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7 Proven Ways to Beat Burnout
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How to stay motivated and get back on track.
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A Bill Gates-backed energy company is developing what could be a game-changing nuclear reactor
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TerraPower
TerraPower, an energy company co-founded by Bill Gates, builds advanced nuclear reactors.
The company is developing a new reactor that uses molten salt instead of water as a coolant. TerraPower believes the design will be safer and more efficient than today's reactors.
Gates has supported nuclear energy projects for several years, hoping that improvements in the technology can help curb the effects of climate change.
A new laboratory is slated to open next year, and TerraPower chief technology officer John Gilleland said the company plans on having a prototype reactor ready in about 10 years.
Bill Gates sees nuclear energy as a potential solution to lowering carbon dioxide emissions around the world, and he has spent the past decade funding new ways to produce the energy in a safe, affordable way.
About 10 years ago, Gates co-founded a company called TerraPower to build new kinds of nuclear reactors.
TerraPower is developing a line of reactors that use a molten chloride coolant, drawing on a decades-old but still unused invention to lower costs and reduce waste. The most common reactors use light (or regular) water as a coolant.
Following a US Department of Energy investment worth $40 million and a partnership with energy provider Southern Company, TerraPower plans on opening a new laboratory next year. Gates' company wants to develop a molten chloride prototype by 2030, and the laboratory will be used to test reactor materials in the meantime.
John Gilleland, the company's chief technical officer, told Business Insider that molten chloride designs are the "ultimate green reactor."
"It not only would allow you to produce electricity without carbon emissions, but by shipping the heat directly to some process in an industrial facility, you can provide the necessary heat to cause reactions to occur in industrial processing, or whatever you want to use it for, without carbon emissions," Gilleland said.
How a molten salt reactor works
Nuclear energy grew in prominence after 20th-century scientists figured out how to harness the atom's power, but high costs and safety concerns over dangerous radioactive waste have deterred many countries from investing in it.
Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative say that within the electricity sector, nuclear energy would be the least expensive solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades. But nuclear energy currently accounts for only 11% of the world's electricity, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Nuclear energy is produced when radioactive fuel is put into a reactor to trigger fission — a process in which the nucleus of an atom splits within a reactor core.
In light water reactors, solid fuel sits within cladding, or corrosion-resistant metal that stops radioactive pieces from contaminating the coolant. The water around the cladding helps turn a reaction's heat into steam for turbines, which generate electricity.
TerraPower's liquid chloride design, however, puts uranium fuel and the coolant in the same molten salt, Gilleland said. Fission can heat the salts directly as the mixture flows through the reactor core, and the mixture then goes through heat exchangers to generate heat or electricity, he said.
Light water reactors can't sustain reactions at very high temperatures because the coolant evaporates. With molten chloride, though, TerraPower could operate reactors at much higher temperatures than before. In addition to generating electricity, nuclear technology could be used in high-temperature processes like fertilizer production and oil refinery.
The materials inside light water reactors degrade quickly and need to be replaced roughly every 18 months, as it becomes more difficult to sustain fission with older fuel. Molten chloride reactors, meanwhile, produce little residual waste and could theoretically run for years without the need to add fuel or get rid of waste.
TerraPower's design is also less likely to be used in nuclear weapon production because its radioactive fuel is not separated out.
TerraPower's new reactor was inspired by a 1960s experiment
Though TerraPower began working on its newest line of reactors just a few years ago, the design is based on Cold War-era molten salt technology. (TerraPower has also spent the past decade developing a traveling wave reactor, another advanced design.)
Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee developed a molten salt reactor in the 1960s, but funding came to a halt several years later as scientists raised concerns about corrosion and safety problems associated with the reactor.
Read more: A forgotten war technology could safely power Earth for millions of years. Here's why we aren't using it.
Now, with government funding and the support of billionaires like Gates, these reactors have another shot at hitting the market. TerraPower and Southern Company are working on their design with scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute, and Vanderbilt University.
Several other startups are competing with Gates' company to commercialize similar molten salt reactors.
In April, Florida-based company ThorCon received $400,000 from the US Department of Energy for a joint research project with Argonne National Laboratory. ThorCon aims to begin testing a molten salt-fueled fission reactor by 2023.
Department of Energy officials have also given $2.1 million to Alabama-based Flibe Energy, which is using thorium instead of uranium.
The molten salt reactor movement extends beyond the US as well. Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian company, wants to commercializes the design for its Integral Molten Salt Reactor by the late 2020s. And in the UK, Moltex Energy is making a Stable Salt Reactor, which uses molten salt fuel. Moltex plans on deploying its product at a nuclear reactor site by 2030.
At the same time, some nuclear startups have struggled to make their designs commercially viable. MIT-affiliated Transatomic Power, for example, shut down in September after seven years of operation. The company, founded just after the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture, had claimed its reactors would produce electricity 75 times more efficiently than light water reactors.
In a blog post announcing the shutdown, Transatomic CEO Leslie Dewan acknowledged there had been errors in early analyses and said the company was unable to scale up fast enough. Transatomic Power later open-sourced its intellectual property for other researchers to use.
REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Clean energy is in urgent demand, and Gates' startup is at least a decade away from a working prototype
Renewable energy use is growing too slowly to prevent dangerous climate change on its own.
If governments don't implement new policies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the bulk of the world's energy will still come from fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency's 2018 World Energy Outlook. Solar, wind, and nuclear energy systems are not keeping up with global energy demands, the report said.
Read more: 'Energy is worth a war': US nuclear supremacy is collapsing, but there's a way to win it back
About 25% of the world's electricity currently comes from renewable energy sources, according to the World Energy Outlook. The International Energy Agency predicts that the share will rise to 40% by 2040, and nuclear energy can prove to be a vital factor in any changes.
For Southern Company and TerraPower, the companies' ambitious plan could produce a new reactor well before 2040. The partners are developing a prototype with the capacity to produce up to 1,100 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 825,000 homes, according to the California Energy Commission.
TerraPower's $20 million laboratory, set to open in Washington state next year, will help researchers ensure the reactor's safety. Gilleland said TerraPower will run tests with depleted uranium, which is not used in fission, to determine which materials can hold molten salt without being damaged by corrosion.
Gates, who still serves as TerraPower's chairman, has emphasized that fewer people die in nuclear plant disasters than in coal mine or natural gas accidents. During a 2010 speech at MIT, he also praised nuclear energy for its potential to benefit countries where solar and wind energy are scarce.
"It is infinite. You can filter out of the sea very cheaply enough uranium to run this thing for as long as the sun will shine," Gates said. "I love nuclear."
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The all-new Echo Dot was the number one most purchased item on Amazon this weekend
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People bought an incredible 180 million products worldwide on Amazon over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
The number one best-selling item was the new Echo Dot (third generation).
Right now, the Echo Dot is still listed at its sale price of $29.99 rather than $49.99. If you're thinking of getting one, this is one of its lowest prices ever.
Cyber Monday was once again the biggest shopping day in Amazon's history, and it has already been predicted to be the largest online shopping day of the year.
People bought an incredible 180 million items on Amazon over the long weekend, which included thousands of deals to celebrate Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But the number one best-selling item worldwide — from any manufacturer, in any category — was the all-new third generation Echo Dot.
The Echo Dot is Amazon's most popular voice-controlled speaker, likely due to the fact that it packs all the benefits of Alexa into an under-$50 device that's small enough not to convert the feng shui of your home to "techy" in one fell swoop. With it, you can ask Alexa to play music, answer questions, read the news, check the weather, set alarms, call and message hands-free, and control compatible smart home devices (like lights, locks, or thermostats).
You can stream songs from Amazon Music, Spotify, SiriusXM, and more. For stereo sound, you can pair with another third generation Echo Dot in your home or connect to your own speakers over Bluetooth (or with a 3.5 mm audio cable). If you have Echo devices in different rooms, you can drop in to make an announcement in other rooms instantaneously.
The new third generation Echo Dot is 70% louder than the 2nd, and it has a new fabric design that comes in three colors: sandstone, heather gray, and charcoal. Right now, it's still priced at $29.99 (originally $49.99) — one of its lowest prices ever (rivaled only by a $24 listing on November 22, 2018). In comparison, the similar second generation Echo Dot typically retails for $39.99, but it's currently priced at $19.99.
If you're looking for something with dual speakers or more height, check out the full-sized Echo ($69.99 now, originally $99.99). If you're looking for stronger bass and a clearer sound, check out the $149.99 Echo Plus (or, better yet, the bundle deal that gives you an Echo Plus and a Philips Hue smart bulb for the same $149.99 (originally $164.98). For a full breakdown on Echo devices, find a short Insider Picks comparison here. Most Cyber Monday deals on Amazon products and services are still available — including up to 75% off Amazon devices for a limited time — so if you missed out on Cyber Monday, it's not too late.
Echo Dot (third generation), $29.99 (originally $49.99) [You save $20]
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Trump's views on the US auto industry are childish and intended only to rally his supporters (GM)
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Trump thought he could makes deals with the US auto industry that would largely benefit Trump.
Detroit has taken what it wanted from the administration in the form of tax cuts and reduced fuel-economy objectives, but the industry is now back to preparing its business for a sales downturn in the coming years.
Trump's response to GM's decision to idle a factory in Ohio — state critical to the president's re-election — is evidence of how his childish view of the global auto industry has hurt his supporters.
President Trump hasn't gotten what he wanted from the US auto industry — but he was never going to.
On Monday, General Motors announced that it would idle two car factories in Michigan and Ohio, as well as transmission plants in Michigan and Maryland (a third idled assembly plant is in Canada.) The factories make mostly sedans, and those vehicles have been declining in popularity as consumers switch to SUVs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Trump said he told [GM] CEO Mary Barra that she should stop making cars in China and open a new plant in Ohio to replace the ones where the company is planning to end production."
