text:
Annual overview of global energy trends
Michael Liebreich:
Plenty of good news: unsubsidised solar below 2.7c/kWh; c. 10% annual decline in Li-ion battery packs to 2030 & increasingly flexible power markets.
The Transportist
David Levison:
Welcome to the seventh issue of The Transportist. As always you can follow along at the blog or on Twitter. I am pleased to report I am now in Sydney, as long promised. Contact information is at the bottom of this newsletter. Due to the move, it should have been a bit lighter than usual, oh well.
How is ARM changing the face of ADAS and IVI systems?
ARM Community:
As excitedly as we talk about it, you'd think the promise of fully autonomous vehicles is right around the bend, just another few miles and we'll pull into our destination. In truth, we're not there yet, and a few sceptics even suggest we'll never get there — too many bumps in the road ahead.
As engineers, we know that we'll get to the holy grail of autonomous driving. The key questions are how long will it take, what's the best route and how much will it cost?
Let's pull out a map and see how we can get there from here in automotive electronics. We know it will require serious engineering feats to integrate all of the different components and deliver seamless safe performance. The good news is we're perched on a stepping stone right now: advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which are seen today in features such as emergency braking assist, drive- and steer-by-wire and collision avoidance. If we want to see this type of advanced technology in every mass-market vehicle, these systems need to be robust, low cost and low power. But this is what the collaborative design chain ecosystem does well and relentlessly optimizes. These core engineering tenets are a compass that will help us navigate the map toward the holy grail of autonomous vehicles.
BMW Is Trying to Scare Staff Into Loving Electric Cars
Elisabeth Behrmann
Inside a bright auditorium at an abandoned airfield near Munich, rows of men and women gaze at images flashing by on a giant screen: a Mercedes sedan; Porsche and Jaguar SUVs; the face of Elon Musk. "We're in the midst of an electric assault," the presenter intones as the Tesla Inc. chief's photo pops up. "This must be taken very seriously."
The audience is composed of BMW AG employees flown in for a combination pep rally/horror film intended to make them afraid—very afraid—about the future of the industry. The takeaway: The market is shifting in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago, and BMW must adapt. The subtext is a recognition that the company has gone from leader to laggard. For years, it set the benchmark in luxury, but it needs to hit the accelerator to fend off resurgent rivals such as Mercedes-Benz and new competitors like Tesla. "BMW is falling behind in electrics," says Ingo Speich, a fund manager at Union Investment, which owns almost 1 percent of the company.
QUIC in the wild, only for Google ad advantage
Luke Mulks:
QUIC is enabled by default in Google's Chrome browser and underlying Chromium open source browser code. As of March 2017, Chrome accounts for 58.9% of users browsing the web.
Brave blocks QUIC requests. QUIC is an opt-in feature in Opera, and is currently not available in other Firefox, Edge, and Safari. HTTPS requests containing the alt-svc: quic=":443″ response header fall back to traditional TCP connections in other browsers, or when QUIC fails in Chrome.
Airline disruption: it will happen in the next decade – but no one is preparing for it
Why so unprepared? It seems inconceivable that the structure of an industry with so many artificial constraints can remain intact much past 70 years, while all around it has changed.
This decade alone has been witness to major disruptions in the travel and transportation industries. Most prominent have been in ride sharing – Uber – and in hospitality – Airbnb. Telecommunications, media and music industries have also been turned on their heads; banks and payments are in the firing line; retail generally is being rapidly transformed. There is scarcely an industry whose fundamental structure remains intact. Except the airline industry.
Portland wants to open its streets to self-driving cars
Karen Weise:
Portland says it wants to be the first city to issue permits for driverless cars, with the goal of getting them on its roads for testing this year.
Autonomous vehicles need to drive and drive and drive, vacuuming up hours of real-life encounters on the road to make their algorithms smarter and safer.
But there's one thing in relative short supply: cities willing to have test cars on their streets. Portland is trying to change that and be what it says would be the first to issue permits for driverless vehicles, with the goal of getting them on its roads this year.
"The technology is coming," says Mayor Ted Wheeler. "Either the technology will happen to us, or we are going to shape the playing field."
Wheeler and Transportation Commissioner Dan Saltzman are directing the Portland Bureau of Transportation to create a policy to open up the city's streets to self-driving cars.
We all thought having more data was better. We were wrong.
David Fletcher:
For years, the mantra in the world of business software and enterprise IT has been "data is the new gold." The idea was that companies of nearly every shape and size, across every industry imaginable, were essentially sitting on top of buried treasure that was just waiting to be tapped into. All they needed to do was to dig into the correct vein of their business data trove and they would be able to unleash valuable insights that could unlock hidden business opportunities, new sources of revenue, better efficiencies and much more.
Big software companies like IBM, Oracle, SAP and many more all touted these visions of data grandeur, and turned the concept of big data analytics, or just Big Data, into everyday business nomenclature.
Analytics is hard, and there's no guarantee that analyzing huge chunks of data is going to translate into meaningful insights.
Even now, analytics is also playing an important role in the Internet of Things, on both the commercial and industrial side, as well as on the consumer side. On the industrial side, companies are working to mine various datastreams for insights into how to improve their processes, while consumer-focused analytics show up in things like health and fitness data linked to wearables, and will soon be a part of assisted and autonomous driving systems in our cars.
The truth is, analytics is hard, and there's no guarantee that analyzing huge chunks of data is going to translate into meaningful insights. Challenges may arise from applying the wrong tools to a given job, not analyzing the right data, or not even really knowing exactly what to look for in the first place. Regardless, it's becoming clear to many organizations that a decade or more into the "big data" revolution, not everyone is hitting it rich.
JANESVILLE: AN AMERICAN STORY When the nation's oldest operating General Motors plant closes, residents emerge from the Great Recession into an uncertain future.
Alyssa Shuman:
Television crews from as far away as the Netherlands and Japan had come to film this moment, when the oldest plant of the nation's largest automaker turned out its last.
Janesville, Wis., lies three-fourths of the way from Chicago to Madison along Interstate 90. The county seat of 63,500 people is the home town of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R) — an old United Auto Workers town in a state led by a new generation of conservative, Gov. Scott Walker (R). It is a Democratic town still, though the economic blow that befell Janesville is the kind of reversal of fortune that drove many working-class Americans to support Donald Trump for president.
The assembly plant began turning out Chevrolets on Valentine's Day 1923, and, for 8½ decades, the factory, like a mighty wizard, ordered the city's rhythms. The radio station synchronized its news broadcasts to the shift change. Grocery prices went up along with GM raises. People timed their trips across town to the daily movements of freight trains hauling in parts and hauling away finished cars, trucks and SUVs.
And so, when the plant stopped in the midst of the Great Recession, the people of Janesville — even as they began to reinvent themselves and their town — clung to a faith that GM would reopen the plant so their future could be like their past. Over time, though, people began to confront a question they had not considered before: What choices to make when there were no more good choices left?
McDonald's is poised to be the first major fast-food chain in America to allow customers to place orders via smartphone at all locations.
Kate Taylor:
The fast-food giant plans to roll out mobile ordering and payment at all 14,000 US locations in the fourth quarter of 2017. According to analysts, beating out the competition and becoming the first to debut mobile ordering nationally would be a major win for McDonald's.
"Among the hamburger players, we believe that MCD is establishing a first-mover advantage with digital that can drive sustainable share gains in late 2017 and beyond," analyst Jeff Farmer wrote in a note to clients Monday, CNBC reported.
Wendy's seems likely to follow McDonald's in achieving national mobile ordering, with plans to roll out mobile order and pay across half of its locations by the end of 2017, according to Farmer. Burger King and Jack in the Box are lagging behind, as their programs are still being tested.
United Air Lines – an OODA loop perspective
Chet Richards:
I'm not too good at reading minds, much less corporate minds, but one thing stands out: For all practical purposes, domestic airlines in the US today are monopolies. They have left just enough market share at their primary hubs to avoid the threat of federal action, and this limited capacity means that open skies treaties won't significantly increase competition.
When your orientation says "monopoly," you act like a monopoly. In particular, without the threat of the marketplace, you have a lot of flexibility in the levels of service you provide — your quality — and in what you can charge. Play this game well and you can maximize the amount of money to be paid out to the the people who control the organization and to those who can fire them.
