 1,200 per cent off the back of these announcements, augmented by the rumour that the digital currency would be added to Coinbase, the popular application that allows retail investors to trade their real-world cash for cryptocurrency.
But this rumour failed to turn into reality, and the price tanked. The old adage applies here – buy the rumour, sell the news.
As a long-term investment, there is a huge risk that some XRP investors realise their tokens have little utility and begin dumping the currency, cashing in desired profits and leaving those less fortunate holding the bag.
Any player in this market ought to remain mindful. Ripple is a disruptive payments company which happens to have a cryptocurrency. When compared to its cryptographic cousins, it was the first to build a viable enterprise offering specifically for the world’s financial services institutions.
This is demonstrative of the commercial ingenuity and entrepreneurship of Ripple Labs’ founders.
Those same founders can rest much easier than other cryptocurrency creators in the knowledge that should cryptocurrency markets rise or fall, they will at least have a business left should the bubble burst.


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Facebook said Monday it is restoring three ads by ‘s presidential campaign calling for breaking up large tech companies that were earlier removed. A Facebook spokesman said the ads were removed because they included an image of the Facebook logo, which is against the company’s policies.
Politico reported Monday the three ads had been taken down, with a message saying the ad had been removed “because it goes against Facebook’s advertising policies.” The ads included a video touting Warren’s to use federal antitrust law to break up tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google.
“Three companies have vast power over our economy and our democracy. Facebook, Amazon, and Google,” the posts said. “We all use them. But in their rise to power, they’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field in their favor.”
In anat the South by Southwest festival in Texas last week, Warren said companies like Facebook and Amazon “are eating up little, tiny businesses, startups, and competing unfairly.”
Reacting to the ads’ removal Monday night, Warren tweeted the episode was evidence of why her proposal is needed.
“Curious why I think [Facebook] has too much power? Let’s start with their ability to shut down a debate over whether [Facebook] has too much power,” she wrote. “Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media marketplace that isn’t dominated by a single censor.”
The ads featured a video about the proposal, that included the Facebook logo, and users were prompted to sign up to receive updates from the Warren campaign. Each ad had been seen less than 5,000 times as of Monday evening with less than $100 spent to promote each post, according to data from Facebook’s Ad Archive.
Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, said the ads were removed “because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo.”
“In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads,” Stone said in a statement. Facebook’s advertising policies prohibit the use of the company’s corporate logo in ads.
Stone said the ads appeared to have been removed automatically, and pointed to dozens of Warren campaign ads about her proposal that didn’t use the Facebook logo and were unaffected.


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Research analysts Gartner published their latest quarterly smartphone sales report on Tuesday.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone sales remained flat during Q3 2011 according to Gartner. Android’s growth saw the operating hit 52% market share worldwide with Symbian at 16.9% in second place, shortly followed by Apple’s iOS in third with 15%. Microsoft managed to secure just 1.5% market share in Q3 2011, down from a 2.7% market share in the same period during 2010. Android benefited from a number of mass-market offerings according to Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. The operating system reached 52% market share thanks to “a weaker competitive environment and the lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems such as Windows Phone 7 and RIM,” Cozza said.
Gartner predicts that Microsoft’s Windows Phone turnaround won’t take place until the second half of 2012, mainly due to Nokia’s products. “Heavy marketing from both Nokia and Microsoft to push the new Lumia devices should bring more improvement in the fourth quarter of 2011,” said Gartner.
Gartner has previously predicted that worldwide smartphone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 57% increase from 2010. Android is expected to further hold its lead and account for 49% market shareby 2012. Microsoft’s Windows Phone is expected to increase to 10.8% by 2012, up from 4.2% in 2010. Gartner has also previously predicted that Microsoft will cement a strong second place market share by 2015. The research analysts believe Microsoft’s Windows Phone will account for 19.5% market share by 2015, above Apple’s 17.2%. Windows Phone will also account for 215 million worldwide shipments by 2015.


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Japanese shares fell, with the Topix index (TPX) paring its weekly advance, as earnings reports and forecasts by companies from Sony Corp. to Mitsui Chemicals Inc. disappointed investors.
Electronics exporter Sony and Mitsui Chemicals tumbled at least 8.1 percent after cutting earnings outlooks. Ricoh Co. fell 6.7 percent after the maker of printers and digital cameras reported operating profit that missed its forecast. Panasonic Corp., the maker of Viera televisions, jumped 6.2 percent after doubling its net-income outlook. Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd., which makes machinery and ships, surged 7.6 percent as operating profit beat analyst estimates.
The Topix slipped 0.9 percent to 1,183.03 at the close of trading in Tokyo, trimming this week’s gain to 0.4 percent. All but four of the 33 industry groups retreated. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average lost 0.9 percent to 14,201.57. The yen strengthened 0.5 percent to 97.92 per dollar.
“The winners and losers of this earnings season are becoming clear to see, and their share prices are reacting pretty extremely,” said Seiichiro Iwamoto, who helps oversee the equivalent of $33 billion at Mizuho Asset Management Co. “Optimism about across-the board benefits from a weaker yen is starting to wane, and now it’s about which companies can truly push forward on their own merits.”
The Topix was October’s worst performer among 24 developed markets tracked by Bloomberg, rising 0.01 percent. Japanese shares are still the biggest gainers among the markets in 2013 amid optimism Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies and unprecedented monetary easing from the Bank of Japan will lead the country out of deflation. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 4.5 percent last month, with the Stoxx Europe 600 Index up 3.8 percent.
More than 1,100 companies on the 1,744-member Topix announce results in the two weeks through Nov. 7, the peak for earnings season, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Of the 385 that have reported this quarter and for which Bloomberg had estimates, 61 percent posted sales that beat expectations.
Earnings per share for companies on the gauge are expected to increase 41 percent from the previous quarter, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Sony plunged 11 percent to 1,668 yen, the biggest single drag on the Topix. The company unexpectedly lowered its full-year profit forecast by 40 percent on stalling demand for TVs and digital cameras, and as films flopped at the box office.
Mitsui Chemicals dropped 8.1 percent to 239 yen, its biggest decline since May 23 and the second-biggest drop on the Nikkei 225. The company slashed its net income forecast for the year by 80 percent to 1 billion yen, while also reducing its operating profit outlook by 11 percent.
Ricoh (7752) declined 6.7 percent to 964 yen, the most since June, after operating profit of 45.9 billion yen missed its own forecast of 56 billion yen.
Panasonic jumped 6.2 percent to 1,046 yen, its highest close since April 2011, after doubling its net income forecast to 100 billion yen, with sales projected to rise to 7.4 trillion yen.
Sumitomo Heavy surged 7.6 percent to 466 yen, the biggest jump on the Nikkei 225. The company posted operating profit of 8.4 billion yen for the first half of this fiscal year, beating the 5.6 billion yen average estimate of three analysts compiled by Bloomberg.
Seiko Epson Corp. soared 25 percent after the printer maker more than doubled its full-year net-income outlook.
Futures on the S&P 500 gained 0.2 percent today. The measure dropped 0.4 percent yesterday, capping its first two-day slide in three weeks, on speculation the Federal Reserve will scale back stimulus in coming months.
The Topix’s 30-day historic volatility was at 16.37 today, down from its five-year median of 19.18. Volume was 4.2 percent above the 30-day average today.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Kitanaka in Tokyo at email@example.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah McDonald at firstname.lastname@example.org


