What it felt was like this – I'm small. I'm helpless. My talents, my career, my past, my future – they somehow don't matter at all in the face of this helplessness. I walk into rooms, people listen to me talk – and this doesn't matter. I write articles, people have tried to threaten me over some of them, I write plays, people tear them apart or praise them – and this doesn't matter either. I know how to shoot a gun, I know how to shoot an arrow, I know how to punch and duck a punch (though I haven't had practice as of late) – none of it freaking matters.
I realize now that I have always needed not to need. It's been a philosophy and a religion of mine. Now that it's suddenly useless, I'm not entirely sure what to replace it with. Magic? Alchemy?
Moscow this time of year reminds me of Jonathan Strange's London. It's a restless and beautiful kind of place that seems comfortably perched on the brink of a visible or invisible disaster. I wander around it in total confusion.
Were you referring to the book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? Because I just read it recently… it's great, isn't it?
I have found that it is more terrible to need someone when you know that nobody is going to be there.
I always carried a ziplock baggie (or larger thick plastic bag) with me and a very small bottle of mouthwash.
I remember stitting on the side of the bath and crying because I couldn't stop being sick and I had to go to work.
And yes, it is scary, overwhelming and wonderful too.
Needing other people works because nothing inspires closeness like being needed. It's more for them than it is for you, so that even in the act of needing, you're being unselfish.


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PROFESSOR DR THORSTEN HENS
Department of Banking and Finance
Thorsten Hens (born December 19, 1961) is a Swiss economist and finance academic born in Germany. According to the Handelsblatt ranking, measured by life-time achievement, Hens is among the top 20 economics professors in the German-speaking area (Germany, Switzerland and Austria). Hens is Swiss Finance Institute Professor of Financial Economics and member of the directorate of the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen and a permanent guest Professor at the University of Lucerne.
His research areas are—among others—evolutionary and behavioural finance. In researching how investors make their decisions, Professor Hens draws on work in psychology and applies insights from biology to understand the dynamics of financial markets. He was one of the pioneers of evolutionary finance and cultural finance, where he conducted the first large-scale international test on risk and time attitudes (INTRA).
His consulting experience includes the application of behavioural finance for Private Banking and evolutionary finance for asset management. He studied at the University of Bonn and DELTA in Paris and previously held positions at Stanford University and the University of Bielefeld.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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David Kidney
David Neil Kidney (born 21 March 1955) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stafford from 1997 to 2010.wikipedia
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Stafford (UK Parliament constituency)
StaffordStafford (seat 1/2)Stafford constituency
David Neil Kidney (born 21 March 1955) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stafford from 1997 to 2010. Having fought the seat unsuccessfully in 1992, Kidney was Member of Parliament for Stafford from 1997, when he defeated Conservative candidate David Cameron, to 2010, when he lost to the Conservative candidate Jeremy Lefroy by 5,460 votes in a 7.4% swing.
Jeremy LefroyDavid KidneyRichard Brinsley SheridanStaffordPenkridge
2010 United Kingdom general election
2010 general election20102010 election
David Neil Kidney (born 21 March 1955) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stafford from 1997 to 2010.
David Cameron2010 United Kingdom government formationGordon Brown2010 United Kingdom general election debatesCameron–Clegg coalition
CameronPrime Minister David CameronPrime Minister
Having fought the seat unsuccessfully in 1992, Kidney was Member of Parliament for Stafford from 1997, when he defeated Conservative candidate David Cameron, to 2010, when he lost to the Conservative candidate Jeremy Lefroy by 5,460 votes in a 7.4% swing.
He also campaigned using the claim that a Labour government would increase the cost of a pint of beer by 24p; however, the Labour candidate, David Kidney, portrayed Cameron as "a right-wing Tory".
Cameron–Clegg coalition2010 United Kingdom general electionPremiership of David Cameron2016 Conservative Party leadership electionLiberal Democrats (UK)
Longton High School
Longton High
Kidney attended Pinewood Primary School in Meir (now the new Crescent Primary School), Longton High School then the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College.
William AstburyLongton, StaffordshireCharles TomlinsonCliff BrittleRobbie Earle
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Stafford, EnglandWildwoodSt Patrick's Catholic Primary School
Kidney was a solicitor from 1977–79 in Hanley then in Stafford from 1979–97, and a Stafford Borough councillor from 1987–97.
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Jeremy Lefroy
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He studied Law at the University of Bristol, receiving an LLB.
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He was a parish councillor of Checkley from 1983–7.
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He was a ministerial aide in the Environment team (for which no additional remuneration is given), but resigned in 2003 when he voted against the Iraq War.
2003 invasion of IraqIraqi insurgency (2003–2011)Casualties of the Iraq WarGeorge W. BushIraq War troop surge of 2007
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He became PPS to Elliot Morley Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in November 2005, and in 2006 he became the PPS to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Miliband.
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Rosie Winterton
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Following this, Kidney was PPS to Rosie Winterton, then Minister of State for Work and Pensions.
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In the June 2009 reshuffle Kidney entered the Government as a minister for the first time, becoming Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for Energy and Climate Change, replacing Joan Ruddock.
Minister of StateParliamentary Private SecretaryBritish government departmentsSecretary of State (United Kingdom)Minister (government)
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Joan Ruddock
(Dame) Joan RuddockDame Joan RuddockJoan Mary Ruddock
Department of Energy and Climate ChangeLewisham Deptford (UK Parliament constituency)Socialist Campaign GroupCampaign for Nuclear DisarmamentPontypool


LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) installed a utility pole-mounted electric vehicle (EV) charger in Watts as part of a pilot program to expand EV infrastructure citywide. The curbside charger, located in front of 1773 East Century Blvd., is likely the first such power pole public charger in the country according to utility officials.
Here in Los Angeles, the Department of Public Works has installed dozens of curbside EV chargers by utilizing the electrical wiring on street lights. Many other cities, including neighboring Burbank, install public chargers via underground electrical lines, requiring the street to be ripped up prior to installation and then repaved after the work is completed. The LADWP-installed power pole chargers require no additional work other than connecting the EV chargers to the existing wires on the power poles.
The City of Los Angeles has surpassed the Mayor's Sustainability goal of 1,000 public chargers installed in the city, including more than 100 on City property. However there is still a need for additional EV infrastructure. As it stands, there is currently only one public EV charger for every 20 EVs in the city. LADWP has a five-year goal to have more than 10,000 EV chargers installed, including 1,000 on City property, to support public and workplace charging as well as charging for residents of multi-unit housing.
Currently, there is no fee to use the utility pole-mounted EV charger in Watts. Discussions are underway about whether to enforce a parking/charging time limit at the space or to charge a fee after the car has been parked over a certain amount of time.
Three to four additional power pole EV chargers will be installed throughout the city by the end of 2017 as part of the pilot effort.
The power pole EV charger pilot program is part of LADWP's strategy to promote additional electric vehicle transportation. In addition to public charging, LADWP offers rebates for chargers through LADWP's Charge Up LA! Program. Residential customers can get up to $500 back for an EV charger; commercial customers can receive up to $4,000 for a qualified Level 2 (240-volt) EV charger. Commercial customers can qualify for up to 20 charger rebates per site under the program depending on the size of their parking lot. The $21.5 million rebate program will be in effect through June 30, 2018, or until funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
For more information on LADWP's Charge Up LA! rebate program, go to www.ladwp.com/EV. To find public EV charger locations across the City of LA, go to www.plugshare.com.
Photo Caption: Watts Neighborhood Council President Mac Shorty, Board of Water and Power Commissioners Vice President William Funderburk and LADWP Director of Power Engineering Marvin Moon charge up an electric vehicle at the new pole mounted EV charger in Watts.


