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End of days for doomsday convention?
GONZALES — Attendees at the 7th Annual National Preppers and Survivalist Expo weren't shorted on exotic lessons on how to survive an assortment of doomsday scenarios – ranging from natural disasters to nuclear attacks to every actual or perceived dan
End of days for doomsday convention? GONZALES — Attendees at the 7th Annual National Preppers and Survivalist Expo weren't shorted on exotic lessons on how to survive an assortment of doomsday scenarios – ranging from natural disasters to nuclear attacks to every actual or perceived dan Check out this story on theadvertiser.com: https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/louisiana/2017/03/10/end-days-doomsday-convention/98909650/
Manship School News Service Published 7:05 p.m. CT March 10, 2017
Leonard Lamar of the Louisiana Chapter of the Zombie Eradication Response Team talks to David Brackman, right, about the products at his Self Defense ATL booth.(Photo: Ian McCusker/Manship School News Service)
GONZALES — Attendees at the 7th Annual National Preppers and Survivalist Expo weren't shorted on exotic lessons on how to survive an assortment of doomsday scenarios — ranging from natural disasters to nuclear attacks to every actual or perceived danger in between.
What was in short supply at the two-day event in Gonzales' Lamar Dixon Expo Center this past weekend were attendees. Apparently, Armageddon-like events aren't high on southeastern Louisiana's radar this year.
"This is the slowest show I've done in nine years," said exhibitor David Brackman, who drove 10 hours from John Creek, Georgia, to provide Louisiana women with materials and skills to defend themselves.
The trip cost him several thousand dollars, he lamented.
Brackman, 65, worked for more than three decades in the printing business, but said he retired when keeping up with changes in the profession became too expensive. He sold his business 12 years ago and began selling self-defense products, such as stun guns, after he heard about a woman who was kidnapped and killed while hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Booths at the expo cost between $855 and $2,100, depending on size.
Acadiana Tactical Firearms bought a booth to promote their services, which include training for concealed carry and classes on self-defense. Damian Leger was scheduled to conduct a seminar on hand-to-hand combat for up to 50 people on Sunday, but canceled after no one signed up for the class.
"The organizers told us the last show had 8,000 in attendance," said Leger. "It turned out they were counting people from the gun show in one of the other buildings."
Leger added that some exhibitors were considering a complaint to the Better Business Bureau.
The mood around the Lamar Dixon Expo Center was far from doom and gloom, however, despite the event's focus on preparing for the end time. Nowhere was that clearer than around Doom and Bloom, run by Joseph Alton, a physician, and Amy Alton, a nurse.
The husband and wife duo wrote "The Survival Medicine Handbook." They sell medical survival kits and even created a board game so that parents can help prepare their children for disasters.
"Our audience is families who want to be prepared," said Amy Alton.
Elizabeth Hogan was among the 16 participants in the Alton's Sunday class. Hogan said she and her husband, Bill, work as paramedics in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, area and they were drawn to the expo after seeing an advertisement in American Survival Magazine.
Bill and Elizabeth Hogan practice suturing and stapling a pig's foot during a seminar on wound care at the National Preppers and Survivalists Expo in Gonzales. (Photo: Ian McCusker/Manship School News Service)
The Hogans took turns suturing a pig's foot under the guidance of Alton, while the other watched their 10-month-old daughter, Marianne, play with blocks and stuffed animals. Eventually, Melisa Mink offered to let her daughter, 10, supervise Marianne so that the Hogans could take full advantage of the class.
Mink herself was an exhibitor and taught a class Saturday on soap making. Her Homestead Moma business sells a variety of wellness products, including essential oil kits.
She says it concerns her that preppers and survivalists are portrayed as crazy. Preparedness for worse case scenarios makes sense, she insists.
"Look what happened with Katrina," said Mink, referencing the government's response to the 2005 hurricane and chaos that ensued in its aftermath.
Attendee Leonard Lamar visited the expo with several friends, all of whom are members of the Zombie Eradication Response Team (Z.E.R.T.), an international organization that prepares for disasters. He was quick to point out that "zombie" should not be taken literally.
"It's a metaphor for any disaster that will occur in our lifetime," said Lamar, who also points to Hurricane Katrina.
Despite the low attendance, Lamar was succinct in his review of the event. "We love it."
Still, many exhibitors felt differently, while maintaining an upbeat attitude. Dan and Lise Neville began Thug Busters as part of a "crusade to keep women safe." That crusade ended early Sunday.
The Nevilles began packing up around 1 p.m., just when they were scheduled to give a class on the uses and differences of stun guns and Tasers.
"We've had enough abuse," said Dan with a smile.
Read or Share this story: https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/louisiana/2017/03/10/end-days-doomsday-convention/98909650/
LSU vs. Clemson: Severe weather expected Saturday in New Orleans
Three die in severe weather, winds cause damage
Lafayette police chief asked to resign because of sheriff
Despite LSU 'home game,' Clemson fans travel to NOLA
Lafayette police chief paid $70,000 settlement to resign
How New Orleans is preparing for the championship


José Manuel Barroso, leader of the EU Commission, announced today that Europe shall reduce it's CO2 emission by 20 %. With European pride in his voice he claimed the global superiority of this environmental project.
Bless the EU for waking up at last, but this self conscious tone reflects nothing but the embarrassing ignorance which grows proportionally with the rice of the recently invented "European identity". Barroso claimed that no country in the world has comparable environmental ambitions.
I wonder if Bhutan is a part of Barroso's active vocabulary, or if he thinks the word refers to one those green house gases he recently discovered?
This entry was posted by Bernaard on January 10, 2007 at 7:05 pm under Europe ®.


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From A Dutch Immigrant To A Texas Musician, One Pair Of Boots Has Traveled Through Generations
Singer-songwriter Rachel Laven tells the story of her grandmother's worn-in boots.
By Asa CottermanNovember 23, 2017 10:45 amArts & Culture, Heel To Toe, Sounds of Texas
Jennifer June/Flickr Creative Commons
Throughout history, people have understood the "American dream" through a number of objects – a house, a car, or maybe a passport. For Texas singer-songwriter Rachel Laven's grandmother, though, it was a pair of Lucchese cowboy boots.
Laven says her grandmother came to America in 1953 to join her husband, who had traveled to the U.S. a few years earlier to find work and buy a home. They came from Holland and brought their four children with them.
Her grandmother was trained as a Montessori educator back in Holland and helped establish several Montessori schools across the country. Her grandfather was originally an architect, but all of his paperwork was destroyed during World War II. Laven says her grandmother's work as a Montessori teacher helped the family establish itself in their new home. When the pair decided to move to Texas, Laven's grandmother had just one request. She wanted a pair of Lucchese boots.
"My grandfather rushed right out to buy her a pair," Laven says. "That kind of became a symbol that they had finally made it."
It turns out that success runs deep in the Laven family. This past year, Laven quit her day jobs to pursue a music career. Since then, she's been touring a folk and country music set around the country and in Europe.
When Laven was 15, her grandmother gave her the boots.
"She was very majestic and I really looked up to her. And I saw her as a very strong figure in my life, but I didn't really know her that well," Laven says. "I think she gave them to me because I was the only grandchild that had big enough feet to wear them."
To Laven's surprise, the pair was a perfect fit.
"They were custom-made for her, and her feet, and they fit me perfectly, down to the way I kind of wiggle my feet to the sides," Laven says. "It was kind of surreal."
Laven says the experience brought the two women closer together.
"I think that was the most connected I ever felt with my grandmother," Laven says.
Laven says the boots used to make a regular appearance onstage at her shows.
"They were just kind of a spiritual thing about my show," Laven says. "I would sing the song about love and Luccheses and this pair of boots, and then be able to point to my boots and say, 'These are them!'"
Laven says that over time, the leather has worn thin, so she doesn't wear them often.
"But I still find myself slipping them on every once in awhile, just to feel the energy."
Written by Rachel Zein.
Texas Standard For November 23, 2017
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Will UT And Texas A&M Ever Meet Again On The Football Field?
Need To Avoid Talking Politics With Family This Thanksgiving? Watch These New Movies
In Praise Of Tamales

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
(-) Timeline
Last Days of Imperial Japan
Japan experienced unparalleled destruction by U.S. military forces during World War II, resulting in its complete capitulation. Washington played a decisive role in Tokyo's postwar transition and rec…
Timeline by Eleanor Albert, Kevin Lizarazo, and Jeremy Sherlick
James M. Lindsay
Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair
Benn Steil
Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics
Elizabeth C. Economy
C. V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies
Scott A. Snyder
Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy
Stewart M. Patrick
James H. Binger Senior Fellow in Global Governance and Director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program
Adam Segal
Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program
Rachel Vogelstein
Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program
Thomas J. Bollyky
Senior Fellow for Global Health, Economics, and Development and Director of the Global Health Program


