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Thor, the San Francisco-based blockchain project, has announced that it ceases to exist.
In an official post, David Chin, Co-Founder and CEO at Thor, stated that the team has made a number of accomplishments. One of them includes “delivering useful and accessible products for 1099 gig economy companies.”
However, Thor is quitting its operations because of low commercial success and multiple regulatory challenges. The latter made it impossible to fulfill the goals set out in Thor’s whitepaper.
“We hope that the economic environment in the future will be conducive enough to support innovation and we will have the opportunity to serve you better,” said Chin.
He continued to apologize for keeping silence and explained that “We have been working behind the scenes to explore all possible options, including finding a way to raise enough capital to face the lack of sales or finding the company a new home where our technology could benefit from more resources.”
What about the rumors?
In his announcement, Chin also summarized the rumors circulating within the community. These include suggestions that the company offered its Thor Tokens to Matthew Lawler in exchange for $10,000. Thor denies this, saying “We would like the project to continue in the hands of the right person and/or entity. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find the right fit for acquisition at this time.” Besides, Thor made it clear that Lawler reached out to them but subsequently harassed and insulted the community and team members.
Chin also explained its relations with Permian Capital Management, LLC. He emphasized that “Permian was the vehicle Thor used to exchange U.S. dollars for the funds raised, and all at no cost to Thor.” Permian had been incepted long before Thor and thus the company has not used funds to setup Permian. This would simply be illegal.
It is noteworthy that the crypto community stayed rather partial toward the news. For example, the last relevant post on Reddit is two months old. It informs that Thor added Steve Kodak to its advisory board.
Thor is not the only company which ceased its operations in the past six months. In December, ETCDEV, the leading network product development company for Ethereum Classic also closed its operations.


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Railtrack poser as shares relist
RAILTRACK investors are to be set a conundrum next week when their shares return from suspension on the Stock Exchange at what is likely to be a large discount to the Government-backed offer valuing their shares at around 255p.
Railtrack Group is set to announce a deal, perhaps as early as Monday, valuing the group at nearly £1.3bn. That includes the £500m for the rail operations from the Government's Network Rail company, £375m for its rights to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and £350m in cash reserves, with the rest made up from non-network property assets.
Railtrack will put out a circular detailing the offer, which will immediately spark the relisting of the shares suspended at 280p last autumn when ex-Transport Secretary Stephen Byers put the network into administration. However, according to grey-market experts, the shares are likely to re-open at below 200p, reflecting ongoing uncertainties about the deal and the fact that shareholders opting to take the 255p offer will not see their cash for several months.
An extraordinary general meeting to ratify the Government offer will be held early in July. Institutions holding the majority of the shares are expected to accept it.
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domain: news


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Acustom made wristbandss other ports rise, HK still has much value for shippersYour Guide To Festival Essentials It"s that time of year again. As spring settles in (albeit slowly), the summer music festival season in Denver is hard on its heels. We"ll be giving you a heads-up about some of these events as they approach-and we"ll start with the annual Westword Music Showcase, to be held June 22, 2013. Ideally, when I say "on the street," I mean somewhere that"s bustling with activity, like a festival wristbands or an arts crafts booth fair - these are great places to try these techniques to learn how to pick up women. Start a conversation with a girl about someone or something that"s around you both. Maybe someone"s wearing a really weird outfit. Or maybe there"s a cute dog that"s wearing a tutu. Share that with a girl and then you"re in a conversation with her.
Logistics industry insiders called on Hong Kong to enhance its high-end shipping services, rather than focusing so much on container throughput. Doing so, they said, would burnish its reputation as an international shipping center.
"Hong Kong should provide more high-level shipping services, including maritime arbitration and logistics, to Chinese companies investing in countries along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road," said Zhu Hanliang, managing director of Asia Container Terminals, which is based in Hong Kong.
"It"s necessary for Hong Kong to make use of its advantages instead of only paying attention to maintaining the container throughput, which shrank in recent years," he said.
Hong Kong port had the world"s most container throughput of any port from 1987 to 2004. However, in the past 10 years, it has been overtaken by Shanghai; Shenzhen, Guangdong province; and Ningbo-Zhoushan in Zhejiang province, and now ranks fifth in the world. Some have predicted it will be surpassed by Guangzhou this year.
Ma Danyang, commercial director of Cosco-HIT Terminals (Hong Kong), said the trend mainly arises from the fact that Hong Kong"s nearby ports optimized their infrastructure dramatically over the past two decades - facilities such as Yantian Port in Shenzhen and Nansha Port in Guangzhou - attracting plenty of cargo that otherwise would have been moved through Hong Kong.
M.V. Cosco Netherlands, a container ship that can carry 13,000 containers, left Yantian port on Aug 2 after stopping in Hong Kong port on Wednesday. It set sail from China in late July, heading for Europe.
"We loaded 1,662 TEUs at Yantian and only 926 in Hong Kong," said Wang Lin, the ship"s chief officer. "Most ships had to stop in Hong Kong previously, but now it"s not necessary. Both Yantian and Nansha ports have enormous berths for huge freighters to stop. However, older machines and equipment in Hong Kong"s port reduce efficiency in loading and unloading."
Asia Container Terminals" Zhu said the lower labor and land cost at the two ports also contribute to the trend, which he thought was inevitable.
"So now Hong Kong"s traditional dominance in container throughput is gradually weakening," he said. "But it can offer high-quality service on maritime arbitration, logistics and other aspects, helping Chinese shipping companies further invest along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road."
High value-added shipping service is Hong Kong"s other traditional advantage, including maritime arbitration, marine insurance and ship management.
International law firms in Hong Kong provide legal advice on ship chartering, cargo claims and dispute resolution. According to Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Hong Kong International Arbitration Center handled 297 new arbitration cases in 2016, with 9 percent of those involving maritime disputes.
There were 88 authorized ship insurers in Hong Kong before March, 35 of which were foreign-owned, offering services in loss or damage to ship hulls, machinery and cargoes.
The Hong Kong government also draws attention to its high-end maritime service. It established the Hong Kong Maritime & Port Board in 2016, which takes charge of driving the city"s growth of high value-added and professional maritime services, and helping them with transformation and upgrading.
"Hong Kong has a lot of maritime talent and a leading law system, which should be adopted, so as to promote Hong Kong as an international maritime hub," Zhu said.silicone bracelets custom cheap paper wristbands red rubber wristbands custom rubber bracelets wristbands with a message


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Panama Canal Expansion Creates Competitive Environment Between US Ports
The expansion of the Panama Canal has created a highly competitive environment between US ports on opposing coasts. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California are the most active shipping ports in the United States and serve as the integral link between Asian goods and the America marketplace.
But as the Panama Canal expands with a 2014 target to open to wider, deeper container ships (the so-called Super Post Panamax Megaships), the West Coast might be bypassed in favor of delivery to Gulf of Mexico and East Coast US ports.
A group of West Coast port advocates has even formed an organization to press for reinvestment in expanding the capacity and capabilities of the West Coast ports to convince shippers not to bypass California in favor of passage through Panama.
Called the Jobs 1st Alliance, the group has marshaled itself around a 2014 campaign called Beat the Canal.
There are reasons for West Coast ports to be concerned. The Port of Miami, for example, is embarking on its Deep Dredge project. Dredging its channels to 50 feet in depth will allow the port to handle Super Post Panamax Megaships.
The ports of Norfolk, New York and Baltimore have already deepened their channels to accommodate these larger container ships, each of which is at least 22 containers wide. With the addition of Miami, the US East Coast will have significant import/export capacity and ready access to major consumer and manufacturing populations.
Roughly 58% of the US population lives east of the Mississippi River, and the population density along the coast itself, from New Orleans around Florida and up to New York and Boston is clustered along the major waterways.
Without question, the Panama Canal’s expansion will impact shipping; and the expanded port options along the US East Coast will further influence arrivals from all over the world.
Dredging alone is not enough, however. In addition to the increased depth requirement, the cranes necessary for adequately managing cargo containers for Super Post Panamax Megaships weigh between 1600-2000 tons. This is roughly double the crane weight of what most large volume, large container ports use.
Crane foundation redesigns will likely require further infrastructure investment, such as the incorporation of geogrid reinforcement in foundations.
Dredging Today Staff, December 30, 2011; Image: portoflosangeles