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Deezer, one of the most used music streaming platforms in the world and based in France, is planning to expand its catalog. Now, the company is targeting content dedicated to relaxation and mood, in short, meditation. At the moment, the application is only available on iOS devices, but the company is already developing the Android version.
Zen is the name of the new Deezer application, which will host at least 600 exclusive content located in different categories. To access the app, users will be able to create a new account or log in with their Deezer account. In a platform community post they suggest that Zen content will be linked to your mood (happy, neutral, bad). Likewise, the content can be consumed depending on your objectives; For example: reducing stress, improving your communication, resting better, etc. The truth is that in the content you will find relaxing sounds, even guided chapters on breathing and yoga.
It may interest you: Spotify will launch separate feeds for music and podcasts
But this is not the first time that the new Deezer catalog has been discussed. In April this year, when Deezer revealed its first earnings report after the company went public in April, CEO Jeronimo Folgueira argued that Deezer was planning to launch the new meditation app. At that time Folgueira maintained that the app would have its debut in 2023; So far, the release date hasn’t been changed, but we don’t know the exact day and month either.
The company hopes to recover (and increase) its subscribers with this new line of content that they will launch soon. Well, in the results of the first half of this year, the company pointed out that they lost at least 300,000 users. As soon as Zen makes its debut, it will start to compete with companies like Calm and Headspace Health.


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Not Even Tilray Is Impervious To This Cannabis Industry Trend: Pot Giant Is Latest To Lay Off Staff
Tilray Brands (NASDAQ:TLRY), will lay off 49 employees at medical cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facility in Cantanhede, Portugal, reported Jornal de Notícias.
The layoffs, which will cut the workforce by 25%, are expected to occur in the coming three months. A company source clarified that Tilray is not in “economic difficulties”, but rather “making cost cuts” in view of the current market.
Tilray’s net revenue decreased 7% in Q2 2023 when it reported a net loss of $61.6 million as compared to Q2 2022's net income of $5.8 million.
“We are close to achieving our increased annualized cost savings target of $130 million, consistent with our commitment to building a lean, efficient, and dynamic business that will realize tangible and immediate benefits as the market improves,” stated Irwin Simon, Tilray’s chairman and CEO, in the earnings report.
A Growing Industry Trend
Tilray joins many cannabis companies that have recently laid off employees as part of cost-saving measures.
Columbia Care Inc (OTCQX:CCHWF) is laying off numerous workers at its Saxton facility, per data from the Department of Labor & Industry; 73 employees will be let go effective February 28.
LeafLink, an online wholesale cannabis platform, laid off 80 workers on December 15th.
Curaleaf Holdings (OTCQX:CURLF) laid off around 220 people in November.
WM Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MAPS) recently cut 25% of its workforce, amounting to 175 employees.
Trulieve Inc. (OTCQX:TCNNF) laid off an unspecified number of workers at its McKeesport growing facility in Pennsylvania.
Leafly (NASDAQ:LFLY) laid off 21% of its workforce in October, claiming annual savings of $16 million.
The Flowr Corp (OTCEM:FLWPF) cut 40% of its workforce in an effort to save the company from bankruptcy.
Aurora Cannabis (NASDAQ:ACB) cut 12% of its global workforce in a scheme to save up to $69 million.
Get your daily dose of cannabis news on Benzinga Cannabis. Don’t miss out on any important developments in the industry.
Photo by CRYSTALWEED cannabis on Unsplash
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Most fitness centers rarely open early or stay open late. Even fewer fitness centers open their facilities for use by teens, 14 and older. Next month, 24Seven Family Fitness & Tanning Center will open its first Hinesville gym, making a good workout possible for the whole family around the clock.
The new fitness center, which will be in the Magnolia Oaks shopping center at Highway 196 West and Airport Road, is expected to open for business by mid-March. Manager and personal trainer Justin Huitt said 24Seven has nine other facilities in the Savannah area and one in Richmond Hill.
“There are no other gyms that offer 24-hour access like us,” Huitt said. “Another big benefit we offer is free child care while you’re working out.”
The facilities are only staffed until around 8 p.m., he said. For late-night and early-morning use, members are issued a keychain access card they can swipe to enter the facility. The member has about two seconds to open the door after swiping the card.
Teens who are 14 and older are allowed to use the facilities, which have weight-lifting equipment, treadmills, stationary bicycles, an aerobics studio and more. He noted, however, teens under age 16 must be accompanied by an adult.
Huitt emphasized that all 11 fitness centers are owned by military veterans who understand the difficulties of squeezing in a good workout around their long duty day. He said they also understand the stresses of military family members, who have to squeeze in their exercise time between their own work hours and taking care of children. The child-care option would be a big drawing point for these family members.
“We expect the majority of our customers at this gym to be military or military family members,” Huitt said. “Soldiers whose units don’t conduct daily (physical training) can come here before they start their duty day or in the evenings to work off the stress of their duty day.”
Huitt said he is helping to manage three other 24Seven facilities, including the one in Richmond Hill. However, when the 5,000-square foot Hinesville facility opens, he will give his full attention to that gym.
“We really don’t want our members coming in the gym and not being greeted by a staff member,” he said, explaining that he expects to put in a lot of hours for several months. “These first few months are going be very important. We want to build a relationship with our customers as we build our membership base.”
Customers already are able to sign up for membership, Huitt said. They can use one of the other facilities until the Hinesville center opens. One of his newest customers, Elyssa Spicer, said she is looking forward to the fitness center opening.
“I’m interested in joining their fitness center because it’s so close to where I live and work,” Spicer said. “(Their membership) rates are very reasonable, too, and they’re open 24/7. Oh, and I like the idea of child care available right there at the gym.”
As a personal trainer, Huitt said his first objective in working with new clients is to “clean up” their diets before working on cardiovascular exercises or weight lifting.
“I’d say about 70 percent of results in a workout come from your diet,” he said. “The diet I put my clients on — you could stand in a corner and lose weight. One thing I emphasize is no processed foods. Most people don’t even know where to look for healthy foods, but they’re usually the ones on the outside perimeter or produce section of a grocery store.”
Huitt said he’s looking forward to working with and serving new clients and community members at the Hinesville fitness center.
For more information about 24Seven Family Fitness & Tanning Center, call Huitt at 912-428-8647.