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Home / New York / Cruises and boat tours
Cruises and boat tours in New York
Day sail to Statue of Liberty on America 2.0
Come on board the America 2.0– a modern tribute to the first boat that won America's Cup in 1851. Although the design is influenced by the s...
Big Apple in lights - NYC night tour
See New York City sparkle on an evening panoramic tour of the city! Experience awesome New York City's sites at night. Hop aboard the comfor...
New York Water Taxi All-Day Access Pass
The New York Water Taxi All-Day Access Pass is the perfect way to see the best of the city that never sleeps! Choose between completing the ...
Statue of Liberty and NYC skyline sightseeing cruise
Experience a New York Sightseeing cruise like never before. Step aboard the 1920s inspired motor yacht and take in all the iconic sights tha...
New York City sightseeing cruise around the Statue of Liberty
Your trip to New York City isn't complete without a sightseeing cruise around the Statue of Liberty! Experience the Big Apple from a differe...
Day sail to Statue of Liberty on the Adirondack
You'll take in the famous Manhattan skyline as it was meant to be seen– from the water. Take in spectacular views as the schooner passes Ell...
Alive After Five NYC happy hour cruise
Alive After Five happy hour cruise is your new favorite after-work spot for great drinks, a bite to eat, good vibes and good times. Locals a...
Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island Reserve Ticket with city guide
No trip to New York City would be complete without a visit to the world-famous Lady Liberty. A Reserve Ticket (retailing at USD 18.50) will ...
New York must-see guided combo tour
This must-see combo package includes three walking tours, a private double-decker tour and boat cruise--all led by an informed and entertain...
Discover NYC day tour with harbor cruise
Experience New York City by bus, boat, and foot through some of New York City's finest districts! This 6-hour NYC guided day bus tour includ...
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Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island fast-track tickets with optional pedestal access
Visit Liberty and Ellis Islands, home to the most symbolic landmarks of freedom and justice!The Stat...
Statue of Liberty tour with pedestal access and Ellis Island
Meet NYC's most famous lady up close and in person on our Early Access Statue of Liberty Tour.Start ...
New York Explorer Pass and Guidebook
Get admission to attractions and tours of your choice with the New York Explorer Pass. Once purchase...
New York CityPASS: Must-See Attractions
With the New York CityPASS, you'll save 42% on admission to the city's most popular attractions. The...
9-11 Memorial and Museum tickets
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One World Observatory standard ticket
The One World Observatory at Freedom Tower offers expansive 360-degree views in all directions of Ne...
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) skip-the-line tickets
Skip the lines and enter The Museum of Modern Art directly. You'll get immediate access to some of t...
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Take a Bite Out of the Big Apple: The Sightseeing Day Pass has over 100 experiences, destinations, m...
Big Apple helicopter tour
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Tickets to the Lion King on Broadway
The Lion King continues to amaze, with astounding visuals that will make this a show you'll remember...
Super New York tour plus Statue of Liberty ferry ticket and special attraction admission
Discover the Big Apple and see iconic NYC landmarks for 72 hours aboard a double-decker hop-on, hop-...
Big Bus New York hop-on hop-off tour
Experience New York's top sights and attractions at your own pace. With the option to choose between...
Top of the Rock tickets
Rise above the crowded streets of New York City and get a breath of fresh air on the observation dec...
The Met skip-the-line pass
The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from every corner of the world for e...
All access: 9-11 Ground Zero walking tour with 9-11 Museum and One World Observatory tickets
Join the all-access tour, which will begin with a 90-minute walking tour that covers St. Paul's Chap...
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12 places around the world to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day
From the Emerald Isle to London to America and back again, Musement takes a look at twelve destinations to partake in some rollicking St. Patrick's Day festivities. Shamrocks, Celtic folk music, a pint of Gat, a leprechaun hat and everything green! So, St. Patty's Day shenanigans are upon us again. Here, in no particular order, […]
9 movies filmed in 9 iconic locations
From Rome to London to New York, Musement takes a look at nine of the most famous filming locations in nine different films. The art of film is a magical medium that offers us an escape–a chance for us to put our worries aside as we're temporarily transported to another world. Yet, a visit to […]
6 iconic skyscrapers
Skyscraper Day is September 3 and in honor of these towering, sky-tickling structures, Musement looks at six of the world's most iconic. It's that time of year again: Skyscraper Day! These super tall structures started to pop up in the 19th century. While skyscrapers are the norm for most major cities today, they were revolutionary […]


Somewhere in D7, past the craft beer joints and coffee places, beyond the quaint little bookshops, free from the sight or smell of pulled pork, lies Squat City.
From 2013 to 2015, it was home to dozens of squatters, many of whom were very public about their use of the premises. They were eventually evicted, though, and, in June 2015, the keys were handed over to the guards.
Squat city was closed. Security guards patrolled the premises.
Until it was eventually sold. It lay vacant for eight months, barren and, for some, a symbol of the lack of affordable housing in Dublin. But the new owner did not keep the guards in place, and squatters soon reoccupied it.
So after months and months of lying vacant, people are now calling the complex home once more.
It's an enormous concrete courtyard with several warehouses, shacks that people live in and the remnants of a garden. It is nestled cosily in an otherwise gentrifying part of the capital, in Grangegorman, and it houses about 30 people, free of charge.
Here's Luke Lavaine, a Grangegorman resident. He's been squatting in Dublin for about two years, and I'm greeted with a grin as I meet him in a squatted house in the north of the city.
The house is a little dusty, but it's clearly people's home, and the dimly lit kitchen is full of vegetables, pots and pans. To my left is a window; I can see a narrow garden engulfed in green bushes and growth.
There's a dreadlock or two in the long hair that frames Lavaine's bearded face. He recently injured his eye in some kind of accident, and says that that's why he's not making eye contact, so please don't think he's being rude.
I tell him not to worry, and I blow on my hot tea as I thank him for it.
Tomorrow we'll rendezvous again for a quick tour of Squat City, but for now we sit in the kitchen and chat about squatting in Dublin. Residents of the house are periodically coming in and out, and I say hello.
I ask Lavaine for a profile of the kind of people who make up Dublin's squatting community, a description of the standard squatter. He pours me some more peppermint tea.
He explains that while anarchists, socialists and activists account for a portion of people who squat in Dublin, a number of others do it purely out of necessity, and are not informed by any particular political philosophy.
As we're talking, a resident walks in and begins looking at the small potted plants on the window ledge next to me. Lavaine tells her that we can move to the house's living room if we're in her way. We're fine, she says.
Grangegorman in November 2014. Photo by Hazel Hogan.
There are people from a variety of sexual orientations, genders, political beliefs, and backgrounds who squat. But they all agree one thing: that the state has failed to house its citizens. As do the experts.
McVerry has called for the government to declare a national emergency to address the situation. Focus Ireland, and the Dublin Simon Community have also said the government is not doing enough to address housing and homelessness issues.
Squatting, for many, must be viewed in this context: of a state which has failed to provide affordable housing.
Initiatives by some independent groups to provide housing have been opposed by the government. When activists in Dublin occupied an empty Dublin City Council-owned hostel on Bolton Street last summer and attempted to open it to house homeless people, the council said it had safety concerns, took them to court and forced them to stop.
It used to be better furnished.
Squat City was previously equipped with a community kitchen, a "free shop", to which people could donate unwanted items for others to take without charge, as well as a community garden, where residents grew their own fruit and vegetables.
The garden was bulldozed and demolished after the eviction in June, and a large mound of clay now rests in the middle of the courtyard.
Based on the accounts I hear about from residents, I'm surprised the earth wasn't salted so that nothing would ever grow here again. During the numerous eviction attempts during the previous occupation, residents claimed they were assaulted.
But new signs of new life are emerging. Kale and nettles are now growing, and there are pots filled with flowers scattered throughout the squat.
As we walk around, it's quiet. Other than somebody building a shack, there doesn't seem to be much going on.
The warehouse ceilings are high, maybe forty or fifty feet up there, and there are piles of clothes scattered around. It looks as if someone has been sorting through them.
A space as large as Grangegorman, as this place is often known, has a lot of potential, and the residents have plans for it to be used by the public at no cost. Last month, they held an open day, for people to come visit the squat.
A semi-regular spoken word and poetry event, "Words in the Warehouse", takes place in Squat City. There are also workshops and a space for art exhibitions.
"Because squatters have less financial pressure, there are a lot people – musicians, artists, poets, and so on – who are able to pursue what they want to do," Lavaine says.
A number of weeks ago, Grangegorman hosted a circus, which performed free of charge for an audience of at least 100. Acrobats performed in the candlelit warehouse. Artists and musicians from the squat also took part.
I ask Lavaine about plans for the future, and how he sees the space being used.
Here's Michael Gaffney, "unrepentant working-class anarchist". Gaffney is relatively new to the squatting movement. Although he currently isn't squatting, he's a friend and ally of Grangegorman.
I meet him for a pint in Sweeney's, and we oscillate between sitting in a quiet corner to chat and taking breaks to go outside and smoke rollies. I ask him about his background, and how he became involved with squatting and squatters.
He says he got involved in Squat City relatively late. "I was at my first PETTYCASH show, and Hazel Hogan was giving a speech about the big eviction attempt, and how they needed support – of any kind: hands on, artistic, moral and otherwise," he says.
The community at Grangegorman helped Gaffney through a tremendously difficult period in his life. Squat City provided a place for him to go, to fill his days doing something productive.
"My engagement was just broken up and I was using a lot of very heavy drugs, almost daily, and was just after a suicide attempt. So, I eventually ended up going down to Grangegorman every day, during a great dash of sunshine. I gradually met more people," he says.
Gaffney is a poet, and a very good one. He performs at spoken-word events around Dublin, as well at as events put on at Grangegorman.
The community welcomed him, and his life has since improved. "I met another squatter in a squat not so far from Grangegorman, and had hung out with him a lot as we both crashed in one of the warehouses a bit. Then on the day of a mass squatting of a HSE building two minutes from Grangegorman, I went to help." he says.
Though the squatters say the local community around Squat City have been welcoming, popular opinion, generally speaking, is not sympathetic. Several attempts have been made to remove the residents of Squat City, they say.
One morning in February, around the time the Father Peter McVerry said that the homeless crisis was a result of government policy, an attempt was made to once again remove the residents of Squat City. The residents say private security guards tried to forcefully evict them, eventually leaving when they discovered they were outnumbered.
He rolls up another smoke, and begins to tell me about the ethos of Grangegorman's squatters.
"If you have a burning to fight back against the monster which is mainstream middle-Ireland today, you will have a place at our table," Gaffney says.
As with all squatted buildings, the future is, as far I can see, uncertain. While no one living in Squat City can predict what will become of the space in the next five years, the atmosphere seems to be generally quite optimistic.
Though not always explicitly political, squatting in Ireland is in some ways always a political act.
In occupying an empty premises for the purpose of living, one is making (intentionally or not) a statement against an absolutist conception of private-property rights. Against the notion that vacant land cannot be used by people who need it because someone, somewhere claims ownership of it.
Grangegorman lay empty and forgotten before the squatters came. In a time of a shortage of affordable housing, Squat City is now a home to tens of people, and will soon be home to more. And there are more places like it all over Dublin.
Back in the kitchen of the north Dublin squat, I'm finishing my tea. Lavaine is talking about the divides in the last group that occupied Squat City.
"Grangegorman Round One was made of several groups of different people, two groups of people who got along, but weren't politically on the same page . . . there were differences," he says.
Paulie Doyle: Paulie Doyle is a freelance journalist and writer.
This site was/is in Nama. No 'For Sale' was put up, yet within a short period of time after the first evictions, notices went around to local residents from a private development company informing them of plans to build 500+ student bed complex on the site. I attended that meeting last July. Plans were pretty advanced though planning permission hadn't been applied for. There's been no further contact since.