However, as Tom Peters once pointed out, in Thriving on Chaos as I recall, after some point, it's impossible to order cost cuts without also damaging the customer experience.
Back in the pre-Toyota US auto industry, they had a similar orientation: Customers didn't appreciate quality and wouldn't pay for improvements in quality over what Detroit was already producing. As I said, that was pre-Toyota. But weren't Toyotas cheaper than their American competitors? They were indeed less expensive, but their quality in terms of manufacturing defects and ride experience, was much higher. Detroit claimed "Dumping!" but extensive studies showed that Toyota had evolved a manufacturing system that reduced waste thereby lowering costs organically, rather than just arbitrarily cutting costs by leaving out things.
Apple Said to Near Road Tests of Self-Driving Car Software
Mark Gurman:
The company was granted approval by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test autonomous driving technology on public roads, according to a notice on the DMV's website on Friday. This is the first time Apple has received approval to test its technology on public streets.
Apple will soon begin testing self-driving car software with existing vehicles, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Cupertino, California-based company started developing a self-driving car to take on Google and Tesla Inc. a few years ago before it pulled back and focused on first developing underlying autonomous technology last year, Bloomberg News has reported.
The tests are the clearest, public sign yet that Apple is serious about a nascent field that could, in time, transform mobility and upend the auto industry. A quarter of all miles driven in the U.S. may happen in shared, self-driving electric cars by the end of the next decade, Boston Consulting Group said this month. Apple wants a piece of this action, but it's got a lot of competition: 29 other companies have autonomous vehicle testing permits in California.
Silicon Valley engineer launches driverless car sensor start-up
Tim Bradshaw & Leslie Hook:
A 22-year-old Silicon Valley engineer, who was paid by a venture capitalist to skip college, has launched a start-up which aims to solve one of the toughest technical challenges in autonomous driving.
Austin Russell founded Luminar Technologies in 2012, when he was just 17, to create a new version of the laser-based imaging sensor that is known in the automotive industry as Lidar. Backed by investors including the well-known venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Mr Russell unveiled Luminar on Thursday after five years of secretive development, claiming a 50-fold improvement in resolution compared with existing Lidar products.
Lidar sensors have become a key enabler of self-driving cars because they allow vehicles to "see" the world around them, allowing vehicles to navigate and avoid obstacles. Uber and Alphabet's self-driving car unit, Waymo, are locked in a bitter legal battle over allegations of stolen Lidar designs.
As start-ups, automotive manufacturers and tech companies rush into autonomous driving, supplies of existing Lidar systems from manufacturers such as Velodyne have become so scarce that the devices have a waiting list several months long.
At the same time, limitations in existing Lidar systems such as struggling to see through rain or snow have been seen as a barrier to widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles outside sunny areas such as California.
Mr Russell says that he can solve these supply and quality problems and in doing so, "make autonomous vehicles both safe and ubiquitous" — although crucially he has not disclosed the price he will charge for his Lidar systems.
After tinkering with photonics projects that included laser-powered drones and augmented-reality glasses in his teens, Mr Russell settled on creating high-resolution, long-range Lidar sensors as a way into the nascent autonomous vehicle market, which even then he believed "would eventually become vital to transportation".
A Remote Attack on the Bosch Drivelog Connector Dongle
Argus Cyber Security
In this blog post, I discuss the vulnerabilities of the Bosch Drivelog Connector OBD-II dongle found by the Argus Research Team. The vulnerabilities allowed us to stop the engine of a moving vehicle using the Drivelog platform.
On February 20th, 2017, in accordance with Argus' responsible disclosure policy, upon uncovering the vulnerabilities we informed Bosch of our findings. On February 21st, 2017, Bosch's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) contacted Argus and began addressing the issue.
In summary, the following two vulnerabilities were found:
GM expands Silicon Valley autonomous car operations
Neil Boudette:
Running our autonomous vehicle program as a start-up is giving us the speed we need to continue to stay at the forefront of development of these technologies and the market applications," she said.
The move comes as traditional automakers are rushing to partner with and acquire technology companies amid a global race to develop cars capable of driving themselves safely with little input from passengers.
In February, Ford Motor said it planned to invest $1 billion over the next five years in Argo AI, an artificial intelligence company, as part of its own push to develop self-driving cars. Ford has also vowed to begin production of a fully automated car — with no steering wheel and no pedals — by 2021. Similar efforts are underway at Audi, BMW and other car companies.
The automotive giants are competing with technology companies that appear to be leading the self-driving race. Google's automated car subsidiary, Waymo, has racked up more than 200 million miles of driving with various test vehicles, while Tesla already offers its semi-automated Autopilot system in its electric vehicles.
Remote work: More Americans now work full-time from home than walk and bike to their jobs
Christopher Groskopf:
In the United States, the past decade has been marked by booming cities, soaring rents, and a crush of young workers flocking to job-rich downtowns. Although these are heady days for pavement-pounding urbanists, a record 2.6% of American employees now go to their jobs without ever leaving their houses. That's more than walk and bike to work combined.
These numbers come from a Quartz analysis of data from the US census and the American Community Survey. The data show that telecommuting has grown faster than any other way of getting to work—up 159% since 2000. By comparison, the number of Americans who bike to work has grown by 86% over the same period, while the number who drive or carpool has grown by only 12%. We've excluded both part-time and self-employed workers from these and all results.
Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence Virtual to Real Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving
Yurong You, Xinlei Pan, Ziyan Wang, Cewu Lu
(Submitted on 13 Apr 2017)
Reinforcement learning is considered as a promising direction for driving policy learning. However, training autonomous driving vehicle with reinforcement learning in real environment involves non-affordable trial-and-error. It is more desirable to first train in a virtual environment and then transfer to the real environment. In this paper, we propose a novel realistic translation network to make model trained in virtual environment be workable in real world. The proposed network can convert non-realistic virtual image input into a realistic one with similar scene structure. Given realistic frames as input, driving policy trained by reinforcement learning can nicely adapt to real world driving. Experiments show that our proposed virtual to real (VR) reinforcement learning (RL) works pretty well. To our knowledge, this is the first successful case of driving policy trained by reinforcement learning that can adapt to real world driving data.
The Hype Cycle & Rational Thought
As David Welch pointed out in his excellent piece for Bloomberg, "GM expects to earn more than $9 billion this year and analysts predict Ford will generate adjusted profit of about $6.3 billion. On that basis, Tesla is expected to lose more than $950 million."
Read that back again slowly. And no, that's not all, it gets even worse than that. Welch goes on to quote Alexander Potter, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos., who said the following: "Tesla engenders optimism, freedom, defiance, and a host of other emotions that, in our view, other companies can't replicate."
Wait a minute, is this is a financial analyst talking, or one of Elon Musk's unpaid shills who dot the landscape and crawl out of the woodwork wielding pitchforks the moment someone has the temerity to slam their esteemed leader for his smoke-and-mirrors act? Well, both actually. Yes, Potter is not only an analyst who upgraded the stock on Monday, but also an analyst who has owned a Tesla for seven months and who added, "As they scramble to catch up, we think Tesla's competitors only make themselves appear more desperate."
Catch up to what, exactly? Remember, folks, we're talking about a car company that sold around 80,000 vehicles last year. For the record, GM sold more than 10 million. In the immortal words of Vince Lombardi, "What the hell's going on out here?!?!"
If you've wondered why Tesla continues to be the darling of certain factions on Wall Street, against all rational measures of evaluation, I might add, you only have to re-read Potter's telling quote to understand the madness. The valuation has nothing to do with any rational measure or reasoned perspective, it's the Silicon Valley True Believers populating Wall Street who are completely intoxicated by the vapor trail left by the Muskian Vision of bunny rabbits and rainbows being propelled across the sky.
In other words, the Wall Street analysts buying into Tesla have veered off into the land of Cray-Cray, where the sky is bluer and the grass is greener, and The Future will be forged by the visionary brilliance of Elon Musk, and all of those dirty, nasty – and old – smokestack car companies that form the industrial fabric of this nation will be relegated to the scrap heap once and for all, replaced by clean, incandescent factories made up of equal parts magic and group hugs.
Has Ridesharing In Austin Been Ruined?
Dan Solomon:
During SXSW, there was a brief outage of service from both Fasten and RideAustin. If those names don't sound familiar to you, it's because you don't live in Austin—you are presumably more familiar with the ride-hailing services provided from major international players like Uber and Lyft. In May 2016, when a local ordinance that would have repealed the city's regulations on those kinds of services—backed by the two titans of the app-based ride-hailing industry—failed at the ballot box, and Uber and Lyft quickly left town.
Since then, Austin has more or less recovered. Off-brand companies like Fasten, Fare, Wingz, GetMe, and InstaRyde, as well as the non-profit RideAustin, popped up and quickly developed a pecking order. Fasten and RideAustin are at the top, offering tens of thousands of rides a week, while the others provide services in a more limited capacity.
Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind
Tamsin Shaw:
We are living in an age in which the behavioral sciences have become inescapable. The findings of social psychology and behavioral economics are being employed to determine the news we read, the products we buy, the cultural and intellectual spheres we inhabit, and the human networks, online and in real life, of which we are a part. Aspects of human societies that were formerly guided by habit and tradition, or spontaneity and whim, are now increasingly the intended or unintended consequences of decisions made on the basis of scientific theories of the human mind and human well-being.
Why we're dropping Google Ads
Nathan Geffen:
From today, we're dropping Google adverts from GroundUp. The Google advertising model is broken: not for Google of course, which is massively profitable, but for us, the publishers who have to put up with poor quality, misleading adverts in exchange for small change.
Not too many years ago, newspapers could make real money from advertising. Then along came the Internet, followed by Gumtree, and Google Ads, which with a few minor competitors became the backbone of online advertising. As readers moved to freely available news on the web, so too did advertising revenue.
Deutsche Post DHL Group:
Deutsche Post DHL Group continues to focus consistently on electro-mobility and its self-developed StreetScooter electric van. In light of the strong customer demand and the vehicles required for the company's own operations in Germany and the rest of Europe, the logistics provider will double the production capacity of its own electric vehicles from 10,000 to as many as 20,000 by the end of the year. For this purpose, the company will commission another production location in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Group will announce further details in due course.
In addition, the company is now also selling its own electric vehicles – which have so far been optimized for postal operations and delivery purposes – to third parties. At least half of this year's annual production is planned for external prospective buyers of the vehicles. Deutsche Post DHL Group sees municipal authorities, strategic partners and large fleet customers in Germany and the rest of Europe in particular as potential buyers for starters. The company aims to at least double – from the current number of about 2,500 vehicles – its own StreetScooter fleet for letter and parcel deliveries this year.
Autonomous Trucking Overlooks Skilled Labor Need
Joseph Kane & Adie Tomer:
Automation has become one of the major ongoing stories regarding the future of the American economy.
What began with the rise of robots – and loss of jobs – across manufacturing industries is now a full blown threat to traditional jobs across all industries, salary bands, and education requirements.
The effects are wide-reaching, no job may be safe.
On the surface, trucking seems to fit perfectly into this national narrative.
Autonomous vehicles are one of the hottest developments in technology across the country, and an automated truck already delivered 50,000 cans of beer within Colorado last fall.
The Beginning of the End For American Automakers in China
Michael Dunne:
In the early 1980s Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping returned from visits to Japan and the US with a vision of China's economic future. Seeing a connection between big car industries and economic prosperity, Deng laid out a strategy for transforming China from automotive pauper to automotive powerhouse:
1. Form joint ventures with American, German and Japanese carmakers.
2. Lock in Chinese control over the joint ventures.
3. Get the know-how to build our own high quality Chinese cars.
Thirty five years later, that master plan has come a long way, but is still incomplete. Yes, China has formed joint ventures with all of the world's top foreign automakers. Yes, Chinese has kept tight control over the joint ventures. And, yes, Chinese brands already control the commercial bus and truck industry, taking more than 90% of sales.
Up until now, however, Chinese automakers have struggled to match the quality of cars made by the global majors. Foreign models produced in China still account for the majority of car sales. Drive the streets of Shanghai and you'll be struck by the number of VWs, Buicks, Chevys, Hondas, Toyotas and Audis.
Detroit is kicking Silicon Valley's ass in the race to build self-driving cars
Andrew Hawkins:
We've seen a lot of this type of maneuvering already, with GM buying Cruise Automation, Intel acquiring Mobileye, and Ford giving $1 billion to some AI company that no one has ever heard of. Big companies are buying little startups and then leveraging their technology and expertise to round out the much larger-scale enterprise of developing, testing, validating, producing, and distributing self-driving cars.
YOU PROBABLY WON'T BE BUYING A SELF-DRIVING CAR AT A DEALERSHIP
Early on, most highly automated vehicles will be available through mobility services like ride-sharing and car-sharing, Abuelsamid predicts. In other words, you probably won't be buying a self-driving car at a dealership, but rather riding in one that you hail through an app-based service like Uber or Lyft. These vehicles will be part of a fleet owned by a manufacturer, like Ford or GM. Fleet ownership will help manufacturers manage the issues self-driving vehicles are likely to encounter early on, like accidents. And there will be accidents.
"With all of that in mind, it's far easier for a manufacturer to replicate the sort of logistics platform that Uber or Lyft have than it is for those companies to invest in and create the development, manufacturing, and service infrastructure that [original equipment manufacturers] have," Abuelsamid said. "That's exactly what's already happening as all the leading OEMs already invested in or developing their own services
Delphi takes stake in companies to profit from data in connected cars
Car parts supplier and integrator Delphi Automotive on Thursday announced investments and partnerships in three privately held companies to help carmakers profit from the increasing amount of data produced by the growing number of vehicles connected to the internet.
As cars are equipped with new capabilities, from staying in lanes to driving themselves, they are using and producing vast amounts of information, including where they drive. Delphi said automakers need a single strategy for handling the data as cars become more complex.
Delphi's chief technology officer, Glen DeVos, told reporters in a briefing that Delphi wanted to partner with data-related companies in three key areas: inside the car itself; as data moves from the car to the cloud; and organizing that data in the cloud so it can be used to generate revenue.
Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset
Anne Irrera:
Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than $100 an hour when they get called in to patch up glitches, rewrite coding manuals or make new systems work with old.
For their customers such expenses pale in comparison with what it would cost to replace the old systems altogether, not to mention the risks involved.
Antony Jenkins, the former chief executive of Barclays PLC, said for big financial institutions – many of them created through multiple mergers over decades – the problems banks face when looking to replace their old technology goes beyond a shrinking pool of experts.
"It is immensely complex," said Jenkins, who now heads startup 10x Future Technologies, which sells new IT infrastructure to banks. "Legacy systems from different generations are layered and often heavily intertwined."
Some bank executives describe a nightmare scenario in which a switch-over fails and account data for millions of customers vanishes.
Long-Range Iris Scanning Is Here
Robinson Meyer:
An officer pulls someone over on the side of the highway. The cop sits in the car a moment, runs the plates—they're fine—and gets out of the car. As he or she approach the driver's side window, the driver pulls out a gun, shoots the officer, and flees.
This is something close to what happened in Long Island earlier this year, when a Suffolk County police officer was shot during a traffic stop. Unlike the recent traffic-stop shooting in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the suspect in the New York case, police told CBS, was a "known gang member."
Peter Fairley
Secretive Robotaxi Startup Zoox Prepares for Real-World Testing
There was not much to see when I arrived at the entrance to the small business park in the sleepy Silicon Valley town of San Carlos. Signage for three of its units were blank but, upon closer inspection, I could just make out the word Zoox on a door. I had tracked the company to this location using visa and property records, and was hoping to get a glimpse of what it was up to.
The name Zoox probably does not mean much to its neighbors, or even to electric vehicle fans seeking the birthplace of Tesla Motors, which started in this very building in 2004. But behind these glass walls and shuttered garages is one of the most buttoned-up and most valuable autonomous vehicle startups in the world.
Judge blocks Uber from operating anywhere in Italy
Emma Hinchliffe:
Forget getting kicked out of Austin — Uber just got banned from an entire country.
The ride-hailing service is now blocked in Italy after a judge ruled Friday that it created unfair competition.
Unlike rulings in other European countries, where the use of UberX or the European version (UberPop) has been limited, Italy's ruling blocks all of Uber's services: UberBLACK, UberLUX, UberX, UberXL and UberSelect among them.