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Looks like Verizon's alleged backdoor wheeling-and-dealing was for naught, as the FCC's basically reaffirmed the open access provisions on the "C" chunk of the 700Mhz spectrum up for auction in what looks to be the actual final set of bidding rules. This should effectively end the ongoing back-and-forth venom-spitting between Verizon and Google, at least about the rules themselves.The C block has a reserve price of at least $4.63 billion, which coincidentally matches what Google has pledged to spend on the auction. If it's not met, it goes up for auction again, sans open access provisions. Also, the value of entire spectrum up for grabs is now capped at $10 billion, with companies making less than $40 million picking up a discount on their bids. Finally, the auction's been pushed back by about a week to Jan. 24, probably to give companies more time to find their checkbook, since it looks to be a cash-flinging bloodbath. [Electronista]
FCC Keeps Open Access Provisions for 700Mhz Auction, Delays It
Trending Stories Right Now
This week, anyone looking to hack their Switch or run their own software on it got some good news and more good news. An exploit has been released that opens the homebrew floodgates - and because it's hardware-based, Nintendo can't just patch it.
It's not exactly a bold statement to say that tyres are an important feature of a car. But despite rather needing them to get your automobile moving, some people don't know a whole lot about them or how to look after them properly. So let's change that! Here's just a few things you should know about tyres to get you started.


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Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland's prime minister, has said that the state of Covid-19 epidemic threat may be lifted as of January 2023.
VIDEO: Concerned about the amount of plastic waste being produced by disposable 3-ply face masks, the students came up with a device called XTRUDE ZERO which disinfects the face masks before turning them into a reusable multipurpose polymer pellet that can be subsequently used again in the manufacture of a wide range of plastic parts.
The Polish health minister has recommended that rules requiring the wearing of face masks in indoor public spaces should be maintained.
Poles will no longer have to wear facemasks outdoors from May 15, but will still have to maintain social distancing rules.
From May 4 shopping malls, art galleries, museums and building material and furniture stores will reopen. Hotels will be able to resume operations on May 8 but only at 50-percent capacity, and restaurants, cafes and bars on May 15 but only for customers sitting outside. May 15 will also see lifting of facemasks in public.
After developing 3D printed, biodegradable eco-mask adapters for the health service, Professor Marek Macko (right) will now turn his corn waste and proprietary blend polymer mix into adaptors for the fire service, before making them commercially available.
The Polish government has decided to activate temporary hospitals in nine Polish provinces due to the third wave of the Covid-19 epidemic, the health minister announced on Wednesday.
Swapping their PPE clothing (personal protective equipment) for more elaborate costumes, the medics from Małopolska dressed up to portray well-known and obscure characters including Thumbelina, Hercules, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast as well as scenes recreated from ‘The Miser’, ‘Adventures of a Cheating Flea’ and the Polish modern fairy tale ‘Who will cheer up the unlucky Rhino?’.
Face mask regulations, raising the number of hospital beds for COVID-19 cases and the startup of a 'Stop Covid' application are among the anti-epidemic measures proposed on Wednesday in the Sejm (lower house) by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
The calculator consists of a simple questionnaire in which users are asked whether they wear a mask and about the material that it is made of, with options including cotton, linen and surgical masks. Based on this, the tool calculates the mask’s effectiveness, expressed as a percentage.


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For solar power, the future looks bright (pg. 2)
An unlikely savior
With SunPower running out of money in 2000, Swanson went to his old colleague. Rodgers was intrigued. But before committing, he set out to get a handle on the business, looking into putting solar cells on the roof of Cypress's new headquarters. After running the numbers, he figured that they would generate enough electricity to pay for themselves in about seven years; he ordered panels from Sanyo and Shell.
SunPower did not yet have a commercial product, but Rodgers admired its work for Helios - the plane set a world altitude record of 96,863 feet before its unfortunate demise (unrelated to its solar panels), and he was impressed by the efficiency ratings of its cells. He was not impressed by the company's manufacturing operation, however. "No insult intended - they didn't have a clue how to run a fab," he says. But Cypress, which has three efficient chip plants in the U.S. and the Philippines, knew how to fix that.
The timing was perfect. Researchers at Bell Labs developed solar PV cells in the 1950s. They had been deployed since the 1970s, mostly off the grid. But it took the Japanese and German subsidies of the 1990s to make solar a business; since then, economies of scale have driven down costs as prices for natural gas have risen.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fan of solar, soon became California's governor; last year he signed a law that calls for a million solar roofs and provides $3.2 billion in rebates for solar customers.
The industry, meanwhile, revamped its business model. For years companies, including SunPower, aimed to develop large-scale solar farms in remote, sunny locations to compete with big fossil-fuel generators that sell electricity to utilities. Solar thermal power plants, which use the sun's heat to turn water into steam that drives turbines, continue to build utility-scale plants.
But solar PV panels are now mostly sold to businesses and homeowners. "The killer app that changed the industry was the realization that the natural role for PV is distributed power," Swanson explains. "You can generate the electricity where it's needed. You don't need a big solar farm in the desert anymore."
This is obvious now, but it was far from clear when Rodgers first asked Cypress's board of directors to invest in SunPower. They declined. So he loaned the company $750,000 of his own money on the understanding that an extreme makeover would follow. His message was unambiguous: "You're going to have to shut down your American fab and put one in a low-cost area. You're going to have to lose half of your employees, some of whom you love. You're going to have to bring in new management. And if you are willing to do all of that, then and only then will you turn it into a real company."
It took some doing. "We had to make a very rapid transition from a handmade, boutique solar-cell mentality to full-blown, state-of-the-art manufacturing," Swanson says. The company transplanted its manufacturing line from Palo Alto to a Cypress plant in Texas and then to a newly built fab in a suburb of Manila, disrupting the lives of engineers and their families. Rodgers sent some of his best Cypress executives over to SunPower, including Tom Werner, a longtime technology executive and Ironman triathlete who became CEO.
In 2002, Rodgers convinced Cypress's board to get in on this solar action - and the company made its first $9 million investment in SunPower. Two years later Rodgers persuaded his board to buy the rest of the company. It turned out to be a smart move: Cypress has spent $168 million to buy SunPower and invest in plant, equipment, and startup costs.
The 2005 IPO, as noted, was a hit. Last May, Cypress sold 7.5 million shares, bringing in $437 million. As of June 30, Cypress held about 44.5 million shares - representing about 55% of SunPower on a diluted basis - worth about $3.6 billion. The amazing upshot here is that the company's holdings in SunPower account for more than 80% of the market value of Cypress, which has been in business since 1982.
A sunny dispostion
It must be noted that SunPower's valuation reflects a very rosy view of its future. Shares are trading at about 32 times projected 2008 earnings. Besides Cypress, major shareholders include Legg Mason, BlackRock Group, Deutsche Bank, and Janus. "You have mainstream, sophisticated, long-term investors buying into the SunPower business plan," Werner says.
One reason for the optimism is that when you take federal and state subsidies into account, solar is already competitive. SunPower offers some commercial customers a deal that sounds too good to be true - no upfront costs, instant savings on their electricity bills, and long-term price stability.
That's because of a financing mechanism known as a power purchase agreement, or PPA, that's increasingly popular in the solar business. Instead of making a capital investment of $1 million or more in solar panels, a big customer like Wal-Mart can sign a ten- or 20-year agreement to buy at a fixed price electricity generated by the solar panels on its roof. Ownership of the solar installation is retained by SunPower or sold to an institutional investor.
No wonder retail customers are clamoring for more: When Wal-Mart entered into PPAs with SunPower, BP Solar, and Sun Edison covering a total of 22 sites in California and Hawaii, David Ozment, Wal-Mart's director of energy, said the retailer would begin saving money "as soon as the first day of operation."
Can homeowners obtain such risk-free deals? Sadly - annoyingly - no. They can, however, recoup some of their capital costs in states with "net metering," a policy that requires utilities to credit their customers for electricity they supply to the grid. So, for example, on a sunny day, if a house is empty and not running air conditioning, the homeowner's excess electricity goes back to the grid, and the utility prorates the bill. The meter literally spins in reverse. (For a home solar primer, see "This old solar-optimized house.")
Because demand for electricity frequently peaks during hot summer days, utilities benefit, since they can buy solar electricity from thousands of homeowners and won't need as many power plants. That at least is the radical vision of solar enthusiasts, who note that the supply of solar energy is inexhaustible and available to literally every nation under the sun.
Indeed, to overcome a major drawback of solar power - that it's available only when the sun is shining - some dream of building a global power grid so that the sunny side of the earth could supply the dark.
Well, maybe someday. But the more immediate task for SunPower and its rivals is to drive down costs so that solar energy can compete with fossil fuels and nuclear power without subsidies. Rodgers welcomes that fight - he'd like the government out of the energy business entirely. Werner says SunPower can cut its costs in half by 2012, getting the price of solar down to about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour - reaching grid parity with much of the nation.
For Swanson, who has spent his adult life working on solar power, more is at stake than the company's future. He's looked at the science of climate change and has visions of diasporas, conflicts, and starvation. "Given the huge downside risk," he says, "I can't understand how one cannot be worried."
Late in September, more than 10,000 people gathered in Long Beach, Calif., for the solar industry's big annual conference. (The same event drew only 800 people just three years ago.) They listened to celebrities like Ted Turner and Larry Hagman, pondered a dizzying array of solar products and technologies, and buzzed about takeover rumors and rising stock prices.
Could the excitement over solar power turn into another bubble? Credit Suisse's Cavalier, who's been in the energy business for 24 years, doesn't think so. "The reason I do not believe it is a bubble is that I honestly believe that climate change and greenhouse gases are not going away," he says. "And there are a lot of cars yet to be driven and a lot of lights still to be lit all around the world."