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The Scurr family and their company Piñata Farms have invested substantial sums to develop some of Australia's most advanced strawberry operations, including high-tech hydroponic substrate farming, new varieties and even metal detectors in the packhouse.
But the latter was done to avoid stray rocks or jewellery, not needles like what has been seen with the brands Berry Obsession and Berry Licious due to a suspected case of sabotage.
The effects have been felt across an already struggling strawberry industry, and it could take a very long time before sales return to normal.
Almost any business could end up becoming collateral damage after an industry peer is hit by some kind of freak disaster, but such issues are more common in the agrifood sector. At Business News Australia we catch up with Piñata Farms managing director Gavin Scurr to gain some insight into how leaders can prepare for the unexpected and overcome challenges that are beyond their control.
Gavin, thanks for your time. How have you been?
Flat out mate.
I can imagine. Strawberries have been in the news for all the wrong reasons this week.
They have. Any publicity about strawberries lately has been less than positive. They're either glutted or contaminated, but that's life.
It's a tough time. For you as a farmer and a businessman, what has been the impact after needles were detected in strawberry punnets from another farm? Do you think it will affect your sales?
It has already. It's hard to know what the overall industry sales are down by, but yesterday and today it looks like they're down half what they would normally be. It's hard to quantify that obviously due to us being one small cog in a big wheel, but it certainly has had a negative impact.
And you're in the thick of the season in South East Queensland.
It is absolutely. There are plenty of strawberries around, everyone's busy and the last thing we need is this sort of thing to make consumers think twice about whether to buy or not.
So even though health authorities have named which specific farm the contamination can be traced to, that hasn't given consumers sufficient confidence to buy your brand?
I guess not. Our brand is only available when supermarkets order it as well - it's not always available for consumers to buy and it's the same with other brands. The general public probably are not willing to take the risk. They've heard about it, they're not sure and it doesn't mean much to them. It's just another brand of strawberries.
They've got a million other things going through their heads, so when they're walking down the aisle of the fruit category they might think 'I'll buy raspberries today or blueberries or apples or citrus'.
Historically, whether it be with strawberries or other fruit crops, how long does it take for consumption to get back to normal levels after a scare like this?
I don't have any firsthand experience with that. This is the first time we've been in an industry that's been impacted, however my understanding is the rockmelons that had the [listeria outbreak] issue earlier this year are still only a fraction of what they were this time last year.
That industry hasn't recovered but hopefully this issue which is much more specific with a single grower, in fact a single employee on a single farm, doesn't have that impact and it's about rebuilding confidence.
After all the work you've done in varieties and innovative production methods, does this just throw all that out the window from an economic viability perspective?
Well it does at the moment because we've been impacted by the loss of demand due to this issue so everyone is affected. That's the unfortunate thing. However, having put in the systems and processes in place that we've done, I'm certainly not sorry we've done that.
It gives us peace of mind as business owners, my brother and I, that this can't happen on our place. But something like this affects the whole industry. That's the downside when you're dealing with a commodity like strawberries.
On your Facebook page you have a video about the metal detectors in place at your packing shed. Is that because something like this has happened in the food sector before with pins, needles or any other metal object entering a product?
I'm not aware of it being in berries before but it certainly has happened in other types of food. The reason we put it in was for exactly that. We've had it in for four years now and we were thinking along the lines of material getting in there inadvertently, whether it be a little bit of stone or something.
A metal detector picks up dirt and rocks, a staple or jewellery - all jewellery is banned on our sites anyway, but if it did get in there this would pick that up.
Our intention to put it in was just ensuring no metal got in there accidentally, and not because of sabotage.
Also, it gives our packers, our staff, the peace of mind that if something like this did happen on our farm it'd be picked up at the metal detector level. All the staff at the farm in question have been suspects since that hit the fan and they've been interviewed by police.
I would imagine that's a fairly harrowing experience for those backpackers. English is a second language for them, they're in a strange country, not really understanding what's going on probably and they're all being treated as suspects. By putting in a metal detector it just removes all that.
And how has all of this affected the atmosphere with your staff, whether they be seasonal workers or permanent employees?
To be honest our staff are actually shocked that this has actually happened, that someone could actually be that twisted to do this in the first place; not even just to think about but that they've carried it out to the level that they've done.
So like I guess most of the population, we're more in shock than anything. Other than that it's pretty much business as usual. We've got systems and processes in place that ensure the integrity of all of our staff is protected.
And do you think that as a result you'll be forced to cut price in order to move product?
Price is already ridiculously low. It's barely covering the cost of harvesting, packing and freight now. What's happening is that we'll start moving out of blocks; our worst performing blocks we'll just stop harvesting those and we'll shrink the amount of fruit we harvest to the amount we can sell.
Growers have been doing that for the last month anyway. That's typical at the back end of the season however this will expedite it. So instead of blocks going longer than now, they'll get taken out because of the lack of demand.
Do times like this make you happy you've at least got a diversified crop portfolio with mangoes and pineapples?
I guess so. That's why we diversify with our crops as well as the regions we grow in it spreads your risk so if it happens in one, you've got the others. But at the end of the day if you're losing money in one, there's not a lot of joy. Just because you're making money somewhere else, if you're in a loss position it's not a good situation regardless of whether you've got income or not.
I hope people move on. That grower has finished his season - he's actually stopped harvesting completely. I feel for him as the grower because it's not his doing but the situation has been isolated. Consumers can buy with confidence. The sooner we can build confidence in consumers, the better it'll be for our industry.
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Sweden based bitcoin exchange Safello has announced a new banking partnership that will see it add local deposit options for United Kingdom customers.
Thе firm ѕауѕ thе move opens uр thе “underserved” British market fоr bitcoin buying аnd соuld spark a “wave оf interest” in thе digital currency.
Thаnkѕ tо itѕ nеw arrangement, Safello nоw supports payment methods including CHAPS, BAC аnd Faster Payments – thе lаttеr оf whiсh iѕ free fоr standard United Kingdom bank accounts аnd takes bеtwееn twо tо thrее hours tо transmit funds.
Aѕ spoken bу Frank Schuil, Safello’s CEO аnd co-founder:
“Hopefully wе аrе аt thе start оf wider bitcoin adoption in thе UK … Thеrе’ѕ nо rеаѕоn fоr уоur stubborn colleague оr conservative friend tо stay оn thе sidelines anymore. Gеt with times, Uncle Phil!”
Whilе confirming thаt thе company’s nеw London based partner iѕ indееd a bank аnd nоt аn intermediary financial services company, Schuil ѕаid hе wаѕ nоt аt liberty tо divulge thе nаmе оf thе institution.
Hе did add, however, thаt thе bank iѕ aware thаt Safello operates in thе bitcoin space.
Thе banking issue
Thе company’s announcement iѕ notable bесаuѕе mоѕt bitcoin startups in thе United Kingdom аrе сurrеntlу forced tо bank еlѕеwhеrе in thе European Union. Thiѕ iѕ due tо thе fact thаt financial institutions аrе reluctant tо gеt involved with cryptocurrency businesses due tо thеir perceived higher risk factor.
Aѕ a result, customers аrе bеing asked tо deposit funds viа еithеr international bank wire оr SEPA transfers, whiсh tаkе ѕеvеrаl days tо arrive аnd оftеn charge hefty fees.
Whеn asked whу banks аrе ѕо reluctant tо engage with bitcoin companies, Schuil said:
“I wоuld ѕау thаt thеу аrе hesitant tо potentially damage thеir relationship with оthеr banks. Thеу аrе dependent оn еасh оthеr аnd саnnоt isolate themselves.”
Hе continued: “That iѕ whу challenger banks аrе оftеn оn thе forefront оf bitcoin adoption. Additionally, thе perceived AML risk оftеn outweighs thе perceived reward аt thiѕ stage оf thе market.”
Building trust with Banks
Schuil indiсаtеd thе nеw relationship hаd соmе аѕ thе result оf hiѕ company’s consistent operation ѕinсе itѕ founding in 2013.
“We hаd tо build trust with оur banking partners аnd thiѕ simply tооk ѕоmе time. However, thе risk perception iѕ changing аnd wе expect оthеr banks tо fоllоw suit in 2015. Bitcoin iѕ nо longer a fad.”
Sinсе itѕ formation, Safello hаѕ sealed twо $600,000 аnd $250,000 funding rounds, аnd hаѕ bееn energetic in launching nеw features аnd forging nеw banking relationships.
In lаtе spring, thе company partnered with Jumio fоr instant ID verification and, thrее months later, launched a free bitcoin fundraising service fоr charities. Sinсе then, thе exchange hаѕ аlѕо announced a nеw social mеdiа inspired bitcoin wallet.
With 87 banks supported in 11 countries, thе firm аlѕо offers a variety оf fast payment methods fоr customers асrоѕѕ thе region.
Safello Partners with United Kingdom Bank for Faster Payments


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- Shanghai exported products worth RMB433.4 billion (US$66.3 billion) to ASEAN in the first 11 months of 2020
- ASEAN exported more than RMB339.3 billion to Shanghai in the same period
- Vietnam is Shanghai’s largest trade partner in the region, accounting for 27.4% of the city’s total trade with ASEAN
Trade between Shanghai and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) remained strong in 2020 despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, data from Shanghai Customs showed.
Shanghai imported goods worth more than RMB339.3 billion (about US$51.9 billion) from ASEAN in the first 11 months of this year, an increase of 6.1% from the same period last year, reported Xinhua News.
Meanwhile, products worth RMB433.4 billion were exported from Shanghai to ASEAN, down 4.1% year on year, partly due to the impact of the pandemic, according to Shanghai Customs.
Integrated circuits was the largest category of commodities Shanghai imported from ASEAN in the first 11 months, the product category registering a total import value of RMB85.64 billion. The amount represented a 20.5% growth over the same period last year and accounted for 25.2% of the total import value from ASEAN during the period.
Vietnam was Shanghai’s largest trade partner in the region from January to November, accounting for 27.4% of Shanghai’s total trade with ASEAN.
Photo by Marqueed


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Google detects 4,000 state-sponsored attacks every month
Google is notifying 4,000 customers every month that they’re being attacked by sophisticated hackers probably working for a nation-state, a senior executive of the internet giant said.
Speaking Monday at Fortune Magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, Google Senior Vice President Diane Greene dropped the number while talking up the company’s record on security.
Reuters news agency, which reported the remarks, didn’t include any direct quotes from Greene in the story and Google didn’t immediately respond for a request for more details.
Google began alerting users to possible state-sponsored cyberattacks in 2012 but has previously given much vaguer and broader figures about the scale of the issue.