elimination of federal tax credits likely to kill U.S. EV market
Edmunds:
Since 2010, buyers of quali ed plug-in electric-drive vehicles have been eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $7,500. These credits are available for the rst 200,000 customers of each auto company producing eligible vehicles. To date, Tesla has sold nearly 100,000 vehicles, which would put the company near the halfway point of its 200,000 federal tax credit allotment assuming its customers received the credit. Nissan, which is expected to debut a second-generation Leaf next year, is about halfway through its credit allotment. General Motors, which has the Bolt and Volt among others, is expected to run out of credits at some point in late 2018 or 2019.
Federal tax credits for EVs are a part of broader set of EPA policies, which require congressional approval to adjust. So the Trump administration may
not eliminate them prematurely but is unlikely to extend these credits. Without these credits, this market is likely to crash. While President Trump did not address federal EV tax credits speci cally in his 2018 budget blueprint released last month, he proposed the elimination of funding for the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program, which would have assisted future EV production.
Without these credits, this market is likely to crash.
Uber said to use "sophisticated" software to defraud drivers, passengers
David Kravets:
Uber has devised a "clever and sophisticated" scheme in which it manipulates navigation data used to determine "upfront" rider fare prices while secretly short-changing the driver, according to a proposed class-action lawsuit against the ride-hailing app.
When a rider uses Uber's app to hail a ride, the fare the app immediately shows to the passenger is based on a slower and longer route compared to the one displayed to the driver. The software displays a quicker, shorter route for the driver. But the rider pays the higher fee, and the driver's commission is paid from the cheaper, faster route, according to the lawsuit.
End of road for trucking startup Palleter
Märt Kelder:
Unfortunately it made no difference. Two months after launching the platform we started to learn that our core hypotheses were just not correct.
Trucks have much less available space than the Eurostat data leads to believe. Firstly the data only considers cargo weight. So lightweight cargo skews the data. Secondly reporting the data to Eurostat is an annoyance for the trucking companies — so who knows what's in those reports.
Even if the trucks have spare space and are close to the pickup location of the cargo they more often than not are not willing to pick up the loads in reality. That was a big and nasty surprise. The trucks are running on such a tight schedule for their existing clients that they just cannot afford to spend time on extra loads. They might miss a deadline and lose a loyal customer.
Even when the trucks were willing to pick up the loads they quoted prices higher than regular logistics operators such as DSV or Dachser. Basically trucking companies were willing to drive thousands of kilometers partially empty instead of filling up the truck by offering a competitive price. Literally it was cheaper for the shipper to contract DSV who dispatches one truck to bring the freight to a terminal, a second truck to do a terminal to terminal line haul and a third truck to make the last mile delivery. The risk of losing time by sending a big truck to pick up partial loads from unknown loading places pushed up the price.
U.S. auto industry faces 2004-style 'Triple Threat,' says Deutsche Bank
Garfield Reynolds:
This week's report about a stagnation in U.S. vehicle sales may be a sign that the auto industry is about to head back down the mountain at a rapid pace after a peak last year.
Deutsche Bank said March's weak sales, coming amid rising interest rates and a slide in used-vehicle prices, make for a potentially slippery outlook. Industrywide deliveries last month slowed to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 16.6 million vehicles, contradicting analyst expectations that the rate would accelerate to 17.2 million. Automakers set a record in the U.S. last year, with 17.6 million vehicles sold.
"Somewhat ominously, today's market increasingly resembles one we described in 'A Triple Threat' (Feb. 20, 2004)," Deutsche Bank analysts Rod Lache, Mike Levine and Robert Salmon wrote in a note on Tuesday. "In that report we highlighted the risks to the industry from rising rates, rising negative equity in vehicle loans and used vehicle-price deflation. This could lead to deteriorating affordability, delayed trade-in cycles, consumer shifts from new to used, diminishing credit availability and deteriorating mix/pricing."
A key concern is that fewer cars are being taken off the road — scrappage has declined to about 11 million a year from about 13 million to 14 million a decade ago. While net new drivers jumped to 4 million in 2015, that may not be enough. Total vehicles in the U.S. have increased to 270 million, from 249 million at the end of 2012.
"This has led us to question whether the U.S. is broadly oversupplied, and whether trend demand in the 17 million range is fundamentally supported," the analysts wrote. "If it is not, the oversupply should be self-correcting — the U.S. market will experience declining used-vehicle prices, pressuring new vehicle sales."
Bonds comprised of subprime auto loans were a bright spot for the securitization industry following the housing bust. In recent weeks, however, analysts and investors have been debating what impact rising delinquencies may have on the sector. "Credit performance for both prime and subprime auto loan ABS is expected to continue to deteriorate, although at a moderate pace," analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a report last week.
Deutsche Bank also noted the following:
• Used-vehicle price declines accelerated to 7.7 percent in February, from an average fall of 3.5 percent in the first nine months of 2016.
• Sales have bifurcated, with significant declines for passenger cars, while trucks hold at a 10 million-11 million a year pace
• Ford Motor Co. and General Motors may need to cut their car production again in the second quarter and add additional incentives to keep inventories manageable
• A few select market segments have a positive outlook, with pickup demand up 6 percent so far this year, and the analysts view American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. and Dana Inc. as "compelling" thanks to their exposure to the market segment.
• Delphi Automotive, BorgWarner Inc. and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. have a positive long-term outlook.
Brazil lawmakers vote to regulate Uber, other apps
Brazil's lower house of Congress voted on Tuesday to give cities greater power to regulate ride-hailing app Uber and other transportation apps, paving the way for local governments to charge taxes, require insurance and pension benefits for drivers.
In a symbolic vote, a majority of lawmakers approved the main text of the bill and voted on specific items that still need to be cleared in the Senate. One of the approved amendments would require cities to authorize Uber services.
That amendment, which makes ride-hailing services a public interest activity, could interrupt Uber services in cities that lack regulation, Daniel Coelho, one of the lawmakers in charge of drafting the legislation, told reporters after the vote.
Automated Driving Navigant Research
Navigant Research Leaderboard Report:
Automated vehicles are quickly nearing a level of maturity that will enable initial deployments for consumers. A large group of companies are actively developing complete automated driving systems and the components that go into those systems, including automotive OEMs, suppliers, non-automotive technology companies, and startups. Several of these companies entered this market recently but rapidly moved into contention through acquisitions, investments, and strategic hiring of key personnel. Others have been working on automated driving technology for decades.
This Navigant Research Leaderboard Report examines the strategy and execution of 18 leading companies developing automated driving systems. These players are rated on 10 criteria: vision; go-to market strategy; partners; production strategy; technology; sales, marketing, and distribution; product capability; product quality and reliability; product portfolio; and staying power. Using Navigant Research's proprietary Leaderboard methodology, companies are profiled, rated, and ranked with the goal of providing an objective assessment of their relative strengths and weaknesses in the global market for automated driving systems.
How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers' Buttons
Noam Schieber:
The secretive ride-hailing giant Uber rarely discusses internal matters in public. But in March, facing crises on multiple fronts, top officials convened a call for reporters to insist that Uber was changing its culture and would no longer tolerate "brilliant jerks."
Notably, the company also announced that it would fix its troubled relationship with drivers, who have complained for years about falling pay and arbitrary treatment.
"We've underinvested in the driver experience," a senior official said. "We are now re-examining everything we do in order to rebuild that love."
Naom Schriber:
And yet even as Uber talks up its determination to treat drivers more humanely, it is engaged in an extraordinary behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioral science to manipulate them in the service of its corporate growth — an effort whose dimensions became evident in interviews with several dozen current and former Uber officials, drivers and social scientists, as well as a review of behavioral research.
Uber's innovations reflect the changing ways companies are managing workers amid the rise of the freelance-based "gig economy." Its drivers are officially independent business owners rather than traditional employees with set schedules. This allows Uber to minimize labor costs, but means it cannot compel drivers to show up at a specific place and time. And this lack of control can wreak havoc on a service whose goal is to seamlessly transport passengers whenever and wherever they want.