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The non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are slowly taking over the crypto world. Although it is a great way of empowering artists, some believe that the new market is creating a catastrophic impact on the environment, But, the true scale of this impact cannot be understood for now.
NFTs are similar to digital certificates of ownership for a tweet, an artwork, or a promise to farm 1,000 acres in a manner that ensures carbon is trapped in the ground. Fungible items like oil and money are generic and interchangeable. On their part, the non-fungible tokens have unique lines of code that integrate them with unique items.
Artists are not at fault and the ones that manage to sell their artwork are benefiting from the NFTs financially. The arts industry has suffered extensively in the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethereum is the cryptocurrency on which most of the NFT sales are based on. In that context, the price of Ethereum is linked to the amount of demand/supply there is.
When a currency is growing, there is a lot of demand that leads to an abrupt increase in transactions. For now, time will tell whether acquiring NFTs for Beeple’s digital collage for $69M or Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9M were great investments or investors fell to hype like the case of tulipmania of the 1600s.
The more urgent issue for many currently is: what are the climate effects of tethering the sales of virtual items on different blockchains? Will the exchange of non-fungible tokens erect a huge hurdle in the path to saving the global warming planet.
But, before the recent heat sparked over NFTs, the blockchain-supported tokens were getting embraced by some people that were climate champions. They include two Pacific Northwest-based efforts that are working to set up trustworthy platforms for the carbon exchanges: a startup called Nori and the nonprofit Blockchain for Climate Foundation.
The founder and executive director of the Vancouver, B.C.-based foundation, Joseph Pallant, said:
“I am a booster of Ethereum and blockchain, and I’m a carbon professional.”
NFTs exist as a part of the global computing networks known as blockchains, and most of them run on the Ethereum blockchain. Users are familiar with blockchains as the foundation that powers cryptos like Ether and Bitcoin. Ether can be termed as Ethereum’s fungible token.
Climate comes into the picture since bitcoin, ethereum, and the other “proof of work” blockchains need a lot of energy to run computer servers that mine and produce crypto and do other computational transactions and tasks. ‘Minting’ NFTs is one of the tasks.
While BTC launched over ten years ago, the emergence of crypto art NFTs has brought in planetary effects of the industry to the front, highlighting a growing rift between those in support and those against the blockchain.
A senior policy associate at the nonprofit Northwest Energy Coalition, Fred Heutte, stated:
“It’s an incredibly inefficient way to do things, where people are constantly being sucked into these manias.”
Blockchains may have many positive uses but the bottom line comes to this: What is the carbon footprint for an NFT of a dancing cat video, and what happens when many people want one?
Reviewing The Carbon Footprints
As the non-fungible tokens started to cause ripples in the crypto space, members of the art community also started to raise alarms about their energy impacts. Some of the artists also opted out of NFT auctions entirely and others pledged to offset their climate effects.
The pro and con groups began lobbying extensively varying numbers for the carbon emissions of the transactions. One site started in 2014, Digiconomist, calculates the energy and carbon footprints of Bitcoin and Ethereum networks entirely.
ETH’s approximate annual energy use is over 30 Terawatt hours (TWh), which is an amount that is at par with the power that is consumed by Ireland. Interestingly, its carbon footprint is nearly 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. By comparison, Seattle’s yearly emissions, are around 5.8 million metric tons.
Another site on GitHub goes a notch higher. It integrates the Digiconomist data with other sources to determine the effect of the crypto-art platforms only. The biggest is OpenSea that by late March had done over 800,000 transactions.
It translated to 61,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide that the EPA equates to driving around 13,000 passenger cars for a whole year. Notably, the nine biggest crypto-art exchanges combined produced a carbon output of 22,000 vehicles. Carbon.fyi is a platform that also calculates Ethereum-driven emissions.
Pallant believes that these numbers are quite reasonable approximations but adds a slight wrinkle to the NFT calculations. It is not yet clear whether every transaction normally needs more power or is somehow folded into other operations that are also happening simultaneously. Yet, increased demand for NFTs can push up energy use, according to Pallant. He said:
“The Ethereum blockchain and all its transactions are always happening, regardless of adding NFT users or not.”
The Energy Consumption Of NFTs Is Astounding
NFTs are unique which means that the more artists mint NFTs, the more transactions are executed. Also, every bid, canceled bid, and purchase is considered a transaction. This means that an NFT is quite transaction-heavy.
Due to the nature of the NFTs transactions, they consume more energy than the regular crypto transactions in numbers, one NFT transaction consumes 82 kWh, with 48 kg of CO2 emitted. That amount is over 2.3 times higher than a normal transaction. Notably, an NFT sale from start to finish may comprise hundreds of transactions
Analysts estimate that an average NFT takes up 340 kWh of energy and emits up to 211 kg of CO2. That compares to flying for around two hours or driving for up to 620miles. The worst-case scenario is that some of the NFTs will never be sold which will make artists lose money while simultaneously harming the planet permanently.
NFTs And Offsets
Many now wonder what an organization trying to slow climate change is doing in the world of non-fungible tokens. When Gambill helped launch Seattle-based Nori in 2017, he was seeking to eliminate atmospheric carbon to help in fighting global warming. He set up a marketplace that matches farmers who adopt practices that are known to sequester carbon in the soil with consumers and institutions eager to mitigate their carbon emissions.
There was a verification of the farmers’ compliance with this program. To document these offsets and ensure that the carbon benefits are sold just once, Nori uses Ethereum to mint an NFT that it refers to as a Nori Removal Tonne (NRT).
The use of blockchain serves as an entirely transparent and secure database to track all sales and, in turn, prevent users from selling an offset twice. Gambill said:
“Carbon markets are plagued with issues of double-counting, especially in international trading. It’s a silly problem that is easily solved with double-entry bookkeeping, but thus far the international community has not agreed to do so. That’s exactly why blockchain is so useful here. NFTs are provably unique assets, and so using an NFT to represent a unique carbon certificate is the perfect application for solving this problem.”
NRTs are sold by cash or even credit cards. However, Nori plans to launch its crypto sometime later this year. It is now interesting in a bit of circularity since Gambill wants to make Nori marketplace carbon neutral by acquiring offsets to cover the emissions that are generated by his marketplace for selling these offsets.
At some point, Nori’s carbon debt may get considerably small if and when Ethereum shifts to Ethereum 2.0.
Proof Of Stake
BTC, Ethereum, and other major cryptos are consuming huge amounts of energy. The reason behind it is due to the way they operate transactions using the “proof of work” strategy to validate their systems.
Bitcoin is known by many to be a power hog and by design, it is expected to get hungrier over time since it is essentially built that way. As more crypto gets mined, it becomes harder to pull more Bitcoin from the system, hence needing more energy and more powerful servers and yielding a meager payoff.
Some of the fuel that is used to powers different blockchains is acquired from clean sources like solar, wind, and hydropower from dams like the case of the Northwest. But, the demand from the other industries will ramp up just like the case of building heating and cooling, transportation, and other power consumers move from fossil fuels to the energy grid.
Currently, Digiconomist puts Bitcoin’s yearly carbon footprint alongside Hong Kong and its energy use is at the same levels as the Philippines. A recent Bank of America report put these numbers considerably high, with carbon footprint surpassing American Airlines. It is also larger than oil giant Conoco Phillips, while its energy use is nearly the same as the Netherlands.
Another source from the University of Cambridge provides a wide range of bitcoin energy estimates; its mid-level guess is that the crypto’s power use almost matches Norway. Bitcoin’s critics like Bill Gates appear to also criticize the environmental impact of creating all the NFTs that are taking the crypto world over by storm.
But, Elon Musk thinks otherwise and his company, Tesla, already $1.5 billion worth of bitcoins earlier in the year and is accepting BTC payments for their vehicles.
Ethereum produces energy and carbon footprints that are nearly 33% of Bitcoin’s, based on analysis by Digiconomist. But, the footprint might reduce after the Ethereum community pledged to move from proof of work to the proof of stake system.
That effort has, however, been delayed for many years and with the emergence of NFTs, things might get worst for now. Even Vitalik Buterin has lamented his creation’s consumption of energy and a growing carbon footprint. Buterin said in 2019 in IEEE Spectrum:
“That’s just a huge waste of resources, even if you don’t believe that pollution and carbon dioxide are an issue. There are real consumers — real people — whose need for electricity is being displaced by this stuff.”
The IEEE story states that the launch of Ethereum 2.0 might slash its energy use by nearly 99%.
Galvanization And Mobilization
Thousand- and million-dollar NFT auctions started creating climate controversy which made Pallant enter the conversation. A March 8 post on the Blockchain for Climate Foundation site read:
“It occurred that we might be in a good position to shed some light on the topic of NFT carbon footprints, and perhaps help concerned folks in making decisions about the space.”
Pallant has been working since 2004 to create carbon markets where users buy and sell credits that mitigate carbon emissions. He later launched the foundation in 2017 aiming to put the Paris Agreement on the blockchain.
The foundation’s target is to develop tools on the blockchain for the world to have a transparent, public, and universal ledger where countries can trade and account for carbon credits to reach emission targets set by that Paris Agreement.
Using blockchain prevents the double-counting of these projects while simultaneously offering support for climate-friendly efforts globally. For instance, Canada could finance a Kenyan geothermal power project and the deal would then be accounted for through the transfer of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The spotlight on the Nyan Cat and Grimes video NFTs might be dominated by confusion but it helps the cause nonetheless. Pallant mentioned:
“Because more interest in NFTs begets more understanding in Ethereum as well. We have the task of explaining to decision-makers at national governments that we want to use this fancy, newfangled tool to engage with the Paris Agreement.”
Now, the NFT controversy can offer a wake-up call for the Ethereum blockchain developers to step up their carbon game. Pallant concluded:
“I really hope this is an opportunity to galvanize and mobilize members of the Ethereum community, to inspire people young and old to find solutions and build solutions to help beat climate change.”