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Consumers buying gifts like smart speakers and wearable health monitors should keep in mind how, and when, the devices collect data, says digital rights expert Alexis Hancock
By Avi Asher-Schapiro
Sept 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Amazon.com Inc this week announced a household, canine-like robot called Astro and a deal with Walt Disney Co to imbue its voice-controlled tech in resort hotels, striving to make its virtual aide Alexa a bigger part of consumers' lives.
From wearable health monitors, to smart speakers and in-home security systems, consumer electronics that collect and share data are increasingly common and affordable.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation asked Alexis Hancock, a digital rights expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, what privacy risks consumers should keep in mind when considering these kinds of technologies.
What should consumers considering buying gadgets that collect personal data consider?
I would suggest thinking about the exact need they are trying to fulfill; how exactly are you going to make your life better - sometimes it doesn't require an internet connected device.
Not every tool needs to come with an app; you can get cool stuff without a privacy risk.
But once you connect things to the internet, you need to worry about all sorts of things: secure passwords, encryption, and of course the privacy practices of the companies and what they do with the data they're collecting.
We know that our data is being collected all the time; shouldn't we just let it go?
So, we try to combat a lot of this kind of nihilism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; people may think: "They already collected so much data, I should just accept it."
What we say is that pushing back can be good and consumers can have an impact.
In 2020, for example, after consumer outcry about the microphone in Google’s Nest (a home security system which failed to disclose its built-in microphone), they changed it... and now there's a physical kill switch on the mic.
Nest is one of many home security camera systems for sale - what, if any privacy risks should people consider?
Again, I would suggest people think: what problem are you trying to solve? Do you really need a company-affiliated camera and doorbell device in your home?
With a lot of these products they sell themselves as being about safety and security, but many of the business practices we've seen come out are concerning - especially the amount of data sharing with police or other entities.
So people should ask themselves: are you buying something that's going to keep you safe, or are they buying another layer of surveillance for your loved ones?
How does that thinking apply to in-home smart speakers and assistance devices?
If you are worried about companies sharing or capturing your data, I would research what privacy measures are built into the devices - do they allow you to cut off the mic, can you disconnect from the internet?
If they don't function without the internet, is your home internet safe? Remember: the more devices you add in your home, the more routes there are for your data to be shared.
Also, something to consider for voice-activated devices: the artificial intelligence isn't always built for everyone, and they might not recognize certain kinds of accents or voice types.
And what about wearable devices like watches that monitor your steps or heartbeat?
There are valid reasons to buy these kinds of tools. I enjoy products that help me understand me better, but I don't enjoy sending that data off to end points of the internet that I don’t know about.
And if these devices use AI to make recommendations about my sleep, or tone of voice, they should be transparent about the models they are using - I want to know how they are arriving at these recommendations.
This article was updated on Wednesday, 29 Sept 2021 to include news of Amazon's Astro robot.
(Reporting by Avi Asher-Schapiro @AASchapiro, Editing by Tom Finn and Zoe Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.


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Under the deal, Entain will pay an initial £81.0m, as well as £122.0m in additional payments over a three-year period, totaling £203.0m.
Angstrom utilises simulation-based predictive modelling to offer a range of pricing and forecasting capabilities to sportsbook clients.
Primarily serving the US market, Angstrom’s offering covers the most popular competitions and leagues in the country.
The acquisition will allow Entain to offer a full suite of end-to-end analytics, risk and pricing capabilities for its US operations, namely BetMGM, which it runs as a joint venture with MGM Resorts International.
This will improve customers’ US sports betting experience including more betting opportunities, optimised parlay and in-play products, it added.
The acquisition is expected to complete during Q3 2023.
Unlocking new US opportunities
“We’re delighted Angstrom will be joining Entain, enabling us to accelerate the development of the Entain platform,” Entain chief executive Jette Nygaard-Andersen said.
“Their next generation forecasting, pricing and risk management capabilities will unlock significant opportunities across BetMGM’s US sports betting offering, particularly in the fast-growing markets of parlay and in-play wagering.
“This acquisition will provide our customers with an unrivalled sports betting experience underpinned by enhanced in-house data-analytics, a global platform and market leading brand.”
Angstrom chief executive Sion Colley said joining forces with Entain would ensure it delivers “unique and exciting betting opportunities” for US sports.
“Entain shares Angstrom’s passion for innovation. Our partnership will enable us to realise our ambitions in bringing best-in-class products and experiences to sports betting customers through Entain’s market leading global brands.”
Entain’s product led M&A
Much of Entain’s recent M&A activity is driven by deals that aid market expansion, but there’s plenty of evidence of the business bolstering its product offering through bolt-on deals.
In June, Entain completed its purchase of Tiidal Gaming NZ, owner of esports betting developer Sportsflare for CA$13.2m.
By acquiring Sportsflare, Entain added a number of betting products optimised for esports, such as a bet builder and a solution for gamers to bet on their own performance.
The acquisition further strengthened Entain’s presence in the esports betting vertical and followed the relaunch of Unikrn in December last year.
Last month, Adam Greenblatt, who has led the BetMGM venture since its formation in 2018, spoke to iGB about the importance of tech- and product-focused deals in the industry.
Entain is not the only leading force in the industry to have ramped up its M&A strategy in recent months. Several other operators have sought to acquire assets across technology and products to support their own expansion goals.
Last month, Fanatics Betting and Gaming (FBG) agreed terms on a deal to purchase the US arm of PointsBet Holdings. This was only after it returned with a higher offer following the emergence of a rival proposal from DraftKings.
PointsBet shareholders overwhelmingly voted to approve the FBG deal at the end of June. Neither PointsBet nor FBG have set a completion date for the deal.
Going back further and on the same line as Entain with Angstrom, OpenBet in August last year acquired betting technology and trading business Multi Builder. This came ahead of OpenBet’s own acquisition by sport media conglomerate Endeavor Group.
Also last summer, Betting supplier Kambi announced that it would increase its focus on modularised products rather than its full sportsbook solution. This, it said, would likely include a series of acquisitions.
Sure enough, just a month or so later, Kambi acquired front-end technology specialist Shape Games for an initial €38.5m.
Shape Games’ front-end technology supports customers with driving customer engagement and retention. The provider counts Danske Spil, Norsk Tipping, BetWarrior and JACK Entertainment among its clients.


