Friday, June 30, 2017
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Newcastle man charged with eight terror offences – BBC News
A 31-year-old man has been charged with eight terrorism offences.
Abdulrahman Alcharbati, from Newcastle, is accused of seven counts of disseminating terrorist publications.
He also faces a charge of eliciting, publishing, or communicating information about members of armed forces.
Mr Alcharbati, of Westholme Gardens, who was first arrested in May, is due to appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court later.
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Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Monday, June 26, 2017
Six Flags parkgoer slips free of a high-flying ride, but she’s thankfully OK
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Is there any theme park horror story scarier than the one where someone falls out of a high-flying ride?
That’s exactly what happened at Six Flags Great Escape in Lake George, NY on Saturday though the incident thankfully had a happy ending. As an unidentified teenage parkgoer dangled 25 feet above the ground, a crowd gathered below to catch her which they did once she fell.
A tense video captured and shared on Facebook by Loren Lent, who witnessed the fall, shows us what happened.
In his Facebook post, Mr. Lent thanks the Good Samaritan attendees who acted quickly to save the day. He also expresses his surprise that Six Flags seemingly has no rapid response plan for dealing with situations like this.
“Girl falling from ride at 6 Flags Great Escape and they have NO means to rescue them,” Lent wrote. “Thanks to the guys who banded together to catch her and the guy who climbed the tree to move the branches out of the way.”
While parkgoers did manage to bring the situation to a safe conclusion before anything truly terrible could happen, Six Flags contends that it does have an action plan for responding to ride malfunctions.
“As part of our annual practice an evacuation drill is conducted in partnership with local emergency personnel on this particular ride each spring,” a spokesperson told The Washington Post. “Every situation is unique and requires the appropriate time and tools for the evacuation. We are reviewing our internal procedures to ensure the safety and security of our guests and team members.”
The incident occurred on “Sky Ride,” a “mellow-paced” cruise over the park in two-person gondolas. It’s not clear how the victim, a 14-year-old visitor from Delaware, slipped free, but local police confirmed that she’s now at the nearby Albany Medical Center, in stable condition and with no serious injuries.
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Sunday, June 25, 2017
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Walmart and Amazon are battling for retail’s future. Is anyone else in the running?
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How do you compete with Amazon and Walmart?
That’s the question ringing in the ears of everyone who works in U.S. retail. Amazon’s blockbuster $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods solidified the notion that the retail giant is not content to just dominate ecommerceit’s coming for your real-world stores too.
Walmart is attacking from the other direction. Already established as the dominant U.S. store with more than 11,000 locations, it is now on a buying spree to establish itself as an ecommerce player.
Everyone else faces a very tough way forward. Many department stores and clothing outlets that haven’t outright failed yet are teetering on the brink of death. Traditional grocers now fear a similar fate.
Can companies like Kroger and Target survive? Maybe. Here’s how some big-name rivals still hope to play on the same field as Amazon and Walmart.
Target
Once the king of cheap-chic retail, Target and its more than 1,800 stores have been struggling intermittently for years as Amazon and Walmart eat into its market share.
In the face of that pressure, it’s set out to recapture its trendy roots with a multibillion-dollar turnaround plan centered on smaller Walgreens-like stores in cities and college campuses.
Food is a naturally big part of that push, so the Amazon and Whole Foods deal last week was seen as a big blow. Target’s stock tumbled in response, and Citi Research downgraded its recommendation of the company’s shares on Wednesday.
“[Target]’s two main competitors have very quickly changed the game,” analyst Kate McShane wrote in a research note on Wednesday. “This makes [Target]’s rev. growth prospects through organic or acquisition growth tougher to achieve, absent any kind of game-changing move.”
Target can’t match Walmart’s scale or Amazon’s convenience, but it has shown some signs that it might take a more unconventional tack towards its e-commerce business elsewhere. In recent months, it’s partnered with shaving subscription services Harry’s Razors and Bevel and invested heavily in mattress delivery startup Casper. It’s possible Target may apply the same approach to groceries at some point.
Despite Target’s supermarket ambitions, groceries remain something of a side hustlethey only account for around 20 percent of the discounter’s overall revenue. Like Amazon and Walmart, though, Target treats the category as a “loss-leader,” meaning that its purpose is more about drawing people into the stores on a regular basis than strictly sales, according to Forrester retail analyst Brendan Witcher.
“We’ll take the grocery, but we want the other sales. That’s what we’re looking for,” Witcher said of these companies’ strategy. “Grocery, by default, then becomes a loss-leader standalone product, which is never a good thing.”
Kroger
That approach is especially bad news for traditional grocers like Kroger, which obviously can’t afford to treat their core business as window dressing.
Kroger, with more than 2,700 stores, remains the biggest grocery retailer in the country, but it’s struggled for years in the face of a growing challenge from Walmart. And without the luxury of the diverse income streams enjoyed by companies like Walmart, Amazon, and Target, it can’t match their investments in the new technology needed to keep up with changing consumer preferences.
“Pure grocery is challenged because of the razor-thin margins that they operate on,” Witcher said. “Without those secondary streams of income, it’s very difficult to innovate and add technology to create better customer experiences because they have no revenue for that.”
Even so, Kroger has managed to take on some tech projects, like a new “click-and-collect” online pickup system now available at more than 600 stores. It’s also quietly built an impressive data analytics outfit that some analysts think could rival that of even Amazon.
But Witcher says traditional grocers will eventually have to bite the bullet and build a much more robust digital operation to avoid going the way of Blockbuster, no matter what short-term losses it might cause.
How could Kroger really make a splash? One analyst suggests it should outbid Amazon and take Whole Foods for its own.