"I love Ohio," Trump told the Journal. "I told them, 'you're playing around with the wrong person.'"
Typical. Trump has never shown any meaningful grasp of the modern, global auto industry, preferring instead to reduce the business to a crude calculation of what's good for Trump.
Read more: GM will stop building cars at 3 North American factories and cut its salaried workforce by 15% in 2019 as it shifts to electric and self-driving cars
In that context, the decision to phase out production of the only car that the Lordstown, Ohio, plant is building — smack in the heart of swing-state Trump country — is a disaster for the chief executive. The Chevy Cruze is on track to sell nearly 100,000 fewer units in 2018 than 2017. The factory was down to single shifts. Everyone in the auto industry and in Ohio's government knew this situation couldn't continue.
Business reality vs. Trumpian fantasy
The best-case scenario for the factory is that it would be re-tooled to build pickups or SUVs, but GM hasn't said anything about doing that. The company made this week's moves to get its manufacturing capacity correctly aligned with consumer demand and to prepare for a US sales downturn. And even if GM does intend to shift to different models at Lordstown, the Cruze will be phasing out through 2019 and the factory's fate won't know until after the United Auto Workers and GM forge a new contract next year.
On China, Trump is equally misguided. GM builds exactly one vehicle there that's exported to the US in significant numbers — and that's being generous, as only about 30,000 Buick Envisions will be sold in all of 2018. The vehicle was developed for the Chinese market and is only sent to the US to provide Buick dealers with some options in the crossover segments.
Last year, Trump told Ohioans they'd see job gains, not losses, and he might have thought a huge corporate tax cut passed in 2017 would secure that outcome. But it wasn't going to happen, and although GM has been investing in tomorrow, it's largely been focused on new technologies, such as electric and self-driving vehicles, as well as launching new SUVs and pickups.
Now Trump is blustering about the inevitable, to mask the fact that he sold Ohio voters on a fantasy future. He also overlooked that a financially healthy GM won't operate like the basket case it was during the financial crisis, but instead will maneuver more like an independent country.
When GM is strong, it operates like a country
Ruben Sprich/Reuters
Beyond that, if he thinks GM is playing around with the wrong person, he's underestimating CEO Mary Barra, who has been unflinching in the face of tough decisions and has no intention of allowing GM to flirt with bankruptcy and government bailout ever again.
The real issue is that he's been caught in a deception about auto-industry economics, one that the potential impending layoffs of thousands of workers in Ohio (and, for that matter, Michigan) will make impossible to perpetuate. It hasn't helped that his trade war with China and his dismembering of NAFTA have increased carmaker's raw-materials costs and introduced uncertainly around cross-border supply chains. To top it all off, his EPA's re-jiggering of fuel-economy standards has undermined the value proposition of vehicles such as the relatively high-MPG Chevy Cruze.
Trump's relationship to the car business has been childish and largely incoherent, driven by giveaways that weren't going to be reciprocated, deals that he got hoodwinked on, and hiring demands that were either impossible or inconceivable on timetables that would fit with the US election cycles.
His flailings weren't going to hold up in a recession, anyway — and now GM has pulled foward some recession-level decisions that the pre-bankruptcy giant would have stalled on until it was too late. Ohioans should now see that the emperor has no clothes, that his sound and fury signifies nothing — or whatever literary cliché best captures the sad reality that a gigantic global corporation was somehow going to bend its entire business to the task of getting 51% of the Buckeye State to re-elect him.
GM will stop building cars at 3 North American factories and cut its salaried workforce by 15% in 2019 as it shifts to electric and self-driving cars
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6-foot-7 heavyweight Deontay Wilder says he'd 'sign up' if he could get pregnant carry a child and give birth as a man
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6-foot-7 heavyweight Deontay Wilder says he'd 'sign up' if he could get pregnant, carry a child, and give birth as a man
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Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images
Heavyweight Deontay Wilder, a father of seven, wants to experience pregnancy and childbirth as a man.
The six-foot-seven athlete is one of the world's most feared boxers with a terrifying record of 40 wins from 40 fights, 39 of which have come by knockout.
But the WBC heavyweight champion is revealing a softer side, opening up about fatherhood, his eldest daughter's health problems, and his desire to be a pregnant dad.
Deontay Wilder has said he would "sign up" if a procedure was ever invented that would allow him to get pregnant, carry a child, and give birth as a man.
Wilder is a six-foot-seven heavyweight who has knocked out every single opponent he has ever faced in a boxing ring.
A WBC champion, Wilder defends his iconic green and gold belt on Saturday December 1 when he takes on a resurgent Tyson Fury in a battle of big men, as Fury stands at six-foot-nine.
Read more: America's best heavyweight Deontay Wilder is a 'one trick pony' who fights like 'Bambi on ice,' according to the Gypsy King of boxing Tyson Fury
Because of his terrifying ability to poleaxe an opponent in a split-second, Wilder has cultivated an image as "the baddest man on the planet."
And that badman, a father to six children with his former wife Jessica Scales-Wilder and stepdad to his current partner Telli Swift's child, wants "to experience what women go through."
In an interview with The Telegraph, Wilder said: "If they ever invent something that will allow a man to carry a child, I want to sign up for it. I really do. I would say to my girl: 'Let's have a baby, and I'll carry it.' I would love to experience what women go through to bring life into this world."
He added: "That's why women are the most powerful thing on the earth. When we've got people who bleed for seven days every month… come on, man!"
He added that he feels like "the mother goose" in his family.
"I kiss my kids six or seven times a day. They are all individuals. I love them."
Photo by David A. Smith/Getty Images
Wilder is motivated by his eldest daughter
Wilder has previously told ESPN that one of the greatest influences on his prizefighting career and the success he has enjoyed is his eldest daughter Naieya Wilder (above).
Naieya was born in 2005 with spina bifida, a condition where an unborn baby's spine and spinal cord don't develop properly. Wilder was told that she may never walk.
According to ESPN, when Wilder heard his ex-wife was pregnant, he quickly dropped out of college where he was a promising athlete. He then worked in the restaurant business at IHOP and Red Lobster, and maintained his athleticism by going to a local gym where he eventually trained as a boxer.
The rest is history. Naieya confounded the doctors by walking after five surgeries as a baby, and Wilder — a bronze medallist at the 2008 Olympic Games — is looking to confound critics by extending his unbeaten run this weekend.
It is rare for fighters to preserve undefeated records and after a decade in professional sports, Wilder is yet to lose. Only Tyson Fury stands in his way when the two fighters collide at the Staples Center in Los Angeles this weekend.
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"Naieya's been through so much and it's motivation," he told The Telegraph. "If she can go through the suffering, the heartaches, and the pain, then what I do is easy."
He added: "This is the time — the biggest fight of my career. This is the one. This is the one that solidifies my name, especially here in America. America got a great man, America got a badman in boxing."
But this badman, Wilder says, has "a great heart."
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Anxious South Korean youngsters have lost hope in their future and don't want to get married and that's unexpectedly fueling the country's $2.5 billion air fragrance industry
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Anxious South Korean youngsters have lost hope in their future and don't want to get married — and that's unexpectedly fueling the country's $2.5 billion air fragrance industry
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South Korea is one of the fastest-growing air freshener markets in the world, dominating a global industry that's worth $10 billion.
Candle sales alone jumped from $55.3 million in 2013 to $184.5 milion in 2016.
South Korean millennials are driving the home fragrance trend.
The youngest millennials don't have enough money to afford homes or cars, while the oldest ones are eschewing childcare and marriage to spend money on themselves, their homes, and their comfort.
SEOUL, South Korea — It's 10 p.m. in Munjeong-dong, a fashionable neighborhood in Seoul, and Vora Jeon, 34, is embarking on her nightly ritual: flowery Parisian tea, gentle European house music and, most crucially, a sunset-inspired candle called "Rare Sky." It smells of tulip, wood, and rhubarb.
"I love the kind of pink sky," says Jeon, the CEO and creative director of Seoul-based fragrance company MOTE. "When I see that kind of thing, I feel really happy. I use that kind of candle when I want to refresh my memory of it."
Across South Korea, there's a growing emphasis on home scent.
Candles are the classic housewarming or wedding gift. Pots of fragrance diffusers are tucked into elevator corners and onto car dashboards and displayed in office cubicles and classrooms. Diffusers perfume even the shabbiest public restrooms and taxi cabs. Convenience stores often have fewer varieties of candy than of air care products — candles, room sprays, car vent sticks, fabric sprays, diffusers, and so on.
Worldwide, home fragrance is having a moment. The global air care market was valued at $10 billion last year and will grow to $12 billion by 2023, according to Allied Market Research.
With that growth, South Korea has become the largest and fastest-expanding air care market, according to Taeho Sim, a Seoul-based partner at management consultant firm A.T. Kearney.
The fragrance market totaled 2.7 trillion South Korean won (US $2.49 billion) in 2016, according to Sim. Candle products grew from $55.3 million in 2013 to $184.5 milion in 2016. The country imported three times as many candles in 2017 as it did 10 years prior, according to data from the Korea Customs Service.
Shinsegae Department Store, a luxury retailer, said air fragrance sales increased 60% year-over-year in 2015, while ubiquitous cosmetics store Olive Young reported that sales of health products like candles and diffusers jumped 90% in the fall of 2017 compared to the previous autumn.
"Such growth in the South Korean home fragrance market is not just a short trend, but rather a long-lasting and permanent feature," Sim said.