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Corporate climate pledges are weaker than they seem, a new study reports
NEW YORK — Many of the world's largest companies are failing to take significant enough steps to meet their pledges to vastly reduce the impact of their greenhouse gas emissions in the decades ahead.
That's the conclusion of a new report by the NewClimate Institute, an environmental organization that works to combat global warming. Its researchers, who examined the actions of 25 companies, concluded that many of them are misleading consumers by using accounting practices that make their environmental goals relatively meaningless or are excluding key parts of their businesses in their calculations.
The companies have pledged to make their emissions reductions or to offset their emissions through such techniques as planting carbon-capturing forests over self-imposed periods ranging from 2030 to 2050.
The authors chose to study corporate giants, including Amazon and Walmart, which made bold climate pledges and who, because of their size, are seen as especially influential. In recent years, large corporations have increasingly adopted pledges to significantly reduce their carbon footprints — a priority of growing importance to many of their customers, employees and investors.
NewClimate Institute concluded that even though many companies have pledged to reach net-zero emissions, the 25 companies they studied have collectively committed to reduce emissions by about 40% — not the 100% that people might be led to believe from the companies' net-zero or carbon-neutral pledges.
"We were frankly surprised and disappointed at the overall integrity of the companies' claims" said Thomas Day of NewClimate Institute, one of the study's lead authors. "Their ambitious-sounding headline claims all-too-often lack real substance, which can mislead both consumers and the regulators that are core to guiding their strategic direction. Even companies that are doing relatively well exaggerate their actions."
Among the 25 companies the researchers studied, 24 relied too heavily on carbon offsets, which are rife with problems, the report said. That's because carbon offsets often rely on carbon removal ventures such as reforestation projects. These projects suck up carbon but are not ideal solutions because forests can be razed or destroyed by wildfires, re-releasing carbon into the air.
Most of the companies, the report said, presented vague information on the scale and potential impact of their emissions-reduction measures or might have exaggerated their use of renewable energy.
The report called Amazon's goal of net-zero carbon by 2040 unsubstantiated. It said it was unclear whether Amazon's goal referred solely to carbon dioxide emissions or to all greenhouse gases. The report also said it was not clear to what degree Amazon planned to reduce its own emissions, as opposed to buying carbon offset credits which rely on nature-based solutions.
In response, Amazon said it has been transparent about its investments in nature-based solutions, and disputed that its net-zero goals are based on offsets. The company said it's on a path toward powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of its original target of 2030. It also highlighted other initiatives including deploying 100,000 electric delivery vehicles by 2030.
As an example of a misleading goal, the report said CVS Health could potentially achieve its 2030 emissions target with little effort because it compared that target with a base year that included extraordinarily high emissions.
A CVS spokeswoman responded that after the company's merger with Aetna in late 2018, 2019 was the first full year of data the company could use as a baseline for the new combined entity.
"By 2030, we plan to reduce our environmental impact by more than 50%, including a reduction in our energy consumption and use of paper and plastic," the company said.
The NewClimate report said that Nestle, among the companies with the lowest marks, had emissions-reduction plans that covered only portions of its business and that its net-zero targets relied upon carbon offsets. The company also provided little detail on the renewable electricity sources it was pursuing, it said.
Nestle responded that its emissions reduction targets do cover all its activities, that it's reducing greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 and that its factories and offices are switching to renewable electricity.
Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the school for environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, who had no role in the NewClimate report, said: "Far too many companies are coming up short when it comes to meaningful decarbonization. Corporate decarbonization goals and plans for meeting them are generally far less compelling than needed for success in halting climate change."
Some other outside experts suggested that the NewClimate report was too critical of carbon offsets.
"Forest-based offsets are challenging, but they can be real and important," said Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. "A too-strong emphasis on decarbonization paths that don't include offsets will slow overall progress and raise costs."
The report did note some things it said the companies are doing well. Shipping company Maersk received the best ratings despite the challenges its industry faces in reducing emissions. The authors noted that Maersk is pursuing alternative fuels and has partnered with a renewable energy company to establish a factory for e-methanol. Maersk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Most of the companies studied, 15 of them, have outlined plans to reduce their "Scope 1" and "Scope 2" emissions, which are emissions released directly by the company or by its using electricity, the report said. But those companies didn't address their "Scope 3" emissions; these include emissions released by suppliers or customers that use their products. Scope 3 emissions account for, on average, 87% of all emissions for the 25 companies studied, the group said.
The report commended Walmart, which pledged to be net-zero by 2040, for following good practice by committing to reduce its operational emissions to zero without the use of offsets and setting near-term goals for those reductions which include using 100% renewable energy by 2035. But Walmart was faulted for not including Scope 3 emissions. Walmart does have a voluntary program that guides its product suppliers to reduce emissions, and nearly a quarter of its suppliers have joined, the report said.
Walmart responded that it does have a goal to reduce or avoid one billion metric tons of Scope 3 emissions and that it reports its progress openly.
The report stressed that companies should take more responsibility to reduce Scope 3 emissions. Yet it can be challenging to track those emissions across supply chains, especially when working with smaller companies, said Maggie Peloso, a lawyer involved in climate change risk management and environmental litigation.
"It's not always as easy as calling someone up and saying, 'Hey, I want to know what your emissions were from the factory when you produced that 100 boxes of stuff that you sent to my stores and I sold them,' " Peloso said.
Among the suggestions for improvement that the NewClimate Institute offered were that companies focus on shorter-term emissions reduction targets for the next five to 10 years. It also suggested that companies set specific emissions-reduction targets with transparent accounting, instead of ambiguous net-zero goals.
If national governments created policies and regulations to meet the targets they have set, it would be far more effective, suggested John Reilly, who served as co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT. "On the hopeful side, perhaps there is ongoing effort within companies to create rules, procedures, and strategies to achieve their ambitious targets," he said.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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This article was originally published on Opto – Will the FedEx share price rise on its Nuro autonomous vehicles partnership? After a slow st
This article was originally published on Opto – Will the FedEx share price rise on its Nuro autonomous vehicles partnership?
After a slow start which saw the FedEx share price fall 9.4% from the start of the year to $235.34 on 29 January, a strong recovery has been staged since. Over the following months, the FedEx share price rallied 33.7% to close 7 May at $314.69.
A subsequent dip preceded another rally, which brought the FedEx share price to its all-time high of $319.90 during trading on 27 May. However, the FedEx share price has been on a downward trend since, falling 7% in the following month to close 24 June at $303.69. Overthe trailing 12 months, however, the FedEx share price has seen solid gains of 127.6%.
FedEx has recently revealed details of a partnership that forms a key pillar of efforts to modernise the logistics and delivery giant’s operations.
FedEx and driverless vehicle firm Nuro launched a multi-year, multi-phase partnership in April. The move sees FedEx step closer towards its goal of autonomous delivery by testing Nuro’s autonomous vehicles in the Houston area. While giving Nuro a foothold in parcel logistics, the partnership enables FedEx to trial autonomous vehicle use cases such as multi-stop and appointment-based deliveries.
FedEx’s first majorstep into autonomous delivery was the 15 October 2019 release of its autonomous SameDay delivery robot, Roxo. The FedEx share price rise 2.2% following the launch of the automaton.
Delivery logistics companies are facing challenges at present, thanks to a shortage of labour and a rapid rise in e-commerce following the coronavirus pandemic. A FedEx press release announcing the collaboration with Nuro stated that the company “believes that continued innovation and automation will improve safety, efficiency, and productivity for the company’s more than 570,000 team members”.
“We are excited to collaborate with an industry leader like Nuro as we continue to explore the use of autonomous technologies within our operations” – Rebecca Yeung
Rebecca Yeung, vice president of advanced technology and innovation at FedEx, said: “We are excited to collaborate with an industry leader like Nuro as we continue to explore the use of autonomous technologies within our operations.”
Nuro has previously partnered with grocery, pharmacy and restaurant companies, including an autonomous pizza delivery partnership with Domino’s Pizza [DPZ] in Houston, which began in April 2021.
“Working with FedEx — the global leader in logistics — is an incredible opportunity to rethink every aspect of local delivery,” said Cosimo Leipold, head of partnerships at Nuro. “Our collaboration will enable innovative, industry-first product offerings that will better everyday life and help make communities safer and greener.”
“Our collaboration will enable innovative, industry-first product offerings that will better everyday life and help make communities safer and greener” – Cosimo Leipold, head of partnerships at Nuro
In May, FedEx redeemed $5.8bn debt accrued during the early stages of the pandemic, and in the process made history as the first North American transport and logistics company to issue a sustainability bond. The EUR600m sustainability bond tranche in Europe will fund FedEx’s pledge to render its operations carbon neutral by 2040. The redemption, which reduced FedEx’s total debt by 11%, had minimal impact on the FedEx share price, however.
All HAIL the BOTZ
The partnership between FedEx and Nuro reflects the later company’s continued move towards two fast-growth areas for the logistics and transport sectors: autonomous vehicles and robotics.
The SPDR S&P Kensho Smart Mobility ETF [HAIL] focuses on autonomous and connected vehicle companies as well as transportation tracking and optimisation businesses, and those involved in drone technologies. The Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF [BOTZ] likewise reflects the performance of companies linked to the adoption and utilisation of robotics and artificial intelligence.
RETURNS RISE OF THE SPDR S&P KENSHO SMART MOBILITY ETF IN 2021
HAIL has gained 13.3% in 2021 to 24 June, while BOTZ has seen more modest gains of 6.2% over the period. HAIL has also outperformed BOTZ over the trailing 12 months, with gains of 108.3% in the period compared to BOTZ’s gains of 49.6%. Despite this impressive growth over the past year, even HAIL’s performance still lags behind that of the FedEx share price.
The L&G Ecommerce Logistics UCITS ETF [ECOM], which focuses on the logistics and e-commerce sector and tracks the Solactive E-commerce Logistics Index, gained 23.8% in the year to 18 June, and 56.3% over the trailing 12 months. The fund will be partially swayed by the FedEx share price: FedEx was the 26th-largest holding in the fund with 2.3% of its weighting, as of 31 May.
MyWallSt operates a full disclosure policy. MyWallSt staff currently holds long positions in companies mentioned above. Read our full disclosure policy here.
CMC Markets is an execution-only service provider. The material (whether or not it states any opinions) is for general information purposes only, and does not take into account your personal circumstances or objectives. Nothing in this material is (or should be considered to be) financial, investment or other advice on which reliance should be placed. No opinion given in the material constitutes a recommendation by CMC Markets or the author that any particular investment, security, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person.
The material has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research. Although we are not specifically prevented from dealing before providing this material, we do not seek to take advantage of the material prior to its dissemination.
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*Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and can change or may differ in a jurisdiction other than the UK.