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Joan the Apostate
by Michael Little February 7th, 2003 August 29th, 2020
I initially planned to begin this review by saying that you'll want to burn a copy of Joan of Arc's So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness—at the stake. Yes, the Chicago band whose deconstructionist impulses and emo-country-jazz leanings have given new meaning to the word "pretentious" is back, so gather up some kindling, boys and girls, because we're gonna have us an auto-da-fe!
But upon repeated listening, I put down my lighter fluid, because it suddenly occurred to me that any band whose lyrics include the phrase "Camus isn't your boyfriend" repeated over and over again (from "Hello Goodnight Good Morning Goodbye") must have something going for it—namely, a sense of humor. (As for the possibility that Joan of Arc doesn't intend this as a laugh line, well, it's simply too unnerving to even contemplate.) More important, I came to understand that, buried within Joan of Arc's tortuous—or should I say torturous—arrangements are moments of real beauty.
Joan of Arc stalwart and sole steady member Tim Kinsella (guitar, vocals), joined this time around by brother Mike Kinsella (drums, bass)—like Tim, formerly of Cap'n Jazz—Graeme Gibson (keyboards), Sam Zurick (guitar), and Ben Massarella (percussion), along with numerous guests, has packed the band's sixth release with 11 sometimes annoying, sometimes dazzling (and I'm talking within the same song) slabs of indie-folk prog. The monstrous offspring of an unholy union among Built to Spill and Rainer Maria, with a little Wake of the Flood-era Grateful Dead thrown in just for the hell of it, Joan of Arc doesn't make songs so much as it makes mazes, and your enjoyment of said songs is likely to be directly proportionate to your willingness to follow the band members into and out of the compositional cul-de-sacs they delight in working themselves into.
That said, a few of the tunes on So Much Staying Alive induce a feeling almost akin to pleasure. My personal favorite is "Mr. Participation Billy," a pretty and shockingly straightforward (for Joan of Arc, anyway) little ditty that evokes Transformer-era Lou Reed with its simple melody, plaintive vocal, and deadpan evocation of ultraviolence ("David had no money for a cab/So he got his pelvis smashed with a baseball bat instead…Paul got a hundred and fifty stitches/When he got his face caved in with a brick").
I also have a soft spot in my heart for "Mean to March," which begins inauspiciously enough, with some annoying guitar noodling, before morphing into a hypnotic, albeit occasionally herky-jerky, piece of spazz jazz. One guitar figure weaves in and out of another amid spacey vocals and the occasional flurry of piano notes to produce a sound that can be honestly called jazz-rock without—as is generally the case—shaming both camps.
With its discordant chords, choppy repetition, and maddening chorus (same as the title), "Hello Goodnight Good Morning Goodbye" actually drew my wild-eyed wife from the other room to sputter, "Promise me—promise!—that you'll say mean things about these people." My pleasure, darling, although the horrible truth is, "Hello Goodnight etc." has grown on me. With its twin guitars, of which one repeats a riff and the second seems solely designed to rattle your nerves, the song comes perilously close to sounding like a U.S. Maple song—which is to say I kind of like it. Too bad Kinsella's normal-guy vocals are so…well…not execrable; had the band brought in U.S.M.'s spastic Al Johnson, it might have whipped itself up a bona fide masterpiece.
Like "Mr. Participation Billy," album-closer "Staying Alive and Lovelessness" eschews sinuousness for simplicity; indeed, with its stripped-down acoustic guitar and down-home vocals, it could almost pass for something off the Dead's American Beauty. Why, it's downright purty, is what it is—as if the fellows almost forgot for a moment how desperately they seem to want to be disliked. At the end it segues into a Sonic Youth-meets-James Dean spoken-word thing—some inscrutability about green apples and teenage drag-race casualties—over a strummed acoustic guitar.
Unfortunately, So Much Staying Alive's remaining songs aren't as down-to-earth. Joan of Arc's avant-garde leanings are disconcertingly obvious on "The Infinite Blessed Yes," which features lots of jazzy guitar chords, smooth (for a change) harmony singing, and some generic Miles Davis-style muted-trumpet waffling—and ought to appeal to the kind of people who think rock 'n' roll belongs in the hands of people who went to Berklee to study music theory and grow horn-rims. Similarly, "Diane Cool and Beautiful" is an annoying ride down Jazzbo Lane, not to mention a waste of some lickety-split fuzz bass. Featuring lots of pseudo-scat unison singing set over Camper Van Beethoven-style violins, "Diane" never fails to send the needle of my Fop-O-Meter into the red zone. "We drove around and around," sings Kinsella, "just looking at the big houses." Yeah, I guess they did. But if you're smart, you'll ask them to drop you off at the nearest bar.
All too often, the band's proggish impulse to write single songs that are actually two or three songs unhappily joined at the hip ends in tragedy. Such is the case with "Madelleine Laughing," Part 1 of which is a gormless (and largely formless) exercise in minimalism, featuring as it does Kinsella's wandering and halting vocals backed by percussion and the occasional flurry of guitar wanking. By the time the band gets around to Part 2—an almost pretty salute to a girl who seems to view love as a kind of performance art ("For Madelleine's performances/I could've been anyone/And now I know that anonymity/Was all that I thought love was")—you're likely to have decided that these guys don't need a producer so much as a surgeon.
But "Madelleine Laughing" is musical meat and potatoes when set next to "Olivia Lost." The song begins with a repeated piano figure that evokes some beginning piano student showing off his "chops," over which Kinsella natters on about "some people." Then it shape-shifts into a likable Up on the Sun-era Meat Puppets space jam, with Kinsella repeating "half asleep" over some goofy piano runs and lots of out-of-kilter guitar hoodoo. Typically, the boys can't resist throwing in a lot of complex Leo Kottke-esque guitar noodling, too.
In the end, though I may not particularly care for the results, there's something admirable about Joan of Arc's iconoclastic, tail-chasing aesthetic. Certainly the band has set itself a tough row to hoe. Too fey for the noise folks, too weird for the emo people, too snotty-jazzy for the Smog and Bonnie "Prince" Billy freaks, too folky for the Tortoise/Sea and Cake crowd, Joan of Arc is on a lonely quest, challenging expectations, pleasing almost nobody, making strange sounds to fall through the cracks by. If So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness is unlikely—pardon the pun—to set you on fire, it's proof positive that rock still harbors its fair share of heretics. CP


what is to stop anyone from cloning a numberplate of a similar car and colour and using it on their one?
And what's to stop anyone doing that now?
There's this strange modern invention called a computator.
My F****ing huge issues are with vehicles which don't quite fit.
Every year for the past, oh I can't be ***** thinking, I have to go to the post office with a pile of paperwork and explain why I've not got an MOT certificate, and can they give me free of charge / nominal charge etc... a tax disk, and yes, for 12 months please, not 6.
The online / telephone system borkes at this every time. Is the 'new' paperless tax disk going to be done at the post office? Or is this a way of removing the DVLA's reliance on the post office so that it can be sold off.
There's a number of reasons not to bother with an MOT, although the point I was making is that the computer version of speaking to someone is borked in that you NEED an MOT and Insurance which are both computerised now. If you don't have an MOT computer says no.
The old guy at the post office knows this, knows the law and knows how to press buttons on the console to make the computer say 'yes', hand over paperwork, laugh at how technology is making things harder, and tax disk later.
What's wrong with tax disks. Why do they want to get rid of them.
I thnk it's a good idea. Works OK for TV licences so why not car tax?
I wonder are they also going to drop the MOT disc here?
By work, you mean charge household in the country no matter what, and you have to prove that you don't have a TV, and the lies about the detector vans?
I semi agree with you on the need for a MOT for a lot of us the MOT is superficial because we choose to keep our vehicles in a well maintained condition that very often exceeds MOT standard, but there are those that the MOT is the only service their vehicle gets every year and they are the people that need it.
It's all on computer too so I don't see why not.
Honestly? I think that question is a symptom of 'grumpy old man'.
To HMRC: pure cost saving, less admin, less personnel (computer says no).
Of course there are always people who will find the system more problematic, people who the new system simply does not cater for, people who just like to moan, people like you What do you want done about it? An entire re-write of policy and procedure for the 0.1% of the population?
Exactly. The only downside is some public servants will loss their jobs, but that's a different discussion altogether.
Unlikely until the PSNI can afford to equip their vehicles with ANPR.
The PSNI have a lot more ANPR than they admit but that's a somewhat moot fact when they don't routinely check for untaxed/unMOTed vehicles. The PSNI only check tax/MOT if you get pulled for some other offence.
No tax/MOT is almost completely the remit of the DVA here in Nortern Ireland which is why you should make extra sure they acknowledge the SORN, sale or disposal of a vehicle. Otherwise the computer will fine you and there's very little you can do about it if you don't have the relevant paperwork AND proof of delivery.
There's plenty of ANPR already used by DVA for tax dodgers. Also, most PSNI cars are fitted with computers linked to the DVA database and MID - that's how they got me for no MOT!
You miss my point. Vehicles which don't have MOT's.
Tractors, recovery trucks, cranes, special vehicles, electric delivery vehicles, an articulated vehicle which isn't a bus or lorry, older than 1960, there's quite a list.
These are all a royal PITA to tax because there's no MOT certificate, since they don't need one. Every year, go down to the post office, then spend 30 minutes waiting whilst they fudge the computer.
Get rid of the person you can speak to a the post office (who knows what they are doing) and replace with a numpty in a call centre in Swansea (who doesn't know what they are doing) and it's a nightmare.
I've tried getting tax online, I've tried getting tax over the phone, I've tried getting tax at a post office. Only one of those works. I'm also not alone here.
Na, the benefit is that the government can sell of the post offices. Replace everything they do with online, don't give to figs about those people who can't / don't want to get online and make some quick cash.
On a side note, anyone looked at the royal mail pricing over the past few weeks? It's now cheaper to use couriers. Have fun with that over Christmas.
I believe your still going to be able to pay at the post office or online so you can still present certificates and exemptions to a person. Monthly direct debit costs 5% extra.
What I'm not sure of is how you know how much tax a car has when you buy it as the other person could surely cancel as soon as you drive away?
I haven't had an officer check for a physical disk for years. They either wait for their box in the car to alarm for no mot, insurance or tax or radio for a vehicle check.
I think you are doing something wrong. I own or am responsible for 5 vehicles none of which need an MOT either being less than 3 years old, agricultural or historic vehicles and I've not had a problem.
Why would it suddenly become more difficult when EVERY new car can get VED online without an MOT.
complain about problems like yours.
Quite possibly, but this is every year with a number of different vehicles.
Basic error checking procedures cause one to look for the common denominator!
When I first had to tax the Alldays I went to the Post OFfice and the girl behind the counter was very confused and asked if I want 6 or 12 months free VED!
Heh, on my second 404, I had the same conversation, you do you want 6 or 12 months free. TBH, the lass stopped for a second, realized what she had said and laughed. That one was no issues for taxing though.
As I've said though Richard, the guys have the post office have always sorted things out with no issues, have you tried taxing any of yours either over the phone or online? This is where I've found problems.
Sorry I should have said - I was referring only to renewing online both for myself and everyone else I know I've spoken to with similar cars.
I think it's a good idea. No more fussing to get the bit of paper into the holder.
No more getting prosecuted for "failing to display"
The computer system is easy. Go to web page and fill the details in, then punch card number in.
That way it takes me less time than waiting for the 'bus to take me to the post office. No mention of the time save to the 'bus stop or the long wait in the post office.