In turning around Whole Foods, both Amazon and Kroger would bring strong capabilities but ironically, Krogers leadership in big data analytics in grocery could arguably be the most critical, Loop Capital’s Andrew Wolf wrote in a research note on Wednesday.
Costco
Costco might seem to be the best-positioned retailer in the wake of Amazon’s Whole Foods deal, considering that its wholesale bulk model has little overlap with Whole Foods’ pricey artisanal fare.
But Wall Street is worried nonetheless. The company’s shares have tumbled more than ten percent in the week since the news, and it faced multiple analyst downgrades.
One point of concern is that Costco has mostly ignored its digital side as its rivals have scrambled to bolster theirs. The wholesaler’s business model subsists on some of the slimmest margins in the industry, and its attention is focused almost exclusively on keeping prices low at all costs.
That attitude has mostly worked out okay. The thinking has long been that Costco’s membership model and unbeatable prices could insulate it from the online threats facing the rest of the industry.
It also has an edge in its unique level of vertical integrationthat is, its ownership of a number of the various stages of production between a product’s origin and its sale. To keep supply costs down, Costco owns or invests in everything from chicken coops and hotdog factories to eyeglass grinding facilities and farmland and plows.
But with the the expansion of Amazon’s Prime program and now its push into groceries, analysts aren’t quite so sure about Costco’s safeguards anymore. Some have noted that nearly half of Costco members also pay for Prime accounts, and there’s speculation that Amazon might use perks for Prime shoppers to run Whole Foods with a system similar to Costco’s.
Whatever happens, Costco seems to be simply staying the course for the time being; it’s given no indication that it plans to rush into any big tech renovations.
At least it will always have free samples.
Ebay
Ebay doesn’t offer much in the way of groceries but it’s one of the few digital-first companies competing on Amazon’s plane, and mostly because it doesn’t have any other choice.
The aging online auction house has struggled since its divorce from Paypal two years ago. Contrary to its dated reputation, second-hand goods only make up a small portion of its business nowadays. The rest relies on the same retail churn as any other shopping company.
But under the guidance of CEO Devin Wenig, Ebay has began to claw its way back with a distinct gameplan that’s tailored to Amazon’s weaknesses.
Amazon’s online store is a well-tuned machine; you search for a particular product, maybe compare prices or reviews, and then await your order’s speedy arrival. Everything the company does is built around speed and purpose.
That model may be efficient and convenient, but Ebay argues that it’s not a whole lot of fun. What it promises instead is the virtual equivalent of digging through sales bins or browsing racks at a store. Ebay wants to attract shoppers who are more interested in stumbling across something unexpected than making bee-line purchases.
The company played up that contrast with colorful packaging and exciting products in an ad campaign launched earlier this month.
That focus doesn’t mean Ebay’s immune to the price wars of the rest of the industry, of course. The company announced on Wednesday that it will now match competitor prices on tens of thousands of products.
Despite its modest growth, the company remains little more than a blip on Amazon’s radar, pulling in around 7 percent of the latter’s revenue last year.
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Airbnb set to launch a premium tier to compete with hotels
Airbnb wants to be more like the hotels it’s disrupting.
The short-term home rental platform is getting ready to launch a premium tier of rentals that would compete more directly with hotels, according to a report in Bloomberg.
The service would match higher-paying guests with high-quality home rentals, checked by Airbnb’s very own inspectors. To pass inspection, Airbnb hosts would have to treat their listings like hotels and provide fancy towels and bed linens and travel-size shampoo and conditioner. They’d even have to keep the kitchen stocked with bottled water, coffee, and tea.
Hosts who make the cut will have their listings featured in a special, prominent section of Airbnb’s website. They’d also get the help of a professional photographer and an interior decorator provided by Airbnb.
Airbnb hasn’t confirmed their plans yet. According to Bloomberg, the program is already inviting hosts to participate and could be called Select.
“We’re continually experimenting with new ways to create meaningful experiences on Airbnb,” Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas said.
For hosts who are already basically Airbnb professionals, it’s a way to make some extra money. For Airbnb, it’s a way to gain traction with business travelers and customers who are swayed by the reliability of traditional hotel amenities.
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5 tips on how to overcome the entrepreneurial dilemma
Randi Zuckerberg is a businesswoman who marches to the beat of her own drum.
As a serial entrepreneur, NYTimes best selling author of Dot Complicated, speaker, television host and producer, and founder & CEO of Zuckerberg Media, one skill-set Randi had to learn was time management.
Below, Zuckerberg outlines five tips professionals should follow to overcome the entrepreneurial dilemma of work-life balance.
For the full interview and more discussion, check out the above episode of #BizChats.
1. Chooseyour three major focuses of the day: work, family, friends, fitness, sleep, etc.
“You get three of those, you can pick a different three tomorrow. The goal is for it to balance out over the long run, not to try to do all those five things everyday.”
2. Stave off the urge to do tasks outside of those three choices (save it for another day when you can enjoy it)
“Once you pick your three, stick with it. Don’t say, ‘alright I’m going to try and sneak in in this fourth or fifth [activity].’ Do those three things really, really well. If you didn’t choose fitness that day, don’t beat yourself up. Don’t try to squeeze in a 5-mile run. Save it for another day when you can enjoy it and you can do a great job.”
3. Hold yourself accountable by tweeting your choices or sharing them to friends
“If you don’t think you’re the kind of person that can hold yourself accountable to picking three things and sticking with it, bring other people in on the action. Get social! You can text your friends and share with them your three things you picked that day. You can tweet it, you can post it on Facebook, have other people help you be accountable for picking three.
“I also like to say, instead of creating a really daunting ‘to-do’ list of things that you have to do that day that are weighing over your head, make a ‘ta-da list’ of the things you accomplished that day that you can feel proud of at the end of the day.”