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A beginner’s guide to Snapchat
Originally launched in 2011, Snapchat has gone on to become one of the most popular social media apps on the market.
It’s a dog eat dog world out there in the realms of social media. One day you’re up, the next Kylie Jenner tweets something less than complimentary about you and your stock’s in the gutter.
In this online world what’s hot today has no guarantee of being cool tomorrow, and we probably haven’t even heard of tomorrow’s big deal yet.
And so welcome to Vero.
In the wake of the Kylie/Snapchat furore, one of the biggest winners to clamber out of the social media catfight has been Vero, a content sharing app created by billionaire businessman Ayman Hariri.
Vero is said to have signed up 500,000 users in 24 hours alone this week, rocketing from number 99 to number one in Apple's UK store in the past week, as social media users scramble for alternatives to the big social media platforms.
It’s been a slow burn for Vero, which originally launched in 2015 to very little fanfare. But its latest popularity surge could see it go from about 600,000 lifetime downloads in the App Store and Google Play, to more than 500,000 a day.
But why is it suddenly so popular?
In many ways Vero offers much the same as Instagram, although it does differ from it in several key areas.
Unlike Instagram, Vero shares content “reverse chronologically” rather than on a popularity “like” basis - so the latest posts are seen first.
As well as photos the app also lets you share text and web addresses, as well as recommendations for books, TV shows and films. Vero also distinguishes posts based on their contributor’s relationship to you. You can designate people as friends, acquaintances or followers and decide to target posts specifically at these groups.
Perhaps most importantly for social media users tired of their every action and keystroke being monitored and fed to advertisers, Vero is keen to play up its non-commercial values.
It claims it only collects a minimal amount of data from its users and doesn’t provide information to third parties or advertisers.
At the moment it is also ad and fee free – although this may change in the future as Hariri tries to monetise the service.
So, how does it make money then?
The simple answer is it doesn’t. Yet.
Eventually, the app says it will charge a small subscription fee – perhaps a few pounds a year – to users, although the first million users to sign up are likely to have their first year membership fee waived.
Of course, if you want to be part of the latest social media movement you can download Vero at the Apple Store and Google Play. It will certainly be interesting to see if Vero can maintain its explosive growth of the past week.
And don’t count your other social media platforms out yet. It’s worth remembering Kylie Jenner was quick to profess her love for Snapchat when she realised her throwaway comment had helped wipe a billion dollars off its share price.
And as we already know, what’s hot today may not be remotely cool tomorrow.


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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Rebirth confirmed for Switch
Koei Tecmo is bringing Nobunaga’s Ambition: Rebirth to Switch, the company confirmed today. The project was first announced a few months ago, but there was no word on specific platforms at the time.
Japan will be getting the game on July 21, 2022 with all pre-orders coming with an extra scenario. Koei Tecmo will release a Treasure Box containing an art book, daily pad calendar, and two-disc soundtrack.
Below is a trailer for the game:
And here’s a bunch of gameplay:
Nobunaga’s Ambition: Rebirth has not been announced for the west at this time, but we’ll give you a heads up if anything changes on that front.
The official website can be accessed here.


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China's largest online marketplace, Alibaba Group's Taobao, said Wednesday that it would ban the trading of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies from January 14, after a government crackdown on the units.
The People's Bank of China (PBoC), the country's central bank, in December ordered financial institutions to halt Bitcoin-related services and products and cautioned against its potential use in money-laundering, according to a statement.
Bitcoins—a form of digitally-created "e-money"—are stored in a virtual wallet, and can be sent directly to another person, bypassing banks and remaining largely anonymous.
The PBoC also banned domestic third-party payment companies from providing clearing services for virtual currencies, according to state media reports.
"In order to better promote the healthy development of Taobao Marketplace and effectively safeguard interests of Taobao members, Taobao will adjust its management practices on prohibited goods according to related state laws and regulations," Taobao said in a statement on its website.
"Newly added rules include a ban on sales of Internet virtual currencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin," it said.
Taobao said the trading ban also applied to tutorials on how to "mine" virtual currencies, as well as hardware and software used to obtain them.
Taobao Marketplace, a consumer-to-consumer platform, has nearly 500 million registered users, according to the company.
A spokeswoman for parent Alibaba Group told AFP that the ban applied to the trading of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies through Taobao, which lists more than 800 million products.
However, Taobao had never accepted Bitcoin as a payment method, she said.
Alibaba, which is preparing for an overseas stock listing which some analysts expect to rival Facebook in how it values the Chinese company, also operates China's leading third-party online payment platform, Alipay
Taobao said in its statement that the PBoC had ordered payment providers, which include Alipay, to shut down payment channels using Bitcoin and other such currencies.
Before the government ban, Chinese speculators poured money into Bitcoin, driving the price on the BTC China exchange up 9,122 percent from January 1 to November 30 last year and making the country at times the world's biggest Bitcoin market.
Bitcoins were created in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis by an anonymous programmer who wanted a currency independent of any central bank or financial institution.
© 2014 AFP


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Apple grabbed 12 per cent of mobile apps market in 2008
Based on Apple's announcements that the App Store passed 300 million downloads on December 5th last year, and 500 million on January 16th, we're assuming it did over 400 million downloads in 2008 as a whole.
If that's 12 per cent of the mobile apps market, that means overall volumes of 3.33 billion mobile apps across all platforms during the year. Crumbs.
Anyway, Strategy Analytics makes the point that Apple's share of mobile apps revenues is lower than 12 per cent, due to the high number of free and low-priced apps on the App Store.
"The Apple App Stores favorable revenue share for developers has created a tremendous buzz and fostered innovation," says analyst David MacQueen.
"This has excited consumers, inspiring an unprecedented volume of downloaded applications. The downside to this popularity is that with so many developers rushing on board, competition has become fierce and the majority of applications are downloaded for free, or at a very low cost."
However, like most in the industry, Strategy Analytics thinks the mobile operators are hitting back with their own App Store-like strategies.
"Apple's has won the initial skirmishes, but the war is far from over," says the company's VP David Kerr. For more information on Strategy Analytics's report, click here.


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There are many reasons why food waste is one of the most significant issues the planet is facing, including world hunger. Still, many people don't realise the massive impact of significant food waste on the environment and its role in climate change. In fact, if food waste were a country, it would emit more greenhouse gas emissions than every country except China and the US.
So how does food waste impact the planet, and what can we do about it?
Firstly it's essential to understand precisely what food waste is.
Before we look at the causes of food waste and its implications on climate change, we must understand the correct definition of waste. Many confuse “food waste” with “food loss”, but there is a difference.
Food loss occurs before it reaches the consumer. This might be due to extreme weather conditions such as drought or wildfires that destroy crops, or if bugs spoil harvested produce due to inadequate storage. Food loss can also occur during the processing stage or during transportation due to poor cooling equipment.
Whereas food waste happens at the end of the supply chain, at consumer and retail levels. This is food bought by families but not eaten, wasted at restaurants due to overproduction or rejected by supermarkets because of its appearance. In fact, 20 tonnes of parsnips are wasted a week due to cosmetic specifications.
Food production, in general, significantly impacts the environment. A report by Chatham House has found that our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss.
Farmers have increasingly invaded wild and fertile lands to maximise agricultural yields. Practices such as deforestation, slash and burn, and the conversion of wild areas into farmlands have destroyed natural habitats and hunting areas for many wildlife, including birds, fish and amphibians.
This loss of land has led to a dramatic loss of biodiversity. In fact, the increase in demand for food, as well as land changes, is putting certain species at risk of extinction.
Hundred of grey wolves are killed each year by livestock farmers. More than 50,000 endangered sea turtles are killed by shrimp trawling fisheries yearly. Genetically engineered crops and toxic herbicides have significantly reduced the numbers of monarch caterpillar populations, and plains bison have been driven to near extinction due to their natural habitats being turned into farmlands.
Sadly, as much of the food is never eaten, land, wildlife, and habitats are needlessly being destroyed.
Without immediate action from farmers, retailers and consumers to reduce food waste, we will be unable to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
The estimated land required to produce food thrown away by UK households is 19,000 square kilometres; that's an area 12 times the size of London!
Another way to look at this is that 30% of the world’s fertile land has been wasted. Forests have been cut down, habitats have been lost, and ecosystems have been destroyed to provide land for food that will not be eaten.
While the amount of land required for food production is immense, that’s nothing compared to the amount of water needed. One loaf of bread requires roughly 1,100 litres of water to produce, and a pound of chicken takes as much as 2,300 litres of water to rear.
So when we waste food, our blue water footprint, the amount of consumer surface and groundwater resources used, massively increases.
It’s estimated that food waste is responsible for 250km3 of water waste, 34 times the volume of Lochness.
In the UK, food waste costs £19 billion annually, and £12.5 billion of that comes from our own households. That is the equivalent of more than 15 billion meals – enough to feed the entire UK population three meals a day for 11 weeks.
But it doesn’t just stop there. The intense use of natural resources along the supply chain to produce a surplus of food makes them increasingly scarce. This then drives up the price of resources, resulting in extra financial pressure on farmers and suppliers, which then falls to consumers.
Food waste has a massive detrimental impact on climate change. While it may be hard to visualise, 8-10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are related to food waste.
As food in landfills rots and degrades, it goes through a process called anaerobic decomposition. This means it decomposes slowly with little to no oxygen. A staggering 3.8 kg of methane gets released for every 45kg of food waste, a gas 25 times more harmful to our planet due to its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere. In fact, methane is responsible for more than 25% of the global warming we are experiencing today.
Over recent years, food waste reduction has become a priority for local governments, supermarkets, farmers and international organisations.
The UK government has pledged to halve food waste by 2030 and published the resources and waste strategy, explaining that food waste is “morally wrong, environmentally damaging, and costs money”. Their plan to reduce waste includes the following:
The first round of funding of £4 million was awarded in 2019 to four organisations: FareShare, Company Shop Group, The Felix Project and Food Works Sheffield. The grant was used to help the organisations overcome barriers to redistributing surplus food. The next round of funding would focus on improving infrastructure for companies to redistribute surplus food.
There are several different ways you can help reduce the issue of global food waste. By infusing just a few of these simple tips into your daily routine, you can help cut back on the amount of food and drink you waste.
With every change we make as consumers, retailers or farmers, it's important to remember that our challenge should not be how to grow more food, but how to feed more people while wasting less of what we already produce.