South Korea's youngsters have lost hope for the future
After years of breakneck economic growth, the South Korean economy is suffering from its worst consecutive growth years on record.
That has hit South Korea's young adults particularly hard. It's also one of the best-educated groups of youngsters in the world. Nearly 70% of South Koreans aged 25 to 34 have a college degree or higher, compared to 40% of American adults.
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
But that education hasn't helped their prospects. Youth unemployment recently hit a 19-year high. For the past five years, it's been around 10%, though the overall unemployment rate is 4.6%.
College graduates spend an average of 10 months job-seeking after graduation, according to a survey by South Korean HR firm Saramin. This group has been dubbed the "770,000 won generation" because of their low incomes. (880,000 won, or $800, is the minimum monthly income for low-income workers, but young South Koreans are making even less than that.)
Read more: South Korea has the highest rate of deaths by suicide in the developed world — but a 2011 law helped decrease rates by 15%
While most South Korean youth don't fear for shelter, food, or healthcare, there's a declining sense of hope among youngsters. Nearly half of young South Koreans said in a 2015 survey that they don't believe they'll do better than their parents, while only 29% expressed similar doubts in 2006. And eight out of 10 said they would like to emigrate out of South Korea.
A frozen economy means a hot home fragrance market
Unexpectedly, analysts say worsening economic prospects have fueled an interest in home fragrance. Youngsters are looking for affordable luxuries.
Cars, homes, and lavish vacations are out of the question — so it's all about $7 lattés in beautiful cafés and the so-called "natural toothpaste craze," which ushered in $13 tubes of toothpaste.
The trend is called so-hwak-haeng, or "small but authentic happiness," home and tech analyst James Kang of Euromonitor International Korea told Business Insider. There's a more vulgar way to describe it: sibal biyong, or "f--- it spending."
Sim of A.T. Kearney said those trends are clear in home fragrance.
"Consumers find home fragrance products more affordable and accessible compared to other luxury products, such as designer bags and clothes," he said.
"Instead of buying a new house or new furniture, young Koreans can spend $20 or $30 on candles," said SL Life CEO Jesse Kim, whose company distributes Aquiesse, a US fragrance brand, in South Korea. "Because of the long-term recession, people are stressed out. They're looking for ways to alleviate their stress and have a healing moment."
Here are some Instagram photos tagged 시발비용, or 'f--- it spending'
Older South Korean millennials are driving the home fragrance craze for a different reason
The most coveted brands in South Korea are Jo Malone and Diptyque.
A standard Jo Malone diffuser costs 129,000 South Korean won (or $118), which may strike some as a dizzying amount of money to spend on a pot of lime- and orange-scented liquid with some sticks poking out. But it's indicative of another trend in which single-person households, along with millennials, are the biggest sector of the home fragrance market, Sim said.
Home fragrance has a different tone among the various youth sectors in South Korea. Older South Korean millennials, 30- or 40-somethings who haven't married or had kids, want to make their home a sanctuary space.
"Having home fragrances, which help one's home to smell nice with a very natural and stress-reducing scent, has a strong correlation with this trend," Sim said.
The number of single-person households in South Korea increased from 23.9% in 2010 to 27.2% in 2015, Sim said. According to Statistics Korea, 38% of women aged 30-34 were single in 2015, compared to 29% five years prior.
"I am living alone even though my age is too high for that; I'm 34," Jeon said. "Even though women like me are getting old, they don't get pressure a lot like before. They just enjoy their own lives."
Meanwhile, South Korea's fertility rate is the lowest in the world — even lower than Japan's. There is a variety of reasons for that, including the cost of childcare and the lack of career opportunities for mothers.
"We like pets more than babies," Jeon said. Then, she added that candles are helpful for covering up the smell of a pooch or kitten.
YOLO (or, 요로) is back
There's a unifying thought among these two sets of young South Koreans, despite their very different economic prospects: a shift from focusing on the future to thinking about the present.
South Korean millennials have embraced YOLO, or "You Only Live Once" — yes, the phrase first popularized in 2011 by the Canadian rapper Drake. The term has taken on a feeling in South Korea that one should live in the moment.
"In the past, a future-oriented paradigm prevailed," Kim Nan-do, a consumer studies professor at Seoul National University, told The Korea Times. "We saved a lot, preparing for tomorrow. Now, more people cherish the joy of the present."
When it comes to money, YOLO encourages a completely different mindset than what existed previously in the country. South Korea has long been known among economists as a country that saves rather than spends — even Germans, the more stereotypically saving-obsessed country, save less money than Koreans, according to OECD data.
But, among younger South Koreans, that seems to be changing.
"Unlike our parents' generation, our younger generation cares more for themselves or they care for more this moment," Jihye Lee, marketing manager at Seoul-based distributor Kumbi Cosmetics, told Business Insider. "They are not worrying for their future."
But the things that South Koreans used to buy have spiraled out of reach. The average home in Seoul costs more than $600,000. As for having a child, after-school tutoring alone cost the country's parents $17 billion in 2011.
Luckily, even the priciest diffuser is a comparatively tiny $118.
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MoviePass may have found a way to stop losing money on every subscriber but it could lead to the company's demise (HMNY)
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MoviePass may have found a way to stop losing money on every subscriber, but it could lead to the company's demise (HMNY)
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MoviePass subscribers' average monthly usage was down to below one movie (0.77) in September, according to the company.
In March, when the company was touting close to three million subscribers, it was averaging just over two movies (2.23) per month.
But the lack of usage may be the only thing keeping the business afloat.
The dirty little secret about movie-ticket subscription services, like MoviePass, is that the less people actually use the service, the better it is for the company offering it. And it seems that lack of usage may be the only thing keeping MoviePass afloat.
Along with filing its third-quarter financials in mid-November, revealing it had lost $130 million in the quarter, MoviePass' parent company, Helios & Matheson Analytics, also disclosed a drop in monthly usage by MoviePass subscribers from March 2018 to September 2018.
In March, the average usage per subscriber was just over two movies (2.23) and by September it dropped to below one movie (0.77).
The graphic below shows the epic decline in average usage over the six months:
MoviePass/Shayanne Gal, Business Insider
A lot happened to MoviePass in those six months.
Though it was touting having millions of subscribers after lowering its monthly price to $9.95 to watch one movie per day, the first sign of concern came in April when Helios and Matheson's independent auditor stated in a filing to the SEC that it had "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to stay in business. Since then, changes to the monthly plan that make it harder for subscribers to see movies, bad customer service, the app sporadically going offline, and the rise of competitors like AMC Stubs A-List and Sinemia, have led to the dramatic drop in usage.
Read more: MoviePass competitor Sinemia is being sued by angry customers who say it ripped them off with new fees
A source inside MoviePass also told Business Insider that the company disclosed to its staff that in October alone tens of thousands of subscribers had canceled the service.
But the reality is that it's a good thing for MoviePass if people don't actually go to see movies — as long as they don't cancel.
If no one is using the service, MoviePass doesn't have to pay fees to MasterCard, which is the provider of the MoviePass debit card, or pay for the tickets from theaters that its subscribers buy.
The average movie-ticket price in the US for the third quarter this year is $8.83, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. If you combine that price with MoviePass' September average of 0.77, it comes out to $6.80 per subscriber that MoviePass could be paying per month (though its user base is likely skewed toward high-cost areas like New York City). With its current $9.95 per month subscription price, the company could conceivably not be losing money per ticket, or at least be close.
But the company needs more help than that.
With little money coming in besides subscriptions (the company has a handful of deals with distributors to market its titles on the MoviePass app), and the stock trading at around $0.02, it's tough to see how MoviePass can continue to stay in business once subscribers realize they aren't getting much value out of it.
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Google Pixel Slate review: An expensive work in progress
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Another year, another powerful Chrome OS device from Google. Like clockwork, flagship devices have accompanied milestone releases of the Mountain View company's lightweight, Linux-based operating system for the past several years and doubled as showcases for spotlight features. Now it's the Pixel Slate's time to shine.
The Slate has the distinction of being Google's first 2-in-1 convertible that doesn't run Android, following on the heels of the Pixel C. And in some respects, it's Google's strongest showing yet, thanks to bespoke accessories like a custom keyboard — the Pixel Slate Keyboard — and a category-leading display, plus new multitasking features optimized to take advantage of its form factor.
But it's not perfect. Under the hood, the Slate's processor is decidedly less powerful than those found in the Surface Pro 6. And other omissions — like the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack — bear the ugly stamp of compromise.
Rarely has the 2-in-1 category been more competitive, what with heavyweights like the aforementioned Surface Pro 6 and Apple's recently released 2018 iPad Pro topping a list of capable machines from HP, Asus, Samsung, and others. So how does the Pixel Slate stack up?
That depends on how long you're willing to wait.
The Pixel Slate's design can be summed up in six words: slim, light, and built to last.
It's a smidge heavier than Apple's 1.39-pound iPad Pro 12.9 (2018), but no less wieldy for the extra ounces. Don't get me wrong — the Pixel Slate isn't a tablet that lends itself to one-handing, and my two skinny arms can't hold the thing at eye level for very long. Still, it's exceptionally well-balanced, with a pivot almost perfectly centered on its anodized aluminum chassis. And it manages to come in under the 1.7-pound Surface Pro 6 and HP Spectre X2, albeit not the 1.55-pound Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet.
Being lightweight isn't extraordinary on its own, of course, but it's a quality the Pixel Slate milks for all it's worth. The aforementioned aluminum — colored an understated shade of dark blue (Google calls it "midnight blue") — wraps subtly around all four sides, with slight and gradual curvature that feels great in the hand. It's a seamless transition from the front's lipped Gorilla Glass to the backplate, which houses an 8-megapixel camera on the top-left corner and an embossed Google logo on the top right.