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Lakers Head Coach Reveals Team's Improvement Areas Ahead of Game Against Clippers – Essentially Sports
The NBA is very close to returning to action with the seeding games. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Lakers won their third and final scrimmage game against the Washington Wizards. With two victories out of three in the scrimmages, the Lakers now have to shape up well ahead of a crucial game against the LA Clippers.
The Lakers taking on the Clippers on the opening night of the NBA's return is what we all want. LeBron James against Kawhi Leonard is the kind of action is what was missing all these months. As the Lakers prepare to avenge their Christmas day loss, head-coach Frank Vogel gave an update on the fitness levels of his players.
Vogel mentioned about the Lakers' downside in the three games that he's witnessed. "Vogel said free throw shooting and transition defense are two areas of focus for improvement for the Lakers, though he does think they've made progress there," Mike Trudell of Spectrum SportsNet wrote.
Dwight Howard and Kyle Kuzma missed the action against the Wizards due to the knock that they experienced in the previous game against the Magic. Mike Trudell posted Vogel's update on the matter on his Twitter account.
Are the Los Angeles Lakers going to be without Anthony Davis in their first seeding game?
The Lakers vs Clippers rivalry just got really intense this season. With the introduction of Kawhi and Paul George into the team, the Clippers have become well-shaped and a more balanced team this year.
On the other hand, the Lakers have arguably the two best players in the league. AD and LeBron are wonderful partners on the court, who compliment each other so well. However, Anthony Davis was poked in his eye in the game against the Magic, which caused him to sit out for the Lakers' final scrimmage.
It was an anticipated move from coach Vogel. He has to rest his star player for the upcoming seeding games, which remain the priority. But how serious is AD's injury? He got poked in the eye and Frank Vogel informed that AD didn't train with the team today. There is also a concern, which was reported by Mike Trudell:
"Frank Vogel said @AntDavis23 did not practice today as his eye is still bothering him. He's day-to-day at this point. Vogel said there "is some concern" Davis would miss Thursday's game, but he's "hopeful" that Davis will play."
Lakers fans will be hugely bothered upon reading this news. However, the team is playing it safe by keeping AD away from any action until his eye is fully healed. A poke in the eye during a competitive basketball game can surely be a painful one. We hope whatever's bothering Davis' eye gets cured and that he is able to make the starting lineup for the Clippers game.
SOURCE: Mike Trudell's Twitter
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'The Lion King' could seal Disney's reign over the box office
Posted 10:43 am, July 20, 2019, by CNN Wires
The House of Mouse owns the top four highest-grossing films of 2019, including "Avengers: Endgame," "Captain Marvel," "Aladdin" and "Toy Story 4." "Endgame" shattered records when it opened in April and has made more than $2.7 billion globally.
Domestically, the company's film slate has brought in more than $2.1 billion in 2019, which accounts for 35% of the market.
And this weekend, the windfall from the photorealistic reboot of "The Lion King" is going help Disney secure its perch at the top of the US box office.
"'The Lion King' is one of the most beloved and well-known movie brands of all-time and this reboot will offer an opportunity for a whole new generation to embrace these iconic characters and this story in a bold new way," Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, told CNN Business. "That should be more than enough to make it yet another hit for Disney."
The film, which is a reboot of its 1994 animated hit, made $78.5 million on its opening day. Analysts are expecting it to make around $150 million in the North American box office by Sunday.
Beyoncé and Donald Glover, along with an all-star cast, are lending their voice work to the film, which means it might not matter that "The Lion King" is not favored among critics (it has a 56% score on review site Rotten Tomatoes).
"It faces challenges including mixed reviews and fans of the original questioning the need for this newly re-imagined telling, but it's looking like the allure of the film, particularly for kids, will be incredibly strong," Dergarabedian said. "Any negative reviews that may influence parents will likely be offset by their children who are absolutely going to be a strong influence on their parent's decision to head to the multi-plex."
Disney's live-action reboots of animated classics have been subjected to this scenario before. "Aladdin," which stars Will Smith as the magical blue Genie, exceeded expectations when it opened to $116 million over Memorial Day weekend. The film, which holds a 56% score on Rotten Tomatoes, has made more than $965 million worldwide.
The domestic box office is down roughly 9% compared to this time last year. Much is riding on "The Lion King" to rule.
But not all is lost if it fails to live up to expectations. The second half of 2019 could bank on potential hits such as "Hobbs & Shaw," "It: Chapter 2" and "Joker." Disney also has two more heavy hitters with "Frozen 2" and "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" at the end of the year.
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Oh my, it is hot!! Don't get me wrong, I love summer and live for warm weather, but turning the oven on is a no- no these days. Just give me something no bake and cool, like Kozy Shack® Rice Pudding and I am a happy camper!!
So we are a grilling family! I love my new gas BBQ. For so many years we used briquettes and lighter fluid, and what a messy pain that was! Now, we just turn the gas on and it is ready to go!!
I have been trying out different fruits on the grill. I have found that grilled fruit is amazing. It tastes caramelized and sweet and juicy. I have been grilling peaches and now they are my new favorite!
I created a new dessert with Grilled Peaches, Fresh Raspberries and toasted Pecans over Kozy Shack® Rice Pudding. It is a wonderful No Bake refreshing dessert, perfect for summer parties and BBQ's.
Did you know that National Rice Pudding Day on August 9? I love rice pudding so much and love that Kozy Shack® Pudding is made with real, simple ingredients—and the perfect way to make your summertime celebrations even more special.
Kozy Shack® Pudding tastes delicious straight out of the fridge, of course. But you can turn your everyday pudding into a special treat by adding fruit, spices and other toppings you already have at home. There is no wrong way to enjoy it!
Scoop two tablespoons of Kozy Shack® Rice Pudding into a serving dish. Place Chopped grilled peaches on top. Place raspberries over peaches. Sprinkle with pecans.
Serve immediately. Wrap with saran wrap and place in to refrigerator until ready to serve.
Find out more at Facebook.com/KozyShack and share your memories and ideas with the hashtag #SummerofPudding #KozyShack on Instagram and Twitter. How do you like to enjoy your pudding? What toppings do you always have on hand? Something salty? Something sweet? Do you simply spoon some into a dish and smile? Do you like to top it with fruit, crunchy pretzels or whipped cream? How do you keep it simple and delicious?
Many thanks to Kozy Shack® Enterprises, LLC for sponsoring today's story and encouraging me to try Kozy Shack® Pudding! #SummerofPudding #KozyShack.
these appetizers are just lovely!!!!!!!!!!!! nice ideas for a quick healthy snack!!
Mmm, i love grilled fruit and i love rice pudding!
What a perfect Summer dessert, the peaches are so amazing right now.
What a great summer snack and will have to check out this brand of rice pudding Nettie!
It is just the perfect little thing for summer!
I love that you grilled the peaches for this. It looks delicious!
Yummy. My hubby LOVES rice pudding. This would be a great dessert for him. We really need to try grilling the peaches. That sounds perfect!