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This Mustang is hiding a secret: there’s no engine underneath the hood. Although it’s not doing a great job of keeping that secret considering the hood has a pair of see-through polycarbonate windows.
So what’s going on here? Well, Ford has paired up with Webasto to create this fully-electric Mustang. They call it the Mustang Lithium, and it’s got 900 hp and 1,000 lb-ft of on-demand electric torque. GT500, eat your heart out.
Unveiled at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, the Lithium is a testbed to showcase what Webasto’s new electric conversion technology can do with limited space. In this case, the Mustang’s big V8 is completely removed and replaced by an 800-volt EVDrive battery-driven electric motor. For those paying attention, that’s the same voltage as the brand new Porsche Taycan, which is said to improve charging time and peak power output.
Ford says the Lithium Mustang can discharge a full megawatt at maximum output. They didn’t tell us just how fast that will make the Lithium go (or for how long), but it seems like it would make anything move very fast indeed.
The interesting part is that the rest of the car is almost as expected. It still has a 6-speed manual transmission that has been strengthened to handle all that extra power, so the electric drivetrain feeds directly to a driveshaft and gearbox as you’d expect in a regular car. A Super 8.8 Torsen rear differential puts power to 20-inch forged wheels wrapped in Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, and Brembo brakes help it stop as quickly as it can go.
A custom carbon fiber body kit and a 1-inch lowering kit round out the Lithium's bag of tricks.
“Ford has made no secret of the fact that we are electrifying our most popular nameplates,” said Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s Chief Product Development and Purchasing Officer. “This one-off Mustang prototype is a great opportunity for us, together with Webasto, to showcase to our customers what a new electrified powertrains can do for performance in a car they already know and love.”
We know that Ford has a fully-electric Mustang in development somewhere, so maybe this is how it will eventually turn out.


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After a series of leaks, Nokia has revealed its latest in a long line of impressive camera phones. Called the Lumia 1020, it's the true successor to the awfully impressive (but Symbian-laden) 808 PureView. It has a 41-megapixel camera, optical image stabilization, an all-new Pro Camera app with manual focus controls, and more. On the phone side of things it's about the same internally as the Lumia 920 and 925 before it. This is the place to be for all of the information on the latest Windows Phone — we'll be posting updates as they come in.
Jul 12, 2013
Nokia Pro Camera, the application taking center stage on the photography-focused Lumia 1020, will be making its way to more of the company's smartphones. A post on Nokia's official blog notes that the app will come to PureView-branded Lumia phones — that's the 920, 925, and 928 — as part of this summer's "Amber" software update.Read Article >
Pro Camera gives mobile photographers a more in-depth shooting interface, allowing them to adjust exposure settings such as ISO and shutter speed. Owners of other phones won't be able to take advantage of the 1020's large 41-megapixel sensor, of course, but the added control afforded by the app should go appreciated nonetheless.
After a cascade of hardware announcements surrounding the Lumia 1020 and its 41-megapixel PureView camera, Nokia said relatively little about software functionality and the Windows Phone 8 platform. The question is, do consumers want a 41-megapixel smartphone? And can you convince current iPhone and Android users to switch platforms for hardware features alone? Join Nilay Patel for an interview with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to find out.Read Article >
- Read Article >
Need to catch up on Nokia's Lumia 1020 event? We've got you covered with this 5-minute recap — that's 7.3 seconds for every megapixel in the camera! (While you're at it, check out David's hands-on with the 41-megapixel smart camera phone and Nilay's interview with CEO Stephen Elop.)
Jul 11, 2013
With the Lumia 1020 today, Nokia's revealed its latest in a line of camera phones that introduce rather impressive imaging performance in a pocketable frame. We've all heard the headline spec — a massive 41-megapixel sensor squeezed into the body of a Lumia smartphone — but what should we expect with this camera?Read Article >
The details we have so far (see our Lumia 1020 hands on here) lead us to expect similar excellence from this camera as we got with the 808 PureView. There's a good reason for that: from what we can tell, the camera package on the Lumia 1020 is quite similar to what Nokia placed in that massive hump on the backside of the 808. The most important feature is the sensor size: 2/3-inch. That's unfortunately smaller than the 808's 1/1.2-inch sensor, but that's still far larger than what's found in traditional smartphones (1/3.2-inch) and it's the same size as the sensor in the rather good Fujifilm X10. And sensor size matters because bigger sensors capture more light — which means better pictures. The Finnish company is also using the same software technique here that led to such great images with the 808 PureView last time around: oversampling.
Jul 11, 2013
At a small, almost awkwardly intimate event at Pier 92 in New York CIty, Nokia just unveiled its latest PureView creation: the Lumia 1020. After a 45-minute buildup to the event that was nothing more than a slideshow of beautiful pictures "taken with a Nokia Lumia smartphone," we had to see the device for ourselves.Read Article >
At first blush, it's impressive. The 1020 is handsome and sleek, rounded and not quite so boxy and large as some of the other Lumia phones we've seen. It's not small, though: the 41-megapixel lens coming out the back is large enough that it props the phone up off a table when it's laid down flat, and the 1020 certainly doesn't match the sleekness of the 920. The device comes in black, yellow, and white – the yellow is as awesomely ostentatious as always, but we're smitten with the sleeker black model too.
Jul 11, 2013
After weeks of leaks, Nokia is making its Lumia 1020 handset official on Thursday. The Finnish smartphone maker has just unveiled its latest flagship Windows Phone on stage at an event in New York. The Lumia 1020 is a big upgrade over Nokia's previous Windows Phone efforts for one reason alone: a 41-megapixel camera. Nokia is taking its PureView 808 sensor from its Symbian days and adding a number of enhancements to bring it to Windows Phone.Read Article >