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Smosh is closing in on becoming the first YouTube channel to reach eight digit subscribers, and one of the duo’s secondary channels is now looking to use their influence to power an entire network of creators. Smosh has launched the Smosh Games Alliance, which will consist of videos from aspiring gamers all over YouTube.
A video on the Smosh Games channel gives a nice introduction to the program, which is specifically noted as an alliance even though “that’s just a fancy word for network.” Basically, gamers are invited to join the Alliance, where they can be featured on its new channel. More enticingly, a weekly show on Smosh Games will spotlight certain videos from the Alliance in front of millions of viewers.
We recently explored how guest hosting on the popular YouTube show =3 caused Sarah Silverman’s YouTube channel to gain a huge number of new subscribers. Theoretically, the Smosh Games Alliance now allows previously unknown gamers to benefit from the ‘Smosh bump’, where a one-time guest appearance on Smosh Games leads to a long-lasting increase in audience size. Of course, the introductory video also implies that channels featured on Smosh Games Alliance Spotlight will be both “great” and “complete s**t”, so joining the Alliance means you may be ridiculed instead of celebrated.
Channel creators who join the alliance also get free video making tips and the potential to earn cash money if their content proves popular. If you’re a gamer with a dream, now’s your chance to try and make it with all these other gaming channels on YouTube. And these ones. And these ones, too. Good luck, you’re going to need it.


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BNSF, PORT OF OAKLAND TO OPEN JOINT INTERMODAL TERMINAL
The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. and the Port of Oakland have reached an agreement for the railroad to operate the port’s newly built joint intermodal terminal.
The terminal, called the Oakland International Gateway, will open in mid-March, and includes 85-acre, near-dock capacity for 250,000 containers per year. It will also includes 13,300 feet of tracks to accommodate 410 FEUs at a time. In addition, the terminal has 10,100 feet of storage and support tracks and parking for 1,245 containers.
The cost of the terminal is $38 million, with $22.1 million from federal grants through ISTEA and TEA-21 funding.
The Oakland International Gateway will cover BNSF’s trackage rights approved by the Surface Transportation Board as part of the 1995 Union Pacific/Southern Pacific Merger Settlement Agreement.
“This facility will provide the shipping community additional capacity on the West Coast and give BNSF’s customers a direct link to our network — as opposed to a 12 mile truck dray over the highways to our intermodal facility in Richmond,” said Steve Branscum, group vice president of BNSF’s consumer products marketing.
The port estimates that the Oakland International Gateway will take about 20,000 trucks off Interstate 80 each year.