4. Keep a journal or calendar of your choices so you can see how your month balanced out
“Just like if you’re trying to watch your nutrition, the biggest advice is to keep a journal of what you’re eating so you can see what you chose. Keep a journal of which three [activities] you picked. Again, work, sleep, family, friends, fitness, you get to pick three. You want to make sure you’re balancing out over the long run, but it’s okay if you pick the same three over and over again for a short time. We’re entrepreneurs, we’re busy, sometimes you’ve got to focus and drill down, but write it down to make sure you’re not letting anything in your life go by the wayside.”
5. Profit financially, physically and emotionally
“If you give yourself that permission to really focus, first of all, what you’re going to find is that you’re going to be so much more productive, you’re going to be happier, and I know in my own personal life and my professional life, I don’t think I’ve ever accomplished anything I was truly proud of when I felt like I was just balancing everything really well. It was when I really deep dove into one area and was really focused and I felt like I accomplished anything I was really proud of. So that’s why I think the new reality of being an entrepreneur (especially for those of us who are parents too) is that you have to maybe be a little more lopsided instead of balanced and it’s okay as long as it shifts back and fourth.”
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Lady Gaga wore a ballgown and heels on a hike to show the world that she DGAF
Lady Gaga never fails to flaw us with her exquisite style. But her latest outfit, worn while on a hike in Montauk, New York, is perhaps her most diva-esque outfit to date.
While most of us don leggings, hoodies, trainers, or hiking boots, when out for a hike with her boyfriend Christian Carino Gaga opted for something a little more…fancy.
The pop diva sported a pair of nude Christian Louboutin heels with a long black skirt and an off-the-shoulder crop top. An outfit that, in all honesty, wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Met Gala.
Lady Gaga on a hike http://pic.twitter.com/hwjEB2SGsZ
Yashar Ali (@yashar) June 23, 2017
Lady Gaga taking a hike in a ball gown and heels is the level of “I don’t give a fuck” that I want http://pic.twitter.com/BHIUePHmkj
Eden (@edengoodall) June 23, 2017
Her runway style, naturally, turned heads on social media.
Some were particularly enamoured by the fact that her hiking outfit is a striking contrast to her usual casual, everyday attire.
Lady gaga is the only person who walks down the street in sneakers and walks on a hike with louboutin heels http://pic.twitter.com/sJu8Eb8JF7
Sam (@Newyorkgaga9) June 22, 2017
And others pointed out that the star was absolutely slaying the hike.
Gaga is SLAYING this HIKE honestly speechless, letting the captions talk for themselves http://pic.twitter.com/uvNfPQnxqp
Kitty Girl (@lllchrisllll) June 22, 2017
“Slay that mountain, wreck that trail, and dismantle our awful hiking patriarchy. That trail has been canceled… https://t.co/uFvowLwKH8
Rog (@yehitsroger) June 22, 2017
Wreck that trail, Gaga. Wreck it.
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Friday, June 23, 2017
7 days quiz: What caused a titter before the Queen’s Speech? – BBC News
It’s the weekly news quiz – have you been paying attention to what’s been going on in the world over the past seven days?
If you missed last week’s quiz, try it here
Picture credits: PA, Reuters, Getty Images and Mattel.
Join the conversation – find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter
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Thursday, June 22, 2017
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Amazon’s Prime Wardrobe makes a play against all those at-home shopping subscription boxes
Stich Fix, Fabletics, Trunk Club … watch out.
Amazon just took aim at all those at-home try-on shopping subscription servicesand every other e-commerce sitewith Prime Wardrobe.
Prime Wardrobe is Amazon’s entry into the apparel box space. The “fitting room that fits into your life” allows you to choose a bunch of clothes and accessories on Amazon to try on at home. Amazon will send you all those items for free, and then you only pay for the items you keep.
“You have the freedom to try new styles, and there’s no better place than in your own room,” Amazon said in a video introducing its new service.
Amazon’s version of this service is less a personal stylist than a fitting room. Most of these other services choose clothes for you to try based on an initial profile and preferences you give them. Through Prime Wardrobe, you choose the exact pieces you want to try. Amazon says Prime Wardrobe will include over 1 million items.
Instead of receiving a monthly box of clothes you might like, you choose what to try on and when. That approach makes Prime Wardrobe competitive with all other kinds of online shopping, too. Why order from ASOS if you can try on the same thing through Amazon?
Since it’s Amazon, Prime Wardrobe comes with competitive pricing. The more you keep from your box, the more discounts you get10 percent off for three or four items and 20 percent off for five. You have seven days to return the rest of the box via UPS.
Clothing sold on Amazon will also be labeled with “Prime Wardrobe” if it’s available through this service, along with the usual Prime label. Prime Wardrobe, of course, is free for anyone who has a Prime membership.
Prime Wardrobe is still in beta, but anyone interested can sign up to be notified when the service launches for real.
Last week it was groceries, this week it’s online shopping.
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‘Polishing a Rusty Knife’ is a perfect video and deserves the world
The #1 video on YouTube right now is “Polishing a Rusty Knife,” uploaded by Japanese YouTuber Jun on Monday. I’ll cut right to it this is a great video, and it deserves this honor.
First of all, the narrative arc here is extremely satisfying. As Jun explains, he purchased the rusty knife for $3 far more than it was worth in its dilapidated condition. So, to get the best of the dude who ripped him off, he painstakingly buffs and sharpens it to perfection. It’s a beautiful revenge story! Wow.
But the wonders don’t stop there. After Jun finishes polishing the knife, he demonstrates its newfound powers by finely chopping a bunch of vegetables and he’s clearly an expert in the kitchen. Now we have two satisfying videos in one! Wow.