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La pastinaca reticolata (Himantura uarnak ()) è un pesce cartilagineo della famiglia dei Dasiatidi.

Descrizione

Ha un corpo di forma romboidale, largo sino a 125 cm, con apice delle pinne pettorali arrotondato e una lunga coda a forma di frusta, 2,5-3,5 volte più lunga del corpo, dotata di un aculeo seghettato in prossimità della base. La superficie superiore del corpo è per lo più liscia, con una fila di piccoli tubercoli appiattiti che va dagli occhi alla base della coda.
Il colore della livrea è variabile in rapporto all'età e alla localizzazione geografica. Gli adulti hanno un pattern dorsale con un reticolo di macchie marrone scuro su uno sfondo che va dal beige al giallo-marrone, con bande più chiare sui lati. La parte ventrale è chiara. I giovani sono giallastri con piccole macchie scure.

Biologia
È una specie demersale che trascorre gran parte del tempo sui fondali, ricoperto dalla sabbia o dal fango.

Alimentazione
Si nutre di pesci, crostacei e molluschi.

Riproduzione
È una specie ovovivipara, che raggiunge la maturità sessuale verso i 4 anni di età. La gestazione dura circa un anno, al termine dei quali la femmina partorisce 3-5 piccoli di circa 20 cm di diametro.

Distribuzione e habitat
Questa specie è ampiamente distribuita in tutto l'Indo-Pacifico, dal Sudafrica al mar Rosso ad ovest, spingendosi a est attraverso il subcontinente indiano e il sud-est asiatico, sino a Taiwan e alle isole Ryukyu a nord, e alla Nuova Guinea e all'Australia settentrionale a sud. In epoca recente ha anche colonizzato, attraversando il canale di Suez, il Mediterraneo orientale (migrazione lessepsiana).

È una specie eurialina che spesso penetra negli estuari dei fiumi.

Note

Voci correlate
Specie lessepsiane

Altri progetti

Dasyatidae
Taxa classificati da Johann Friedrich Gmelin

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a news conference at the White House July 28, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
'Racist, Classist Garbage': Trump Brags to Suburbia About His Repeal of Housing Desegregation Rule
"This is blatant racism from the President of the United States," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "And it's disgusting."
In a pair of tweets one advocacy group denounced as "racist, classist garbage," President Donald Trump on Wednesday boasted that he is working to prevent construction of low-income housing in the suburbs by repealing an Obama-era rule aimed at combating persistent racial segregation in those communities.
"I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low-income housing built in your neighborhood," Trump tweeted. "Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!"
"Words can't quite capture how outrageous and racist this is. Trump and Ben Carson have worked hand in glove to obstruct and destroy decades of work to promote fair housing in our country."
—Kristen Clarke, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Trump was referring to the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, an addition to the 1968 Fair Housing Act that required cities and towns receiving federal funding to document and develop plans to redress racial housing segregation.
In 2018, Trump's Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson suspended the Obama-era rule. Last Thursday, HUD announced it is replacing the AFFH with a new regulatory framework (pdf) that would allow localities to monitor their own compliance with fair housing laws. The new rules are set to take effect next month.
"Words can't quite capture how outrageous and racist this is," Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in response to the president's tweets Wednesday. "Trump and Ben Carson have worked hand in glove to obstruct and destroy decades of work to promote fair housing in our country."
"On this latest move," Clarke added, "we will see the administration in court."
This is the president of the United States telling "all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream" that "crime will go down" because he's moved forward with gutting the Fair Housing Act & is rescinding a rule to help fight modern-day segregation.
It's white supremacy. https://t.co/c9hWEWeQCJ
— The Leadership Conference (@civilrightsorg) July 29, 2020
With the 2020 presidential election a mere three months away, critics like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) characterized Trump's tweets as the president's most recent racist dog whistle aimed at white suburban voters he believes would be comforted by such messaging.
The AFFH rule that Trump ripped up was about helping cities address our country's ugly legacy of government-backed housing discrimination and segregation.
This is blatant racism from the President of the United States. And it's disgusting. pic.twitter.com/5t7aKPBsS1
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 29, 2020
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll last month showed Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden 35% to 60% among suburban voters.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that "Trump and his campaign team, already concerned about his weakness in battleground states, have become increasingly alarmed by internal polling showing a softening of support among suburban voters, especially women without college degrees."
"The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article," Trump tweeted last week, linking to a New York Post column by right-wing commentator Betsy McCaughey. "Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!"
Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in a statement last week that Trump's rescission of the AFFH rule is an "abhorrent" attempt to "use a critical fair housing tool for election year race-baiting, particularly during a time of reckoning for racial injustices."
Amid 'Slow-Motion Coup,' Manchin and Sinema Help GOP Sink Voting Rights
"Ignore whatever spin comes from their press releases and media appearances in the aftermath of this debacle—history will not be kind to these enablers of racism and authoritarianism."
Jake Johnson · Jan 20, 2022