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Why fruit exporters need more support
ENTERPRISE | By Wainaina Wambu | September 15th 2021
Fruit and vegetable exporters have asked for government support to boost recovery efforts owing to the economic ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"There has been so much talk of supporting businesses and entrepreneurs recover and get the economy working again but we are getting zero support. All ministries and stakeholders need to pull up their socks so that we can prosper and empower livelihoods," said AvoVeg chief executive Nathan Loyd Ndung’u.
This is as Avoveg resumes its vegetable export and in the next two weeks, the firm will also commence with mangoes export after a ban to supply to the lucrative European Union market report was lifted.
Mr Ndung’u explained that 2021 was a recovery year for the industry after the Covid-19 pandemic cut business in 2020 owing to the restrictions in movements by countries to contain the virus.
"Despite 2022 being an electioneering year, majority of entrepreneurs like us feel that the economy will fully pick up next year since there are all indications of everyone including our farmers to get the economy back on track even as we continue fighting the pandemic," he said.
The firm funds the purchase of fertilizers by farmers they source fruits from to help maintain can the quality of the exports.
Kenya had imposed a self-ban to the EU market for eight years resulting from interceptions due to fruit flies.
The lifting of the ban is big boost to thousands who rely on the mango tree for their livelihoods, with Kenya earning close to Sh5 billion in foreign exchange reserves at the peak of its export to the European market.
Jimi Wanjigi says Raila Odinga's Sh6,000 monthly stipend is unrealistic
By Jane Mugambi
- New lobby, MPs join crusade to market Raila in Mt Kenya
By Allan Mungai
- Is DP Ruto an unassailable frontrunner or mere pacesetter?
By Oscar Obonyo
- Ruto or Raila? Kiunjuri’s gamble over 2022 candidate
- Murang’a leaders endorse Peter Kenneth to deputise Raila Odinga
- Relief as friends raise Sh16 million to pay Monari's bill


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DDO's Shadowfell Conspiracy, Awesomenauts, World of Warplanes and more! - The Daily XP August 20th
Wargaming today announced the official release date for the next addition to their World War II MMO arsenal, World of Warplanes. The team have enjoyed hugely successful closed and open beta periods as over 3 million players have registered interest and almost 200 million combat flights have been recorded.
World of Warplanes will enter its official launch phase across all CIS countries on September 25th before becoming available in America and Europe on September 27th.
“In the two months since the launch of Open Beta, we’ve made a huge amount of progress,” said Oleg Gotynyan, development director of World of Warplanes. “We are extremely thankful for the feedback and data our testers provided to us through both Closed and Open Beta. They contributed a great deal to the process of helping scale the game, and we expect it to offer a deep and polished experience to both MMO fans and flight combat enthusiasts alike.”
For more information on World of Warplanes, including current planes and achievements, you can visit the official website.
The Elder Scrolls Online Release Date, Lineage II: Valiance and more! | The Daily XP December 11th
Your Daily MMO and MMORPG News for Wednesday December 11th. Today Kirk discusses The Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy XI and Lineage II: Valiance.
Lineage II: Valiance Released
NCSoft and Lineage II announces the release of Lineage II: Valiance, the new, free content expansion for the Lineage II franchise.
The Elder Scrolls Online Release Dates Revealed
Zenimax Online Studios today announced the official release dates for the PC and Mac versions of The Elder Scrolls Online with console release windows also provided.
PvP Details On The Horizon For Elder Scrolls Fans
Zenimax Online Studios recently updated the official Facebook Timeline Photo with an image suggesting players can expect to hear more information on PvP and Alliance battles in coming weeks.
Return To Final Fantasy XI For Free
While Square Enix continue to enjoy the success of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, they're not yet ready to give up on fans of the award-winning Final Fantasy XI.
Entropy Early Access, Inferno Legends, GTA Online and more! | The Daily XP December 10th
Your Daily MMO and MMORPG News for Tuesday December 10th. Today Kelsey discusses GTA Online, Inferno Legends and Entropy.
Entropy Enters Steam Early Access
Artplant, the developers of Bigpoints award-winning Battlestar Galactica Online, today announced the early access program for the exciting open-universe science-fiction MMO, Entropy.
Inferno Legend Closed Beta Begins Today
Gamebox first revealed Inferno Legend last month but a rather lackluster trailer and lack of in-game media has left many fans still wanting.
Creation Tools Coming To Grand Theft Auto Online
Rockstar Games today announced the next batch of content heading to the struggling Grand Theft Auto Online with the introduction of the highly anticipated creation tools and a new game mode.
Destiny's Release Date, Dark Age of Camelot and more! | The Daily XP December 9th
Your Daily MMO and MMORPG News for Monday December 9th. Today Nicole discusses Dark Age of Camelot, Alfheim Tales Online and Destiny.


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Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped has the scoop about a new search optimization contest from Germany.
The contest is being sponsored by a German computer magazine publisher and will use the nonsense term of "Hommingberger Gepardenforelle." Philipp goes on to say that Google.de, Yahoo.de, MSN.de and Seekport.de will be the engines used to judge positioning.
Much more in the Google Blogoscoped post: Hommingberger Gepardenforelle.
Meet Your Favorite Search Engine Watch Contributors
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Heliospectra forecasts that America’s growing public support of legalized medicinal and recreational cannabis use will push industry to more sustainable cultivation practices and cost-effective LED light strategies.
The American population’s increasing support for the legalization of cannabis has been a primary driver of the industry’s rapid growth, with the trend being validated by the Gallup Poll released in October 2016 showing that 60 percent of Americans are in favor of legalization, the highest percentage of support recorded in the 47-year trend. The accelerating momentum of support has given rise to the passage of new cannabis regulations and offered lawmakers the confidence to introduce new legislative initiatives for action, as reflected on 2016 ballots. The states considering legalization in the upcoming election include North Dakota, Arkansas and Florida for medicinal use and Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada for recreational use.
“An increase in the number of licensed greenhouses, indoor facilities and regulations will focus the industry on sustainable growing techniques and the documented data that integrated LED lighting systems and control technologies provide,” said Staffan Hillberg, CEO of Heliospectra. “Commercial cannabis cultivators recognize that the ability to dynamically adjust, monitor and customize the full light spectrum specific to plant need ensures consistent crop health, product quality and harvest results.”
Given the distinct possibility that November election results will expand licensed recreational states from four to nine in the burgeoning U.S. cannabis industry, financial and advisory firm Viridian Capital Advisors predicts that attention will now shift to operating margins, long-term profitability and business efficiencies.
“As downward pricing pressure from the commoditization of cannabis continues, growers are rapidly adopting more advanced cultivation products and processes,” explains Scott Greiper, President of Viridian Capital Advisors. “Technology solutions, including LEDs, enable cultivators to establish competitive advantage and cost-effective operations while boosting yields.”