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Cities across the country, including Denver, are trying to come to regulatory grips with services like Airbnb, which link folks who want to rent homes on a short-term basis to others looking for an alternative to hotel stays.
One of the raps against Airbnb is that it causes rent hikes by taking rental inventory off the market, tightening demand and driving up prices. The company, on the other hand, says that it helps cash-strapped middle-class homeowners make their mortgage payments by occasionally renting a room or their whole home.
There's some truth to each of these positions, but how much? It's a tough question to answer because Airbnb generally keeps its data private. The company says it has worked with Denver city officials for a year-and-a-half as policymakers draft new regulations for short-term rentals. But staffers told a City Council committee in September they are struggling to quantify the use of short-term rentals.
A CPR News data scrape shows there are nearly 1,700 Airbnb units in the city. Our analysis also suggests that most units are rented a handful of times a month or less, and most hosts only rent out one unit. (Read more about the data here.)
That said, 118 entire home units appear to be rented at least half the year, suggesting they are likely to take scarce vacancies off the city's rental market. But one housing expert, Ron Throupe, an associate professor at the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business, said he doesn't think that's enough to affect rental prices in the area.
Denver Looks To Take Action
Short-term rentals are technically illegal in Denver, but the city admits existing laws are rarely enforced. The new rules, currently in draft form, would require hosts to have a business license and to live in the property they rent out. Luke Palmisano, aide to Councilwoman Mary Beth Susman, said he anticipates the full Council will take up the issue early next year.
A top concern so far is the fear that short-term rentals are snapping up affordable housing for permanent residents.
"It's about the availability of stock for middle-income folks," Councilwoman Robin Kniech said at a neighborhoods and planning committee meeting in September.
This report aims to give some context to that concern. However, while Airbnb is the most popular short-term rental service in Denver, it's not the only one. VRBO and Flipkey offer similar services and they are not represented in this report.
Where And What Are The Airbnb Rentals In Denver?
This map shows where Airbnb units are located in the city. Darker shades of blue indicate more units.
Airbnb rentals are concentrated around downtown and other tourist destinations. Five Points and Capitol Hill are the top neighborhoods by raw number of rentals.1 Results are similar when factoring in neighborhood density. Entire homes are by far the most popular type of listing:
Frequency Of Rentals
Occupancy of Airbnb rentals is perhaps the most important piece of information to regulators. Critics worry that affordable apartments and houses are being turned into short-term rentals at the expense of would-be permanent residents. And in a hot real estate market like Denver, that concern carries some weight.
Unfortunately, usage data is difficult to obtain. Airbnb doesn't make this information public, and our datascrape didn't include this information. However, we were able to scrape the number of times a unit was reviewed -- and therefore the minimum number of times a unit was booked.2
The chart above shows the vast majority of listings are reviewed less than once a month. This supports Airbnb's claims that most units go unrented most of the time.
But reviews underestimate how often units are rented; Airbnb says 72 percent of guests leave reviews. So that means a listing reviewed 10 times a year may have hosted 15 guests. And most guests stay for longer than one night -- Airbnb says four nights is the average in Denver -- so that listing with 10 reviews was more likely occupied for about 60 nights. Airbnb critics and city governments, including the San Francisco Planning Department, have used such methods to estimate occupancy rates.
One hundred and eighteen entire home listings have an average of at least 31 reviews per year. Thirty-one reviews per year means a unit was likely rented for at least half the year, a threshold the New York attorney general's office used to determine when a short-term rental took a unit off the long-term rental market.
The estimate of 118 units is higher than what Airbnb reported. Internal company data provided to CPR News says 93 percent of entire home listings in Denver were rented out fewer than 180 nights per year. That equates to about 70 high-activity listings. The average unit is rented for fewer than 55 nights per year, the company said.
In either case, DU professor Throupe said there aren't enough Airbnb rentals to significantly affect the city's rental market.
"I don't believe that number of homes effects pricing," Throupe said in an email.
Neighborhoods near downtown have the most high-activity listings:
What Does An Airbnb Cost?
Location in the city determines price, as well. For neighborhoods with at least 10 listings, the most expensive neighborhoods are Union Station and Jefferson Park: The cheapest are Goldsmith ($67), Lowry Field ($78) and West Colfax ($81).
Who Are The Hosts?
The draft proposal on short-term rentals working its way through the City Council would ban hosts from renting a property they don't live in. More than 80 percent of Airbnb hosts, or about 1,138 people, only have one listing. That means about 200 hosts could be affected by such a regulation. However, Airbnb told CPR News many people with multiple listings share a second room in their home. Still, 54 hosts have three or more listings. These hosts make up 4 percent of all hosts but control 13 percent of all listings in the city.
This table shows the distribution of the number of units per host. For example, 158 hosts, or 11.7 percent of all hosts, rent two units on Airbnb.com.
|Number Of Units||Number Of Hosts||Percentage Of Total|
Who Enforces The Laws?
When Denver finalizes its laws for short-term rentals, Airbnb hosts will be responsible for making sure they follow all regulations. The company warns hosts to be aware of local laws, but doesn't prevent them from being broken.
“Our role is really educating the community about those rules," said David Owen, regional head of public policy at Airbnb. He noted the company operates in thousands of cities across the world and said short-term rental regulations are most successful when they are enforced by municipalities, not companies.
About The Data
1) Our scrape on Aug. 24 found 1,676 units for rent within city limits. The data scrape included latitude and longitude information for each listing. Neighborhood boundaries were provided by the City of Denver.
2) The number of units reviewed an average of at least 31 times a year was calculated by dividing the number of reviews by the date of the first review. The data used for this chart threw out about 700 listings added in the six months before the scrape date. Some new listings already had a significant number of reviews, leading to artificially high monthly review rates.
More on short-term rentals:
- Airbnb: a lucrative gig – if you don’t get caught (Business Den)
- Airbnb's impact in San Francisco (The San Francisco Chronicle)
- Airbnb and San Francisco (Detailed city planning department report)
CPR's David Sprankle contributed to this report.
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Contract prices of PC DRAM products have started to turn downward sharply this October as major suppliers have completed most contract negotiations, reports DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. The average price of 4GB PC DRAM modules for 4Q18 contracts has dropped by 10.14% QoQ from US$34.5 in 3Q18 to the current US$31. As for the average contract price of 8GB PC DRAM modules, it has dropped by 10.29% QoQ from US$68 in 3Q18 to the current US$61. Since the DRAM market has just entered oversupply, DRAMeXchange does not discount the possibility of further price declines in November and December. Also, the price decline of 8GB solutions will continue to surpass that of 4GB solutions because DRAM suppliers are now eager to sell off their inventory.
“As the indicator of the price trend in the contract market, spot prices have kept falling since the early 2018 and continued their downtrend from September”, says Avril Wu, senior research director of DRAMeXchange. The latest update reports that the average spot price of 1G*8 chips has dropped to US$6.946, showing a difference of 5% with the average contract price of US$7.31. While the oversupply situation and the falling spot prices pull contract prices of PC DRAM modules downward, the market penetration of 8GB modules is starting to increase very rapidly because suppliers have aggressively expanded shipments of the higher-density products. DRAMeXchange furthermore believes that 8GB modules will surpass 4GB counterparts in shipment volume much sooner than originally anticipated and become the market mainstream. It should also be noted that DRAMeXchange will be using prices of 8GB modules as the base for determining the contract price trend in the PC DRAM market starting in 2019.
Seasonal headwinds expected to aggravate price decline in the PC DRAM market during 1Q19
PC-OEMs have not been able to step up their product shipments in 2H18 due to the shortage of Intel CPUs. Going forward, the pressure of rising component costs will only mount as the shipment season transitions from the peak period to the slow period. Since DRAM prices had risen for nine consecutive quarters, they are expected to take a plunge as they move past the inflection point. The sliding ASP in the PC DRAM market will also add to the downward pressure on prices of PC DRAM modules, leading to large and sudden drops.
Looking ahead to 1Q19, seasonal headwinds will affect shipments of end products not only in the PC market but also in the server and smartphone markets. Furthermore, the quarter will be the period for the channel market and OEMs to eliminate excess inventory. Thus, negotiating contracts will be very challenging for the DRAM suppliers. The ASP in the whole DRAM market is forecast to fall by as much as around 20% YoY in 2019, according to DRAMeXchange’s latest analysis. After reaching peak profit in 3Q18, DRAM suppliers are now optimizing their costs so that they will have a soft landing in 2019 as prices are marked down every quarter.


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Chinese tech giant LeEco might not get the chance to build the massive Silicon Valley HQ it wanted. According to Reuters, it's selling the 49-acre property a year after it bought the site from Yahoo and in the midst of serious financial issues. LeEco had big plans to conquer the US market, including the development of a "Tesla killer" electric car. Unfortunately, it expanded too quickly and ended up hurting for cash. Co-founder Jia Yueting told employees through a letter that the company "blindly sped ahead, and [its] cash demand ballooned. [It] got over-extended in [its] global strategy."
Reuters says the tech corporation plans to sell the site to Chinese developer Genzon Group for $260 million, $10 million more than what it paid for the property last year. Genzon confirmed that the site's sale is currently under negotiation but didn't mention anything more than that. LeEco told TechCrunch it has "nothing to announce at this time."
The Chinese conglomerate originally wanted to turn the site into an open environment HQ called EcoCity to house up to 12,000 employees. That number sounds impossible to achieve at this point in time. In addition to selling its Silicon Valley property, it also reportedly downsized its workforce in the US, in India and in its home country. We might not even see a launch for the EV it's developing. Faraday Future, the US company that's working with LeEco to create its electric car, is in dire financial straits, as well.


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Nintendo's President said that the Revolution game console will ship in North America in time for the Thanksgiving holiday sales period.
Speaking to the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun
, Nintendo chief Satoru Iwata said: "We can't disclose the Revolution's release period yet, but we have no plans to miss out on the year-end sales battle."
"As for North America, we need to release it by Thanksgiving, or otherwise we won't receive support from the retail industry. So the Revolution will be released prior to that period." (Gamespot.com report)
Speaking about pricing, Itawa just said that th edevice will be "affordable".
"The amount of money that people are willing to spend on video games is getting less every year," he said. "Even if it's a superb machine, it's not going to sell if it's JYen 50,000 (US $435). We plan to make [Revolution] an affordable price."
Microsoft's Xbox 360 has adopted a two-tier price strategy ($299 for a bare bones version and $399 for a souped-up machine). Sony, meanwhile, has shouted from the rooftops the PS3 would be a pricey piece of equipment. Nintendo, though, seems ready to lowball its competitors on the retail front.
"Value has been a key card for us this generation and we'll continue to play it," Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America had hinted in an interview last December. "Do I expect us to be at a lower price point than our competition? Yes I do. Have we determined a price yet? No we haven't."
Nintendo employed this price strategy at the beginning of this round of the console wars in 2001. While Sony and Microsoft released their video game machines at $299, the GameCube initially sold for $100 lower. Ultimately, the move didn't work as well as hoped. The GameCube is third in hardware sales, behind PlayStation 2 and Xbox, a position typically blamed on a weaker portfolio of third-party games and (initially, at least) the machine's boxy design, which even senior officials acknowledge looks childlike.
"I think there were some lessons we learned with the GameCube that we need to apply to the Revolution," said Fils-Aime. "First, we've got make sure that the titles in the first six months are strong and can drive sales. We've also got to make sure the console is attractive visually. And we've got to deliver on the right consumer needs. With GameCube, at the time, portability was thought to be a big factor that's why it has a handle. Obviously, that wasn't the case."
The Revolution is aimed at a wider audience than the GameCube or any of Nintendo's previous systems. While it will play DVD movies, its primary focus will be games. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will focus strongly on games as well, of course, but have their eyes on a bigger prize - digital domination of the living room. Nintendo has said it wants, instead, to attract people who do not consider themselves gamers.
The device will not support high definition video, a marked divergence from the path Microsoft and Sony are taking. And it's not something the company is re-thinking, despite the fervent hopes of some hardcore gaming fans.
The Revolution is expected to be showcased at next year's E3, at Nintendo's pre-E3 press event, on May 9, 2006.