Finally and a lot of Redditors have already pointed this out Jun’s adorable orange cat (who almost looks thrilled by the knife-polishing journey) really elevates the video into “classic” territory. But, friends, there is also a subtle second cat in the background. See it, perched on the countertop and gazing out the window? Wow.
Now this is a video that gets it right.
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Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Venezuela accuses Twitter of censoring
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Venezuela is not happy with Twitter, and Twitter is staying silent.
President of Venezuela Nicols Maduro accused Twitter of censoring by suspending 180 government-related Twitter accounts, including TV and radio stations, Reuters reported.
President Maduro suggested the suspensions were directed at Twitter users who supported late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who was his predecessor.
“Twitter in Venezuela today deactivated thousands of people’s accounts,” Maduro said at televised rally, according to Reuters. “Simply for being ‘Chavistas.'”
Twitter declined to comment to Mashable on the accusations. Twitter’s guidelines say that accounts can be suspended for abusive behavior and spamming.
Still, the President of Venezuela does not want the people of his country to stop using Twitter. He said that his supporters should use Twitter to counter the opposition online.
“The battle on social media is very important.”
“They killed thousands of accounts, if they shut down a thousand, we will open 10,000 or more with the youth,” he said. “The battle on social media is very important.”
In Venezuela, Twitter has been a battleground for hackers to take over accounts and spread misinformation. A hack called “DoubleSwitch” involves hackers taking over accounts and then switching the username.
The hack affected human rights activists and journalists in Venezuela. Twitter was able to recover two of the accounts affected, according to digital rights group Access Now.
WATCH:
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Monday, June 19, 2017
Seems weird that no one has mentioned Orbeez to me before
Life is a series of crushing disappointments, and this is no exception: I have recently learned that Orbeez, which are tiny, absorbent polymer balls that expand to 100 times their original size when wet, and which YouTube personalities love to purchase by the millions and pour into pools, have existed for years.
And none of you posers thought to tell me!
SEE ALSO: 9 pool floats you need right now
Check this out. Here’s a guy putting 25 million Orbeez in a swimming pool, where they become large and jelly-like, and jumping in to see if he’ll float. This video has everything I like: yelling, science, and a vague connection to the Salem Witch Trials.
And no one was like, “Hey, cool vid! I’m going to pass this one on to Chloe?” Sheesh.
Here’s some dude in a muscle tank dipping several pool skimmers full of dry Orbeez into a pool, watching the Orbeez expand, putting the expanded Orbeez in a trash can, putting his cute dog in that same trash can and uttering the phrase “dog spa” (my favorite phrase), then dumping those Orbeez one million of them into his girlfriend’s car.
This video was published in September 2016. And no one wanted to copy-paste the link (a maximum of five clicks) and send it to my Gmail or whatever? I’m literally always checking my Gmail, and I have two accounts! Oh my god!
Next, please enjoy a video of the world record for Biggest Orbeez Waterfall. As the video description says, the clip features “MILLIONS of Orbeez dropped by a giant CRANE into a big POOL.”
And you’re telling me that MILLIONS of Orbeez didn’t even convince you to send this to me? Or just mention it in passing? Come on.
And here’s somebody putting Orbeez in a meat grinder. Look at the disgusting goop that comes out. It’s like … I could have watched this in February four calendar months ago.
Christ. I have never had any true friends. Whatever. Have a good weekend.
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Elon Musk shows us how tech moguls celebrate Father’s Day
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Like many dads around the world, Elon Musk is spending his Father’s Day making bad dad jokes and receiving the gift wrapped fruits of being a good parent.
First, Musk took to Twitter to let his kids (who must be sci-fi fans, too) know that he’s not just a space and electric car mogul, he’s also on the dark side of the Force.
It’s time they knew http://pic.twitter.com/wt7XfXqTM6
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2017
Later, Musk seemed a little giddy when he posted a photo of a gift he received for Father’s Day: a luxurious, personalized iPhone case.
Based a quick look at the Chaos Club website, the gold chain adorned case may have cost as much as $350.
Don’t be jelly, but I just received a monogrammed iPhone case with a gold-plated chain, cat ears & three-leaved clover http://pic.twitter.com/7ozYu8xQ1J
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2017
That’s not the most expensive gift you can give a billionaire, but when it comes to the often janky gifts we give our understanding dads, this ranks pretty high on the swag scale.
Yes, even Mars-loving space geeks who plan to bore holes into the earth to move around Los Angeles faster get a little warm and fuzzy on Father’s Day.
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Google exec’s op-ed lists 4-point plan to combat terrorism on YouTube
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Following a wave of terrorist attacks in the UK in recent months, Google’s senior vice-president and general counsel, Kent Walker, used one of the leading publications in the country to outline a plan to combat the use by terrorists of Google’s tools.
On Sunday, Walker posted an op-ed in the Financial Times that listed four distinct steps Google is taking to fight extremists who harness the power of tools like YouTube to spread their messages.
“We will now devote more engineering resources to apply our most advanced machine learning research to train new ‘content classifiers’ to help us more quickly identify and remove [extremist and terrorism-related videos],” said Walker.
“We will greatly increase the number of independent experts in YouTubes Trusted Flagger programme,” Walker continued, offering detail on the changes behind the scenes at YouTube. “We will expand this programme by adding 50 expert NGOs to the 63 organisations who are already part of the programme, and we will support them with operational grants.”
These initiatives don’t just cover technical approaches. The company will now take a modified approach to judgment calls on content in general.
“We will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies … videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content.”
“We will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content; in future these will appear behind a warning and will not be monetised, recommended, or eligible for comments or user endorsements,” although this particular measure is no guarantee that such content won’t still make it to users, eliminating the monetization of such content may help. “We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints.”