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Sixties Scoop survivor hopes federal settlement leads to healing
Raven Sinclair wants portion of money to go to counselling, healing retreats, culture camps
Raven Sinclair was taken from her mother at age four, along with her siblings. She hopes Friday's settlement helps fund ways to help people like her heal from their past trauma. (University of Regina)
A Saskatchewan survivor says the federal government's settlement with Indigenous survivors of the Sixties Scoop — the details of which are expected Friday morning — has provoked mixed reactions within herself.
Ottawa announces $800M settlement with Indigenous survivors of Sixties Scoop
"A small bit of money for a lifetime of change and turmoil and in some instances pretty extreme trauma — I don't know if the compensation really matches," said Raven Sinclair, now a professor of social work at the University of Regina.
"But it's at least an overture that they're making."
Ottawa to announce $800M settlement with Indigenous survivors of Sixties Scoop
Money expected for reconciliation
Multiple sources speaking on the condition of anonymity told CBC News on Thursday the settlement will include some $800 million in compensation, or between $25,000 and $50,000 for each claimant. Roughly $100 million will be dedicated to other reconciliation initiatives.
Carolyn Bennett, federal minister responsible for Crown-Aboriginal Relations and Northern Affairs, announced on Monday in addition to the $750 million earmarked for individual compensation, $50 million would be set aside for a foundation to provide aid and supports for Sixties Scoop survivors.
Another $75 million will be provided to cover legal fees accumulated over the years for the plaintiffs.
Conditions of the legal fees compensation, which is capped at $75 million, include the agreement that lawyers will not go back to the survivors to try and get more money out of them.
During the time period known as the Sixties Scoop, thousands of First Nations children were forced out of their homes and placed in non-Indigenous care between 1965 and 1984, which resulted in psychological harm that has dogged survivors into adulthood, according to an Ontario Supreme Court ruling.
Sixties Scoop settlement 'in the best interest of all class members': Lawyer
'Endless ways' to bring survivors together
Sinclair, a member of the George Gordon First Nation in southern Saskatchewan who was taken from her mother at age four, knows what she'd like the $10-million reconciliation portion to fund.
"I want to see adoptees have the opportunity to access healing programs, whether that's individual counselling, group counselling, healing retreats, culture camps," she said.
"There's endless ways that we can bring people together and help them to deal with past traumas and find more effective ways of living."
Montreal Sixties Scoop survivors critical of federal settlement
Placing a dollar amount on trauma
Nakuset said if she knew her language and culture, she could pass the teachings on to her own children. For now, they have Cree names and that's a start, she said. (CBC)
Nakuset, a Cree woman from La Ronge who was taken from her family at age three and adopted to a family in Montreal, told CBC Radio's The Morning Edition the ruling will mean different things to different people.
"What we learned from the residential school pay outs is that those that weren't able to sort of -- if they weren't able to receive the moneys, then the money disappeared quite quickly," she said. "It didn't really help."
Nakuset questions how a dollar amount can be placed on loss of culture, trauma and loss of familial connection.
Nakuset is the executive director of the Native Woman's Shelter of Montreal.
Sixties Scoop adoptee recounts growing up in Jewish Montreal family
For Nakuset, she said if she went back to her community, she doesn't think she would survive.
"I'm so urban — I don't speak the language. I don't know how to live off the land. I don't know how to fish. I don't know how to hunt. I don't know how to do beadwork; I don't know how to do any of the things I'm supposed to know how to do."
If she knew how to do those things, then the teachings could be passed on to her children. Nakuset's children have Cree names and that's a start for now, she said.
Apologies awaited
She's still waiting for an apology, one promised by Premier Brad Wall.
"To me an apology is a recognition of wrongdoing, and also ideally an apology is made because it's not going to happen again."
Indigenous leaders call on Justin Trudeau for redress on Sixties Scoop
Indigenous leaders have also called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to formally apologize for the wrongs of the Sixties Scoop.
Nakuset shared her story in the anthology STOLEN GENERATIONS. Use the seach bar on this blog.
Labels: 60s Scoop Nakuset's Story, Raven Sinclair
November is ADOPTION AWARENESS MONTH
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
Kenaitze to take services for Native children from...
Inviting Tribal Leaders from All the Tribes with C...
Rest in Peace Gord
Child Trafficking = Adoption
Treated like animals #60s Scoop
Evidence 1935 | Hopi Prisoners on the Rock
Judge rules in Sixties Scoop victims' favour
Marcia's Vision for the Path Forward
Sixties Scoop survivor hopes federal settlement le...
Canada to Pay Millions in Indigenous Lawsuit Over ...
Government to Announce Payout of $800M to Indigeno...


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Arsenal chasing perfect Europa League record as Group stage climaxes
Arsenal have won all their opening five Europa League games this season. (PHOTO/Courtesy)
Dundalk vs Arsenal
Aviva Stadium, Dublin
Thursday, 10-12-2020 @8:55pm
Ref: Ivan Bebek (CRO)
Usually the atmosphere before a match where an Irish football team faces an English team is very tense. That is not going to be the case this Thursday in Dublin where Dundalk welcomes Arsenal.
Hosts are without any chance to fight for Europa League playoffs, while the Gunners have 100% win rate and secured top position.
It's very realistic to see Mikel Arteta combine the starting lineup a lot and give some rest to key players for upcoming EPL battles.
Dundalk interim manager Filippo Giovagnoli will be unable to call upon the services of attacker Patrick Hoban, who is out with an injury. Other than that, there are no known issues.
Meanwhile, Arsenal will be without midfielder Thomas Partey and young Brazilian attacker Gabriel Martinelli, who are both nursing injuries. Veteran centre-back David Luiz is a doubt to feature.
Dundalk have failed to pose a threat to Arsenal in the 2nd round in match played in London. Gunners were confident and took an easy 3-0 win thanks to the goals of Nketiah, Willock and Pepe.
Irish champions have faced English teams five times in the past, lost four of the duels and only avoided loss once. It happened against Tottenham in 1981 (1-1 FT).
Leicester City vs AEK Athens
King Power Stadium, Leicestershire
Thursday, 10-12-2020 @11pm
Ref: Lawrence Visser (BEL)
Leicester was caught by surprise in the previous two EL clashes that they have ended up with a winless streak in that period, including a 1-0 loss on the road against Zorya last time out.
However, the Foxes have already qualified for the playoffs this season in the tournament.
Having won only one of their five appearances in the Europa League group fixtures this term, AEK Athens doesn't pose a huge threat to the home team.
They are on a two-game losing streak, following a 2-4 loss at home against Braga in the previous EL encounter.
Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers will be without the services of Portuguese right-back Ricardo Pereira, centre-back Caglar Soyuncu and Ghana international Daniel Amartey, who are all out injured. Belgian full-back Timothy Castagne is a doubt.
Meanwhile, AEK Athens have no known injury issues and manager Massimo Carrera is expected to have a fully-fit squad at his disposal.
Their previous encounter in 2020 EL gave a 1-2 away win for the Foxes. The host has not played against a club from their opponents' country. The visitor has lost their recent four meetings with any other English clubs. Athens has scored no goals in their last two EL clashes with other English teams.
Tottenham Hotspur vs Antwap
Ref: Jesus Gil (SPA)
These two teams have already ensured their progression to the knockouts, and now all that remains to be seen is which of the two will be adjudged as the group champions.
It's of importance, since the first-placed team will be allotted an easier opponent in the Round of 32.
Surprisingly, Spurs are placed second in the table, and need a win this Thursday to climb to the top, while Ivan Leko's men could secure the first place with a draw.
The hosts are the toppers of the most competitive league in Europe, while their counterparts come from the comparatively weaker Belgian top flight. Moreover, Spurs are also at home, and are managed by the legendary Jose Mourinho.
Tanguy Ndombele didn't feature against Arsenal on Sunday, and remains doubtful for this game. Erik Lamela is injured and will not feature. In addition, Joe Rodon is unavailable for the Europa League, having not been registered in the Tottenham Hotspur squad for the competition. Despite this being a top-of-the-table clash in Group J, Mourinho is unlikely to risk starting top regulars like Kane and Son in the midst of what is a busy period in the Premier League.
For Antwerp, midfielder Sander Coopman is ruled out with an injury.
The Belgians had won the reverse fixture, with a 1-0 scorecard at home. This has been the only h2h meeting till now. Mourinho's men were unbeaten in six of their previous ten overall match-ups against other Belgian rivals. Leko's men last won against any other English club back in 1975.
The other Europa League games on Thursday
-Young Boys vs CFR Cluj @8:55pm
-CSKA Sofia vs AS Roma @8:55pm
-Rapid Wein vs Molde @8:55pm
-Bayer Leverkusen vs Slavia Praha @8:55pm
-Hapoel Be'er Sheva vs Nice @8:55pm
-Standard Liege vs Benfica @8:55pm
-Lech Poznan vs Rangers @8:55pm
-PSV vs Omonia Nicosia @8:55pm
-PAOK vs Granada @8:55pm
-Napoli vs Real Sociedad @8:55pm
-Rijeka vs AZ Alkmaar @8:55pm
-Sporting Braga vs Zorya @11pm
-Celtiv vs Lille @11pm
-Sparta Praha vs AC Milan @11pm
-Maccabi Tel Aviv vs Sivasspor @11pm
-Villarreal vs Qarabag *postponed*
-Ludogorates vs LASK @11pm
-Dinamo Zagreb vs CSKA Moscow @11pm
-Wolfsberger vs Feyernoord @11pm
-Hoffenheim vs Gent @11pm
-Slovan Liberec vs Crvena Zvezda @11pm
Tags: AntwarparsenalDundalkeuropa leagueleicester citytopTottenham HotspurZorya