Moving on to the Slate's top and sides, there's a recessed power button with a fingerprint sensor — Pixel Imprint — that boasts a dedicated microcontroller Google claims delivers "better on-device security" and a pair of USB-C ports — one on the left side, below the volume rocker, and another on the right — that output video up to 4K.
What you won't find is a 3.5mm audio jack — Google's opted to relegate audio duties to Bluetooth 4.2 and USB-C ports. Fortunately, the company had the decency to include a USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter.
On the front of the Pixel Slate is the screen, which is arguably the star of the show. Two front-firing speakers and a front-facing 8-megapixel camera flank the 12.3-inch, low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) LCD — power-efficient tech that uses less energy per pixel than traditional IPS or TFT panels. At 3000 x 2000 pixels — 6 million pixels total, 293 per inch — it has a higher resolution than that of the Surface Pro 6 (2736 x 1824, 267 pixels per inch) and 2018 iPad Pro 12.9 (2732 x 2048, 264 pixels per inch).
That sharpness is on full display, so to speak — you'll strain your eyes trying to distinguish individual pixels on the Pixel Slate at arm's length. YouTube videos at 4K look as sharp as you might expect, as do typefaces, high-res photos, and user interface (UI) elements like app icons and the control panel. Perhaps the best thing about the Slate's resolution, though, is the expanded scaling options it affords. The internal size is set to 100 percent by default (effectively 1333 x 889 pixels), and I found 70 percent (1905 x 1270) to be the sweet spot between comically small and inefficiently large elements. But even at 40 percent — the Slate's native resolution — text is perfectly readable.
Less impressive is the display's color reproduction — at least on paper. It covers up to 72 percent of the NTSC color space, which is roughly equivalent to 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut and on par with the Surface Pro 6. But it's narrower than the DCI-P3 color space the iPad Pro (2018) supports and falls short of the minimum requirements for high dynamic range (HDR) specifications, like HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.
This is noticeable, particularly next to HDR-capable displays like the Pixel 3 XL. With the display set to maximum brightness — about 400 nits, or roughly equivalent to the 2018 iPad Pro — the Slate's contrast is visibly inferior to that of my trusty Surface Pro 4. It's oversaturated and blows out colors on the warmer end of the spectrum, particularly reds and greens. In one 4K demo reel, a coastal beach looked uniformly and unnaturally white on the Slate, and a grassy knoll glowed a neon-green.
Above: Comparing the displays of Google's Pixel Slate and Microsoft's Surface Pro 4.
Image Credit: Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat
The dynamic range isn't anything to write home about, either. In another demo clip, a rainforest canopy lacked the nuanced shadows the Surface Pro 4 managed to reproduce. And in an (admittedly unscientific) comparison of pitch-black backgrounds, the Slate's screen showed a lighter image — evidence of a higher minimum black level.
Most of the Slate screen's sins could be forgiven if it delivered on the promise of superior battery life, though, and I'm pleased to report that it does.
Google quoted an impressive 13.5 hours on a single charge thanks in part to the display's "molecular" construction and a 48Wh battery, and while I haven't quite cleared that benchmark with my Slate, I've seen it come close. With the brightness set to medium and a relatively performance-intensive mix of Chrome tabs and Android apps like Slack, Twitter, and Discord running in the background, I managed to consistently eke out nine to ten hours. High-res videos drain it faster, of course, as do graphically demanding games such as Shadowgun: Deadzone — queuing up those nonstop on a recent plane trip overseas, I got around five to six hours.
Thankfully, the Slate also charges super quickly with the included wall adapter, which maxes out at 20V/2.25A. Google claims that 15 minutes of charging delivers up to two hours of use, and that's roughly in line with what I see — about four hours of use in 40 minutes.
A final note on recharging: I can't overstate the convenience of twin USB-C ports that double as charging ports. The Pixel Slate, like the Pixelbook before it and following in the 2018 iPad Pro's footsteps, ditches a proprietary power plug for USB 3.1 (as does the wall adapter). It's an absolute godsend when traveling, particularly if (like me) you lug around other devices that sip power via USB-C.
The aforementioned battery drives the Pixel Slate's display, and also its dual speakers. They're in a front-firing stereo arrangement that has been "algorithmically tuned" for "crisp highs" and "clear lows," Google tells me, and that seems to be largely true.
Vocals, a notorious trip-up for speakers of this size, don't sound muted or distorted — Jimi Hendrix came through loud and clear in "All Along The Watchtower." And strings in John Williams' "Duel of the Fates" were impressively detailed, with tension and warmth that's so often lacking in tablets at any price point.
The bass is a different story, which isn't surprising given the volume the twin radiators have to work with. It's present and clear, but definitely muted and understated in songs like Ocean Wisdom's "Revvin."
The cameras are a good deal worse than the speakers, I'm afraid to say.
Both the rear (f/1.9 aperture, 4um pixel size, wide field of view, 1080p video at 30 frames per second) and (8MP, ƒ/1.8 aperture, 1.12um pixel size, 1080p video at 30 frames per second) take incredibly noisy, washed-out, and frequently overexposed photos that don't come close to the quality I'm used to from Google's Pixel lineup. To be fair, premium smartphone-quality snaps are probably a bit much to ask of a 12.9-inch tablet, but I was at least expecting a more stable photo-taking experience. The Google Camera app is a stuttery mess when it attempts to autofocus, and I only got portrait mode — a carryover feature from the Pixel which blurs the background while keeping the subject in focus — to work once; it repeatedly crashed the camera app.
The first three photos were taken with the rear-facing camera, and the last two with the front-facing camera:
Gallery: Google Pixel Slate camera samples
Titan C security chip
The Pixelbook Slate is the first device bearing Google's Titan C security chip, the counterpart to the Titan M microcontroller inside the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. Essentially, it's a coprocessor encoded with a unique identifier that performs encryption and service authentication, and boot-time checks of the Slate's code and components.
Unlike, say, Apple's 2T security chip, which encrypts fingerprints, serves as a gatekeeper between the microphone and front-facing camera, and powers features like automatic white balancing and audio signal processing, the Titan C acts more or less as an off-the-shelf trusted platform module (TPM).
The Pixel Slate packs one of four Intel processors, depending on which configuration you choose. The latter three are based on Intel's Amber Lake microarchitecture and fabricated on a 14nm++ process, and draw around 5W of power.
An Intel Celeron 3965Y clocked at 1.5GHz
An Intel Core m3-8100Y, clocked at 1.1GHz and Max Turbo of 3.4GHz
An Intel Core i7-8200Y, clocked 1.3GHz with a Max Turbo of 3.9GHz
An Intel Core i7-8500Y, clocked at 1.5GHz with a Max Turbo of 4.2GHz
But wait! It gets more confusing. The Celeron-packing Pixel Slate comes in 4GB RAM/32GB storage and 8GB/64GB storage RAM flavors, priced at $599 and $699, respectively. The Core m3 and Core i5 variants have 8GB RAM/64GB ($999), and the Core i7 model has 16GB RAM/256GB ($1,599). (My Pixel Slate unit is the Core i5 version.)
Compare that bunch to the Surface Pro 6 lineup, which is a bit pricier on the low end at $749 but which features quad-core processors based on Intel's Whiskey Lake microarchitecture (also fabricated on a 14nm++ process). There's also the $999 12.9-inch iPad Pro (2018) to consider: it features a custom-designed A12X Fusion, a 7-nanometer, eight-core CPU that Apple claims can deliver "Xbox One S-class" graphics performance.
Anecdotally, the Slate has no trouble juggling 30-plus tabs in various states of suspension, plus a foreground Android app or two. It doesn't choke on 8K YouTube videos, and it's a capable gaming machine — if Android originals and ports like Asphalt 8: Airborne, Spelunky, Quake Jetpack Joyride, Fallout Shelter, Baldur's Gate 2, and FTL: Faster Than Light are your thing, that is. And like most Chrome OS devices, the Slate cold boots quickly — in 18 seconds or less, in my testing.
All that said, taskbar (shelf) animations — summoning the shelf and scrolling through the list of app shortcuts — are consistently laggy and jittery. The same is true of window switching, the Slate's transition between docked mode and tablet mode, and Chrome OS' split view. They never feel unresponsive, but there's enough latency to give pause.
And occasionally, without clear warning or cause, UI elements briefly flicker. I reached out to Google for an answer, and they provided a statement:
Many different things could cause a flicker in various portions of the UI. It's hard to tell from the description of this specific issue exactly what is causing it, but as our systems get more and more complex we continue to identify ways of improving the user experience. The interaction of advanced web applications, the world's fasted and most advanced web browser based OS and increasingly advanced hardware … can introduce some artifacts on the margins that we are continually optimizing. Furthermore, on a six-week cadence, we release updates to Chrome OS covering everything from general polish and usability to new features. Thanks to this model your Pixel Slate will stay fast over its life cycle and continue improving from a software standpoint.
From a raw numbers perspective, the results were less impressive. The Pixel Slate achieved single-core and multi-core scores of 3,579 and 7,110, respectively, in benchmarking suite Geekbench. By comparison, Surface Pro 6 scores hover around 4,200 in single-core and 13,500 multi-core, and we've seen the 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro hit 4,989 in single-core tests and 17,889 in multi-core.
The Pixel Slate Keyboard stands out in a crowded field. The keycaps, you'll notice right away, aren't the traditionally square affair — they're circular and concave, with slight round outer ridges. A Pixel Slate product manager told me that some early testers saw their typing accuracy improve because of the 16-diameter keys' closer spacing.