The full extent of Friday's maritime incident, where 83 shipping containers were lost overboard, is becoming clearer.
More photos have emerged showing a range of items washing up on Port Stephens beaches – including at Fingal Bay, One Mile Beach and Jimmy's Beach.
Some locals have begun collecting the goods – disposing of the goods.
Authorities are reminding the public the contents of the containers are the property of the shipping company, and can't be salvaged.
None of the 83 shipping containers had any hazardous materials inside them.
Will NBN be posting today June 4th updated story & information re this terrible environmental incident ?
Hi Alison, the story will be up shortly.


The Joy of Tech comic... The real reasons AirPower was cancelled!
Nope, never even heard of it.
Not really, never would have bought it anyway.
Yes, but I'm hoping it will born again sometime in the future, once the bugs are worked out.
I'm ecstatic! I sell other charging pads!
Stibbons seeks a Google Inbox replacement, and asks Brexit means what now?, ... romad seranades To All The Chips I Loved, ... while Snaggy laments Everything is Noro around here.


text:
BI News and Info
Mobile and Cloud
CRM News and Info
OnContact
DWH News and Info
SAS/SPSS
Tag Archives: Autonomous
Nuro becomes first company to receive commercial autonomous vehicle permit from California DMV
December 24, 2020 Big Data
Hours after announcing that it acquired self-driving truck startup Ike, Nuro revealed it's the first company to receive permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to charge a fee and receive compensation for its driverless delivery service. Unlike the autonomous testing licenses the California DMV previously granted to Nuro and others, which limited the compensation self-driving vehicle companies could receive, the deployment permit enables Nuro to make its technology commercially available.
Some experts predict the pandemic will hasten adoption of autonomous vehicles for delivery. Self-driving cars, vans, and trucks promise to minimize the risk of spreading disease by limiting driver contact. This is particularly true with regard to short-haul freight, which is experiencing a spike in volume during the outbreak. The producer price index for local truckload carriage jumped 20.4% from July to August, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, most likely propelled by demand for short-haul distribution from warehouses and distribution centers to ecommerce fulfillment centers and stores.
The California DMV permit allows Nuro to use a fleet of light-duty driverless vehicles for a delivery service on surface streets within designated parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, including the cities of Atherton, East Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and Woodside. The vehicles have a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour and are only approved to operate in fair weather conditions on streets with a speed limit of no more than 35 miles per hour.
"This permit will allow our vehicles to operate commercially on California roads in two counties near our [Mountain View, California] headquarters in the Bay Area. Soon we will announce our first deployment in California with an established partner. The service will start with our fleet of Prius vehicles in fully autonomous mode, followed by our custom-designed electric R2 vehicles," Nuro chief legal and policy officer David Estrada wrote in a blog post. "We have extensively tested our self-driving technology and built a track record of safe operations over the past four years, including two successful commercial deployments in other states and driverless testing with R2 in the Bay Area communities where we plan to deploy."
In April, Nuro, which has over 600 employees, secured a permit from the California DMV to test driverless delivery vehicles on public roads within a portion of the San Francisco Bay Area. That followed the issuance of a DMV permit in 2017 requiring that the company employ safety drivers in its autonomous test vehicles on public roads. More recently, in February, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) granted Nuro an autonomous vehicle exemption that allowed the company to pilot its custom-designed R2 delivery vehicles on roads without certain equipment required for passenger vehicles.
For the better part of a year, Nuro's fleet of Toyota Prius vehicles in Houston, Texas has been making deliveries to consumers from various partners, including Kroger, Domino's, and Walmart. The company has deployed over 75 delivery vehicles to date, a mix of self-driving Priuses and R2s.
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Gatik raises $25 million for autonomous short-haul delivery trucks
November 23, 2020 Big Data
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Gatik, a startup developing an autonomous vehicle stack for B2B short-haul logistics, today closed a $ 25 million series A round. The company also announced it will bring a fleet of self-driving vans to Canada as part of a deal with Loblaw, the country's largest retailer with over 200,000 employees.
Palo Alto, California-based Gatik, which has offices in Toronto, is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon graduate and CEO Gautam Narang. He cofounded the company in 2017 with CTO Arjun Narang and chief engineer and former Ford computer vision lead Apeksha Kumavat.
Gatik's platform taps level 4 autonomous vehicles (capable of operating with limited human input and oversight in specific conditions and locations, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers) to fulfill on-demand and scheduled deliveries up to a distance of 200 miles. Its retrofitted trucks and Ford Transit 350 vans and orchestration software, which the company has been testing on public roads in California since Q1 2018, promise to transport goods around city environments more affordably.
For Loblaw, Gatik says it will transport "multi-temperature" goods and products from the retailer's microfulfillment centers for inventory pooling across multiple locations, multiple times a day, to retail outposts across the Greater Toronto Area beginning January 2021. The program will cover five routes that will operate 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
"Gatik's fleet of Class 1-6 autonomous vehicles moves goods from microfulfilment centers and dark stores to pick-up points like retail stores, distribution centers, and offices — known as the middle mile," Gatik head of policy and communications Richard Steiner told VentureBeat in a recent interview. "This is critical because the middle mile is the most expensive and challenging part of the supply chain for retailers to contend with. … The key to Gatik's success involves optimizing fixed, predetermined routes, such as those used along the supply chain's middle mile, countless times each day. The biggest threat to the autonomous revolution is the unknown, or edge cases, which are substantially reduced on fixed journeys."
In July, Walmart revealed that it had launched a pilot with Gatik to ferry customer orders between select store locations in Bentonville, Arkansas. Gatik's vans transport items from a warehouse to neighborhood market stores along a two-mile route (or five-mile one-way route) in Bentonville. Each van makes up to 10 runs a day during daylight, with human backup operators behind the wheel.
More recently, Gatik received a $ 100,000 grant from PlanetM, a Michigan Economic Development Corporation program that seeks to fund solutions to pandemic-driven challenges in Michigan. In collaboration with an unnamed partner, referred to as "one of the state's largest retailers," Gatik says its autonomous trucks will operate on predetermined, fixed routes throughout Grand Rapids and Rochester.
Gatik says it will continue to target customers such as third-party logistics providers (like FedEx, UPS, and USPS), consumer goods distributors, food and beverage distributors, medical and pharmaceutical distributors, and auto parts distributors for the foreseeable future. The company has raised a total of over $ 29 million in venture capital. Today's round was led by Wittington Ventures and Innovation Endeavors, with participation from FM Capital, Intact Ventures, Fontinalis Partners, Dynamo, Reilly Brennan's Trucks VC, Intact Ventures, and AngelPad.
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Via partners with troubled May Mobility for autonomous shuttle pilot in Arlington
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Via today announced a partnership with troubled autonomous vehicle startup May Mobility to develop a platform that integrates on-demand shared rides, public transportation, and transit options for passengers with accessibility needs. May says it will adopt Via's autonomous fleet platform to power booking, routing, passenger and vehicle assignment and identification, customer experience, and fleet management. The longer-term strategy involves multiple public transit deployments in 2021, starting with Arlington, Texas.
By all appearances, May Mobility was a scrappy success story. But a VentureBeat investigation revealed that May engineers struggled to maintain and upgrade the company's vehicle platform, at one point spending months attempting to install an air conditioning system in the height of summer. Leadership's ambition often outstretched May's ability to deliver, which upset vendors, some of whom went unpaid for stretches of time. And not a single one of the company's commercial routes approached full autonomy.
Despite this, Via plans to forge ahead with the deal. In collaboration with the city of Arlington and supported by a $ 1.7 million U.S. Federal Transit Administration Integrated Mobility Innovation Program grant, on-demand autonomous vehicle rides from May will be incorporated into Via's existing public transit service in the city. This service has been operational since 2017 and was extended in October 2020.
"Via is a leading provider in on-demand transit services, with a software stack to create efficient, highly-optimized on-demand autonomous vehicle solutions," a spokesperson told VentureBeat via email. "May Mobility selected Via as a partner to support the company's shift from a focus on fixed route AV services to on-demand, and will leverage Via's experience and technology to further develop its suite of autonomous vehicle capabilities in a new way."
The one-year Via and May pilot program in Arlington, called Arlington Rideshare, Automation, and Payment Integration Demonstration (RAPID), is expected to launch for the public in March 2021. The companies say it will serve downtown Arlington and the University of Texas at Arlington campus, providing students and faculty with free rides during the test phase, all integrated into Via's app.
Beyond Arlington, Via and May plan to expand access to full-scale autonomous transit networks in 2021, in coordination and partnership with public transit systems in a number of locations across the U.S. "Via's partnership with May Mobility will integrate flexible, autonomous vehicle fleets into public transit today and will provide insights to support cities as they transform public transit infrastructure for the future," Via cofounder and CEO Daniel Ramot said.