LCME has large land positions in Nevada (within 4km of Albemarle's Silver Peak Mine, which is the only producing lithium brine mine in North America). Lithium brine is the lowest cost and most direct method for producing high-value lithium carbonate with Nevada 1 of only 3 regions in the world with existing lithium production. The others are the "Lithium triangle" in South America (ie. Chile and Argentina) and China. Nevada offers the clearest pathway for new, high-value lithium brine production capacity.
The LCME assets have been secured by a geoscientific technical team with a proven track-record of discovering globally significant mining assets (eg. Olympic Dam, Cannington). The LCME Management team is led by Shanthar Pathmanathan, Damien Reynolds, Gordon Addie and Duncan Cornish. LCME's Board of Directors and Advisory Board members have strong credentials and networks which could facilitate unique access and profile for the Company in the global lithium industry and from a capital markets perspective.
27 Feb 2017 - Lithium Consolidated Mineral Exploration (ASX:LI3) Limited (ASX:LI3) CEO Shanthar Pathmanathan discusses the company's upcoming listing and projects.


One of the most stressful, confusing and frustrating things consultants have to grapple with is how to go about billing a client. Typically, you meet with them up front to get some details on what they're really looking for, then put together some sort of a proposal that includes a billing strategy or plan.
As the consultant, you want that plan to maximize the amount of money you can earn while not scaring off the client because of a high price. You also don't want to leave yourself exposed should the client decide to stop the work in midstream. That scenario can happen no matter how much money the client's already invested. It's all about money, so when their hopper is empty, so is yours.
You get paid for your actual work.
You can bill top dollar.
You have to track every hour that you work.
You may get asked to justify hours.
Decisions have to be made on billing for transportation time.
Client may frown on personal calls while you're on site because they feel like they're paying for them.
Client could refuse to pay for work you've already performed.
If you're used to set income, this may make you more comfortable.
If the client has little for you to do during a given billing period, your "calculated" hourly rate can be very high.
If the client doesn't have enough for you to do, they may feel like they're over-paying.
If you don't get paid, you don't have to do any work.
If work is slow, your calculated hourly rate will be very high.
You'll have to sell this concept to the client.
If there isn't enough work, the client may think they're not getting their money's worth.
I always try to go with Option #3 first. You'll be far less stressed when you have the cash already in hand for the work you're performing at the moment. But be prepared to have to persuade the client to go with this scenario, because there aren't many out there who'll readily want to pay in advance for work you haven't done yet, especially before there's any client-consultant trust or working relationship in place.
So how do you go about selling this particular scenario? Below are a few things you can do. It's worked well for me. I have about a 70 percent success rate in getting set retainers paid in advance.
Create a proposal showing both hourly billing and retainer rate (billing in advance).
Justify the hourly rate and show how the calculated retainer rate is based on a mutually beneficial "lower" rate.
If you get pushback, offer to bill the retainer bi-weekly, in the middle of the billing period. That means no one will be out more than one week's pay or work should the other party bail.
Here's an example of what I mean by that last statement is: Say you're offering to bill the client $2,000 every two weeks and you want to be paid in advance for the work. If the client resists, offer to stagger the billing by one week. That means they'll pay you in the middle of that two-week period for both weeks. You've given them one week's work on trust and they're paying you in advance for the next week's work on trust. This has worked well for me on two occasions where I was having trouble getting the client to agree to pay me up front.
Consulting can be stressful enough, especially if you're completely independent, and no one wants to put in a solid week's or month's worth of work only to a client refuse to pay some or all of your invoice. Also, if you're just starting out or have been without an assignment for a while, you probably really need the money and can't afford to wait two weeks or a month to get it.
Strategizing to get paid in advance will greatly reduce your stress level. Just be aware that you'll likely have to persuade the client every time, and you'll probably have to give them an aggressive rate to get to where you want to go. However, don't offer to work for less money than you're comfortable offering. Remember: your professional work has a lot of value. Don't sell yourself short.
Brad Egeland is a Business Solution Designer and IT/PM consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. Brad is married, a father of 9, and living in sunny Las Vegas, NV. Visit Brad's site at http://www.bradegeland.com/.


Join Peppe Cavalieri, Andrew Wilson, Cade Lucas and Gary Turner on Saturday and Sunday for all the latest results and news from around the grounds.
They will be broadcasting live from Avalon Airport Oval for the Division 3 Grand Final between Point Cook Centrals and the Wyndham Suns on Saturday and also the Division 2 Grand Final between the Yarraville Seddon Eagles and Point Cook on Sunday.
Coverage will begin from 1.30pm each day.
Also, tune into 88.9 WYN FM every Friday night between 5pm-6pm to listen to Friday Night Lights, the WRFL Preview Show with Peppe Cavalieri, Andrew Wilson. The duo will preview all the big games for the weekend, as well as have special guest interviews with coaches and players from across the league.
Click here to also listen to the broadcast online.


That's awesome that your best friend came to visit you and spend some time making you laugh... I get the feeling that she loved you very much and wants you to laugh more often.. !!
I both love it and hate it when those who have passed over come back to visit. I hate it, obviously, because they are gone from my touching them or hugging them.. Love it because it's a bit of validation that they still are here..
When my Brother Barry died, he was just 25.. He was swimming across the Meremac River with friends when he went under. While he was a strong swimmer, he was no match for the undertows that are common in this river.. For many months after he would come and visit me by 'turning on my microwave,' or 'turning my TV' on and off while no one was in there.. Turning the volume up when the kids were in bed.. At first it kind of freaked me out but later it made me smile. I had the electricity checked and the mother board replaced on my microwave.. It still happened.. Phone calls came in with no one on the line.. just static..
Sometimes I smell them.. I smell my grandmothers house in North Carolina that we used to spend summers at.. I smell my Dad's Cherry/whiskey cigarettes that he smoked occasionally (no one around here smokes).. Rarely, I feel them as the softest touch upon my hair or a cool breeze when no windows or doors are open.. (and the AC/heat is not blowing..) Other things too but these are the most obvious ..
: Her sentience is paramount.
: REMEMBER THE GRINCH WHOSE HEART GREW THREE SIZES THAT DAY!!


Despite muslim's desire to think that the quran was handed down physically written from Allah's or Muhammad's hand. It just is not so. And the Hadiths record how the quran was handed down. It was written down by from the memory of Muhammad's companions decades after Muhammad himself had already passed away. And what is worse, is that one of those companions verfied that part of a specific quran had lost over 120 verses. Even Aisha mentions that a page of the Quran was forever lost at the death of Muhammad when a SHEEP/GOAT wandered into the tent and ATE THE PAGE.
There was not a single manuscript in which the Mohammed had collected all the of the Quran, all were memorized by his companions.
After this copy edited and completed all other copies of the Quran was DESTROYED.
Gabriel recited the Quran 7 different ways!! Which of the one is contained in the 4 versions of the modern quran?
Allah's Apostle confirmed both different recitations were from Allah and taught by him.
Muhammad said "This Qur'an has been revealed to be recited in SEVEN DIFFERENT WAYS, so recite of it whichever (way) is easier for you (or read as much of it as may be easy for you)."
Uthman caliphate 644-656 decided on a NEW collection due to disputes among his ranks over the correct reading.
Early was written in a scripta defectiva not pointed and not signed which make distinguishing letters difficult.
The claim that quran wasn't altered couldn't be further from the truth! It shows the ignorance of its holders, of the hadiths & the history of the quran. The hadiths also show very clearly that the QURAN WAS EDITED and UPDATED several times with all other (Gabriel and Allah revealed versions) being destroyed in the process. This also means it can be done again today by unquranic "peaceful" muslims to DROP /CHANGE all the violent verses out of the quran that offend their sensiblities and does not conform with social civilities of the 21st century.
Shouldn't his words be timeless and without factual errors?
Shouldn't his words be unmistakable by all in all languages?
Why was he unable to protect his perfect words from even a simple sheep eating a page of it?
With the quran so full of mistakes it is obvious to any reasonable person that it can no be written by a perfect god that knows everything.
Wouldn't you rather put your faith in a book that is clearly timeless, without factual errors, morally correct, unmistakable in all languages including your own, and gives us a clear and simple means of salvation [Through the only Messiah and Savior Jesus son of Mary, whom the quran even calls the Messiah]? What book might that be, you wonder? This is the Bible, preserved word for word, verified by the 2200yr old Dead Sea Scrolls and by over 5000 copies made around 70AD to be unchanged, confirmed by science and archaeology and history.
This Bible says the only way to salvation is by BELIEVING upon this Messiah and his death to pay for the penalty of all our sins. Muhammad can't do it. In fact Muhammad didn't even know if he was saved. But the Bible says we can know we are saved and going to Heaven if we trust in Jesus alone for our salvation as the only son of God. No amount of praying, no amount alms, no amount of money or anything can get you this free gift of salvation. It can only be received by believing and asking Jesus to forgive you all your sins as your own personal savior. Won't you do it today by praying this prayer and meaning it. God can see your heart and know if you mean it.