Lastly, Walker says the company will bolster existing efforts from its Creators for Change and Jigsaw projects to implement the “redirect method,” a program that uses Adwords and YouTube to debunk ISIS recruiting messages online.
Google’s public stance comes just weeks after UK Prime Minister Theresa May gave a speech in which she pushed for more internet regulation as a means to prevent terrorism. In that context, it appears that Google’s op-ed is (aside from its purely positive intentions) an attempt to influence UK away from internet regulation that could take more control out of the hands of internet behemoths like Google.
To that end, Walker also mentioned that Google is working with Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter to create an international forum devoted to combating terrorist activities online.
What this all means for freedom of speech is fascinating to consider: Do you trust curated censoring of some content to be in the hands of internet companies or the government? Both have shortcomings, but Google’s op-ed is a clear sign that this is no longer something the internet will “just work out” on its own, regulation is coming, from one side or the other.
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Forget the IPO, the ICO is the cool new way to get funded
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A few days ago, a startup called Bancor raised around $153 million in two hours and twenty-five minutes.
The ICO, short for initial coin offering, followed several similar, equally successful funding events, and the numbers are rising. Prediction market Augur raised around $5.2 million over two months in 2015; this year, its competitor Gnosis raised $12 million in just 15 minutes.
And we could only be getting started.
SEE ALSO: Bye, Bitcoin. Hello, Ethereum.
The initial coin offering (sometimes also called a token crowdsale) is, in certain ways, similar to an initial public offering. Instead of stock, in an ICO a company sells a number of cryptocurrency tokens.
Every ICO is a little bit different, but typically there’s a time limit for the sale, and a set number of maximum tokens that will be sold. Once those limits are reached, the sale is done, and the owners can use their tokens as they please.
Tokens are different from shares, though. They can be traded and they have a value, and after a successful ICO this value can easily double. Again, this is similar to an IPO; those who get in early usually benefit from the initial spike in value.
But tokens don’t typically give their owners ownership over a part of the company that issued them. Each token is, in fact, a smart contract that can provide additional benefits down the road. For example, the tokens issued by Storj a decentralized storage solution can be exchanged for storage space on the platform. If you’re wondering, Storj’s ICO was also successful; the company easily raised $30 million in May 2017. And Bancor’s tokens are a type of monetary reserve that provide liquidity to other tokens; per the project’s FAQ, an increase of value of other tokens on the Bancor network should increase the value of the Bancor token as well.
It all revolves around Ethereum
So how do you get in on the action? First, you need to get some ETH, or Ethereum. That’s because Ethereum is more than a cryptocurrency, it’s a platform for smart contracts that makes ICOs easier to do (although, theoretically, you can have a token sale on a different platform; for example, Ethereum itself had a Bitcoin-based token sale in 2014, raising $18 million). Thanks to this, most ICOs these days are Ethereum-based, and to participate in the sale, you typically need to exchange your ETH for tokens.
Buying ETH isn’t particularly complicated; you can do so on exchanges such as Kraken or Coinbase. Then, during an ICO, you usually just have to send ETH to a designated address though other rules may apply, so always read the terms of every ICO very carefully before participating.
If everything went OK, you will receive the new tokens soon, usually within a week. You can choose to keep them or trade them back into ETH at any point; a lot of ICO participants quickly “flip” the tokens back into ETH, especially if the tokens quickly gain value compared to the ICO price.
Wait. It’s not that easy.
But that’s all theory. Actually participating in an ICO is next to impossible; trust me, I’ve tried. This is because every ICO as confirmed by Ethereum Foundation member Vlad Zamfir is a huge strain on the Ethereum network, as thousands of buyers try to participate all at once. This means that transactions during an ICO will go through slowly, and similar to trying to buy a ticket for the Super Bowl online, your efforts might be in vain.
There is a whole lot of /r/bitcoin style “this is good news” ITT… imo yes, it is a huge issue!https://t.co/Hi46zzPTxE
Vlad Zamfir (@VladZamfir) June 13, 2017
There are also various tricks big players can employ to buy tokens before others; some companies are undertaking measures to make the playing field more even, with mixed success.
Finally, ICOs aren’t regulated. A company that sets out to do an ICO will post some rules on a website, and that’s pretty much all you have in terms of regulations. Guarantees that you won’t lose your ETH are feeble, and even the name of a known figure from the cryptocurrency world, like Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, doesn’t mean much as recently explained by the man himself.
1. This is me socially precommitting that I will not be an advisor for future ICO projects.
Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) June 13, 2017
5. Most existing projects that listed me as an advisor never paid me a cent for it.
Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) June 13, 2017
The result of these issues is that it will be hard for a small player to participate in an ICO. Again, this is similar to many IPOs, where the majority of available shares are pre-sold to banks and funds. The difference is that here, the barriers to entry are mostly technical, not political.
Finally, disasters happen. Big ones. The crowdsale of decentralized VC fund DAO was one of the largest in history, but someone exploited a bug in the code to steal a big chunk of the raised funds. To fix this, Ethereum forked into a new software version, restoring the funds, but the incident led to a big drop in Ethereum’s price.
So when will this bubble burst?
Despite the issues outlined above, the ICO craze currently looks and feels like a bubble. Tiny, unknown startups which barely have a functional product are raising tens of millions of dollars within hours. By amassing big amounts of ETH, which (typically) stays outside the market for a while, every ICO is driving the price of ETH upwards. And the price of ETH is already up some 3500% compared to last year.