May's post-deployment road has been bumpier than most, but some of its rivals haven't fared much better. In February, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) partially suspended U.S. operations of France's EasyMile after a passenger in Columbus, Ohio was injured while riding in one of the company's driverless shuttles. And in 2018, the NHTSA suspended a separate Transdev program in Florida that sought to replace school buses with EasyMile vehicles.
The Department of Transportation two years ago published a prescient report on the autonomous shuttle sector that highlighted the limited vehicle autonomy, procurement challenges, and regulatory unpredictability shuttle startups have yet to address. The industry isn't without apparent success stories, like that of Optimus Ride. But May's setbacks illustrate the nascent technology's limited applicability, particularly when stretched beyond its capabilities.
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Autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai raises $267 million at an over $5.3 billion valuation
November 6, 2020 Big Data
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In a sign that enthusiasm for driverless cars hasn't waned during the pandemic, Pony.ai today announced $ 267 million in new funding. The startup has offices in Guangzhou, China and Fremont, California and has now raised over $ 1 billion at a valuation north of $ 5.3 billion (up from $ 3 billion as of February 2020).
Some experts predict the pandemic will hasten the adoption of autonomous transportation technologies. Despite needing disinfection, driverless cars can potentially minimize the risk of spreading disease. But surveys are mixed, with one from Partners for Automated Vehicle Education showing nearly three in four Americans believe autonomous cars aren't ready for prime time. Unsurprisingly, Motional disagrees with this assertion, claiming one-fifth of respondents to its Consumer Mobility Report are "more interested" in autonomous vehicles than they were before the pandemic.
Former Baidu chief architect James Peng cofounded Pony.ai in 2016 with Tiancheng Lou, who worked at Google X's autonomous car project before it was spun off into Waymo. The pair aims to build level 4 autonomous cars — able to operate without human oversight under select conditions, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers — for "predictable" environments, such as industrial parks, college campuses, and small towns, with a tentative deployment window of several years from now.
Pony's full-stack hardware platform, PonyAlpha, leverages lidars, radars, and cameras to keep tabs on obstacles up to 200 meters from its self-driving cars. PonyAlpha is the foundation for the company's fully autonomous trucks and freight delivery solution, which commenced testing in April 2019 and is deployed in test cars within the city limits of Fremont and Beijing (in addition to Guangzhou).
Pony.ai is one of the few companies to have secured an autonomous vehicle testing license in Beijing. In California, it has obtained a robo-taxi operations permit from the California Public Utilities Commission. The only other companies to have secured such a license in California are AutoX, Waymo, and Zoox.
Last October, Pony.ai partnered with Via and Hyundai to launch BotRide, Pony.ai's second public robo-taxi service after a pilot program (PonyPilot) in Nansha, China. BotRide allowed riders and carpoolers to hail autonomous Hyundai Kona electric SUVs through apps developed with Via, sourcing from a fleet of 10 cars with human safety drivers behind the wheel.
In August, Pony.ai inked an agreement with Bosch to "explore the future of automotive maintenance and repair for autonomous fleets." Pony.ai and Bosch's Automotive Aftermarket division in North America plan to develop and test fleet maintenance solutions for commercial robo-taxi programs. Pony.ai says it began piloting a maintenance program with Bosch in the San Francisco Bay Area in early July.
Among other potential advantages, autonomous driving promises the continuous operation of fleets and reduction of downtime. According to a 2017 McKinsey report, robo-taxis could reduce a fleet operator's total cost of ownership by 30% to 50% compared with private-vehicle ownership and by about 70% compared to shared mobility, significantly disrupting the market. But robo-taxis will need vastly different maintenance infrastructure than cars, in part because they might lack regular monitoring; have only minutes between passengers; and sport expensive, sensitive, and unconventional parts like lidar sensors.
Pony.ai has competition in Daimler, which in summer 2018 obtained a permit from the Chinese government that allows it to test self-driving cars powered by Baidu's Apollo platform on public roads in Beijing. And startup Optimus Ride built out a small driverless shuttle fleet in Brooklyn. Waymo, which has racked up more than 20 million real-world miles in over 25 cities across the U.S. and billions of simulated miles, in November 2018 became the first company to obtain a driverless car testing permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Rivals include Tesla, Aptiv, May Mobility, Cruise, Aurora, Argo AI, Pronto.ai, and Nuro.
Fortunately for Pony.ai, it has partnerships with Chinese state-owned auto group FAW and GAC Group (a Guangzhou-based automobile maker) to develop level 4 robo-taxi vehicles. It also has a joint collaboration with On Semiconductor to prototype image sensing and processing technologies for machine vision. And Pony.ai has driven over 1.5 million autonomous kilometers (or about 932,056 miles) as of year-end 2019, putting it within striking distance of Yandex (2 million miles) and Baidu (1.8 million miles).
Previous and existing investors in Pony.ai include video game publisher Beijing Kunlun Wanwei, Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital, and Legend Capital. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board's Teachers' Innovation Platform led this latest round, with participation from Fidelity China Special Situations PLC, 5Y Capital, ClearVue Partners, Eight Roads, and others.
U.S. NHTSA's autonomous vehicle test tracking tool is light on data
September 3, 2020 Big Data
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In June, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) detailed the Automated Vehicle Transparency and Engagement for Safe Testing (AV TEST), a program that purports to provide a robust source of information about autonomous vehicle testing. Today marked the official launch of AV TEST after several months of ramp-up, beginning with a tool for tracking driverless pilots in 17 cities across nine states. But despite lofty promises from the NHTSA of the transparency AV TEST will herald, its current incarnation — at least from first impressions — is bare-bones at best.
Companies including Beep, Cruise, Fiat Chrysler, Nuro, Toyota, Uber, Local Motors, Navya, and Waymo have agreed to participate in AV TEST so far, along with those that have previously submitted testing information to NHTSA, including Aurora, Easymile, Kodiak Robotics, Lyft, TuSimple, Nvidia, and Zoox. The tracking tool reveals on-road testing locations and activity data like vehicle types, uses, dates, frequency, vehicle counts, and routes. And it shows information about state vehicle operation regulations, emergency response plans, and legislation, as well as links to the voluntary safety reports some vehicle operators publish.
The ostensible goal is to shed light on the breadth of vehicle testing taking place across the country. Owing to a lack of public data around autonomous vehicles, Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE) reports a majority of Americans don't think the technology is "ready for primetime." The federal government maintains no database of autonomous vehicle reliability records, and while states like California mandate that companies testing driverless cars disclose how often humans are forced to take control of the vehicles, critics assert those are imperfect measures of safety.
"The more information the public has about the on-road testing of automated driving systems, the more they will understand the development of this promising technology," NHTSA deputy administrator James Owens said during a web briefing. "Automated driving systems are not yet available for sale to the public, and the AV TEST Initiative will help improve public understanding of the technology's potential and limitations as it continues to develop."
Above: A screenshot of the AV TEST tracking tool.
Some of the AV TEST tool's stats are admittedly eye-catching, like the fact that program participants are reportedly conducting 34 shuttle, 24 autonomous car, and 7 delivery robot trials in the U.S. But they aren't especially informative. Several pilots don't list the road type (e.g., "street," "parking lot," "freeway,") where testing is taking place, and the entries for locations tend to be light on the details. Waymo reports it is conducting "Rain Testing" in Florida, for instance, but hasn't specified the number and models of vehicles involved. Cruise is more forthcoming about its tests in San Francisco, but only approximates the number of vehicles in its fleets.
The incompleteness of the data aside, participation in AV TEST appears to be uneven at launch. Major stakeholders like Pony.ai, Baidu, Tesla, Argo.AI, Amazon, Postmates, and Motion seemingly declined to provide data for the purposes of the tracking tool or have yet to make a decision either way. The net effect is a database that's less useful than it might otherwise be; while the AV TEST tool reports that there are 61 pilots currently active, the actual number is likely to be far greater.
It also remains to be seen how diligently NHTSA will maintain this database. Absent a vetting process, companies have wiggle room to underreport or misrepresent tests taking place. And because the AV TEST program is voluntary, there's nothing to prevent participating states and companies from demurring as testing resumes during and after the pandemic.
"Unfortunately, NHTSA's reliance on voluntary industry actions to accomplish this is a recipe for disaster," Advocates for Highway Safety president Cathy Chase said of the AV TEST program earlier this summer. "It has been reported that at least 80 companies are testing autonomous vehicles. Yet, only 20 have submitted safety assessments to the U.S. DOT under the current voluntary guidelines, iterations of which have been in place for nearly four years … Additionally, over that time, the National Transportation Safety Board has investigated six crashes involving vehicles with autonomous capabilities uncovering serious problems, including inadequate countermeasures to ensure driver engagement, reliance on voluntary reporting, lack of standards, poor corporate safety culture, and a misguided oversight approach by NHTSA."
Tellingly, the AV TEST program's launch comes as federal efforts to regulate autonomous vehicles remain stalled. The DOT's recently announced Automated Vehicles 4.0 (AV 4.0) guidelines request — but don't mandate — regular assessments of self-driving vehicle safety, and they permit those assessments to be completed by automakers themselves rather than by standards bodies. (Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety also criticized AV 4.0 for its vagueness.) And while the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that would create a regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles, dubbed the SELF DRIVE Act, it has yet to be taken up by the Senate. In fact, the Senate two years ago tabled a separate bill (the AV START Act) that made its way through committee in November 2017.