Personally — and I'd never thought I'd say this, considering the years I've spent espousing the benefits of Microsoft's Type Cover — I'm in love. It's my new go-to. The Pixel Slate Keyboard might not have Alcantara leather, but its matte plastic housing is nearly as comfortable. And there's really impressive attention to detail, from four raised prongs that prevent the Slate's touchscreen from mashing the keys to the backlighting that switches on almost instantaneously after the lights dim.
Of all the things the Pixel Slate Keyboard has going for it, the keys take the cake. (Google calls them "hush keys" — a nod to the sound-dampening tech beneath the keycaps.) They're noticeably springier and sturdier than the Microsoft Type Cover's, with comparable key travel (1.2mm). And while they've admittedly slowed down my typing speed a touch, the extended reach I'm forced to make for each keyhas cut down on mistyped keys and typos.
I'm not as enamored with the Pixel Slate Keyboard's etched glass touchpad, which doesn't recognize pinch-to-zoom gestures as consistently as Microsoft's Type Cover. But I like that it's wider (73.9mm x 102.7mm), ever-so-slightly slightly more resistive and, in my tests, a tad more responsive and precise.
There's more to the Pixel Slate Keyboard than keys and touchpad. A leather flap with an attached magnet serves as an adjustable stand, propping up the Slate from a roughly 30-degree angle to vertical. I've come to prefer it to the Surface Pro's built-in kickstand, if only because it's easier to adjust one-handed.
There's a proprietary four-pin connector — Quick Snap Connector — that pairs the keyboard to the Pixel Slate, and a powerful magnet that keeps it in place. It's a fine setup, but I wish the attraction was a bit less strong; it takes a substantial amount of effort to pull the two apart.
And despite the many things in the Pixel Keyboard Slate's plus column, there's the sky-high price tag to consider at the end of the day: $199. That's $40 more than the Type Cover and Apple's Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro.
Pixelbook Pen
Styluses are a given with tablets of a certain size these days, and the Pixel Slate's instrument of choice is the year-old Pixelbook Pen. (The Slate works with other Wacom AES styluses, Google notes, though with limited functionality.) It hasn't changed all that much, save a new midnight blue finish to match the Slate.
The Pen — which was developed in partnership with Wacom — takes a single AAAA battery that provides juice for up to a year. The grip's aluminum contrasts nicely with the bottom portion's plastic, the two bifurcated by screw threads that conceal the battery compartment. And the replaceable elastomer tip on the end has 2,000 levels of pressure sensitivity (about half that of Microsoft's Surface Pen), 60 degrees of tilt sensitivity, and a 10-millisecond response time.
The Pixelbook Pen's single physical button launches the Google Assistant when it's pressed and held. Circling text and images on the Slate's screen shows information about them, or attempts to transcribe them if they contain text.
More convenient is the handwriting recognition feature, which taps artificial intelligence (AI) to transcribe chicken scratch into Latin characters and predict next words and phrases. It works well in my testing — at least as well as Windows 10's handwriting recognition with the Surface Pen. But I wish that my scribblings didn't quickly fade away on the Pixel Slate's keyboard, which makes it tough to keep track of progress.
A handful of apps explicitly support the Pixelbook Pen, including Sign Easy, Autodesk Sketchbook, Acrobat Reader, Docusign, INKredible, Google Keep, and Infinite Paper. Google Keep's implementation is among the best — its sketch canvas offers a choice in colors, stroke thickness and style, and optional grid patterns.
The Pen isn't without its problems, though. Unlike the Surface Pen or Apple's Pencil, it can't be affixed to the Slate; it has to be stowed away separately. And particularly disappointingly, the Assistant button can't be customized or reassigned to a different action.
The Pixel Slate, like the Google Pixelbook, Pixel C, and Chromebook Pixel before it, runs Chrome OS. An operating system associated with inexpensive school laptops might sound like an odd choice for a powerful 2-in-1, but a Chrome OS product lead told me that the idea was to bring a "fully featured" desktop experience to a device that's suited to both work and play, and that can be taken anywhere.
The Pixel Slate variant of Chrome OS brings a couple of key new features to the table, the most prominent of which is a sleeker and slimmed-down UI.
Native Chrome OS and Android apps (more on those later) alike occupy an omnipresent dock that's always a swipe or tap away — a dedicated keyboard button pulls it to the fore, as does a tap and upward drag from the shelf. And when the Slate's undocked, it transitions into a sort of "tablet" mode that expands a single Chrome tab or foreground Android app to fill the screen.
The taskbar, speaking of, is much like the Windows system tray or macOS dock in that it shows a row of icons representing running apps which can be minimized, maximized, and pinned.
The shelf houses a search bar — the omnibox — that searches across apps, files, and the web. Below it, there's a row of activity recommendations Google says tap the same AI driving Android Pie's app suggestions. At any given moment, you'll see a mix of five shortcuts to contextually relevant and recently opened Chrome tabs and apps.
Below the row is a vertically scrolling list of shortcuts. Right click on a Chrome tab or app, and you'll get options to pin it to the shelf, view pertinent info about it, or remove it.
The improved shelf dovetails with the Pixel Slate's multitasking features. When the Slate's undocked, tapping and dragging a Chrome tab to the right or left of the screen splits the screen into two equal parts. A swipe down from the top bezel or a tap of the multitasking menu on the Google Slate Keyboard throws you into a multirow menu with live previews of open tabs and apps. And when the Slate's docked, Alt+Tab pops open a carousel of running programs.
Also in tow with Chrome OS on the Slate is an easier-to-invoke Google Assistant. Google claims it's 3.5 times faster, and while I couldn't put that claim to the test, it certainly seems quick and speedy.
There's three ways to get it up and running on the Slate: from anywhere within Chrome OS but the lock screen with a hotword ("Hey, Google"), by pressing the dedicated Google Assistant key on the Pixel Slate Keyboard, or by tapping the Pixelbook Pen's button. And there's two ways to issue a command: either with voice or keyboard. Otherwise, the Assistant on the Slate acts much the same as it does on Android and iOS, with the ability to check a calendar, set reminders, beam content to cast-enabled speakers and displays, look up movie showtimes and restaurants, and so on.
It's improved in at least one respect: Google Docs-related requests, which on the Pixelbook once drew a blank, open a tab in Chrome with the query in question (for instance, "Find Google Sheets files from last September"). The same goes for Google Photos searches ("Search for pictures taken in New York last year").
But it's not quite the full monty. Try tapping a third-party Assistant app like Kayak, WebMD, or Uber and it'll return an error message or launch a web search. It can't play music from services like Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, or NPR One, effectively forcing you to rely on web app equivalents. And unlike Apple's Siri on Mac OS, it isn't able to dictate text messages or queue up a video conference.
The Assistant isn't the only slice of Google's ecosystem that's made its way to the Pixel Slate. As alluded to earlier, the latest version of Chrome OS — that is to say, the version that ships on the Pixel Slate — supports Android apps courtesy a compatibility layer.
It's the product of roughly four years of engineering work, starting with the since-deprecated Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC) and culminating in ARC++. It's been roughly two years since Google announced that select Chromebooks would gain support for Android apps, and in the intervening months, they've arrived via the Google Play Store on devices from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Google (the 2015 Chromebook Pixel and Pixelbook). The Pixel Slate joins the growing list with the latest version of Android — 9.0 Pie — under the hood.
A selection of entertainment, productivity, creativity, and wellness apps come preloaded, including Calm, Asana Rebel, Kinemaster, iA Writer, and Lineage 2. But the Google Play Store's also in tow, providing access to the millions of apps available for Android.
A majority of the time, the experience is indistinguishable from native Chrome OS apps — an impressive feat, to be sure.
Games like Asphalt 8: Airborne run as smooth as glass (excepting frame rate dips accompanying lots of particles and high-poly objects) and take full advantage of the Slate's sensors, including its three-axis gyroscope. Productivity apps like Google Calendar, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs launch without a hitch, as do apps like Snapchat, Skype, and Google Duo that tap the tablet's cameras. And thanks to inline replies, you can quickly reply to Hangouts, Slack, Facebook Messenger messages from notifications.
But ARC++ is still a work in progress, as evident from the hiccups I encountered in the course of testing:
When a notification comes in while an Android app's in fullscreen view, the app won't respond to clicks or taps until the notification is dismissed.
Android apps, unlike Chrome OS tabs, don't automatically resume after a reboot or restart — they have to be manually relaunched.
App window sizes tend to be unpredictable. Some apps launch in fullscreen, and others in a windowed view.
Another roughy-around-the-edges component worth mentioning, but which I didn't have time to thoroughly test, is Project Crostini. In essence, Crostini brings proper Linux application support to Chrome OS, and when enabled from the settings menu, it enables you to install apps like Steam, Andoid Studio, Vim, LibreOffice, and more from a terminal. The process isn't particularly user-friendly at the moment, but down the line, as it's iterated on, it could be a game-changer for the Pixel Slate and other Chrome OS devices like it.
A far more fleshed-out feature is Better Together, a collection of integrations and services intended to make Android devices and Chrome OS devices work… well, better together. Smart Lock automatically unlocks the Slate when you're phone's paired via Bluetooth, as long as said phone's running Android 5.0 or above and within a distance of 100 feet. And Instant Tethering automatically taps a paired handset for mobile internet when you're away from Wi-Fi, obviating the need to fiddle with hotspot settings.
Let me state for the record that I like the Pixel Slate — or at least the idea of it. It looks and feels every bit its $600 starting MSRP, despite the display's color inaccuracy. And it brings a bevy of standout features to the tablet, among them USB-C power, crisp and clear stereo speakers, a handy fingerprint sensor, and a touch-forward build of Chrome OS — not to mention a keyboard I won't soon give up.