Up to 30 children and eight adults were declared missing, initially, in addition to those who were known to have died.
Rescue workers are working frantically, in the daylight and in the dark, using picks, shovels, and their hands as well as heavy lifting gear in an attempt to find survivors. Rescue workers must work with precision and be very careful as removing the wrong piece of concrete, rock, or whatever could cause the remains of the building to collapse even more.
The remaining victims have been pinned under the debris since last Tuesday when the powerful 7.1 earthquake hit Mexico City. The workers and the families still have hope that their loved one will be found alive.


text:
Staff and pupils from Hatton Academies Trust enjoyed another successful fun run event on Friday (July 7). All academies within the trust participated, with Sir Christopher Hatton Academy (Year 7s and sixth form support), Oakway Academy, Victoria Primary Academy and Ecton Village Primary Academy taking part.
The fun run took place on Friday The event was held at Sir Christopher Hatton in Wellingborough and started with an enthusiastic warm up led by the sixth form house captains. The race was officially started by Wellingborough's mayor and mayoress, Cllr Paul Bell and wife Carol.
All participants received a race for life medal, and as well as the children running there were many families supporting them who joined in too. The funds are still being collected but are expected to be in excess of £1,500 total raised for Cancer Research. Time for a high five! Rob Hardcastle, Head of Primary Education, said:
"All three primaries running together in the Hatton Academies Trust fun run demonstrated the true sense of the trust ethos – a community coming together. "On one of the hottest days of the year, the children didn't stop smiling, some even ran twice. "I am enormously proud of the staff, children and would like to thank all of the families that participated in the fun."
Victoria Bishop, CEO of Hatton Academies Trust, said:
"The Hatton Academies Trust fun run is our annual flagship event now in its fourth year. More than 1,500 medals were given out on the day "This was our biggest and best event with Victoria Primary Academy, Oakway Academy, Ecton Village Primary Academy and Sir Christopher Hatton Academy Year 7s and support from sixth formers raising funds for a fantastic cause. "I am enormously proud to be the CEO of a trust that is focused on the local community and the best outcomes for its children. "This event epitomises this in every aspect. "We handed out over 1,500 medals to the children, staff and families that joined in. "My thanks and congratulations to all that supported this event and in doing so enrich the children's experiences.
Official opening of new building at school in Wellingborough following merger


When we all pile into the studio for an ethereal tone track creation session, we make sure that have a pocket full of our un-patented TMG PRO-13M STUDIO STANDARD PICKS.
These picks were created to take that whacky, tinny penny picking sound out of the string contact and replace it with a dead-on accurate contact that engages early and blends out fast with just the right amount of arch.
We grew up on Fender tortoiseshell mediums and still have a small shrine set up to pay homage to their greatness. But, now we have graduated to big-boy/girl pants and are ready for the real deal. In this case, the PRO-13M. These tasty little Delrin numbers were custom created for us by our friends at Clayton, and we owe them a big shout out for making these beauties.
The letter M is the 13th letter of the alphabet and represents the solid middle ground of alphabetical greatness, hence the name. The picks are the right PMS color and can set up a harmonic convergence of between your brain and the string to create music magic.
• Play ukulele like a tourist.
• Try unsuccessfully to unscrew the tripod mount on your camera.
• Impress your friends and parole officer.
• Be downgraded to coach seating when not filing private.


text:
Deutsche Bank Names Two New Tech Leaders In Fintech Push
Deutsche Bank AG has hired two new technology leaders as the German bank seeks to boost fintech development.
Elly Hardwick, the former chief executive of Credit Benchmark, has joined Deutsche Bank's London office as the new head of innovation, which includes oversight of all Deutsche Bank Labs.
The bank announced plans to open three Deutsche Bank Labs last year in Berlin, Silicon Valley and London. The labs are aimed at helping the organization apply new technologies to enhance its products, services and processes. It will help it innovate and deepening its relationships with tech startups.
Hardwick will also work with fintech startups and the firm's business units to drive new technology adoption, the bank said in a statement last week.
Philip Milne, who previously was the CEO and founder of a Silicon Valley virtual reality startup, joined Deutsche Bank's Palo Alto office in November as chief technology officer for innovation. Milne has been acting as "an interface between the Deutsche Bank Labs and the bank's wider technology organization."
Both Hardwick and Milne will report to JP Rangaswami, the chief data offer and head of strategy and innovation for the bank's chief operating office.
Deutsche Bank has been facing a number of headwinds and its increased focus on fintech is intended to help it shore up its capital position and stabilize its share price, according to the Wall Street Journal. The firm said earlier this month that it plans to cut roughly 3,400 trading clients a part of a broader restructuring designed to cut costs and restore long-term stability.
Deutsche Bank Lab
The Deutsche Bank Labs are part of the bank's Strategy 2020 under which it plans to spend up to EUR 1 billion on digital initiatives over a period of five years.
Deutsche Bank Digital Factory in Frankfurt, Germany, via DB.com
Alongside the labs, Deutsche Bank has also opened a Digital Factory in Frankfurt where it focuses on developing digital banking products. Around 400 software developers, IT specialists and financial experts from 14 nations were working together in the space as of September 2016. The bank plans to increase headcount to 800 by 2018.
In October, Deutsche Bank partnered with Misys for a five-year enterprise license agreement to deploy Misys FusionBanking Lending and Misys FusionCapital solutions across the business.
Misys' FusionBanking Lending offering includes the Loan IQ back office platform for syndicated lending and the front-end that originates from Custom Credit Systems, a US-based provider of commercial loan software which Misys acquired in 2014.
The FusionCapital solutions include a number of treasury and capital markets systems acquired by Misys over the years: Opics, Summit, Kondor and Sophis' Risque.
Deutsche Bank Partners with Plug and Play Berlin
In September, Deutsche Bank teamed up with startup accelerator Axel Springer Plug and Play in Berlin to back banking and insurtech startups with cash and other support.
Upon completion of the program, which runs during 100 days, Deutsche Bank could decide to invest and partner with the companies. Investment would range between EUR 100,000 and EUR 500,000. The bank seeks to back and partner with roughly six companies by the end of 2017, according to the Financial News.
Matthaeus Sielecki, head of working capital advisory, financial technology, at Deutsche Bank, said in a recent interview that banks and fintech startups must learn to co-operate to align strengths while addressing shortcomings.
"In a highly regulated market such as financial services, neither type of organization can innovate and scale on its own," Sielecki said. "Together, they can find the best ways of serving business customers in the digital age – by combining cutting-edge creativity with proven processes and infrastructure."
The statements echoed an extensive report released earlier this year in which Deutsche Bank calls for more collaboration between financial institutions and the startup community to leverage their respective strengths.
Featured image credit: Deutsche Bank via Pixabay.
Deutsche Bank Digital Factory innovation labs
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Q: Warp threads not SIMD synchronous I'm going through the parallel reduction example from Nvidia. If tid < 32 then the threads are all meant to be in the same warp and so the instructions are suppose to be SIMD synchronous, so we can assume that sdata[tid] += sdata[tid + 32]; completes for all threads before sdata[tid] += sdata[tid + 16]; and so on. But this is not happening for me.
for (unsigned int s=groupDim_x/2; s>32; s>>=1)
{
    if (tid < s) sdata[tid] += sdata[tid + s];
    GroupMemoryBarrierWithGroupSync();
}
if (tid < 32)
{
    sdata[tid] += sdata[tid + 32];
    sdata[tid] += sdata[tid + 16];
    sdata[tid] += sdata[tid +  8];
    sdata[tid] += sdata[tid +  4];
    sdata[tid] += sdata[tid +  2];
    sdata[tid] += sdata[tid +  1];
}

The solution to the same problem on Cuda has already been posted (see), but it uses pointers and the volatile keyword. Directcompute doesn't have pointers and doesn't allow the volatile keyword on global memory.

A:
Directcompute doesn't have pointers and doesn't allow the volatile keyword on global memory.

Indeed, but it exposes comparable functionality as intrinsic functions. Replace += in your loop with InterlockedAdd intrinsic function and see what happens. However that function only works on integers.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


President-elect Barack Obama has named some of his team that will be working on his policies on technology for his administration. According to reports from Obama's transition team in Chicago, Julius Genachowski and Sonal Shah were slected to be part of the team. Both men are executives in technology companies.
Sonal Shah is from Google.org and a former vice president at Goldman Sachs while Julius Genachowski is a former IAC executive who also served as chief counsel to former Democratic FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. Moreover, Genachowski also has old ties with the new president, they were classmates in Harvard Law School.
"Julius is a true believer in the power of technology to change lives and I think that bodes well for the Obama administration that someone like him is part of the transition team," said Rick Whitt, Google's Washignton telecom and media counsel.