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When a British man named Mark Mitchell bought a new iPhone in August, he discovered photos of one of the factory workers who had made it, a young Chinese woman in Shenzhen province. Sporting a pink and white striped uniform, flashing peace signs and grinning broadly at her workstation, the worker made for a perfect Apple ad. Mitchell promptly posted the pics online and soon the whole world was speculating on the mystery girl, her working conditions and whether the entire thing was a hoax. Foxconn, the assembly contractor, called the incident "a beautiful mistake," and proving that not everyone actually wants 15 minutes of fame noted that the young woman was rattled by the global attention. "She's really scared by the media," a company spokesman said of the worker, whose name was never made public. "We let her off work today so she could rest."
Next Recession dining


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Consumers often rely on reviews when shopping. According to European Commission Market Monitoring Survey 2020, 71% of the people surveyed consider that published opinions are important when choosing a holiday accommodation, for example. As a consequence, the European Commission and the EU countries –plus Iceland and Norway– have decided to carry out their sweep about deceptive practices in relation to online reviews on 223 major websites.
Thus, the study has found that two thirds of online stores, marketplaces, the reservation websites, search engines and comparison service sites analyzed raised doubts about the reliability of the reviews: in 144 of the 223 verified websites, the authorities could not confirm that these websites were doing enough to ensure that reviews are authentic, or that they were posted by consumers who actually used the product or service they were reviewing.
Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said: “Consumers often rely on reviews when buying or booking onine. I don’t want consumers to be misled: businesses on-line they must provide consumers with clear and visible information about the reliability of such reviews. Today’s results are a clear call to action.”
According to the study, 104 of the 223 websites examined do not inform consumers about how reviews are collected and processed. And only 84 websites make such information available to consumers on the review page itself, while the rest mention it in fine print, for example in their legal terms and conditions.
A total of 118 sites out of 223 did not contain information on how to prevent fake reviews. In these cases, consumers have no way to verify whether the reviews were written by consumers who actually used the product or service.
Furthermore, 176 of the 223 websites analyzed do not mention that incentivized reviews, resulting from a monetary reward, for example, are prohibited by their internal policy or, if not, how they ensure they are marked as incentivized.
In short, the consumer protection authorities concluded that at least 55% of the websites analyzed potentially violate the directive on unfair commercial practices, which requires that truthful information be presented to consumers so that they can make informed choices. Authorities also had doubts about another 18%.
From here, the national consumer authorities will contact the companies in question to rectify their websites and, if necessary, initiate enforcement actions in accordance with their national procedures.


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B Corporations are businesses that claim to meet “the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose”. (The “B” doesn’t officially stand for anything specific, but it’s widely seen as short for “beneficial”.) They are overseen by B Lab, a not-for-profit organisation that has certified more than 3,000 firms worldwide since its foundation in 2006.
To gain B Corp certification, a company must first score at least 80 points on the so-called B impact assessment (BIA). This is a detailed evaluation of how its business model and daily operations affect its employees, its customers, the community and the environment.
Once a firm scores 80, its certification is verified by B Lab’s standards analysts to ensure that its wider impact is measured as rigorously as its profits are. Certification – for which there is an annual fee – also requires the company to change its articles of association to make it a legal requirement that it considers the effects of its decisions on all these stakeholders.
Setting the bar high
“Let’s not mess around: becoming a B Corp is really hard,” stresses B Lab UK’s co-founder and chair, Charmian Love, in response to Director’s questions about the fact that only 232 British businesses have achieved certification in the five years since the US-based movement established a permanent presence in this country.
“B Corp is meant to celebrate exceptional leaders,” she says. “Not every company can be a leader, so the idea is to identify the top performers that others can emulate.”
British firms that have gained certification include the UK subsidiary of dairy giant Danone at one end of the scale and Callaly, a provider of feminine care goods that employs 15 people, at the other. But more than 70,000 businesses have used the BIA, which is available free online to those seeking an idea of what it would take for them to become B Corps.
“B Corps are the future,” says Love, who is also entrepreneur in residence at Saïd Business School, Oxford. “They might not be everywhere yet, but they’re here. The times we live in require this kind of leadership – and we have evidence to show that it works.”
The B Lab approach can be summed up as a form of stakeholder capitalism. While this school of management thought can be traced back to the 1930s, it has gained popularity in recent years. Already in 2020, the World Economic Forum has updated its Davos manifesto to include many of its key themes, while Dame Sharon White said in her first speech as chair of the John Lewis Partnership in February: “More than 10 years since the financial crisis we’re still asking: is business doing its role to create a good society, good jobs and decent pay?”
As White suggested, there has been far more talk about moving towards stakeholder capitalism than action – a situation that the B Corp movement is looking to change.
A statement of intent
Love cites three key factors that equip B Corps to achieve this goal. First, their impacts on stakeholders are independently assessed. Second, they must re-certify every three years, because “standing still in this fast- changing world is effectively going backwards”. Third, they must change their articles of association to align their legal structures with their missions.
“By making it legally explicit that it’s your duty as a director to consider shareholders as equals to other stakeholders, you alter the DNA of your business fundamentally,” she says. “We’re in a period of dramatic change regarding the role of business in society, so directors need to be tuned in to what all their core stakeholders are thinking.”
Love points to a study showing that the sales growth of consumer-focused B Corps in 2012-17 was 49 per cent compared with 15 per cent for their non-certified equivalents – and that B Corps attract twice as many applicants for jobs. But she happily acknowledges that aspiring to B Corp status isn’t the only way to deliver sustainability.
“Companies will find different paths with different bodies,” she says. “But we all share a view of wanting to help organisations go through the change that we all feel is needed in the world right now.”
To those directors still sceptical about the need to evolve, Love recommends asking customers about their views on climate change or staff about the importance of working for a firm with a purpose. Their responses, she suggests, may surprise you.
The full article can be read in the April / May 2020 issue of Director magazine
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Nobody can predict the future, but Amazon (s AMZN) thinks that when it comes to ebooks the writing is on the wall.
“We’re now seeing the transition we’ve been expecting,” CEO Jeff Bezos said in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report, released Tuesday. “After five years, ebooks is a multi-billion dollar category for us and growing fast – up approximately 70 percent last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just five percent.”
That’s impressive growth, but as the ebook transition moves forward, Amazon should worry that Kindle is not going to be the device leading the revolution. Apple (s AAPL) and iPad will cut into its growth.
Amazon has mastered the art of the press release that doesn’t say much. Several data points are missing from Bezos’s statement — here are some questions I have:
- What’s Amazon’s actual ebook revenue? The company’s worldwide media sales were $19.9 billion in 2012; what percentage of that came from ebooks, and what percentage came from print books?
- What was print book growth for the entire year — and for past years? Bezos refers to annual ebook sales, but print book sales for just one month. Print books are also starting from a much larger base; they make up over 70 percent of trade book sales in the U.S.
- Which ebook categories are growing the fastest?
- Where’s the ebook growth coming from? 70 percent growth is a lot. Is most of it coming from within the U.S. or internationally? And is it coming from owners of Amazon devices — Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets — or is it coming from iPad (s AAPL) and other tablet owners reading ebooks with Kindle apps?
Amazon’s not going to answer those questions (though I did ask them), but they’re important in part because U.S. book publishers are reporting slowing sales of adult ebooks: What was once triple-digit growth has fallen to the double digits. The revolution has also been largely limited to text-based titles — adult fiction and nonfiction — and categories like cookbooks and travel haven’t seen nearly as much growth from ebooks.
If the digital market for certain kinds of books is settling, as it appears to be, Amazon will have to find growth in other areas (though it doesn’t have to, and likely can’t, sustain 70 percent ebook growth for long). The company can expand Kindle internationally, as it’s been doing already, and it can still grab a certain number of ebook newbies.
Eventually, though, Amazon will have to tackle the genres that have remained rooted in print — children’s books and heavily illustrated books like cookbooks, coffee-table books and the huge textbook market. The company clearly sees potential on the children’s front: It’s launched new children’s book imprints and offerings like Kindle Free Time Unlimited. And Kindle Format 8 supports HTML5 and illustrated content.
But the biggest company it has to compete with in this area is Apple. Publishers of heavily illustrated content — both traditional publishers and digital-focused startups — are likely to focus on developing for iPad first, since it’s by far the most popular tablet. The next five years of the ebook revolution are not going to look like the first five.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock / Stacie Stauff Smith Photography