But the Slate's pitted against challengers with cumulative years of refinement under their belts. The 2018 iPad Pro, for instance, boasts a 120Hz display, facial recognition via FaceID, and configurable multitasking panes. The Surface Pro 6, meanwhile, packs quad-core processors and runs Windows 10, which remains the world's most widely used PC operating system by a comfortable margin.
It's true that Chrome OS has improved by leaps in bounds in two short years, thanks in large part to Linux and Android app compatibility that's becoming better by the day. But outstanding bugs hold it back from delivering on the promise of set-it-and-forget-it versatility. And assuming the Slate's underperforming hardware doesn't pose an insurmountable development challenge, it'll take indeterminate months or years before Chrome OS reaches the competition's level of polish.
Finally, there's the price to consider. The entry-level Pixel Slate costs $600, but that's excluding the $200 Pixel Slate Keyboard and $100 Pixel Pen, making it only slightly cheaper than the $899 Surface Pro bundled with the $129 Type Cover but at a significant performance cost. The priciest Slate configuration, which packs a dual-core Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and 256GB of storage, is only $300 less expensive than the Surface Pro 6 configured with a quad-core i7, the same amount of RAM, and double the storage.
That's all to say that the Pixel Slate could, with a matured Chrome OS and a price point that reflects its hardware, rival any 2-in-1 heavyweight in the market today. But as things stand currently, unless you prefer to spend the bulk of your time in a work-in-progress OS, you're better off with a surer bet.
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A day in the life of a luxury interior designer who starts her day with a 'caffeine cocktail' has designed penthouses for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and goes to a SoulCycle class every night
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A day in the life of a luxury interior designer, who starts her day with a 'caffeine cocktail,' has designed penthouses for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and goes to a SoulCycle class every night
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Interior Marketing Group
Cheryl Eisen is the CEO of Interior Marketing Group, a New York City-based company that does interior design, staging, and marketing for luxury homes.
Her past clients include Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West, Bethenny Frankel, and Swedish real estate broker Fredrik Eklund.
She typically starts her day at 9:00 a.m. with a "caffeine cocktail," spends her mornings traveling to sites of design projects across the city, meets with members of her nearly 80-person staff in the afternoon, and goes to a SoulCycle class every evening.
Cheryl Eisen is unapologetically not a morning person.
In sharp contrast to the many executives who wake up at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m, Eisen starts her day slowly, waking up at 9 a.m. and enjoying a "caffeine cocktail" of Poland Spring water, espresso, Truvia, and Lactaid milk.
"In all honesty, it takes until noon for my brain to fully wake up," she told Business Insider.
Eisen, 50, is the CEO of Interior Marketing Group, or IMG, a New York City-based company of nearly 80 employees that does interior design, staging, and marketing for luxury homes that start at $5 million. Eisen has done the interior design for apartments in buildings belonging to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, an Airbnb rented by Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West, and homes for Bethenny Frankel and Swedish real estate broker Fredrik Eklund. IMG also does projects in Miami, Los Angeles, Connecticut, and the Hamptons.
Eisen said IMG's designs tend to be neutral and classic. They layer with textures rather than color, sticking with neutral tones that let the focus stay on the selling pieces of the home, whether that's high ceilings or jaw-dropping views. One of her favorite parts of the job is the big reveal when the client finally gets to see the finished space.
"People cry," she said. "And I get it, because once you see something that you've been working on for months, you see it come to life and it can be overwhelming because a home is a very personal thing."
Here's a peek into a typical day in her life, from her morning "caffeine cocktail" to rearranging furniture and choosing drapes for multimillion-dollar New York City penthouses.
Cheryl Eisen is the CEO of Interior Marketing Group, which does interior design, staging, and marketing for luxury homes primarily in New York City, but also in Miami, Los Angeles, Connecticut, and the Hamptons.
Eisen says she is "unapologetically" not a morning person. She starts her day at 9:00 a.m. with a "caffeine cocktail," which she describes as "a carefully crafted combination of espresso, Poland Spring and Truvia: 3 parts Poland Spring, 2 parts espresso, a ton of Truvia, and Lactaid milk."
By 10:00 a.m., she's out the door, drinking her coffee and answering emails in the car she commissions during the week, which she calls her "mobile office."
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Inside a Ukrainian nationalist camp where kids are trained to kill Russian invaders
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The campers, some clad in combat fatigues, carefully aim their assault rifles. Their instructor offers advice: Don't think of your target as a human being.
So when these boys and girls shoot, they will shoot to kill.
Hidden in a forest in western Ukraine, they are at a summer camp called the "Temper of will," which was created by the country's radical nationalist Svoboda party.
The nationalists have been accused of violence and racism, and this summer camp endorses white nationalistic rhetoric against LGBT rights and Muslims.
Nationalists have played a central, volunteer role in Ukraine's conflict with Russia — and they have maintained links with the government.
Earlier this year, Ukraine's Ministry of Youth and Sports earmarked 4 million hryvnias (about $150,000) to fund some of the youth camps among the dozens built by the nationalists. The purpose, according to the ministry, is "national patriotic education."
The "Temper of will" camp has two purposes: to train children to defend their country from Russians and their sympathizers — and to spread nationalist ideology.
Here's what it looks like inside.
Most of the children at the camp were in their teens, but some were as young as 8 years old.
Mykhailo, 18, the oldest of the campers, said the training was necessary.
"Every moment things can go wrong in our country. And one has to be ready for it," he said. "That's why I came to this camp. To study how to protect myself and my loved ones."
"We never aim guns at people," instructor Yuri "Chornota" Cherkashin told the kids. "But we don't count separatists, little green men, occupiers from Moscow as human beings, so we can and should aim at them."
Cherkashin is a veteran of the fight against pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine; he was wounded in combat and later came to lead Sokil, or Falcon, the youth wing of the Svoboda party.
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SEE ALSO: Meet the Ukrainian children who no longer fear bombs and bullets after more than 3 years of war
SEE ALSO: What we know about the 3 Ukrainian naval vessels that Russia just fired upon and seized

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Trojan Variant Making Big Attack Push
Jul 21, 2014 | Incidents
A wave of attacks pushing a new variant of the Pushdo Trojan compromised more than 11,000 systems in just 24 hours, researchers said.
Indian PCs lead in terms of attacks, but systems in the UK, France and the U.S. have also suffered hits, according to security software firm Bitdefender.
Details on DDoS Linux Trojan
Newer, More Secure Trojan Found
Big Bank Haul in One Week
APT Alert: Two Airports Hacked
As one case in point, the Romanian firm said 77 machines suffered infection in the UK via the botnet in 24 hours, with more than 11,000 infections reported worldwide in the same period. Other countries heavily affected by the Pushdo variant include Vietnam and Turkey.
Bitdefender gets its numbers from traffic toward the sinkholed domains associated with the botnet's control system.
Traffic to these seized sinkholes came from 11,000 unique IP addresses in a period of 24 hours. These pings represent infected hosts phoning home for instructions.
The most affected region seems to be Asia, with India and Vietnam topping the list of compromised hosts and accounting for around 10 percent of infections each. The U.S. accounts for 5 percent.
"We managed to successfully intercept Pushdo traffic and gain some idea of the size of this botnet," said Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist at Bitdefender.
"The sheer scale of this criminal operation, unsophisticated as it may be, is rather troubling and there are indications that the botnet is still in a growth phase. We shall be continuing our investigation as a key priority and further updates shall be made available in the coming days."
The Pushdo Trojan also distributed secondary malware strains such as ZeuS and SpyEye, but over the years its main use has been for spam distribution. The actual spamming occurs through commonly associated components called Cutwail frequently installed on compromised PCs.
Despite four takedowns in five years against Pushdo command-and-control servers, the botnet endures.
The public and private keys used to protect the communication between the bots and the C&C servers changed with the latest variant, but the communication protocol remains the same.
The latest Pushdo binaries add an encrypted overlay not found in previous versions. If the conditions specified in the overlay are not satisfactory, the sample does not run properly.
The DGA (Domain Generation Algorithm) used by the latest variant has also been slightly revamped. DGAs periodically generate a large number of domain names the zombie hosts can ping for instructions. The approach (pioneered by the infamous Conficker worm) makes life harder for law enforcement. Its successful application in this malware goes a long way toward explaining the resilience of Pushdo.


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Life Muḥammad: (17) Orders Any Jew to be Killed, and the Affair of Muḥayyiṣa and Ḥuwayyiṣa
"The apostle said, 'Kill any Jew that falls into your power.' Thereupon Muḥayyiṣa b. Mas'ūd leapt upon Ibn Sunayna, a Jewish merchant with whom they had social and business relations, and killed him. Ḥuwayyiṣa was not a Muslim at the time though he was the elder brother. When Muḥayyiṣa killed him[,] Ḥuwayyiṣa began to beat him, saying, 'You enemy of God [Allāh], did you kill him when much of the fat on your body comes from his wealth?' Muḥayyiṣa answered, 'Had the one who ordered me to kill him ordered me to kill you[,] I would have cut your head off.' He said that this was the beginning of Ḥuwayyiṣa's acceptance of Islam. The other replied, 'By God [Allāh], if Muhammad had ordered you to kill me you would have killed me?' He said, 'Yes, by God [Allāh], had he ordered me to cut off your head I would have done so.' He [Ḥuwayyiṣa] exclaimed, 'By God [Allāh], a religion which can bring you to this is marvelous!' and he became a Muslim.' "
Now Muḥammad's war ratchets up even further, where an elder brother displaying a conscience, yields to the harsh instincts of his younger brother, amazed at such brazenness, which impresses him enough to thus abandon conscience. Carte blanche permission is given by Muḥammad to any Muslim to kill any Jew and without cause. Muḥayyiṣa immediately takes Muḥammad's word and kills a Jewish merchant with whom he used to do business, a man who was a friend. Ibn Hishām's note* on what follows between Muḥayyiṣa and his non-Muslim brother Ḥuwayyiṣa sets the table with a prior history between Muḥammad and Muḥayyiṣa – namely Muḥammad's ordering and supervision of the beheading of four hundred Jewish men as "the faces of Khazraj showed their pleasure," and in so doing, Ḥuwayyiṣa's participation. Thus, as Muḥayyiṣa tells his brother he would do so to him if ordered by Muḥammad, Muḥayyiṣa converts to Islām, seeing this as a "marvelous" religion. This response can only be understood in a culture where violence and the murder of a brother can be honored, whether in Arabia preceding Islām, or within Islām as it conquers.