It's a Tasha thing: Itsatashathing: holy grail make-up and giveaway from TicketChat!
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TicketChat is a new conversation marketplace app focuses on beauty fashion and fitness where fans will join to participate in group chats and live streaming with your favourite beauty influencers. Download TicketChat here.
I've downloaded the app myself and had a look around and it's really good. You can find people to chat to with the same interests as you and blogs you are interested in. You can join there live stream and ask questions and discuss your blogs together. If you don't have a blog you can discuss starting one or just chat to your favourite bloggers about the topic they are streaming about. It's a perfect way to have a more personal interaction with your followers or favourite blogger. I will be doing my own stream on ticketchat and I've chosen to talk about my holy grail make-up products.
I will be giving useful, exclusive tips on my holy grail make-up products during my live TicketChat video stream. I will be answering your questions. I will be live on TicketChat on Sunday 28th August at 7pm GMT London. Get your free ticket now.
Don't be shy come and say hi. My chat is FREE as well!
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Thanks for your comment, it is you get ideas from others you might not of thought of before.
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I loved the L'oreal Super Liner for so many years, it's amazing! I have to try the MAC foundation, I've never tried any of their foundations before!
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The Muppets is exactly what I hoped it would be: the best Muppet movie since The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). It's a gift to decades' worth of fans who love these characters. A true return to form, The Muppets taps into those unique brands of humor and magic that made The Muppet Show (1976-1981) so popular. I only ever saw the show in syndication, but once I discovered it, I couldn't stop watching. While anyone can enjoy this movie, it was made by fans with fans in mind. It's important to note before continuing that I don't know how to write this review objectively, because you see, The Muppets was made for me, and if you love these characters, it was made for you, too.
Gary (Jason Segel) and his brother Walter (played by a Muppet) are lifelong fans of The Muppet Show. When Gary and his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) plan a trip to Los Angeles, Walter comes along to fulfill his dream of visiting the Muppet Studios. Upon arrival, the trio is shocked to find the Muppet Theater in disrepair. Oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) plans to destroy the Muppet Theater and drill for oil. Gary, Mary and Walter set out to round up the Muppets (many of whom, we learn, haven't spoken to each other in years) to put on a Muppet Show fundraiser, though they struggle with the fact that no one seems to care about the Muppets anymore.
Muppet veterans Brian Henson and Frank Oz weren't involved in this production, so a few character voices sound slightly different, but the overall tradition of excellence continues. Muppets and humans blend seamlessly into the same scenes, though a phenomenal amount of work goes into making that look easy. The best thing that can be said for the puppetry is that it goes unnoticed; all we see are characters on screen. Muppet performers have pulled this off for years, though it continues to impress.
The human actors are stellar. Jason Segel (who co-wrote the movie) plays Gary with sincerity, and he sings and dances with apparent ease. Amy Adams has excelled at musical comedy before, and she nails it again this time. Chris Cooper plays the villain totally straight, which was the right choice. The best actors in Muppet movies are the ones who play the material with as much seriousness as possible, as the Muppets themselves provide the laughs. Why does Cooper's Tex Richman hate the Muppets? The Muppets exist to make people laugh (laughter is identified as "the third best gift of all time," after children and ice cream), and Richman is physically incapable of laughter. Also in keeping with Muppet tradition is the long list of memorable celebrity cameos.
Newcomers to the Muppets will enjoy this movie, but for fans, there's an enormous nostalgia factor at work. Watching the opening number of The Muppet Show ("It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights"), exploring the Muppet Theater, and even just seeing the characters on screen again was heartwarming. Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzy - I'm glad to have them all back. Gary, Mary and Walter are all Muppet fans, which helps us connect with them immediately, and making Walter a Muppet was an inspired choice. There's plenty for kids to enjoy in the way of energy and spectacle, but as usual, adults will get the most out of the story and the jokes. There's plenty in this picture for everyone, which makes The Muppets a family film in the best sense. I think Jim would be proud.
MPAA: Rated PG for some mild rude humor.
The only mild rude humor I can recall comes when Fozzie Bear straps whoopee cushions to his feet and dubs them "fart shoes." There are also a few moments of cartoony violence (puppets getting electrocuted, getting into fights, etc.), but on the whole, there's very little in the way of potentially offensive material. I honestly can't imagine why any child wouldn't enjoy this movie.


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Federal Register Notices Published for TPS for Haiti and El Salvador
Home » Resources by Issue » Federal Register Notices Published for TPS for Haiti and El Salvador
Federal Register Notices have been published for Haiti and El Salvador.
TPS for Haiti was terminated, with an 18-month termination period. The last day of TPS for Haiti will be July 22, 2019.
Current Haitian TPS holders' work authorization is automatically extended for 180 days, until July 21, 2018.
Current Haitian TPS holders with a pending TPS application as of date of the publication of the Federal Register Notice, Jan. 18, 2018, do NOT need to apply again. If TPS is approved from the pending application, TPS will be granted through the termination date, July 22, 2019.
Procedures for re-registration:
Current Haitian TPS holders who do NOT have a pending TPS application as of Jan. 18, 2018 must re-register in order to continue receiving TPS through the termination date, July 22, 2019.
The 60-day re-registration period is from Jan. 18, 2018 to March 19, 2018. TPS holders are encouraged to apply as early as possible during the re-registration period.
To re-register, TPS holders must submit the application for TPS (Form I-821). TPS holders DO NOT need to pay a filing fee to submit Form I-821.
Although TPS holders do not need to pay a filing fee for Form I-821, TPS holders 14 years or older must submit an $85 biometrics fee.
Information regarding late re-registration (for those who did not re-register during the previous re-registration period) and late initial filing (for those who may be eligible for TPS but have never applied previously) can be found here: https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status#Filing%20Late
Information about work authorization:
If a current Haitian TPS holder…
Work authorization is…
Associated fees
Does nothing
Automatically extended for 180 days until July 21, 2018.
Does nothing (but has a pending TPS application as of Jan. 18, 2018 including I-821 and I-765)
Automatically extended for 180 days until July 21, 2018 and if the pending TPS application is approved, TPS status including work authorization will be extended through July 22, 2019.
Files an I-821 within the 60-day re-registration period (Jan. 18, 2018 to March 19, 2018)
$85 biometrics fee for individuals 14 years or older (fee waiver available)
Files an I-821 and I-765 requesting work authorization within the 60-day re-registration period (Jan. 18, 2018 to March 19, 2018)
Automatically extended for 180 days until July 21, 2018 and if approved the TPS holder will receive a new EAD with an expiration of July 22, 2019.
$85 biometrics fee for individuals 14 or older + $410 I-765 filing fee (fee waivers available)
Files an I-821 within the 60-day re-registration period (Jan. 18, 2018 to March 19, 2018) but files an I-765 requesting work authorization at a later date after the 60-day re-registration period
At risk of having gaps in employment authorization. TPS holders may still apply for an EAD following the 60-day re-registration period (as long as they currently have TPS or a pending TPS application) however they will be at risk of having a gap in work authorization. TPS holders who would like continuous work authorization through July 22, 2019 are strongly encouraged to file the I-821 and I-765 as early as possible within the 60-day re-registration period.
$85 biometrics fee for individuals age 14 or older + $410 I-765 filing fee (fee waivers available)
In all cases, applicants who are unable to pay the biometrics fee or Employment Authorization fee may apply for fee waivers by filing Form I-912 or by submitting a personal letter requesting a fee waiver with proper documentation. More information on fee waivers: https://www.uscis.gov/i-912.
TPS for El Salvador was terminated, with an 18-month termination period. The last day of TPS for El Salvador will be Sept. 9, 2019.
Current Salvadoran TPS holders' work authorization is automatically extended for 180 days, through Sept. 5, 2018.
Current Salvadorans with a pending I-821 and I-765 as of date of publication of the Federal Register Notice, Jan. 18, 2018, do NOT need to apply again. If TPS is approved from the pending application, TPS will be granted through the termination date, Sept. 9, 2019.
Current Salvadoran TPS holders who do NOT have a pending TPS application as of Jan. 18, 2018, must re-register to continue receiving TPS through until the termination date, Sept. 9, 2019.
If a current Salvadoran TPS holder…
Automatically extended for 180 days until Sept. 5, 2018.
Automatically extended for 180 days until Sept. 5, 2018 and if the pending TPS application is approved, TPS status including work authorization will be extended through Sept. 9, 2019.
Automatically extended for 180 days until Sept. 5, 2018 and the TPS holder will receive a new EAD with an expiration of Sept. 9, 2019.
At risk of having gaps in employment authorization. TPS holders may still apply for an EAD following the 60-day re-registration period (as long as they currently have TPS or a pending TPS application) however they will be at risk of having a gap in work authorization. TPS holders who would like continuous work authorization through Sept. 9, 2019 are strongly encouraged to file the I-821 and I-765 as early as possible within the 60-day re-registration period.
$85 biometrics fee for individuals age 14 or older + $ 410 I-765 filing fee (fee waivers available)


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NEW DELHI -- The epic Mahabharata is full of pointers to issues of psychiatric dimensions and offers many answers, says national president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) K K Aggarwal who considers Lord Krishna as the most celebrated counsellor.
He says Krishna, in the true sense, was the first and perhaps the most celebrated counsellor, whose "sessions with his patient, Arjuna, not only led to his spectacular recovery but also constituted" one of the most revered ancient texts the 700-verse Bhagavad Gita.
"The history of psychiatry in India begins with Lord Krishna's successful counselling of Arjuna before the 18-day battle of the Mahabharata," Aggarwal writes in The Equator Line magazine latest issue of 'Cobwebs Inside Us', which deals with mental health.
At a time when there were no psych drugs or mental-health professionals, the Sanskrit epic seem to have offered a few answers to ancient Indians, he says in his write-up titled "Psychotherapy in the time of the Vedas".
Aggarwal says the Vedic Indian did not know about anti- depressants but it was a time when the "bucolic environment woods running along the river banks, deer prancing around, peacocks strutting close to the courtyard had its own way of healing the bruised mind".
Today, he says, there is an assortment of drugs that nourish the mental health of an individual and the prescription differs from person to person.
He says the Vedic approach to mental health focuses on controlling the mind, intellect and ego.
"Lord Shiva presents a very Vedic way of anger management. Whenever you are filled with resentment, store the negative thoughts in your throat. After some time, think about the issue at hand with a cool mind," he writes.
In the article Of the mind and its maladies , AIIMS psychiatrists Dr Rajesh Sagar and Dr Ananya Mahapatra write: "The future demands scaling up of a wide variety of interventions, ranging from public awareness, early identification, treatment of acute illness, family education, long-term care, rehabilitation, reintegration into society, ensuring of human rights of the ill persons, and efforts to reduce the prevalent stigma and discrimination against these patients."
Bhaskar Roy writes in the editorial: "This is the new killer stalking each one of us. The good thing is mental illness is no longer a subject pushed behind the screen.
Everybody is talking about it, Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone openly talked about her depression and her struggle to come out of it. Now, she is a campaigner for mental health and an inspiring story herself."
Among other contributors to the edition are psychiatrist Dr Sanjay Chugh, former G B Pant Hospital CMO Dr Reshma Hingorani, psychologist Pallav Bonerjee and Bollywood scriptwriter Sumeet Panigrahi.