Here’s how this may look from one user’s perspective. Say you bought 10 ETH in 2016 for a meager hundred bucks. Today, your 10 ETH are worth around $3,500. But say that instead of doing nothing with your ETH, you invested half of it in the Gnosis ICO this April. The price of GNO tokens more than doubled within hours of trading. If you sold those for ETH right away, you’d have roughly 15 ETH, which today would be worth $5,250. This scenario, while theoretical, isn’t uncommon; in fact, with the growth Ethereum has experienced in the last year, gains such as these were easy to achieve.
Sounds crazy? A little bit like building a Jenga tower? That’s because it is. There are currently few people who think this kind of growth is sustainable; and many point out that some sort of correction is necessary.
There’s no “cure” for bubbles except to let them run their course and pop, unfortunately.
Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) June 13, 2017
Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare, told Mashable via email that some of the ICO valuations we’re seeing are “removed from reality and certainly don’t include a realistic assessment of probability of failure.”
For some, this will end badly. “The wealth of the space is being driven by greed which attracts more than its fair share of charlatan – but there is opportunity, too. Money for nothing will lead to dire straits for some,” Hayter said.
On the other hand, the space and possibilities that Ethereum has opened are expanding rapidly. Take Bancor, for example; currently the top dog in terms of money raised via a token sale.
Built on top of Ethereum, Bancor is a platform in itself, allowing easy generation of new tokens to users without the need of extensive technical knowledge, and providing liquidity to seldom-used tokens. The way it all works is complex stuff, and yet raising $153 million seemed easy. Bancor, however, is largely unfazed by the enormous success of their crowdfunding effort.
“Bancor stands in the category of Ethereum as a landscape-shaping product,” Galia Benartzi, Chief Business Officer at Bancor, told Mashable in a phone interview. “When the product launches live, and anyone in the world has easy access to creating a smart token, this will change the face of cryptocurrency adoption. Were very excited in unlocking the power of the long tail.”
While extremely ambitious, Bancor is just one of hundreds of startups built on top of Ethereum, and you’ll hear similarly audacious words from others as well. And many of these upcoming startups have ICOs, or token crowdsale events, lined up in the near future. Long-term, the success or failure of this new breed of apps will likely determine the fate of Ethereum. But right now, despite the big numbers that often don’t make sense, the crypto crowd can’t wait for the next ICO to begin.
Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.
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Sunday, June 18, 2017
Security cam captures a man getting spooked by a family of skunks
A man exits a home, walks down the front steps, and stops dead in his tracks. He looks shook, and takes no time running back up the porch steps to the front door.
“What’s up?” another man asks with a slight fear is his voice.
Thankfully, the terror was caused by a pretty adorable family of skunks that were barreling through the neighborhood and minding their own business. The skunks quickly passed the house without a care for the man on the porch, and sneeaked under the neighbor’s porch.
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Saturday, June 17, 2017
Amazon buys Whole Foods(!)
Amazon has acquired Whole Foods, a move that marks the ecommerce giant’s official entry into the world of brick-and-mortar stores as well as groceries.
It’s Amazon’s biggest acquisition everand it’s not even close. The company is paying $13.7 billion in cash for the grocery chain, which now operates some 465 stores across the U.S.
Starting out as a online book seller, Amazon has grown into a retail behemoth, drastically altering the market for almost every company in the U.S. that sells consumer goods.
Not content to just dominate ecommerce, Amazon has been tip-toeing into the real world with some bookstores and experimental convenience stores.
Those efforts led to speculation that Amazon eventually would make a major acquisition of a chain, rather than slowly build out its own stores.
That acquisition ended up being Whole Foods.
Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does.
Dennis K. Berman (@dkberman) June 16, 2017
The Texas-based grocery chain has grown quickly in the past couple decades, building its brand around healthy and organic offerings that are locally sourced.
Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy, said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, in a press release. Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades theyre doing an amazing job and we want that to continue.
It’s unclear exactly how much Amazon will change Whole Foods or integrate it into its existing business, though the companies noted in a press release that the brand would continue to operate and use its existing vendors.
This partnership presents an opportunity to maximize value for Whole Foods Markets shareholders, while at the same time extending our mission and bringingthe highest quality, experience, convenience and innovation to our customers, said John Mackey, Whole Foods Market co-founder and CEO.
How big of a deal is this for the grocery industry? Well, just about anybody who owned stock in Whole Foods competitors decided now would be a good time to find a new place for their money.
The stocks below are: Amazon, Supervalu, Kroger, Target, Walmart and Costco.
The day Amazon becomes a direct competitor to your company. http://pic.twitter.com/QP9KDWksSi
Bret Taylor (@btaylor) June 16, 2017
Whether Whole Foods will continue to just do Whole Foods things is a whole other question. The company has faced challenges in recent years similar to those of other chains, with a raft of competitors and thinning profit eating into its business. Whole Foods leadership had also been fighting off activist investors that had pushed for major changes.
Now, paired with Amazon, Whole Foods could become a major cog in Amazon’s larger operation. Amazon could use Whole Foods locations for a variety of offeringsparticularly the expansion of its super-fast delivery program.
Whole Foods is generally targeted at high-income people, with its stores strategically located in affluent areas. Now, Amazon has bought its way into that market with one fell swoop.
I, too, spend $13.7 billion at Whole Foods.
Slade Sohmer (@Slade) June 16, 2017
It’s the largest ever acquisition by Amazon, which doesn’t tend to buy up companies very often. Its other notable purchases include Zappos (for $1.2 billion) and streaming platform Twitch (for about $1 billion).
Not that Amazon can just throw around $14 billion, but it’s not that much of a stretch for Amazon, which is now worth more than $460 billion. It is notable, however, that the deal is all cash. Companies often use stock to acquire companies in lieu of just dropping a mountain of money all at once.
But shopping at Whole Foods ain’t cheap. Shopping for Whole Foods shouldn’t be either.