* Ibn Hishām's adds this account: "Abū 'Ubayda told me on the authority of Abū 'Amr, the Medinan, when the apostle got the better of the B. Qurayẓa he seized about four hundred men from the Jews who had been allies of Aus against Khazraj, and ordered that they should be beheaded. Accordingly Khazraj began to cut off their heads with great satisfaction. The apostle saw that the faces of Khazraj showed their pleasure, but there was no such indication on the part of Aus, and he suspected that that was because of the alliance that had existed between them and the B. Qurayẓa. When there were only twelve of them left he gave them over to the Aus, assigning one Jew to every two of Aus, saying, 'Let so-and-so strike him and so-and-so finish him off.' One of those who was so handed over to them was Ka'b b. Yahūdhā, who was an important man among them. He gave him to Muḥayyiṣa and Abū Burda b. Niyār (it was Abū Burda to whom the apostle had given permission to sacrifice a young goat on the feast of Aḍhā). He said, 'Let Muḥayyiṣa strike him and Abū Burda finish him off.' So Muḥayyiṣa fetched him a blow, which did not cut in properly, and Abū Burda dispatched him and gave him the finishing stroke. Ḥuwayyiṣa, who was still an unbeliever, said to his brother, Muḥayyiṣa, 'Did you kill Ka'b b. Yahūdhā?', and when he said he did, he said, 'By God [Allāh], much of the flesh on your belly comes from his wealth; you are a miserable fellow, Muḥayyiṣa.' He replied, 'If the one who ordered me to kill him had ordered me to kill you, I would have done so.' He was so amazed at this remark and went away astounded. They say that he used to wake up in the night astonished at his brother's words, until in the morning he said, 'By God [Allāh], this is indeed a religion.' Then he came to the prophet and accepted Islām. Muḥayyiṣa then spoke the lines which we have written above." Thus, between Ibn Isḥāq's main text, and Ibn Hishām's notes, we have two different stories, the first in a one-on-one context, the second in a mass beheading, with two different principal Jewish men involved.


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seth-ackerman
97 Articles by: Seth Ackerman
Seth Ackerman is Jacobin 's executive editor.
Seth Ackerman
Don't Forget to Worry About Inflation!
Throughout the inflationary years of the 1970s, nearly half of Americans saw rising prices as the most important problem facing the country. Today, despite the best efforts of inflation alarmists, only 5 percent of Americans think it is.
Class Politics in America Is Far From Dead
A venerable theory about people's political values is making a comeback: the theory of "postmaterialism." But despite what you may have heard, the theory doesn't say class politics is doomed in rich countries — and neither did the scholar who created it.
Larry Summers Is Wrong About Inflation
Enraged at the rise of an "intransigent" left, Larry Summers put his credibility on the line with wild predictions of runaway inflation in the wake of Joe Biden's stimulus package last January. It's looking like his predictions were wrong.
Larry Summers
The Marginal Tax Bracket Is an Enemy of Democracy
The marginal tax bracket at the heart of our income tax system obfuscates the key question about taxes in a democratic society: Who pays what? In the 1930s, France's Popular Front government had a solution — until it was dismantled by the right-wing Vichy regime.
Timothy Earle
The Invention of Inequality
From chiefs and kings to billionaires today, a small handful of humans over thousands of years have figured out how to amass tremendous power and wealth. We talked to an anthropologist about how the ruling class got started.
Biden's COVID Relief Bill Is the Biggest Anti-Poverty Program in…Months
The Biden administration is selling its COVID relief bill as a historic milestone in the war on poverty. In reality, it's a temporary measure whose anti-poverty impact is roughly the same as last year's CARES Act signed by Trump. For Biden to claim an anti-poverty legacy, he needs to make the child benefit permanent.
Failure Is an Option
Haunted by the specter of democracy, the Constitution's framers blundered into a historic miscalculation. We're still living with the consequences.
The Victory to Come
Bernie critics seem to think they dodged a bullet. They haven't — the bullet is still on its way.
If Neoliberalism Were to End, How Would We Know?
What will decide the fate of neoliberalism today is not the extent of the economic damage the virus wreaks — it is the extent to which the virus transforms popular expectations.
Economists Told Us "Flexible" Labor Markets Were a Good Thing. Now They're Plunging the US Into an Economic Catastrophe
For decades, America's "flexible" labor markets have been celebrated by economists and favorably compared to Europe's "sclerotic" labor institutions — the products of a century of militant worker struggle. Now, thanks to that very flexibility, the US stands on the brink of an economic disaster.
A Study Last Week Claimed to Prove That Bernie Is Unelectable. It Turns Out the Study Is Bunk.
A big new study came out last week arguing that Bernie Sanders's electability could be a "mirage." There's just one problem: the report is nonsense.
The Cosmic Irony of Bernie Sanders's Rise
What makes Bernie Sanders so threatening to the Democratic establishment is that he stands for what millions of Democrats thought their party stood for all along.
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You Absolutely Don't "Gotta Hand It to Them"
Last night's UK elections results point to a deep problem in world politics today: the gravitational pull of privileging cultural over economic combat — an outcome that consistently divides the Left and hands victory to the Right.
UK Labour Party
Sheri Berman
Adaner Usmani
Fear of a Populist Planet
"Populism" is today employed as a bogeyman by liberals and centrists alike. Is there anything worth salvaging in the concept?
Samuel Moyn
Max B. Sawicky
Looking at Impeachment From the Left
How should the Left view the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump? Are they a political opportunity or a distraction from the issues that leftists care about? A Jacobin roundtable.
Why Bernie Sanders Matters
The rationale for Bernie Sanders's brand of politics has always been that it's better to aim at shifting the basic parameters of American politics — however difficult that may be — than accepting those parameters and trying to maneuver within them.
What Bernie Sees in the New Deal
Bernie Sanders's embrace of the New Deal legacy is an opportunity to dispel some pernicious historical myths about the New Deal's relationship with socialism and its attitude toward the struggle for racial equality.
Franklin D. Roosevelt/FDR
Daniel Zamora
How Michel Foucault Got Neoliberalism So Wrong
In the emerging neoliberalism of the 1970s, Michel Foucault saw the promise of a new social order, more open to individual autonomy and experimental ways of living. That's not how things turned out.
Fabien Truong
A Clash of Loyalties in the Parisian Suburbs
Beyond clichés about a "clash of civilizations," a new book by French sociologist Fabien Truong illuminates the role of Islam in the lives of France's poor and marginalized.
Why Bernie Talks About the New Deal
The pundits are puzzled that Bernie Sanders sees socialist values in the New Deal. They shouldn't be. That's how socialists around the world — and their enemies — saw it at the time.


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Fast And Furious 9 Review: A Fast Ride On A Familiar Lane | Nigeria
By RelationshipTips Last updated Jun 24, 2021
Fast and Furious 9 review
As fans of Fast and Furious 9: The Saga gear up globally for its official release, Life is proud to be part of the exclusive guests to see the movie over the weekend.
There was an advance screening of Fast and Furious 9 organised by Silverbird Film Distribution at Silverbird Cinema. The private screening was attended by press correspondents, influencers, some members of the Mercedes club, and other selected guests, was held in preparation for the official release on the 25th of June, across all cinemas in Nigeria.
If you are a Fast and Furious franchise lover like myself, you must have been eagerly awaiting the release of the ninth instalment of the film. Remember that the writers and producers played with the idea of "What if Dom went bad?" in Fast and Furious 8. Well, in Fast & Furious 9, which goes the route of 'What if Dom had a long-lost brother?'. Yes, Dom having a younger brother is shocking considering he has never been mentioned before but that is not the only thing that would make you blink while watching F9!
It is not a bad idea in itself to delve into the backstory of characters although, for this, it felt like a soap opera blended with dramatic conflict. We see a faceoff between the Toretto brothers Dom (Vin Diesel) and Jakob (John Cena) over some Coronas. Dom and his wife Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) are just trying to live a quiet life but when their old friends Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) show up to request their help to solve a mystery involving their old employer, Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and this sees him drawn back into the world of the furious.
Din Viesel and John Cena in Fast and Furious 9
This storyline is not surprising as it sounds too familiar to what we have been seeing from the franchise, the Fast & Furious crew after some technological MacGuffin. The twist this time is that it's a "weapon so dangerous it shouldn't exist for another half-century" according to Cipher (Charlize Theron).
Depending on your view of things, you could easily consider the F9 a doubling down or a doubling up of the franchise. While there is an escalation in the action of the film with more taste taken into consideration than the last installment with the submarine, there is still a stale feel it leaves you with plot-wise. There is that unshakeable feeling of 'been there, done that. One would almost wish that much more effort had been put into the plot as was put into the outlandish stunts we see throughout the movie. If we thought we had seen it all in the previous instalments, director Justin Lin who is behind the fourth to sixth films takes the series to utterly impossible death-defying stunts.