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AR Rahman to Compose Music for Vikram's Upcoming Tamil Film
South IANS Jul 14, 2019 12:35 PM IST
AR Rahman (Photo Credits: Twitter)
Chennai, July 13 (IANS) Music maestro AR Rahman returns as composer with Tamil superstar Vikram's next film, currently known by its working title as Vikram 58. The makers released a special poster on Saturday welcoming Rahman on board for the project, to be directed by Ajay Gnanamuthu. Vikram is collaborating with Ajay for the first time with this film. The project is slated to go on the floors in August and the makers plan to release it in April 2020. AR Rahman Composes Son Ameen's First Single Sago
The film aims to capture a pan-Indian market, catering to not just Vikram's huge Tamil fan base, but also to the Hindi and Telugu audience. Produced on a massive scale in association with Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, the project will include several big-ticket names in its cast and crew. A first-look poster was unveiled in May, and while most details about the project are being kept under wraps, the buzz is that Vikram plays a photographer in the film. Bigil: Thalapathy Vijay to Sing for AR Rahman's Music?
The actor currently awaits the release of the Tamil action thriller Kadaram Kondan and he also has a project with Mani Ratnam lined up. In a recent media interaction, Vikram confirmed signing Ratnam's next, a film adaptation of the Tamil epic novel, Ponniyin Selvan.
Tags: Ajay Gnanamuthu AR Rahman Tamil film Viacom 18 Motion Pictures Vikram Vikram 58
Actor Vijay's Film Bigil to Not Have Any Political Content?
Bigil: Thalapathy Vijay CONFIRMED to Sing for AR Rahman for the First Time – Read Tweets


Chef Soumyens Kitchen is situated in Calangute, Goa. It is well-known for European Cuisines. It also seves Multi-cuisines, Seafood, desserts, etc. Food is freshly prepared daily & is of the finest & best ingredients available.