Did Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science really revolutionize scientific inquiry?
There are no lists that include "Math Mutation 166 A New Kind of Decade". You can add this episode to a new or existing list.


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Purgation
Purgation synonyms
pûr-gā'shən
(Physiology) Discharge of waste materials from the excretory passages of the body, especially from the bowels.
The act or an instance of purifying, often, specif., of ritual or religious purifying
(Logic) The act of obtaining by separation, or as the result of eliminating; deduction.
The elimination by an organism of waste products that result from metabolic processes. In plants, waste is minimal and is eliminated primarily by diffusion to the outside environment. Animals have specific organs of excretion. In vertebrates, the kidney filters blood, conserving water and producing urea and other waste products in the form of urine. The urine is then passed through the ureters to the bladder and discharged through the urethra. The skin and lungs, which eliminate carbon dioxide, are also excretory organs.
The therapeutic result of this process; abreaction.
clean (related)
Removal of dirt.
religion (related)
The life or condition of a person in a religious order:
keep (related)
(Historical) The main tower of a castle or fortress, located within the castle walls. (According to keep, the word comes "from the Middle English term kype, meaning basket or cask, and was a term applied to the shell keep at Guînes, said to resemble a barrel".)
The act or process of purging:
(Medicine) vomiting
katharsis
mortification (related)
penitence (related)
repentance (related)
lustration
(Politics, law) The restoration of credibility to a government by the purging of perpetrators of crimes committed under an earlier regime.
Find another word for purgation. In this page you can discover 15 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for purgation, like: evacuation, purification, elimination, excretion, catharsis, clean, religion, keep, purge, purging and katharsis.
Purgation Sentence Examples
At the instance of Gondremark, it had undergone a strict purgation, and was now composed exclusively of tools.
But music has also other ends and uses, and on the whole four; namely amusement, virtue, occupation and purgation of the affections; for some men are liable more than others to pity and fear and enthusiasm, but from sacred melodies we see them, when they have heard those which act orgiastically on the soul, becoming settled by a kind of medicine and purgation (teapo - cs), and being relieved with pleasure.
Both sleeplessness and pain are sometimes due to the action of toxins absorbed from the intestine, and both of them may High sometimes be relieved more efficiently by thorough purgation than by narcotics.
Treatment of a large acute overdose should include gastric lavage, purgation with magnesium sulfate and complete bed rest.
Why, then, would we expect this final purgation to be painless and easy?
Words that mention purgation in the Dictionary
jalap
Words near purgation in the Thesaurus
pureed
pureness
purer
purest
purgatorial


More than a dozen police units were sent to the Sommerville address just before 10:30 a.m Thursday, according to call records.
One man was found dead on property "filled with miscellaneous items," according to the medical examiner's website.
The victim was later identified as William Prygon, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner's website. A hometown was not listed for Prygon.
Prygon died from multiple gunshot wounds and his death was a homicide, according to a ruling by officials at the medical examiner's office.
At the time, the suspected shooter was described as a woman with blond hair and large teeth. Police said the suspect was believed to have been a friend or possibly related to the victim.
That suspect was later identified as Catrina Guy.
Guy was in the Tarrant County Jail on Tuesday in lieu of $75,000 bail.


The Commonwealth Games Federation's Coordination Commission has spent the past three days in Delhi, evaluating preparations for the Commonwealth Games that get underway in the Indian capital on October 3rd next year.
The Coordination Commission, chaired by CGF Honorary Treasurer, Austin Sealy from Barbados, received detailed presentations from a range of key functional areas, including accreditation, village operations, security, technology, transport and venue operations. Mr. Sealy also undertook visits to all competition venues.
The Commission also received reports from the various venue construction agencies on the progress of competition venues, the athletes' village, and other Games' infrastructure projects.
The Coordination Commission was expanded by three members for this visit, its sixth to Delhi, to provide direct representation to the CGF member associations, those responsible for bringing the athletes of the Commonwealth to the Games.
The additional members are: Perry Crosswhite, Chief Executive of the Australian Commonwealth Games Association; Chris Jenkins, Chief Executive of the Commonwealth Games Council of Wales, and; Gideon Sam, President of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee.
Other members of the commission are CGF Vice-President Bruce Robinson (Canada), CGF legal advisor Sharad Rao (Kenya), and CGF Chief Executive Mike Hooper.
The Coordination Commission will now report to the CGF and the Organising Committee (OC). The CGF President, Mr. Michael Fennell, will be arriving in Delhi on Friday to have discussions with the key members of the OC on the critical issues that have been identified by the Commission.
Mr. Sealy said that he was pleased to note that there had been clear progress in a number of areas since September.
"We received detailed reports from the Organising Committee across key areas where we had previously identified delivery risks. These reports show an increased awareness of the work that must be undertaken," Mr Sealy said.
Mr Sealy noted the Commission was concerned that the timetable for venue completion has, in most cases, been extended by at least three months since the September forecast, and, in some cases, it seems venues will not be handed over to the OC until June.
"We urge the construction agencies to ensure that no further delays are encountered as this will place the OC in a difficult position and compromise final preparations and Games readiness," Mr. Sealy said.
The CGF President will brief the media before departing India on Sunday, December 20th.


Int J Sports Med. 2010 Nov;31(11):761-7. doi: 10.1055/s-0030-1263117. Epub 2010 Nov 5.
Menopause: highlighting the effects of resistance training.
Leite RD1, Prestes J, Pereira GB, Shiguemoto GE, Perez SE.
The increase in lifespan and in the proportion of elderly women has increased the focus on menopause induced physiological alterations. These modifications are associated with the elevated risk of several pathologies such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, non-alcoholic fat liver disease, among others. Because of estrogen levels decline, many tissue and organs (muscular, bone, adipose tissue and liver) are affected. Additionally, body composition suffers important modifications. In this sense, there is a growing body of concern in understanding the physiological mechanisms involved and establishing strategies to prevent and reverse the effects of menopause. The hormone reposition therapy, diet and physical exercise have been recommended. Among the diverse exercise modalities, resistance training is not commonly used as a therapeutic intervention in the treatment of menopause. Thus, the aim of this review was to analyze the physiological alterations on several organs and systems induced by menopause and ovariectomy (experimental model to reproduce menopause), as well as, to study the effects of resistance training in preventing and reverting these modifications. In conclusion, resistance training promotes beneficial effects on several organs and systems, mainly, on muscular, bone and adipose tissue, allowing for a better quality of life in this population.