The flashbacks only slow down the action of the film as there were no major revelations, only pointers to the fact that Dom and Jakob may be at loggerheads because of gearhead daddy issues. This can be seen in good light as it is a subtle reminder to the audience what the fast and furious story has always been about. After all, the story started as that of a guy who got into illicit street racing after getting banned from the legal kind after almost killing the guy who caused the crash that killed his father.
Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson in F9/GILES KEYTE:UNIVERSAL PICTURES
There is also the return of main characters in the course of the film and while it was easy to navigate the return of some characters, a particular character's return might leave you with questions that you may never be able to get a satisfying answer. Thankfully, the film is not blind to the invisibility of its characters and the tropes and cliches it plays with. We even get a scene where jokes are made about this. I mean, it is not every day we get to see a car hovering precariously over a landmine or slip the surly bonds of Earth and head into space.
Newcomer to the franchise, John Cena gets his moments on screen as he gets to flex some muscles and show us what action moves he has got. We see him zip-wiring around Edinburgh as Dom gives chase on rooftops is one of the subtlest action beats in the movie.
With all said and done, F9 will leave you with questions after you are done watching. You would ponder just how much further the storyline will deviate from the car racing film that came out twenty years ago. Whether the lack of realism is a good thing or a bad thing will also leave you with more questions so it is up to you to decide whether it was well worth the hype.
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Source: The Guardian
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Follow the cash
by Lionel Casey July 11, 2019
Traditionally, seizing guns has been the essential pillar of Indian regulation enforcement agencies' strategy for combating terrorism and separatism. The concept became that there wasn't much that militants should do to undertaking the Indian kingdom. The American plan turned into totally one of a kind. They always targeted the money that fuelled terrorist activity. According to the Americans, strangulating the delivery of finances asphyxiates the movement of terror corporations.
Perhaps, the methods observed using Indians and Americans had been the final results in their countrywide studies. Unlike India, in which getting admission to guns is hugely restricted, in the US, the proper of the people to maintain and undergo palms is a constitutional suitable. Even so, if India's experience in preventing terrorism and separatism inside Jammu and Kashmir is anything to head by, there is lots of merit in adopting and incorporating American attention on cracking down on the economy that maintain terrorist networks. In different words, it is virtually no longer sufficient for the Indian safety forces to double down on the kinetic operations to put off terrorists. Without dismantling the fear of investment networks and the war financial system wherein terrorism and separatism have become the largest cash-spinning industry in Jammu and Kashmir, there's no manner India will ever get a handle on the disturbing scenario within the country.
It is no longer sufficient for the Indian security forces to double down on the kinetic operations to remove terrorists. Without dismantling the phobia funding networks and the warfare economy wherein terrorism and separatism have to turn out to be the most crucial money-spinning industry in Jammu and Kashmir, there may be no way India will ever get a manager over the disturbing scene in the state.
Over the last few years, there may be an increasing reputation inside the security status quo that it wishes to position the war entrepreneurs out of enterprise. The NIA raids on the money laundering and terror finance networks heralded the brand new technique of the authorities. More than the kinetic anti-terror operations, it's miles those NIA raids which have enthused regular Kashmiris who've subsequently started out seeing the Indian country goal the warfare marketers who've prospered and enriched themselves on the blood of the human beings of the country. For some distance too lengthy, unswerving citizens in Jammu and Kashmir have seen the separatists and their sympathizers and supporters, together with individuals who saved one foot in the separatist camp and the opposite inside the Indian center, make the most of the battle.
The surprising part of the phobia industry in Jammu and Kashmir became the reality that it turned into a component fuelled with the aid of companies of the Indian kingdom. A former intelligence chief wrote a book describing how the spooks paid cash to separatists to make them glad. This sort of pay-off might be understandable, also justified, if, in exchange, the men being paid-off switched sides or, as a minimum, worked for the Indian state from inside the ranks of the separatists. But this wasn't the manner it played out. If anything, they stored stringing the spooks along but delivered on not anything. While they saved getting the bills from the Indian facet, they were also plied with funds using the Pakistanis. Not best were these despicable paid, the Indian nation also turned a blind eye to their other activities – encroaching on public land, land-snatch from normal humans, building unlawful shops and buying centers, and giggling their manner to the bank, which as it seems was the government-owned J&K Bank which allegedly laundered their cash.
The current corruption scandal inside the J&K bank is most effective the tip of the iceberg of ways a whole atmosphere become built to undermine the Indian state and empower and increase all those who stood in opposition to the concept of India. Things had grown to be so bizarre in Kashmir that an awful lot of the anti-India propaganda became, in reality, being funded via the kingdom and ruling government! In no other united states of the world does this kind of a component appear. Yet, in Kashmir, the most rabid anti-India newspapers, columnists, journalists have been surviving at the generosity bestowed on them by the authorities in Srinagar and Delhi.
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The Syrian Arab Army is the army of the Syrian state. On 17 September 2016 eighty SAA soldiers were killed in an airstrike by American and Australian forces which did not even have permission to be in Syria. Australia is not at war with Syria. Here is a personal letter, followed by a statement from Hands off Syria, Sydney. Marlene Obeid declares her shock at hearing of Australia's participation in the deaths of Syrian soldiers. She asks for an explanation of the Australian government's condolences, given that Australia is part of a Coalition illegally invading Syria. Tim Anderson, speaking for Hands Off Syria Sydney, asks, "Will the Australian Government hand over to the Syrian authorities or the International Court of Justice those Australians who were accomplices in this atrocity?"


Formatting Languages Is Easy As Pie With DITA-OT and PDF5(-ML Plugin)!
Join us in the Technology Test Kitchen and we will show you how quick and easy it is to publish multilingual documents, just like baking a tasty pie! We will demonstrate how to format multiple languages in a single DITA document with the Antenna House PDF5-ML Plugin for DITA Open Toolkit. The result is a powerful yet simple method of customizing PDF output from DITA. We will show how specific language formatting can be automatically generated by simply modifying external style definition files so you can focus more attention on writing your DITA content.
What will attendees need to bring?
All you need to bring is a Windows based laptop. We will supply a custom flash drive with all the tools needed for the Technology Test Kitchen.
Celina Huang is a Sales & Marketing Specialist at Antenna House, Inc. She's been working with XML-based products for eight years and creatively promotes them to the global market. She holds a BS in Marketing and International Business from University of Delaware.
Wybens Titus is an Account Executive for Antenna House, Inc., a leader in the field of document formatting and conversion. He has experience managing several next generation software products and specializes in XML related technologies.


The Book of Judges takes its title from the twelve men and one woman who served as judges during the period from Joshua's death to the time of Samuel.
This book was written during the period of the monarchy, judging by the phrase which occurs four times, "In those days there was no king in Israel." It is possible that it was written by Samuel, but the actual writer is unknown.
All the judges were themselves limited in their capabilities. In fact, each one seemed to have some defect and handicap which was not a hindrance but became a positive asset under the sovereign direction of God. None of them were national leaders who appealed to the total nation as Moses and Joshua had done. The record is not continuous but rather a spotty account of a local judge in a limited section of the nation.
Backsliding and the amazing grace of God in recovering and restoring is the theme of Judges. The New Scofield Reference Bible gives the theme of the Book of Judges as "Defeat and Deliverance." This is unusually appropriate. There is, however, another aspect which this book emphasizes: disappointment.
The children of Israel entered the Land of Promise with high hopes and exuberant expectation. You would expect these people—who were delivered out of Egypt, led through the wilderness for forty years, and brought into the land with such demonstration of God's power and direction—to attain a high level of living and victory in the land, and in their lives. Such was not the case. They failed ignobly and suffered miserable defeat after defeat.
The Book of Judges is a philosophy of history. "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people" (Prov. 14:34).
1. Historically it records the history of the nation from the death of Joshua to Samuel, who was the last of the judges and the first of the prophets. It bridges the gap between Joshua and the rise of the monarchy. There was no leader to take Joshua's place in the way he had taken Moses' place. This was the trial period of the theocracy after they entered the land.
2. Morally it is the time of the deep declension of the people as they turned from God, the unseen Leader, and descended to the low level of "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (compare Jud. 1:1 with 20:18). This should have been an era of glowing progress, but it was a dark day of repeated failure.
The "hoop" of Israel's history begins with the nation serving God. Then they take certain steps downward. They did evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baalim (see Jud. 2:11). They forsook the Lord, and they served Baal and Ashtaroth. The anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of their enemies. Israel entered a time of servitude. Soon Israel cried out to God in their sad plight and distress. They turned to God and repented. God heard their prayers and raised up judges through whom they were delivered. Then again the nation served God.
Soon the same old story repeated itself. The children of Israel did evil, forsook God, followed their own pleasure, were sold into slavery, entered a period of servitude, cried out to God in their distress, turned to Him, judges were raised up, and Israel was delivered. The nation began serving God again, and they were once again at the top of the cycle. My friend, the hoop of history just turns over and over. You can follow that hoop right through the Bible, and it is still turning today. The old bromide "history repeats itself" is absolutely true.
The Book of Isaiah opens with God giving this philosophy of history. Isaiah outlines three steps that cause the downfall of nations: (1) spiritual apostasy; (2) moral awfulness; and (3) political anarchy, which is the final stage of any nation. These steps have destroyed nations down through history.
"In this day of gathering storms, as moral deterioration of political power spreads its growing infection, it is essential that every spiritual force be mobilized to defend and preserve the religious base upon which this nation is founded; for it has been that base which has been the motivating impulse to our moral and national growth. History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual reawakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."
'Tis he who tills the fallow ground.
But He records the sower's worth.
Without the one who sows the seed.
Without the faithful ones who sow.