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Appeals News
Big Win for Client on Fourth Amendment Issue. Reversed on Appeal!
by Niles Illich | Dec 10, 2019 | Appeals News | 0 comments
Big win for our client on a Fourth Amendment issue. The question was whether the police officer had the right to approach the client in the manner that the officer did. The trial court found for the State but the court of appeals reversed and found that the police officer violated our client's constitutional rights. All evidence suppressed.
Opinion here: http://www.search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=0b888583-187e-4882-9d34-3f03eb89a810&coa=coa05&DT=Opinion&MediaID=cd2250dd-d1ba-4119-b789-0f1ac762ca62
The general analysis for an encounter like this is listed below as is the link to the opinion.
"The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution permits a warrantless detention of a person, short of a full-blown custodial arrest, if the detention is justified by reasonable suspicion." State v. Kerwick, 393 S.W.3d 270, 273 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 28, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 Ed. 2d 889 (1968)); Derichsweiler v. State, 348 S.W.3d 906, 914 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011).
Police and citizens engage in three distinct types of interactions: consensual encounters, investigative detentions, and arrests. State v. Woodard, 341 S.W.3d 404, 411–12 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011). "Consensual police-citizen encounters do not implicate Fourth Amendment protections." Id. at 411 (citing Fla. v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434, 111 S. Ct. 2382, 115 L. Ed. 2d 389 (1991), and Fla. v. Rodriguez, 469 U.S. 1, 5-6, 105 S. Ct. 308, 83 L. Ed. 2d 165 (1984)). Detentions and arrests are Fourth Amendment seizures and therefore implicate Fourth Amendment protections. State v. Castleberry, 332 S.W.3d 460, 466 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011). "[W]hen a seizure takes the form of a detention, Fourth Amendment scrutiny is necessary—it must be determined whether the detaining officer had reasonable suspicion that the citizen is, has been, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity." Id. (citations omitted).
"In reviewing a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress, appellate courts must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling." State Garcia-Cantu, 253 S.W.3d 236, 241 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008). "When the trial court does not make explicit findings of fact, the appellate court infers the necessary factual findings that support the trial court's ruling if the record evidence (viewed in light most favorable to the ruling) supports these implied fact findings." Id. "When a trial court makes explicit fact findings, the appellate court determines whether the evidence (viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling) supports these fact findings." State v. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d 808, 818 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). Such motions are reviewed under a bifurcated standard in which "[t]he trial judge's determinations of historical facts and mixed questions of law and fact that rely on credibility are granted almost total deference when supported by the record. But when mixed questions of law and fact do not depend on the evaluation of credibility and demeanor, [appellate courts] review the trial judge's ruling de novo." Kerwick, 393 S.W.3d at 273 (citing Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997)).
Terry Stop Analysis
Under a "Terry Stop" analysis, this Court first decides whether an officer's action was justified at the inception. Carillo v. State, No. 05-12-000544-CR, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 1280, at *6 (Tex.App.—Dallas Feb. 4, 2013, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication). The second prong under a Terry analysis is whether the search and seizure was reasonably related to the circumstances that justified the stop in the first place. Id.
Consensual Encounter v. Investigative Detention
Consensual Encounter
A consensual encounter is not a governmental seizure, as it is not sufficiently threatening, intimidating, or invasive to trigger Fourth Amendment protections. Bostick, 501 U.S. at 434; see Rodriguez, 469 U.S. at 5–6.
Law enforcement may approach and speak with a fellow citizen without justification. Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 177, 185, 124 S. Ct. 2451, 159 L. Ed. 2d 292 (2004). And citizens may, at will, terminate such consensual encounters. Crain v. State, 315 S.W.3d 43, 49 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010). Even when the officer does not communicate to the citizen that the request for information may be ignored, the citizen's acquiescence to an official's request does not cause the encounter to lose its consensual nature. Immigration & Naturalization Serv. v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 216, 104 S. Ct. 1758, 80 L. Ed. 2d 247 (1984). Courts consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the interaction to determine whether a reasonable person in the defendant's shoes would have felt free to ignore the request or terminate the interaction. Woodard, 341 S.W.3d at 411. The surrounding circumstances, including time and place, are considered when determining whether a reasonable person in the defendant's shoes would have felt free to ignore the police officer or to terminate the communication, but the officer's conduct is the most important factor when deciding whether an interaction was consensual or a Fourth Amendment seizure. Garcia-Cantu, 253 S.W.3d at 244. "A [reviewing] court must step into the shoes of the defendant and determine from a common, objective perspective whether the defendant would have felt free to leave." Id.
Investigative Detention
To conduct an investigative detention, an officer must have "reasonable suspicion." Crain, 315 S.W.3d at 52; Brodnex v. State, 485 S.W.3d 432, 436 (Tex.Crim. App. 2016).
An investigative detention is a Fourth Amendment seizure of limited scope and duration that must be supported by a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
An investigative detention results from a person surrendering to the police officer's show of authority coupled with a reasonable belief that he is not free to leave. Crain, 315 S.W.3d at 49 "The test to determine whether a person has been detained is objective and does not rely on the subjective belief of the detainee or the police." Furr v. State, 499 S.W.3d 872, 878 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016) (citing Wade v. State, 422 S.W.3d 661, 668 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013)). A police officer has reasonable suspicion to detain a person when that police officer has "specific, articulable facts that, when combined with rational inferences from those facts, would lead him to reasonably conclude that the person detained is, has been, or soon will be engaged in criminal activity." Id. However, the officer must have more than an inarticulable hunch or mere good-faith suspicion that a crime was in progress. Crain, 315 S.W.3d at 52. In deciding whether an officer had a reasonable suspicion, appellate courts examine the facts that were available to the officer at the time of the investigative detention. Davis v. State, 947 S.W.2d 240, 243 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997). If it is determined that there was no reasonable suspicion on which to detain an individual, then the investigative detention violates the Fourth Amendment. Id.
When a police officer stops a defendant without a warrant, the State must prove the reasonableness of the stop at a suppression hearing. State v. Cortez, 543 S.W.3d 198, 204 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018).
Cars and Investigative Detentions
The Court of Criminal Appeals explained, in a lengthy footnote, in 2008, that generally when a police car "boxes in" another car, this act usually constitutes a seizure. In this footnote, the Court wrote:
Most courts have held that when an officer "boxes in" a car to prevent its voluntary departure, this conduct constitutes a Fourth Amendment seizure. See, e.g., Riley v. State, 892 A.2d 370, 374 (Del. 2006) ("when police approached the Escort with their badges and flashlights, after having parked their police vehicle behind the Escort so as to prevent it from driving away, a seizure had taken place for purposes of Fourth Amendment analysis"); United States v. Packer, 15 F.3d 654, 657 (7th Cir. 1994) (stating that when officers' vehicles were parked both in front and behind defendant's car with a "take down" light shining through his windows and officer approached car with a flashlight and asked occupants to put their hands in the air where she could see them, defendant was detained); United States v. Pavelski, 789 F.2d 485, 488-89 (7th Cir. 1986) ("A reasonable person in this situation, bounded on three sides by police patrol cars, would not have believed that he was free to leave. Indeed, we wonder whether appellants could have maneuvered their car out of the parking lot in this situation."); United States v. Kerr, 817 F.2d 1384, 1386-87 (9th Cir. 1987) ("Kerr stopped and exited his car primarily in response to Deputy Hedrick's official appearance and conduct, rather than of his own volition. Arriving in uniform and in a marked patrol car, Deputy Hedrick unquestionably appeared to be acting in an official capacity. Instead of waiting in his patrol car at the roadside, or parking and walking, Deputy Hedrick pulled into and blocked the one lane driveway as Kerr was backing out. Deputy Hedrick's conduct thus precipitated the confrontation with Kerr."); State v. Struhs, 940 P.2d 1225, 1227-28 (Utah 1997) (totality of circumstances showed Fourth Amendment detention; "Defendant claims that the officer's action of parking nose-to-nose about one car length away when his car was backed up against a barricade essentially 'blocked defendant in' so he was unable to move. While defendant was not completely blocked in, the officer's positioning of her vehicle is certainly a factor that weighs in favor of finding under a totality of the circumstances that defendant was seized."); State v. Roberts, 1999 MT 59, 293 Mont. 476, 977 P.2d 974, 979 (Mont. 1999) (concluding that defendant was detained when officer "pull[ed] into the one- lane driveway and block[ed] Roberts' exit, thereby physically constraining Roberts' means and direction of travel. Furthermore, Officer Oster was armed and in uniform, and his show of authority in immediately exiting his patrol car and approaching Roberts added to the official nature of the encounter. Given these circumstances, the District Court correctly concluded that '[a] reasonable person would not have felt free to leave a situation where a uniformed officer, in his patrol car, pulled his car into a driveway behind that person's car, blocking its exit.'"); State v. Jestice, 177 Vt. 513, 861 A.2d 1060, 1063 (Vt. 2004) (finding a Fourth Amendment detention because of "the show of authority present in this case, where a uniformed officer parked his marked patrol car nose-to-nose against a couple's car late at night in a darkened trailhead parking lot with no one else around, left the cruiser's headlights shining in their faces as he approached them, and asked them what they were doing."); McChesney v. State, 988 P.2d 1071, 1075 (Wyo. 1999) (finding a Fourth Amendment detention when officer activated his emergency lights and blocked defendant's car in; "Officer Will parked his vehicle directly behind McChesney's, which was parked at the convenience store's front doors. McChesney's vehicle was thus blocked in, and he could not have driven away had he wanted to. Such action has also been found sufficient to constitute a seizure. See 4 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE § 9.3(a), at 108, n.96."). On the other hand, when an officer only partially blocks a parked car or merely makes it somewhat inconvenient for the citizen to depart voluntarily, such action is not necessarily, by itself, sufficient to constitute a Fourth Amendment detention. See, e.g., United States v. Kim, 25 F.3d 1426, 1430-31 (9th Cir. 1994) (no detention "where, as here, officers came upon an already parked car," even though police car "partially blocked" that car); People v. Cascio, 932 P.2d 1381, 1386-87 (Colo. 1997) (noting that, in determining whether the totality of the circumstances established a detention of a citizen in a parked car, "courts have deemed the position of the patrol car relative to the motorist's vehicle an important consideration"; surveying cases and concluding that "if the police patrol car wholly blocks the defendant's ability to leave, courts have held that a reasonable person would not feel free to leave, so that the encounter cannot be adjudged consensual," but when "egress was only slightly restricted. . . with approximately ten to twenty feet between the two vehicles" and the defendant "would have been able to leave by maneuvering the van in a manner akin to parallel parking," this fact was insufficient, by itself, to establish a detention).
Garcia-Cantu, 253 S.W.3d at 246 n.44.
Exemplar Cases for Reasonable Suspicion
Garcia v. State
In Garcia, the Court of Criminal Appeals answered the question, "[d]oes a small child's looking back several times at a following police car, by itself, give rise to a reasonable suspicion that the child is not wearing a seat belt?" Garcia v. State, 43 S.W.3d 527, 528 (Tex. Crim. App. 2001). The Court answered that question "no." Id.
In Garcia, the Court described the facts as: On the morning of December 12, 1996, Pasadena police officer Larry Candelari, responding to an anonymous tip that appellant possessed a substantial amount of marijuana, placed appellant's trailer home under surveillance. Officer Candelari soon observed appellant, accompanied by a small child and an adult male, leave the trailer home and drive away in a pickup truck. Officer Candelari began a discreet pursuit of appellant that continued from Pasadena into South Houston. At that point, Officer Candelari requested assistance from the South Houston Police Department to conduct a stop of appellant's truck. Officer D.L. Sills responded to this request and followed appellant's truck for approximately two blocks. During this time period, Officer Sills noticed that a child, who was the middle passenger, "looked back" at him several times.
This comment that the child "looked back" was made by Officer Sills at the motion to suppress hearing in the following colloquy concerning the possible existence of a traffic violation:
PROSECUTOR: How long were you behind the small pickup truck before you stopped him?
SILLS: Probably a good two blocks.
PROSECUTOR: Okay. And during that time period, did you observe anything, to you, that might be a traffic violation or that you knew to be a traffic violation?
SILLS: The middle passenger, small child, looked back at me several times.
PROSECUTOR: Okay. And what about that indicated that there might be a traffic violation?
SILLS: The traffic violation would be the child was not wearing a seat belt.
PROSECUTOR: And based on the request from Pasadena and that possible traffic violation, did you stop the vehicle?
SILLS: Yes, sir.
After Sills stopped appellant's vehicle and approached, he observed that appellant (the driver) and the child were, at that time, wearing seat belts. However, the adult passenger appeared to be just holding his unlocked seat belt buckle across his body. Sills then determined that appellant was unable to provide any proof of insurance. Immediately afterwards, Officer Candelari approached and questioned appellant regarding the possible possession of marijuana. Id. at 528–29.
The Court then explained:
The State is correct that it need not establish with absolute certainty that a crime has occurred in order to show reasonable suspicion. Nevertheless, the State was required to elicit testimony of sufficient facts to create a reasonable suspicion that the child was not wearing a seat belt. The State contends that the record in this case shows more than the child looking back, but the State reads too much into the record. The quoted passage set out earlier in this opinion is the only portion of the record that describes the child's behavior while appellant was being followed by Sills. Officer Sills did not in any way qualify the manner in which the child "looked back." He simply concluded from the child's looking back that the child might not have been wearing a seat belt. The State seems to have been under a similar misimpression before the trial court. There, the prosecutor contended that Sills "did observe the child turn around and look back at him several times." However, nothing in the record supports the notion that the child "turned around." Id. at 530–31.
The Court concluded, "[i]n the present case, however, all the record shows is that the child 'looked back' several times. We hold that this fact is simply not enough to give rise to reasonable suspicion that the child was not wearing a seat belt. Given the record before us, we find that there was insufficient evidence to establish reasonable suspicion for the stop based upon the child's failure to wear a seat belt." Id. at 531–32.
Ford v. State
In Ford, a state trooper temporarily detained Ford for an alleged traffic violation and, in that temporary detention, discovered contraband in Ford's vehicle. Ford v. State, 158 S.W.3d 488 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005). Ford, who was later indicted for possession of the contraband, moved to suppress, arguing that the trooper did not have reasonable suspicion to justify the temporary detention. At the suppression hearing, the only evidence presented about the reasonableness of the temporary detention was the trooper's testimony that he stopped Ford's vehicle because it was "following too close behind" the vehicle in front of it. Peavy was the only officer to testify to the facts surrounding the stop. The Court of Criminal Appeals summarized his testimony writing:
Q: And on September 2nd of 2001 did you notice something that caught your eye around 5:47 at night?
A: Yes, ma'am. I was patrolling and I saw a maroon utility vehicle following too close behind—I was patrolling 290 westbound. I saw a maroon GMC or Chevy utility vehicle following a white car, following too close.
Q: And where were you when you noticed this vehicle? A: I was directly behind him.
Q: And at the time that you noticed this, what did you do?
A: I activated my emergency overheads and the vehicle pulled over.
Q: And when you were approaching the vehicle, what were your intentions before you approached the vehicle?
A: To talk to him about his violation he had committed. Q: Which violation is that?
A: Following too close.
The trial court denied the motion to suppress, and the court of appeals upheld that denial. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed, holding that the trooper's testimony was nothing more than "a conclusory statement that Ford [had] violate[d] a traffic law" and was, therefore, insufficient to support a finding of reasonable suspicion. Id. at 493–94.
Exemplar Cases on Consensual Encounters and Investigative Detentions
State v. Garcia-Cantu
In Garcia-Cantu, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the intermediate- appellate court's finding that the trial court erred in granting the defendant's motion to suppress because under the facts of the case the case was not "a citizen-police 'encounter'" but was instead "a citizen-police 'detention.'" Garcia-Cantu, 253 S.W.3d at 238.
The Court of Criminal Appeals described the facts as follows:
Officer Okland decided to "investigate" the presence of appellee's truck parked at the dead-end portion of the 300 block of South
The video recording supports the trial judge's implicit finding that Officer Okland used an authoritative, commanding voice and demeanor that brooked no disagreement into his official investigation. Although reasonable fact finders could disagree, we must give great deference to the trial judge's assessment of the facts.
It was 4:00 a.m. on December 26th, Christmas. Officer Okland turned on his patrol-car spotlight to light up appellee's truck even before he stopped his car, and he activated his dashboard camera. He parked his patrol car about ten feet behind and to the left of appellee's truck. The testimony, photographs, and video recording all support the trial judge's implicit factual finding that Officer Okland "boxed in" appellee's parked truck, preventing him from voluntarily
Officer Okland got out of his patrol car, holding his large flashlight in both hands at shoulder-level, and started to approach the driver's side of appellee's truck in a manner that could fairly be described as
Appellee then got out of his truck and started to walk toward Officer Okland, who immediately asked, "What are you doing here?"
Although these words are not, by themselves, sufficient to convert an otherwise consensual encounter into a detention, much depends upon the tone and level of voice, as well as the questioner's demeanor. The trial judge could have concluded that, based upon Officer Okland's tone and demeanor on the witness stand, as well as his tone and demeanor as seen and heard on the video recording, that the officer's questioning was more in the nature of an official command rather than a friendly or neutral inquiry.
Officer Okland then played his flashlight across the female passenger's side of the truck to track the passenger's exit from the truck. She came around to where the officer and appellee were standing at the rear of the
Officer Okland then played his flashlight into and across appellee's eyes as if he were looking for signs of intoxication. He did the same to appellee's friend who came out of the
Officer Okland then asked appellee, "You got any D. on you?" Apparently appellee said that it was in the truck because Officer Okland immediately went back to the driver's side and looked inside the truck. He then came back to the rear of the truck and told appellee to go get his I.D. out of the truck. Appellee did so.
Appellee testified that he did not subjectively feel free to leave or terminate the
That fact is not particularly relevant because the test is whether a reasonable person in the citizen's position would have felt free to leave. However, given the facts that Officer Okland initiated the incident by blocking appellee's exit with his patrol car, turning on his spotlight, approaching appellee's truck with a long flashlight playing over the driver's side, immediately saying, "What are you doing here?", using his flashlight to wave the passenger back to the rear of the truck, and, standing toe-to-toe with appellee, shining his flashlight into appellee's eyes, it is hard to conclude that any reasonable person would feel free to drive or walk away or to terminate the questioning. Id. at 244–49.
The Court of Criminal Appeals then found that "the totality of the circumstances support his conclusion that appellee was detained by Officer Okland for purposes of the Fourth Amendment." Id. at 250.
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New York City's High Line park is totally overexposed. I'm going to expose it further.
I walk with three menfolk from the top to the bottom of this new icon of the Manhattan landscape, stunned by the native plantings that seem to find city soil the best fertilizer in the world.
I spent a day in the country looking at wildflowers and saw no profusion like this.
And a planting of bamboo, which has to be tightly constrained by a metal guard to keep it happy in its place. Kind of the opposite of Jesse, who isn't happy unless he's on the open seas or in some other free environment.
The High Line was built between 1929 and 1934 from Gansevoort to 34th Streets to lift dangerous freight trains above the traffic. For years, meat, produce and dairy products were shipped to town and arrived at the third floor level of plants. That might have been a little inconvenient, but the situation previous was insupportable. In the nineteenth century, people actually called Tenth Avenue "Death Avenue" because the street-level railroad caused so many accidents. Men in an outfit called the "West Side Cowboys" were hired to ride in front of trains and wave red flags to warn traffic off.
In 1980 the last train came through with a load of frozen turkeys. Then the rail bed deteriorated. Gil, who lived in the city then, says, "It was the high line, alright, everyone was getting high." What grew there was what the High Line people now politely call a "self sown landscape." In other words, weeds. Weeds, condoms, syringes.
Now there are trees, grasses and flowers, and I think even Larry, who lives on a farm surrounded by midwestern forest, is impressed.
The gardeners of the High Line transformed the place, beginning in 1999. It's a classic urban place to stop and smell the roses.
Wild roses are fairest, said Louise May Alcott, and nature a better gardener than art. The High Line has nature, art and a third thing, a deep industrial past.
Sculpture rises up along the walkway.
And human sculpture, as people freeze for pictures. What the High Line should have next to the fresh fruit ice pops stand is a camera kiosk. Someone would get rich. Tourists throng — you can walk a long way down the path and not hear a word of English.
With the new, there's the old – a mysterious pattern of bricks.
And a towering old painted sign: BONDED. Across it a tag reads REVS, shortened from REVLON, a famous graffitti artist. "It's got to be on the edge, where it's not allowed," REV has said. There's room on the High Line for all vintages.
The Gehry-designed IAC Building, at 555 West 18th Street, with its milky, origami exterior, has been open since 2007. Vanity Fair called it the world's most attractive office building. It's especially great to see it in tandem with structures of other vintages, including the old-fashioned piedmont of a lower one whose top is flush with the park.
The Standard Hotel soars above. It gained some notoriety when High Line strollers realized they could look up and see happy exhibitionists making whoopee in the floor-to-ceiling windows.
(When Chuck Barris was looking for a word to meet the network censors' standards on the Newlywed Game, the term ultimately settled upon was whoopee.) Meat trolleys for hanging beeves still exist if you look closely. Right along the Standard, in the shadows, a rusted remnant of the district's sanguinary past.
But one essential thing about the High Line is the views.
In the nineteenth century, landscape architects carved out pastoral views on grand country estates, cropping trees advantageously to accentuate vistas of rivers, mountains, or other natural elements. The High Line is the 21st century equivalent, with quirky street perspectives all around, framed from this tall iron structure.
After our promenade, we descend to vintage New York cobbles. A remnant of the lost city.
We refuel at a restaurant called The Spotted Pig.
The eggs it serves are divine, with crunchy flecks of sea salt.
I am tired after our sun-blasted walk of a two miles. Jesse is wide awake, which he always is, except when he's asleep.
And the french fries… well, it is hard to shovel them in fast enough.
The chef strews the shoestrings here with shreds of rosemary. Everything tastes better after the High Line. An ordinary pinapple smoothie from a new perspective.
A fantastic church frieze overhead. Had it always been there? I can't recall. The galleries of Chelsea are closed on Sunday, but that doesn't mean the great sidewalks of New York are closed for business.
Too much graffiti has been scrubbed off in recent years. Manhattan is the new Minneapolis. Now we have clean, healthy biking all over town. In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where I visited a week ago, it's a different – and more colorful – story, as it hasn't quite shed its industrial past and makes a fine canvas for folks who do outdoor outsider art.
Here in the Meatpacking District we find a few worthy efforts.
Two chicks etched on the sidewalk beneath our feet.
For some reason I like these simple birds, making kissy next to their little water fountain.
The all-seeing eye. The Eye of Providence.
On the island of Manhattan, if you let your vision wander up, you see some marvelous things. A blue horizon chockablock with architects' freshest concoctions. Pieces of old New York, dusty red bricks that have miraculously been saved from the wrecking ball. Climbing roses, if you're walking the High Line. From that same pathway, a glimpse of a well-to-do fanny in a chic hotel window. And there are still wooden water towers.
Just two companies, Rosenwach Tank Company and Isseks Bros., manufacture the tanks, which are unpainted and made with untreated wood. A new water tower is a leaky water tower, as it takes time for the material to become saturated and watertight. Chelsea has one, completely dry of course, that has recently been transformed into an exclusive club called Night Heron. You can see it from the High Line.