All of this raises the question of whether the AV TEST program will be able to move the needle on autonomous car safety. Time will tell, but today's rollout doesn't instill confidence.
Bosch and Ford will test autonomous parking in Detroit
August 27, 2020 Big Data
Bosch, Ford, and Dan Gilbert's real estate firm Bedrock today detailed an autonomous parking pilot scheduled to launch in September at The Assembly, a mixed-used building in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood. Leveraging Bosch sensors that monitor driving corridors and their surroundings to guide vehicles to and from assigned spaces, Ford plans to demo how cars like the 2020 Escape can self-drive to parking spaces without human drivers onboard.
The companies have no intention of extending the demo beyond the end of September, but they say they hope to gain "valuable insights" that will help expand the technology in the future. For instance, they claim the system could allow existing garages to accommodate up to 20% more vehicles because developers don't have to leave space for drivers and passengers to open car doors in parking spots.
The autonomous parking valet — which the companies claim is the first of its kind in the U.S. — leans on a range of intelligent infrastructure supplied by Bosch, including lidar sensors and a dedicated server. Complementary in-car Ford technology converts commands from the server into maneuvers, enabling cars to drive themselves up and down ramps and spot potential hazards (including pedestrians).
Upon arriving at the garage, drivers will leave the test vehicle in a designated area and use an app to send it into an automated parking routine. They will use that same app to request the return of the vehicle to a designated retrieval zone.
Above: A Ford test vehicle autonomously backs into a parking space.
The system's reliance on sensors makes it potentially less capable than, say, Tesla's Enhanced Summon, which navigates cars autonomously through virtually any parking lot. But Enhanced Summon doesn't support multi-story garages, and it can't currently park vehicles autonomously — only retrieve them. By contrast, Bosch and Ford say their platform can be deployed via retrofitted solutions or with embedded infrastructure planned into the construction of new garages.
The pilot's launch follows the rollout of Bosch and Daimler's smartphone-controlled automated valet in the Mercedes-Benz Museum parking garage in Stuttgart, which gained regulatory approval in July 2019 following an assessment by German certification authority TÜV Rheinland. That setup is identical to the one in Detroit; Bosch and Daimler began developing fully automated driverless parking in 2015, and in 2017, their pilot in the Stuttgart garage became capable of automated parking in real conditions. A year later, the two companies began allowing Mercedes-Benz Museum visitors to use the parking service live, accompanied by trained safety personnel.
TuSimple plans autonomous truck network backed by UPS
July 1, 2020 Big Data
Ahead of the commercial rollout of its driverless trucks by 2024, TuSimple today outlined the launch of what it's calling the world's first autonomous freight network. In partnership with UPS, Penske, U.S. Xpress, and McLane Company, the company plans to establish an "ecosystem" of autonomous trucks complemented by digitally mapped routes, strategically placed terminals, and a monitoring system dubbed TuSimple Connect.
TuSimple says it believes the autonomous freight network is the "safest" and "most efficient" way to bring self-driving trucks to market. As the pandemic drives unprecedented growth in the logistics and ground transportation market, Aurora, Waymo, and other rivals are investing increased resources in fully autonomous solutions.
TuSimple's autonomous freight network will roll out in three phases. During the first — spanning this year to 2021 — TuSimple will offer delivery service between the cities of Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. The second phase, which will begin in 2022 and end in 2023, will see an expansion in shipping from Los Angeles to Jacksonville that will connect the East with the West Coast. The third phase, starting in 2023, will grow TuSimple's driverless operations nationwide, adding routes in 48 states and allowing customers to use TuSimple-equipped trucks on the freight network (with priority given to existing customers and companies with large orders).
Similar deployments in Europe and Asia will follow if all goes well, building upon TuSimple's delivery pilot in Shanghai. There, as here, businesses will pay TuSimple to haul goods on their behalf.
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TuSimple already operates autonomously on seven different routes between Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and Dallas, and it intends to open a shipping terminal in Dallas in alignment with its freight network plans. For high-volume customers, TuSimple tells VentureBeat it will continue to map routes and deliver to distribution centers. And it says it will give clients of all sizes the ability to track freight in real time using TuSimple Connect.
To accelerate the network's growth, TuSimple completed a series of 22-hour self-driving truck runs along the I-10, I-20, and I-30 corridors through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Leading up to today, the company was completing 50 commercial runs per week, and it now plans to conduct 93 commercial runs per week in the U.S., using 40 trucks.
Penske, which operates more than 750 service facilities throughout North America, has agreed to scale TuSimple's fleet operations and provide maintenance and over-the-road service. U.S. Xpress and UPS will give TuSimple runs to haul for them, guiding which routes open next and enabling the company to further refine its autonomous technology.
TuSimple — which is reportedly seeking $ 250 million in new funding — is proposing an ambitious timeline, but it's arguably better-positioned than most to deliver. The company recently expanded a freight-hauling pilot program with UPS to 20 trips per week, with additional routes between Arizona and Texas and El Paso and Dallas, and its trucks are performing revenue-generating trips for over a dozen customers, including Fortune 100 companies and "household names." Moreover, TuSimple has R&D and testing centers globally in hotspots like Beijing, San Diego, Shanghai, and Tucson. It also has a war chest totaling over $ 298 million, with contributions from Sina, Nvidia, UPS, and Mando.
On the other hand, analysts like Boston Consulting Group's Brian Collie now believe broad commercialization of autonomous cars won't happen before 2025 or 2026, at least three years later than originally anticipated. Partly as a consequence of halted real-world vehicle testing, the coronavirus has delayed Lyft rival Waymo's work by at least two months. Meanwhile, Ford pushed the launch of its driverless vehicle service from 2021 to 2022.
TuSimple's Class 8 semi-trucks can carry loads exceeding 33,000 pounds and are level 4 under the guidelines penned by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), meaning they're capable of full autonomy in controlled (and often geofenced) highways and local streets. Unlike self-driving perception platforms from the likes of Uber and Waymo, TuSimple's is decidedly camera-forward. Using an eight-camera array and other sensors, it can detect cars, pedestrians, and other obstacles up to 1,000 meters away.
TuSimple says its approach enables it to achieve three-centimeter precision for truck positioning, even in inclement weather and at night, and it allows for plenty of leeway in real-time decision-making. It also claims better efficiency than its competitors. TuSimple says its trucks are able to monitor traffic flow far ahead to maintain a given speed more consistently than human drivers and competing autonomous vehicle systems. The company claims this reduces fuel consumption by as much as 15% and average purchased transportation costs by 30%.
TuSimple has plenty in the way of competition, like Thor Trucks and Pronto.ai. There's also Ike, a self-driving truck startup founded by former Apple, Google, and Uber Advanced Technologies Group engineers that has raised $ 52 million. And then there's venture-backed Swedish driverless car company Einride. Meanwhile, Paz Eshel and former Uber and Otto engineer Don Burnette recently secured $ 40 million for their startup, Kodiak Robotics. That's not to mention Embark, which integrates its self-driving systems into Peterbilt semis and launched a pilot with Amazon to haul cargo, or driverless truck solutions from incumbents like Daimler and Volvo.
But demand for driverless trucks is strong. The industry stands to save the logistics and shipping industry $ 70 billion annually while boosting productivity by 30%. According to a recent study from the Consumer Technology Association, a quarter (26%) of consumers now view autonomous delivery technologies more favorably than before the health crisis. Besides cost savings, the growth is driven in part by a shortage of human drivers. In 2018, the American Trucking Associates estimated that 50,000 more truckers were needed to close the gap in the U.S., even despite the sidelining of proposed U.S. Transportation Department screenings for sleep apnea.
Waymo to expand autonomous truck testing in the American Southwest
June 30, 2020 Big Data
Today during a briefing with members of the media, Waymo head of commercialization for trucking Charlie Jatt outlined the company's go-to-market plans for Waymo Via, its self-driving delivery division. In the future, Waymo will partner with OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to equip cloud-based trucks manufactured and sold to the market with its autonomous systems. In addition, Waymo will work with fleets to provide its software services and offer support for things like mapping and remote fleet assistance.
As Waymo transitions to this model, Jatt said that Waymo intends to own and offer its own fleet of trucks — at least in the short term. One of the delivery solutions it's exploring is a transfer-hub model where, rather than an automated truck covering an entire journey, it'll be a mix of an automated portion and a portion involving manually driven, human-manned trucks. Automated vehicle transfer hubs close to highways would handle the switch-off and minimize surface street driving.
In a first step toward this vision, Waymo says it'll soon expand testing on roads in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas along the I-10 corridor between Phoenix and Tuscon, as previously announced. It this year mapped routes between Phoenix, El Paso, Dallas, and Houston and ramped up testing in California on freeways in Mountain View, but the focus in 2020 will be on the American Southwest.
Tests will be primarily along Interstates 10, 20, and 45 and through metropolitan areas like El Paso, Dallas, and Houston. Chrysler Pacifica vans retrofitted with Waymo's technology stack will map roads ahead of driverless Peterbilt trucks as part of a project known as Husky.