Jeff Bezos: “Alexa, buy me something from Whole Foods.”
Alexa: “Sure, Jeff. Buying Whole Foods now.”
Jeff Bezos: “WHA- ahh go ahead.” http://pic.twitter.com/GuJ2jlAiuU
JESAL (@JesalTV) June 16, 2017
This story is developing.
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Amazon will probably kill the crazy lines at Whole Foods
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There’s no greater hell than waiting in a long line at Whole Foods on a Saturday afternoon. Luckily, there could be some sweet relief coming soon.
Alexa to the rescue? Maybe. Amazon announced on Friday its plans to acquire the grocery store chain in a deal valued at $13.7 billion.
So why in the world is America’s biggest online retailer suddenly trying to get into the grocery industry?
Well, Amazon has been pushing to expand its footprint in the grocery business for quite some time. Even as many U.S. consumers are buying other goods like clothing and electronics online, groceries have been one of the last bastions of brick-and-mortar shopping.
Amazon essentially plans to shake up this notion with sophisticated technology like artificial intelligence, computer vision, customer profiling, and drone delivery systems. Imagine: Whole Foods without the obnoxiously long lines! What a world!
No checkouts = no line
Amazon has already outlined some of its high-tech ambitions to kill long lines at grocery stores when it previewed its concept store Amazon Go back in December.
The concept showed customers walking into a grocery store, grabbing items, and walking straight out. No lines. No checkout. No register. Get in, and get out. (The exact opposite of my current Whole Foods experience.)
The concept, as described by Amazon, is reliant on computer vision, deep learning, and sensor technology that lets the store track each individual and the goods they carry out of the story. The tech currently needs some work, though, because early tests of the concept store were rife with problems.
Nonetheless, Amazon Go gives us at least some idea of the seamless transactions the company wants to introduce in its brick-and-mortar stores. In the end, Amazon just wants to make it easier for people to buy things from Amazon stores. It’s a lot like one-click purchasing from its online store, but reformatted to work in the real world.
Just a wave of the (Dash) Wand
To that end, the company will likely use its periphery gadgets to sell more in its grocery stores. For example, the Dash Wand that was just announced on Thursday lets you fill up your shopping cart by using voice commands or scanning barcodes on packages you have laying around the house.
This handheld device could ultimately be used to purchase goods from your local Whole Foods. The goods you purchase could then be delivered to your home or picked up at the store.
The Amazon Echo also has a similar grocery list feature. It is able to keep a running list of items you need to purchase, and syncs them across all your other Amazon devices. You can then order a product (say, toilet paper) by just saying it to your smart speaker.
Or the push of a button
The same idea of quick purchasing was emphasized in the Amazon Dash, the dedicated buttons that let you order more household goods just by pushing a button. The point of all these devices being that they will sync your shopping lists, and ultimately help you make those purchases through Amazon. Best of all, you get to skip the banal task of going to the grocery and walking aisle after aisle through stuff you don’t actually need.
Ultimately, Amazon’s goal is simply making it easier for people to buy stuff from the company. It’s about keeping people locked in a purchasing loop. To that end, Amazon wants to give people options.
Drone Foods
Back in 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduced delivery drones in a widely publicized 60 Minutes interview. It’s easy to imagine these type of delivery drones being implemented in the more than 400 Whole Foods stores around America.
Deploying drones from a local stores like Whole Foods will make it easier to reach doorsteps quickly and solves the greatest weakness of the drones, which is currently travel distance. In its first successful demonstration, Amazon delivery drone was only able to fly two miles. This will be less of an issue with Whole Foods stores everywhere.
All of this technology will be used in sum to personalize your shopping experience. For example, if you love pizza, the store might offer you some coupons on the way in or even send a push notification to your phone. At the end of the day, Amazon is still a data company, and this acquisition will likely be used to mine more information about your purchasing habits.
The showroom
In the distant future, it’s easy to imagine Whole Foods stores becoming showrooms, similar to the way books are treated in Amazon Books (the new brick-and-mortar bookstores). The obnoxious lines at Whole Foods will likely be killed, and it will be much easier to purchase goodsall while Amazon builds a detailed profile of the things you like to purchase.
It’s a little creepy, but we’ll gladly sacrifice some of our privacy to end the grueling task of standing in an hour-long line at Whole Foods.
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Katy Perry just hit a Twitter milestone she really doesn’t deserve
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Friday we witnessed history, according to Twitter.
Katy Perry, whose new album is titled “Witness,” is the first person to reach 100 million followers on Twitter.
In honor of this major milestone, Katy Perry got a special emoji for the hashtag #LoveKaty and a minute-long celebratory video.
But the big issue: Katy Perry doesn’t REALLY have 100 million followers because Katy Perry’s account is plagued by a common problem on Twitter bots.
There are many third-party platforms for analyzing the authenticity of Twitter followers out there. Digital Spy used the service TwitterAudit and found that of her 99.3 million followers at the time, only 32 percent were real. That means nearly 67 million of her followers were fake.
Twitter responded to our inquiry after publication.
“Twitter has verified that Katy does indeed have 100 million followers. The methodology used by Twitter Audit is flawed and their incorrect information should not be taken seriously,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.
Thank you, @Twitter, for always giving me an opportunity to have a voice! #LoveKaty https://t.co/Lpc1DSk4Kw
KATY PERRY (@katyperry) June 16, 2017
Hmm, no bots, you’re saying? Interesting …
We can tell you that in the past Twitter has been extremely sensitive over the bots issue. President Donald Trump’s account is also riddled with bots, for example.
A question during Twitter’s quarterly earnings call in April was centered on bots. CEO Jack Dorsey cited a statistic, first released in 2014, that only 5 percent of Twitter accounts are spam related, and added that they have the means to shut these down.