text:
Q: Unity2D Grab Object Script I'm trying to get this grabbing script working with my game. In The game you play as a fish in water, and fish should be able to grab and carry objects.
Problem:
I get that with raycast you fire The ray to certain direction which doesn't work for me in this game. This code is otherwise working fine, but I can't figure how to fix the code so that objects can be grabbed from any direction as long as in range.
What I've tried:
I've tried Physics2D.CircleCast, but there also you have to set the certain direction for the cast(?) Also tried OnTriggerEnter but couldn't get that working either. Is there way to cast ray to all directions(not z)? Or is there some more simple way to do this?
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class grabberscript : MonoBehaviour
{

    public bool grabbed;
    RaycastHit2D hit;
    public float distance = 0f;
    public Transform holdpoint;
    public LayerMask notgrabbed;

    void Update()
    {
        if (Input.GetButtonDown("Fire3"))
        {
            if (!grabbed)
            {
                Physics2D.queriesStartInColliders = false;

                hit = Physics2D.Raycast(transform.position, Vector2.right * transform.localScale.x, distance);

                if (hit.collider != null && hit.collider.tag == "grabbable")
                {
                    grabbed = true;
                }

            }
            else
            {
                grabbed = false;
            }
        }
        if (grabbed)
            hit.collider.gameObject.transform.position = holdpoint.position;
    }
}

A: What you are looking for is Physics2D.OverlapCircle .. instead of casting the circle into a certain direction this only checks whether a collider lies within a circle at given center and radius. You the should not check via a tag but rather use a dedicated layer for all objects that shall be able to be grabbed
public class grabberscript : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float distance = 0f;
    public Transform holdpoint;

    // Use the layer(s) for all objects that shall be grab able
    public LayerMask grabbable;

    private Transform currentlyGrabbedObject;

    void Update()
    {
        if (Input.GetButtonDown("Fire3"))
        {
            if (!currentlyGrabbedObject)
            {
                Collider2D hit = Physics2D.OverlapCircle(transform.position, distance, grabbable);

                if (hit)
                {
                    currentlyGrabbedObject = hit.transform;
                }
            }
            else // release currently grabbed object
            {
                currentlyGrabbedObject = null;
            }
        }

        if (currentlyGrabbedObject)
        {
            currentlyGrabbedObject.position = holdpoint.position;
        }
    }
}

If you don't use a Layer as said before you would rather have to use Physics2D.OverlapCircleAll and use the first hit matching your tag e.g. using Linq FirstOrDefault like
using System.Linq;
...

Collider2D[] hits = Physics2D.OverlapCircleAll(transform.position, distance);

Collider2D hit = hits.FirstOrDefault(h => h.CompareTag("grabbale");

if (hit)
{
    currentlyGrabbedObject = hit.transform;
}

A: I think you can use an OverlapCircle to check whether the item to grab is in range or not like this:
if(!grabbing)
{
    //This will save the position of all gameObjects in a specific range which are set in a or multiple specific layers
    Collider2D[] grabbedItems = Physics2D.OverlapCircleAll(transform.position, grabRange, grabbableLayer);
}
Foreach(Collider2D item in grabbedItems)
{
   if(item.ComapreTag("grabbable"))
      {
          item.isGrabbed = true;
      }
}

Then in the gameObject that you intend to make grabbable, you can add a script like this:
public bool isGrabbed = false;
public Transform holdPoint;

void Update()
{
   if(isGrabbed)
   {
      TrackHoldPoint();
   }
}

private void TrackHoldPoint()
{
   transform.position = holdPoint.position;
}

Then just to be easier to set, you can add this small script to see in edit mode the range of the cirlce:
private void OnDrawGizmosSelected()
{
    if (transform == null) return;

    Gizmos.DrawWireSphere(transform.position, range);
}


text:
Bitcoin-Loving Bukele Thumbs Nose At Media As El Salvador Pays Off $800M Debt: 'They Lie And Lie..'
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele took a dig at legacy international news outlets for their reports about the country's debt situation.
What Happened: Bukele said legacy international news outlets incorrectly blamed El Salvador's debt situation on its Bitcoin BTC/USD bet.
He said although many outlets reported that El Salvador was in danger of defaulting on its 2023 bond without striking a deal with the International Monetary FundI, the country had paid off its $800 million debt "in full … plus interest."
See More: Best Crypto Day Trading Strategies
"They lie and lie and lie, and when their lies are exposed, they go on silence mode," he said.
El Salvador's presidency press office told Reuters the payment, which followed an earlier transaction, included $604.1 million and interest of $23.4 million. "El Salvador is meeting its debt obligations," it said.
According to a report by Bloomberg, optimism that El Salvador can avoid default is showing in the numbers: its dollar debt has rallied an average of 23% so far this year, the best performance of any emerging economy tracked by a key Bloomberg index. This month, El Salvador was able to secure a $450 million loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, helping to ensure El Salvador's ability to meet future bond maturities until 2025.
Meanwhile, the El Salvador Legislative Assembly on Jan.11 unanimously approved a law regulating the issuance of digital assets, opening up the possibility of issuing government-backed Bitcoin bonds.
Price Action: BTC was trading at $23,083 up 1.45%, in the last 24 hours, according to Benzinga Pro.
Read Next:Bitcoin Hovers Near $23k, Ethereum, Dogecoin Fall Amid Gemini Job Cuts Report: Analyst Says 'A Lot Could Still Go Wrong'