Waymo is also engaged with local delivery under the Waymo Via umbrella, the company reiterated. It currently has two partnerships in the Phoenix area — one with AutoNation and one with UPS. On the AutoNation side, Waymo is performing "hot shot" deliveries where Waymo vehicles travel to certain AutoNation locations and deliver car parts. And on the UPS side, the company is ferrying packages from stores to UPS sorting centers.
Waymo began piloting dedicated goods delivery with class A trucks — 18-wheelers — in 2017. After completing tests in 2018 with real loads from Google datacenters in Atlanta, Waymo began limited testing on roads in the San Francisco Bay Area, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia, and on Metro Phoenix freeways.
Waymo's autonomous trucks employ a combination of lidars, radars, and cameras to understand the world around them. They have roughly twice as many sensors as Waymo's cars to handle the trucks' unique shape and the occlusions they cause, and they place a greater emphasis on long-length perception (the perception range is somewhere beyond 300 meters). But they use the same compute platform found in the fifth-generation Waymo Driver.
As the pandemic drives unprecedented growth in the logistics and ground transportation market, Aurora, TuSimple, and other rivals are investing increased resources in fully autonomous solutions. They stand to save the logistics and shipping industry $ 70 billion annually while boosting productivity by 30%; according to a recent study from the Consumer Technology Association, a quarter (26%) of consumers now view autonomous delivery technologies more favorably than before the health crisis.
Besides cost savings, the growth in autonomous trucking has been driven in part by a shortage of human drivers. In 2018, the American Trucking Associates estimated that 50,000 more truckers were needed to close the gap in the U.S., even despite the sidelining of proposed U.S. Transportation Department screenings for sleep apnea.
Amazon acquires autonomous vehicle startup Zoox
Amazon today announced it is acquiring Zoox, a startup developing autonomous vehicle systems aimed at ride-hailing applications. Neither company disclosed terms of the deal, but according to the Information and the Financial Times, the purchase price is over $ 1.2 billion.
It's Amazon's biggest bet yet on autonomous technologies — whether vehicular, aeronautic, or industrial. Last February, Amazon contributed to driverless car and truck startup Aurora's $ 530 million series B round. In March 2012, Amazon acquired warehouse robotics startup Kiva Systems for $ 775 million.
With Zoox, Amazon — which delivers more than 10 billion items worldwide each year — is looking to cut costs. Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate self-driving technology could save the tech giant over $ 20 billion a year on shipping as it becomes a formidable competitor to companies like UPS, DHL, and FedEx. By 2023, Amazon is expected to spend $ 90 billion on logistics, expanding its truck trailer, ocean freighter, last-mile delivery van, and cargo jet networks.
"Zoox is working to imagine, invent, and design a world-class autonomous ride-hailing experience," said Amazon global consumer CEO Jeff Wilke in a statement. "Like Amazon, Zoox is passionate about innovation and about its customers, and we're excited to help the talented Zoox team to bring their vision to reality in the years ahead."
Zoox was founded in 2014 by Australian artist-designer Tim Kentley Klay and Jesse Levinson, son of Apple chair Arthur D. Levinson, who was developing self-driving technology at Stanford. In December 2018, Zoox was first to gain approval to provide driverless transport services to the public in California. And in January 2019, the company appointed former Intel chief strategy officer Aicha Evans CEO, signaling a shift in priorities from conceptualization to commercialization.
Foster City, California-based Zoox had raised over $ 990 million in venture capital at a multibillion-dollar valuation, and it appeared to be making progress toward a commercial launch before live testing of its level 3 vehicles ground to a halt during the pandemic. The company recently announced it would begin deploying its autonomous Highlanders in Las Vegas. It has a permit from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to transport passengers autonomously and has submitted documents to the California DMV showing its 58 vehicles drove 67,015 autonomous miles in 2019 in San Francisco.
Zoox had hoped to move beyond retrofitted Highlanders to fully custom cars that could be summoned by customers via a smartphone app. The roughly BMW i3-sized electric vehicles would have used cameras and four lidar sensors for perception, with each one covering 270 degrees. The vehicles were also designed with four-wheel steering, active four-wheel suspension, dual power trains, and dual batteries with a combined capacity larger than that of most single-car batteries today.
The idea was to reduce congestion through fleet management and to minimize trips back to base stations for charging overnight. Zoox's shuttle-like car — which was fully driverless — was designed to operate in a shared fleet in order to maximize efficiency and cut down on ride trip times.
The focus on efficiency likely appealed to Amazon's newfound conservationist sensibilities. In February 2019, Amazon led a $ 700 million funding round in Rivian, a Michigan-based startup developing electric pickup trucks, which Amazon claims will save an estimated 4 million metric tons of carbon per year by 2030. Amazon plans to have 10,000 of Rivian's vehicles making on-the-road deliveries as early as 2022 and 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2040.
According to Amazon, Zoox founders Evans (CEO) and Levinson (CTO) will continue to lead Zoox as a standalone business, and Amazon will help "bring their vision of autonomous ride-hailing to reality." Amazon gave little away in terms of how it will leverage the technology. It could convert Zoox's planned robo-taxis into automated delivery vans further down the road, a task it certainly has the expertise to pull off. According to Reuters, Amazon holds more than 210 transportation-related patents, including a 2017 patent to provide on-demand transportation services through a network of autonomous vehicles.
Zoox previously said it was demonstrating its vehicle to partners and insiders behind closed doors, but the next phase of its deployment plans remain unclear. A few months ago, Zoox reportedly laid off 10% of its 1,000-person workforce days after letting go of 120 contract workers, moves it blamed on the economic fallout from the pandemic. It also said it would pay Tesla an undisclosed amount of monetary damages and undergo an audit to settle a trade secret theft lawsuit filed last year in which Tesla claimed some former employees brought proprietary information to Zoox.
According to the Information, a majority of Zoox investors — among them Lux Capital, DFJ, Primavera Capital, and Atlassian cofounder Michael Cannon-Brooks' Grok Ventures — will see a return from the purchase. Still, the reported $ 1 billion price tag supports the notion that autonomous vehicle development remains expensive. Ford and Volkswagen partner Argo AI recently closed a $ 2.6 billion round at a $ 7.25 billion valuation. In May, Didi Chuxing's self-driving unit nabbed $ 500 million, led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2. And in March, Waymo managed to secure a $ 750 million extension, bringing its first external round to $ 3 billion.
The race has taken on greater urgency as the pandemic roils the economy. While startups like Gatik, Optimus Ride, TuSimple, and Nuro have escaped the worst of it so far, well-financed ventures — including Cruise, Kodiak Robotics, and Ike — have shed hundreds of employees collectively.
Analysts predict the health crisis and its effects will result in consolidation, tabled or canceled launches, and shakeups across the autonomous transportation industry. In something of a case in point, Ford pushed the unveiling of its self-driving service from 2021 to 2022, and Waymo CEO John Krafcik told the New York Times the pandemic delayed work by at least two months.
According to Boston Consulting Group's Brian Collie, broad commercialization of AVs won't happen before 2025 or 2026 — at least three years later than originally anticipated.
U.S. will unveil data-sharing platform for autonomous vehicle testing
(Reuters) — On Monday, U.S. auto safety regulators will unveil a voluntary effort to collect and make available nationwide data on existing autonomous vehicle testing.
U.S. states have a variety of regulations governing self-driving testing and data disclosure, and there is currently no centralized listing of all automated vehicle testing.
California, for example, requires public disclosure of all crashes involving self-driving vehicles, while other states do not.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is unveiling the Automated Vehicle Transparency and Engagement for Safe Testing (AV TEST) initiative to provide "an online, public-facing platform for sharing automated driving system on-road testing activities."
With many opinion polls showing deep skepticism about self-driving cars in the U.S., the effort aims to boost public awareness. NHTSA plans "online mapping tools" that will eventually show testing locations and activity data.
NHTSA deputy administrator James Owens said in an interview that providing better transparency "encourages everybody to up their game to help better ensure that the testing is done in a manner fully consistent with safety."
Fiat Chrysler, Toyota, Uber, Alphabet's self-driving company Waymo, and Cruise — General Motors' majority-owned self-driving subsidiary — are expected to take part. Participating states include California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, officials said.
NHTSA's goal is to "pull together really critical stakeholders to deepen the lines of communication and cooperation among all of us," Owens said, adding the effort was "an opportunity for the states to start sharing information among themselves."
NHTSA will hold events this week to kick off the initiative, including panels featuring companies involved in autonomous vehicle testing, such as Nuro, Beep, Waymo, Uber, and Toyota.
Critics say NHTSA should mandate federal safety standards for automated driving systems.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in its investigation of the March 2018 death of a pedestrian in a crash with an Uber test vehicle — the first attributed to a self-driving car — said in November that NHTSA should make self-driving vehicle safety assessments mandatory and ensure automated vehicles have appropriate safeguards.
Owens said NHTSA "will not hesitate" to take action if it believes unsafe vehicles are being tested on U.S. roads, but it has not adopted NTSB's recommendations.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, editing by Peter Cooney.)
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There are 28 Memory Care Facilities in the Naperville area, with 5 in Naperville and 23 nearby.
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text:
Jesús Alán Rojas Lino – peruwiański zapaśnik walczący w obu stylach. Brązowy medalista na mistrzostwach panamerykańskich w 1989. Trzykrotnie na podium igrzysk boliwaryjskich, zdobył srebrny medal w 1989. Zdobył dwa medale igrzysk Ameryki Południowej w 1990 i mistrzostw Ameryki Południowej w 1990 roku.