So how about first a look at Katy’s account, Jack?
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Become a #content queen with this digital marketing course
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Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission.
The field of digital marketing is extremely, well, vague. From copywriters to data analysts to coders, nearly any professional could be performing digital marketing tasks at this very moment.
Digital marketing skills are extremely beneficial for a wide variety of people to know, and no, we’re not talking about your daily dog post to Insta. Unless, of course, your dog is Doug The Pug.
The 2017 Complete Digital Marketing Courseis a great way for you to pick up some of those skills and slap them on your resume for good measure. It doesn’t matter if youre a marketing neophyte or a seasoned industry professional, the training can help you step up your game for less than $20.
This online training is led by internet-famous instructors Rob Percival and Daragh Walsh, who are beloved by their students because their courses are fun, easy to follow, and packed with a ton of truly valuable takeaways. The Complete Digital Marketing Course faithfully retains those hallmarks over 169 lectures and 19.5 hours of quizzes, hands-on practice, and exposure to the most valuable industry tools.
In the course, you’ll learn about marketing fundamentals and best practices, the secrets to amassing email subscribers, social media marketing techniques, and a ton of other skills that recruiters now care about.
One of the coolest parts about online learning, is you can work on it when you have free time. This course has 24/7 access so you can fit it in around your busy schedule, no problem.
The usual cost for such a massive course is $200but you can get it here with a 90% discount, bringing the price down to $19.
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Friday, June 16, 2017
Facebook wants to crush terrorism on its network using a new algorithm
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Facebook has a terrorism problem, and its vowing to fix it. On Thursday, the social media giant announced new plans to use artificial intelligence to scrape words, images, and video in order to wipe terrorist propaganda from its network entirely.
The only catch? It still requires a team of 150 counterterrorism experts as well as plenty of other people to fight extremism on the platform. We can only hope this new AI tool is as sophisticated as Facebook claims it is.
SEE ALSO: In search of Facebooks conscience
“We are currently focusing our most cutting edge techniques to combat terrorist content about ISIS, Al Qaeda and their affiliates, and we expect to expand to other terrorist organizations in due course,” Facebook said in a statement about the update.
The announcement comes in the wake of growing pressure from governments and individuals affected by terrorism to make Facebook remove materials such as terrorist propaganda or other user-generated content that could incite violence.
In Thursday’s statement, Facebook said it has put together a team of more than 150 people “exclusively or primarily” focused on countering terrorism as their core responsibility. The group includes counterterrorism experts, former prosecutors, former law enforcement, and engineers.
The social media company will also work with various partners like Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Affinis Labs to “push back against extremism and hate online,” according to the statement.
Facebook’s public discussion of its counterterrorism efforts is the first in a new series of efforts from the company to bring more transparency and discussion to the myriad of problems that Facebook has either created or contributed to.
Called “Hard Questions,” it’s meant to push the company forward on topics while also soliciting more feedback from the public. Facebook also announced that it created a brand new email address hardquestions@fb.com where you can send feedback or suggestions for problems it should address. So let them know your thoughts!
Facebook remains tight-lipped about how exactly most of its underlying technology works, but the company took a major step forward in sharing details around its image matching technology.
Video fingerprinting called “hashes” are being used to help Facebook’s algorithms find and ultimately terminate extremist videos before they’re ever posted or made public.
The only downside is that this new form of image scanning doesn’t prevent people from joining Facebook, then using it to communicate with and ultimately recruit others using messaging.
It’s also unclear how well the new system understands the context of these images. For example, an image of an ISIS flag could be used in propaganda both for and against the terrorist organizationan example Facebook noted remains a challenge.
Another complication is that terrorist activity is moving to new areas of the internet, such as encrypted messaging services Telegram and Facebook-owned WhatsApp. There are also new challenges presented by Facebook Live, the streaming service that lets people broadcast video to the public instantly in real time.
The decision to publicly announce the update represents a major shift for Facebook in regards to transparency. In the past, the social network has made editorial decisions like this privately. Thursday’s announcement is an obvious attempt to be more transparent and certainly a step in the right directionbut it’s clear that Facebook faces more challenges than its fancy algorithms are probably able to solve. Our crazy world is nuanced, and machines are not yet ready to make difficult judgement calls, even by Facebook’s own admission.
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Repeat viewers beware: Netflix limits the number of times you can download videos
Netflix binging offline may not be so simple after all.
The video-streaming company announced last year that it would be letting users download movies to watch on-the-go in places where Wi-Fi isn’t available. It’s a great feature, but as is the case with pretty much anything, there’s a bit of a catch.
The number of times a user can download a movie or show is limited, and Netflix hasn’t made it clear, according to Digital Trends. But according to the company, this information has been available since the feature was launched.
Any content downloaded has an expiration date, which is directly stated in the site’s help section. This means you only have, say 48 hours, to watch you movie you downloaded you can’t keep it forever. Amazon Prime’s download option has a similar restriction.
But users who wish to download the same movie or show multiple times may need to rethink that decision, because those are the downloads that appear to be limited, Android Police reported.
Android Police points out that rights holders to the movies and shows have the ability to put a limit on how many times content can be downloaded, and since Netflix doesn’t own most of the shows and movies it provides, they really can’t bear all the blame here.
The company does state on its site that there may be a limit on the number of times a title can be renewed. However, it’s buried in the site’s help section, and there’s no clarification on which titles have limits, and which titles may not.
“In some cases, there may be limits to the number of titles from the same licensing agreement that you candownloadat the same time,” Netflix told Mashable in an email. “We will only enforce these limits in cases where our licensing agreements require us to do so”
So be careful about your repeat viewing. You may reach that dreaded limit sooner thank you think.
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