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But perhaps not amusing to everyone. (Remember, Methodists never make love standing up. It might lead to dancing!)
The newly-passed soda taxes in California and Colorado are a bright spot for public health community.
Source: A Big Blow for Big Soda | Civil Eats
Residents of Howard County Maryland reduced the amount of sugary drinks they purchased by nearly 20 percent after a multi-faceted public health campaign that included local policy changes.
Source: Sugary drink sales drop nearly 20 percent after multi-faceted campaign
Group of 73 health and obesity experts call for ban before 9pm watershed, restrictions online and end of sports sponsorship
Source: Curbs on junk food ads No 1 priority in fighting childhood obesity, says study
The NHS in England is considering whether to ban or impose a tax on sugary drinks sold in hospitals.
Source: NHS in England ponders sugary drinks ban – BBC News
Soft drink studies conducted by independent researchers tend to draw different conclusions than studies supported by the beverage industry.
Source: Studies Linked to Soda Industry Mask Health Risks


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This is the horrifying moment a gas leak caused a fire to suddenly break out at a market stall. The food vendor was told to turn off the valve when many shopkeepers smelled the cooking gas. But before they could take action, it caused the fire at Kingkaew Market in Samut Prakan, central Thailand.Footage from Tuesday March 26 afternoon shows how the fire immediately lit up and burned part of the shop and the shop owner who was trying to jump out of the way.Vendors and customers nearby were running away in panic before one of them rushed out to call the fire station.
Thank you for watching this video CREDIT ViralPress!
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Xbox 360: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Halo 4 (Game of the Year Edition code reduc webdistrib Hitman: Absolution.
Krishnamurthy, who is also a managing director at Flipkarts largest shareholder, Tiger Global Management, was the companys chief financial officer and head of categories during its first Big Apps Day.
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Maybe Jabong Big Billion Day also.The big billion days 2018, 20th to 24th Sep, Biggest Flipkart sale!Excepted Date Of Flipkart Big Sale DAY 2018 Flipkart Big Billion Day Offers September 2018 Flipkart Billion Day Coupons September 2018 Big Billion Day 2018 App Sale September 2018 Big Billion Day 2018 Sale September 2018 Flipkart Big Sale 2018 Flipkart has announced that their Big.Preparations for the flagship sales event this year is being led by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who rejoined Flipkart Big Billion Day 2018 Offers as head of category management in June.Big Sale Buy (T.V.) Televisions online Sale Offers TV Exchange Deal Check Now.On occasion, the site also runs special free shipping promotions on high-ticket items, such as customized PCs or laptops.Save on printers, workstations, and laptops with HP promo codes.Canon dslr Nikon dslr dslr Camera Camera Lens Camera Tripod.Bajaj Finserv Flipkart Big Billion Day Offer (No Cost EMI).During this sale event, we are offering Extra 10* Off on all Credit Cards promos intermarché octobre 2018 up to 25,000 Off on Exchange on Television category.


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LaShauna Sewell, News9.com
OKLAHOMA CITY – OG&E has announced it will not disconnect service to customers during the month of August due to Oklahoma's record-breaking heat wave.
According to Oklahoma Corporation Commission rule, Oklahoma electric utilities must refrain from disconnecting service to residential customers anytime the forecasted temperature or temperature humidity index is 100 degrees or higher.
The electric company says instead of cutting off residential service to those who cannot pay their bills, it will work with customers who need some extra time.
"Because it's been so hot – over 100 degrees almost every day for the past month – we have not been disconnecting service," said OG&E spokesman Brian Alford. "And in the interest of public health and safety, we will not resume disconnects during August."
There are some exceptions. Alford says OG&E will disconnect service to commercial customers or residential customers who do not complete the contract-for services process within three business days. He also says customers will accumulate charges on their unpaid bills, which will be much higher because they're using their air conditioners more.
"We recognize that some of our customers will need more time to pay their electric bill, and we want to be as flexible as we can during the next few months. We will offer residential customers who have fallen behind on their bill up to six months to catch up."
Alford says OG&E will work with customers who qualify to create payment plans to meet their needs. OG&E also suggests customers take these additional steps to conserve energy and save money:


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Roughly $130 million has been wiped off Kogan.com’s market capitalisation after the online retailer flagged declining first-quarter margins and a consumer watchdog investigation of one of its promotions.
Shares in Kogan.com had dropped 32 per cent by Tuesday morning, after the company said revenue from sales of global brands in the three months to September 30 was 27.4 per cent lower on the prior corresponding period.
The retailer blamed foreign-owned competitors who undercut Australian rivals by avoiding GST, and said margins had also been hit by the weaker Aussie dollar.
Kogan.com said it initially benefited from the July 1 change that abolished the $1000 GST threshold on imported goods as some competitors exited the market.
“[But] more recently, widespread avoidance of GST has become apparent,” the firm said.
“At this stage, the company is unable to determine whether the recent widespread avoidance of GST will be temporary.”
Analysts downgraded their price targets for Kogan.com – UBS from $8.65 to $5.50, and Cannacord Genuity from $8.60 to $6.00 – due to the impact of the GST change and uncertainty over whether the issue is a short-term hiccup or larger structural problem.
“A focus for investors, and critical to a divisional turnaround, will be a swift government response that returns the division to trend growth or has this become a structural headwind for the industry,” Cannacord analysts wrote in a note to investors.
In a note to investors, UBS analysts said that the revenue slowdown was surprising, given there was little evidence that changes to the GST threshold had a material impact on Kogan’s revenue in July 2018, which was up 33 per cent year on year. This suggests that August/September revenue was up just 4 per cent year-on-year.
Meanwhile, other major online retailers posted strong results in the the first quarter of FY19. Temple & Webster saw a record 39 per cent year-on-year increase in gross revenue in Q1, and Inside Retail understands that online-only retailer and marketplace Catch is on track to have a “massive” first quarter.
UBS analysts said there was a risk that Kogan.com’s revenue from its global brands division could continue to slow if GST laws are not enforced heavily, if the company is not able to regain lost traffic, or if consumer pressures accelerate, though they see little evidence of the latter.
“Overall, we believe the market is being overly pessimistic on the core website business,” they wrote.
Nevertheless, Kogan.com shares dropped to their lowest price since July 2017, wiping $35 million from the value of founder Ruslan Kogan’s personal stake.
“We continue to execute our long-term strategy to grow our e-commerce footprint and make the most in-demand products and services affordable for all Australians,” Ruslan Kogan said.
“While growth in the Global Brands division presents a challenge in the short term, we have built a resilient portfolio of businesses, with the core divisions of exclusive brands, partner brands and Kogan Mobile continuing to show healthy growth.”
It also announced that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had this month asked for “certain information relating to the marketing and pricing of a promotion” run in June.
“Kogan.com has strict processes and procedures in place to ensure compliance with the Australian Consumer Law and takes its obligations under law very seriously,” the retailer said in a statement to the ASX.
“The company is in the process of compiling all information the ACCC has requested and will cooperate with the ACCC in its enquiry.”


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The Toyota Innova Crysta facelift, currently on sale in India, was launched here in November 2020.
Updated : April 22, 2021, 9:49 pm
Sony has announced the trial run of a Video Pass for the PlayStation Plus subscription, wherein the company will provide TV and movie content to subscribers.
Updated : April 22, 2021, 8:23 pm
At least six high courts in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Sikkim are hearing different batches of petitions relating to Covid-19 management across the country.
Updated : April 22, 2021, 6:37 pm
A man tweeted saying that he wanted to meet his girlfriend amid the lockdown. Mumbai Police had the best response.
Updated : April 22, 2021, 5:57 pm
The paintwork repair services for Citroen India vehicles will be offered by AkzoNobel's Sikkens and Lesonal (waterborne systems) brands.
Updated : April 22, 2021, 1:12 pm
The new CT110X measures 1,998mm in length, 753mm in width and 1,098mm in height.
Updated : April 21, 2021, 10:35 pm
Varun Dhawan shared photos with Bhediya director Amar Kaushik as they finished shooting for the film in Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh. Varun also wrote how working under Amar's leadership has been one of the most exhilarating and satisfying experiences.
Updated : April 21, 2021, 1:52 pm
The Citroen C5 Aircross SUV presently competes against the Jeep Compass and the Hyundai Tucson in the Indian market.
Updated : April 21, 2021, 1:29 pm
Shruti Haasan's boyfriend Santanu Hazarika and her cat are giving her company during the lockdown in Mumbai. She wrote that she is thankful for both of them.
Updated : April 21, 2021, 10:14 am
We compare the March 2021 sales figures of the Toyota Fortuner, Ford Endeavour, MG Gloster and Mahindra Alturas G4.
Updated : April 20, 2021, 7:10 pm
The third-gen Hyundai i20 is priced between Rs 6.80 lakh and Rs 11.33 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).
Updated : April 20, 2021, 2:47 pm
The Ford Endeavour is now priced between Rs 29.99 lakh and Rs 36.25 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).
Updated : April 20, 2021, 12:51 pm
The price of the entry-level variant of the Ford Endeavour has remained unchanged. Other trims of the popular SUV have received a hike of Rs 35,000.
Updated : April 20, 2021, 12:14 pm
Sony has decided against its earlier announcement of shutting off the PS Store access for PS3 and PS Vita. The new move comes in response to the feedback received from the PS community upon the earlier announcement.
Updated : April 20, 2021, 12:01 pm
The prices of the new Toyota Fortuner have shot up by Rs 36,000, while the Toyota Fortuner Legender has received a price hike of Rs 72,000.
Updated : April 19, 2021, 8:28 pm