Przypisy

Peruwiańscy zapaśnicy
Urodzeni w XX wieku

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
President Bashir Orders South Sudan Border To Be opened
Sudan President Omar Bashir
President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has ordered the border with South Sudan to be opened.
He announced the move on a first visit to the South since its independence.
Speaking alongside his southern counterpart, Salva Kiir, Mr Bashir also called for peace and normal relations.
Tensions between the two countries, strained after they came to the brink of war last year, have eased recently, but disagreements over oil and territory remain.
However, disagreements over oil and territory continue.
"I have instructed Sudan's authorities and civil society to open up to their brothers in the Republic of South Sudan," Mr Bashir said in a speech in the southern capital, Juba.
Sudan's president invited Mr Kiir to Khartoum for further talks and he also addressed worshippers at a mosque in Juba.
"We won't go back to war," he said. "President Kiir and I agreed that the war was too long."
For his part, Mr Kiir said that he and Mr Bashir had agreed to implement all co-operation agreements.
Flashpoint province
The South's independence in 2011 – which followed decades of civil war – left key issues unresolved.
South Sudan took with it nearly three-quarters of Sudan's oil production when it declared independence and the two sides fell out over how much the South should pay to export its oil through Sudanese pipelines.
At the height of the dispute last year, the South shut down its entire oil output, badly hitting both struggling economies.
Oil started flowing again this month after both sides struck a deal in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in March, helping to ease tensions.
They also agreed to withdraw troops from their border area.
A demilitarised buffer zone is being set up, with the intention of improving security.
However, the two leaders still need to agree on who owns the flashpoint Abyei province and other regions along their disputed 2,000km (1,200 mile) border.
Territorial disputes, border demarcation and the pipeline fee issue are expected to feature again in future talks.
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text:
Q: Optimize Numba and Numpy function I'm trying to make this piece of code to run faster, but I can't find any more tricks that could speed this up.
I get a runtime of about 3 microseconds, the issue is that I'm calling this function a couple of million times and the process just ends up taking to long. I have the same implementation in Java (with just basic for loops) and basically, the computations are instantaneous for even large training data (This is for an ANN)
Is there a way to speed this up?
I'm running Python 2.7, numba  0.43.1 and numpy  1.16.3 on Windows 10
x = True
expected = 0.5
eligibility = np.array([0.1,0.1,0.1])
positive_weight = np.array([0.2,0.2,0.2])
total_sq_grad_positive = np.array([0.1,0.1,0.1])
learning_rate = 1

@nb.njit(fastmath= True, cache = True)
def update_weight_from_post_post_jit(x, expected,eligibility,positive_weight,total_sq_grad_positive,learning_rate):
        if x:
            g = np.multiply(eligibility,(1-expected))
        else:
            g = np.negative(np.multiply(eligibility,expected))
        gg = np.multiply(g,g)
        total_sq_grad_positive = np.add(total_sq_grad_positive,gg)
        #total_sq_grad_positive = np.where(divide_by_zero,total_sq_grad_positive, tsgp_temp)

        temp = np.multiply(learning_rate, g)
        temp2 = np.sqrt(total_sq_grad_positive)
        #temp2 = np.where(temp2 == 0,1,temp2 )
        temp2[temp2 == 0] = 1
        temp = np.divide(temp,temp2)
        positive_weight = np.add(positive_weight, temp)
        return [positive_weight, total_sq_grad_positive]

A: Edit: It seems that @max9111 is right. Unnecessary temporary arrays is where the overhead comes from.
For the current semantics of your function, there seems to be two temporary arrays that cannot be avoided --- the return values [positive_weight, total_sq_grad_positive]. However, it struck me that you may be planning to use this function to update those two input arrays. If so, by doing everything in-place we get the most speedup. Like this:
import numba as nb
import numpy as np

x = True
expected = 0.5
eligibility = np.array([0.1,0.1,0.1])
positive_weight = np.array([0.2,0.2,0.2])
total_sq_grad_positive = np.array([0.1,0.1,0.1])
learning_rate = 1

@nb.njit(fastmath= True, cache = True)
def update_weight_from_post_post_jit(x, expected,eligibility,positive_weight,total_sq_grad_positive,learning_rate):
    for i in range(eligibility.shape[0]):
        if x:
            g = eligibility[i] * (1-expected)
        else:
            g = -(eligibility[i] * expected)
        gg = g * g
        total_sq_grad_positive[i] = total_sq_grad_positive[i] + gg

        temp = learning_rate * g
        temp2 = np.sqrt(total_sq_grad_positive[i])
        if temp2 == 0: temp2 = 1
        temp = temp / temp2
        positive_weight[i] = positive_weight[i] + temp

@nb.jit
def test(n, *args):
    for i in range(n): update_weight_from_post_post_jit(*args)

If updating the input arrays is not what you want, you can begin the function with
positive_weight = positive_weight.copy()
total_sq_grad_positive = total_sq_grad_positive.copy()

and return them as in your original code. This is not nearly as fast, but still faster.

I am not sure whether it can be optimized to be "instantaneous"; I am a little surprised that Java could do it since this looks like a pretty complicated function to me, with time-consuming operations like sqrt.
But, did you use nb.jit on the function(s) calling this function? Like this:
@nb.jit
def test(n):
    for i in range(n): update_weight_from_post_post_jit(x, expected,eligibility,positive_weight,total_sq_grad_positive,learning_rate)

On my computer, this cuts the running time in half, which makes sense since Python function calls have a really high overhead.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Big Hit, Universal Music Group, YG and Kiswe partner to develop new livestreaming platform VenewLive
By Emmanuel LegrandSouth Korean music companies Big Hit Entertainment and YG Entertainment have partnered with Universal Music Group and cloud-based video company Kiswe to launch a digital live streaming platform on a global scale. Big Hit, YG and UMG have invested in KBYK Live, a joint venture that was established with Kiswe last year and is responsible for the launch of live streaming content platform VenewLive in September 2020. The equity investment from YG and UMG will help expand VenewLi...
Related Topics:KiswelivestreamingUniversal Music Group
Sony/ATV to be re-named Sony Music Publishing
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PRS for Music sues LIVENow for a series of livestreaming shows without licenses
Avex USA and Brandon Silverstein Publishing (formerly S10 Publishing) have signed producer Jasper Harris to a worldwide publishing deal. The agreement will come into effect later this year.
"I am incredibly grateful to be joining the Avex and Silverstein publishing team," said Harris. "They're such a strong and dynamic group, and their passion for my music combined with their global reach feels like the most natural combination as I enter the next phase of my career. We are so like-minded ...
Warner Chappell Production Music (WCPM) has expanded into Brazil with a new team based in São Paulo led by Renato Moraes..
Moraes will report to Sinéad Hartmann, Vice President, Licensing & Music Creative, in addition to working closely with Warner Chappell Music Brazil's sync team — led by Flávia Cesar, Director of Strategic, Commercial, Film, Sync, and Licensing.
"I've seen production in Brazil grow tremendously since I started out in this business, and I know this is just the begi...
Universal Music Group has promoted Roey Hershkovitz to Vice President of Sound & Picture. In this newly created role, Hershkovitz will "lead visual content capture across the company's studios, develop new programming and build on the company's leadership in immersive audio."
Based out of Santa Monica, Hershkovitz will continue to report to Christopher Jenkins, Executive Vice President of Digital Studios, and Pat Kraus, Senior Vice President of Recording Studios & Archive Management....