As we've done before, we have some vintage photos of Don's houses and thought it would be fun to show how they looked then and how they look now. Unfortunately, some have been altered beyond recognition. This vintage photo was taken July, 1958 for House and Home Magazine.
This house was an award winning Jones and Emmons design ("Case Study" architects from California) for Don called the "Castillian." (for more about Don's California architect connection, see articles on www.KCModern.com) A lavish open one story plan featuring many windowwalls, multiple outdoor terraces and a true sense of modern living. As far as we can tell, there were seven of these homes built in the Kansas City area and one was located in Richmond, MO. This one is located near 68th & Belinder in Mission Hill, KS. (Look for more on Belinder street soon) The house, altered drastically with Spanish styling, was unique for the type in that it had a basement/bomb shelter below the carport. As has happened in other communities throughout the United States, Belinder street has seen many changes over the last few years, many mid-century modern houses have been torn down. Because of this, we have significant concern about the future of a Marcel Breuer designed house down the street (see previous photo of the week).


text:
Solar-Plus-Storage
NEXTracker Debuts Lithium-Ion Offering, Renames Flow Battery Product
The edgy flow battery-assisted solar tracker now has a more conventional storage companion.
Julian Spector December 06, 2017
Julian Spector
Julian is a staff writer at Greentech Media, where he reports on energy storage, solar power and other clean energy sectors. He also has experience covering clean transportation, state and federal energy policy, and climate adaptation. Previously, Julian reported for CityLab at The Atlantic and conducted grant-funded climate change reporting in Bangladesh. He graduated from Duke University.
The NX Drive provides a pre-engineered vessel for lithium-ion batteries.
Photo Credit: NEXTracker
A year ago, NEXTracker launched an innovative solar tracker with flow battery storage built into it. This December, the big new thing looks much more familiar.
The company has taken over a containerized lithium-ion storage product developed by parent company Flex, a major manufacturing firm active around the world. The NX Drive comes in conventional 20- and 40-foot container sizes, but it's a "highly engineered structure" that standardizes the system's electrical, mechanical, thermal and fire suppression needs, said NEXTracker CEO Dan Shugar.
The platform gives the customer a range of choices on battery chemistry and inverter architecture. It has already been installed in multiple locations, including a National Renewable Energy Laboratory test facility in Colorado, as well as customer sites that Shugar declined to disclose.
"Storage is happening, and it's going to scale," he said. "We wanted to make it easy for customers to get involved and also have a really flexible design."
Many an integrator already sells containerized storage aspiring to the platonic ideal of "plug and play." As a newcomer to the field, NEXTracker hopes to leverage a few differentiators.
One is the digital asset management platform, ported over from the long-running solar tracker business. This system monitors equipment performance in the field, sending data back to NEXTracker via a ZigBee wireless mesh network.
For a battery system, that means moment-by-moment monitoring of temperature and cycling, which is crucial to maintaining the cell warranty and optimizing performance. The company backs up that data with "Fort Knox-level data security" supplied by Flex.
That corporate parent lends strength in the manufacturing arena, and in the global presence for sales and service, although the initial sales focus is the U.S.
"When NEXTracker takes on a supply chain, we don't mess around," Shugar said. "We have an amazing on-time delivery record. We're approaching the battery market with the same fortitude."
The business pitch that highlights a corporate parent's global reach has become more popular among storage integrators this year. Now Greensmith can point to Wartsila, Green Charge can mention Engie, Younicos taps into Aggreko, and, if the paperwork ever goes through, AES Energy Storage will reach out through Siemens' 160-country sales team.
Simply having a parent company with deep pockets and global reach, then, doesn't differentiate as much as it used to. That said, NEXTracker's years of experience shipping and installing fields of utility-scale solar trackers will count as evidence of the company's logistical wherewithal.
Ultimately, the NX Drive looks and feels like storage solutions being sold by all sorts of companies. But NEXTracker hasn't given up on its wholly unique contribution to the storage market.
The NX Flow puts the flow battery right on the end of the solar tracker. (Photo credit: NEXTracker)
The NX Fusion Plus, announced last year, included vanadium flow battery systems from Avalon Battery attached to a solar tracker at the factory to allow for streamlined workflow and quality control.
NEXTracker pitched the combination as a way to avoid clipped power, which gets lost when generation exceeds the solar inverter's capacity. The flow system is DC-coupled to the tracker with an Ideal Power inverter, and soaks up any power that would otherwise be clipped.
The system sounded good on paper, which left out the crucial question of whether anyone was ready to pay for it.
Hardly anybody buys flow batteries yet, despite many a lab scientist's assertions of their superior cycle life and safety. Ideal Power has commercialized promising power conversion technology, but is still a small-cap relative newcomer to the inverter world, and lacks the balance sheet of a SolarEdge or SMA.
The product doesn't appear to have flown off of the shelf. NEXTracker has installed some flow systems at customer sites, Shugar said, but he declined to say where or how much capacity they add up to.
Asked whether the product is ahead of its time, he said he heard the same skepticism when the company launched its independent row trackers, back before it became a market leader.
"There's a period of specification and development," he said. "We're going to see this coming year and the next year be breakout years for storage. We are very well positioned with a product that covers a wide range of use."
The only major update to the flow product appears to be a name change: It will henceforth be known as the NX Flow, to maintain a "consistent branding platform."
nextracker


text:
Digest • News
Grasswire Weekly: April 8
PawPrintAndrew
A recap of the past week's stories on Grasswire and a round-up of what we were reading elsewhere.
Top Stories of the Week
Mohamed Abrini
Mohamed Abrini, wanted since November in connection with the Paris Attacks, was arrested on Friday afternoon Anderlecht district of Brussels. Five other men were also arrested.
Belgian prosecutors on Thursday released new CCTV footage of the third suspect in the Brussels airport bomb attack. The man was tracked from the airport after the explosions to the nearby town of Zaventem, and then into Brussels where all traces of him were lost at 9:50 a.m. local time.
Our previous stories on the Brussels attacks
Almost two-thirds of Dutch voters rejected a two-year-old European Union treaty with Ukraine in a referendum on Wednesday.
The referendum isn't binding on the government, but Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said: "it's clear that 'No' have won by an overwhelming margin."
Microsoft released a Windows 10 update Wednesday, featuring some of the features announced last week at the company's Build conference, for Windows Insiders.
Among the new enhancements is the ability to run native Bash on Ubuntu and enhanced Cortana functionality.
Junior doctors in England held a 48-hour strike as part of an ongoing protest over new contracts that the government will automatically impose in August.
Over 5,100 non-urgent surgical procedures and appointments were canceled due to the walkout.
The first results of the year-long Panama Papers investigation were published on Sunday, revealing the offshore links of some of the world's most prominent figures.
Over 11.5 million documents were leaked to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, and were investigated by more than 400 journalists worldwide.
The first high-profile casualty of the leak was Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has also come under pressure.
Mossack Fonseca says it was 'hacked by servers abroad'.
All of our Panama Papers coverage
Other stories from the past week
Michigan governor Rick Snyder was named along with other state officials in a federal racketeering lawsuit over Flint's water crisis.
Four people suspected of membership of Islamic State were arrested near the Danish capital, Copenhagen on Thursday.
San Francisco passed a measure requiring business with 20 or more employees to provide fully paid leave to new parents.
A category three cyclone struck Fiji, resulting in flash flooding, two deaths, and the cancellation of all flights at Nadi International Airport.
Twitter beat out rivals Amazon, Yahoo, and Verizon to acquire global rights to 10 Thursday night NFL games next season.
Five people died when a Bell 206 sightseeing helicopter crashed in the Great Smoky Mountains near the town of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
A New Orleans federal judge approved an estimated $20 billion settlement resolving litigation linked to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
An Amtrak train travelling from New York to Savannah, Georgia, hit track equipment near the town of Chester, Pennsylvania and derailed. Two people were killed and more than 30 injured .
California's legislature approved a plan to raise the state's minimum wage to $15/hour by 2022 which will be America's highest minimum wage.
What Got Us Thinking
He created Google Alerts. Now he's an almond farmer https://t.co/2Unj3YyomY pic.twitter.com/W4kNoTmcNa
— CNN (@CNN) April 4, 2016
The moment @spacex stuck the barge landing. pic.twitter.com/LgRA4IuH8q
— ⚡ Owen (@ow) April 8, 2016
Search on for Sam the Dog after school project sent him to edge of spacehttps://t.co/nfZJC6p6Cw pic.twitter.com/3xaxztsn7B
— ITV News (@itvnews) April 8, 2016
In Lieu of Text
.@HillaryClinton blatantly lies again: "Most guns used in NYC come from Vermont"
Actually come from states she won pic.twitter.com/33mkCaaK4x
— Angry Bernie Sanders (@AngrySenSanders) April 6, 2016
Americas • News • North America • Uncategorized • USA
Trump Gives Major Announcement About Immigration
Eleven dead, six injured at Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
Greyhound announces plans to end service in western Canada
Paris Attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini among six arrested in Brussels
Two Killed in 'Workplace Violence Incident' at Texas Air Force Base


text:
import React, { Component, PropTypes } from 'react';
import Helmet from 'react-helmet';
import { qrcode } from 'meteor/dschulz:jquery-qrcode';
import { $ }from 'meteor/jquery';
import { isEmpty } from 'lodash/lang';
import { defaultImgUrl } from 'lib/helpers/defaultValue';
import { Flex, WhiteSpace } from 'antd-mobile/dist/antd-mobile';

export default class UserShare extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
  }
  componentDidMount() {
    const user = Meteor.user();
    const imgUrl = user ? isEmpty(user.profile.headimgurl) ? defaultImgUrl : user.profile.headimgurl : defaultImgUrl;
    const path = 'https://' + window.location.hostname + '/';
    const options = {
      render: 'image',
      size: 300,
      text: path,
      minVersion: 5,
      fill: '#2196F3',
      backgroud: '#fff',
      ecLevel: 'H',
      model: 4,
      quiet: 1,
      mSize: 0.2,
      image: imgUrl,
    };
    $('#qrcode').empty().qrcode(options);
  }

  render() {
    return(
      <Flex direction='column' justify='center' style={{fontSize: '.3rem', paddingTop: '1rem'}}>
        <Helmet title='我的推广' />

请长按二维码保存或分享

        <WhiteSpace size="lg" />

      </Flex>
    );
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Composite decking is great for children and pets, but why? We have made an infographic to show all the reasons why it is so good! For more information, visit our website!
4 reasons why composite decking is the next big trend for 2019!
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Why should you choose a low maintenance garden?