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Martin Lines, UK Chair, says:
The UK has signed its trade deal with Australia – and it’s exactly what we were afraid of. Our research earlier this year found many farmers do not feel supported in upholding high environmental standards and this is another blow to their confidence.
It’s a far cry from the Government’s manifesto commitment made in 2019 and a loud call to action for consumers to back UK produce and home-reared meat. Climate change has global implications and trade liberalisation should be elevating standards to match our domestic climate & biodiversity goals – not undermine them.
The government cannot credibly support sustainable food production and champion farming’s environmental stewardship while opening the door to low-welfare, high-carbon imports which will flood a marketplace ill-equipped to differentiate between high and low standards of production. Consumers and farmers alike deserve better and now, more than ever, we need mandatory food labelling of production methods.


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The Taste of Annandale will have some sweet treats on hand.
The Sweet Frog truck will offer six ice cream flavors, about 30 toppings, non-dairy sorbet, and frozen yogurt.
Franchise owners Kimberly Douglas and Jennifer Roseboro bring their Sweet Frog truck to community festivals, birthday parties, universities, schools, and church events.
“We go pretty much all over the place,” says Douglas, who left a 16 and a-half-year career with the Metro Transit Police Department in March 2022.
This is their fourth season with the Sweet Frog truck. Since ice cream is most popular in the warmer months, they operate the truck from April to the end of October.
“We’re extremely excited to be part of the Taste of Annandale,” Douglas says.
There are still slots open for restaurants and food trucks and other food vendors at the Taste of Annandale. Learn more and download an application here.


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New Government proposals to make the act of 'ripping' CD's to a home computer legal are a welcome step in the right direction but need to introduced quickly, says Steve Oliver, the ex-managing director of Music Zone and now founder and managing director of www.musicmagpie.co.uk (opens in new tab), an online store that buys and sells pre played CDs.
"These proposals are long overdue. It's always been ridiculous that consumers could potentially face copyright charges for copying CDs to their computers. Most people who use mp3 players and iPods are predominantly using their CD collections to build their digital music collection anyway so the Government should act quickly to introduce this legal clarification to stop people feeling like criminals.
"Moving tracks from their CDs to iPods also lets people keep the actual CD as a backup in case they lose their iPod or PC and it also lets them play their music in other devices or lend it to friends. Clearly, there is no difference in quality between side loading a CD on to your i-Pod and downloading a track from the internet and these proposals clear up a grey area that will finally provide some clarity and comfort for consumers.
However, Oliver does believe it is important to get the balance right between the consumption desires of the consumer and the welfare of the artists and to that end supports the Government's clarification that this digital copy must be wiped if they dispose of the CD.
Despite musicmagpie.co.uk offering music lovers what they believe to be the most convenient way to dispose of their unwanted CDs and even, if they so wish, to sell back to Magpie a CD they have bought and perhaps no longer want, Oliver insists it is entirely fair that they should be expected to lose their digital copy, if they have made one, at that point:
"We remind all our customers of this when we are purchasing their unwanted CDs as we are a responsible music loving company that wants to encourage people to try more artist's music at lower risk prices but not at the expense of effectively renting the CD and risking damaging the industry"
Oliver also stresses the belief that music fans are still paying more than they need to for their music despite Apple's announcement that it will shave 5p of the price of a music download.
The Apple price cut brings the cost of a standard download to 74p - in line with the rest of Europe - after EU regulators insisted it was unfair to charge UK consumers more than anywhere else in the world.
However, Oliver says Music lovers are still paying a lot more for their music PER track than they need to.
"There are still too many people out there who are paying more than necessary for their music and the fact is that in most cases it is less than half the price to 'side-load' an iPod with music from a pre played CD bought from an online retailer like ours than it is to purchase the entire album's tracks from say iTunes or Napster. For instance, why pay Apple £7.99 for Definitely Maybe by Oasis when you can get it for £2.99 as a fully guaranteed pre played CD from www.musicmagpie.co.uk?"


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Finally, loyalty is rewarded: Aviva to give existing customers discounts that are not available to newcomers
Aviva is testing a scheme which gives loyal customers discounts that are not available to newcomers
Long-term customers are to be rewarded for their loyalty by insurance giant Aviva.
Company boss Mark Wilson has previously criticised the industry's pricing model that rewards customers who switch every year, while those who do not see hikes to premiums.
He is now testing a scheme which gives loyal customers discounts that are not available to newcomers.
A trial is being run with 50,000 people and has proved popular so far, with Aviva hoping to take it nationwide.
Wilson said: 'Rather than putting up premiums, we want to reward loyalty. It can change the market.'
The chief executive has spoken in the past about his desire to change how insurers treat customers, saying the race to get them to switch is not in their best interests.
Last year he said: 'The market is broken. I don't like it and neither do our customers.'
The update on the loyalty scheme came as Aviva unveiled a 2 per cent rise in profits to £3.1billion and said it will buy back £500million of shares from investors.
Another £600million has been set aside to buy smaller rivals, although most deal-making is likely to be outside the UK. The dividend was raised 18 per cent to 27.4p per share.
Profits in Britain were up 13 per cent to £2.2billion, and Wilson said the success was partly due to Brexit, and was dismissive of the gloomy views of many other bosses.
He added: 'In the UK it was a strong year, which may be surprising to some doom and gloom merchants. During these uncertain times, we think there's probably been a bit of a flight to quality.'
Shares yesterday rose 0.2 per cent, or 1p, to 508.6p.
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