text:
British theatre's most influential person – Architect Steve Tompkins: "We have to think in terms of maximising theatrical affect while minimising resource and energy use, in construction. All bets are off otherwise – so how do theatres show the way?"
The prolific architect was named most influential person in British theatre but the world is in the grip of a climate emergency – and he says we all have to act.
Whenever there's an announcement about an exciting UK Theatre building being built, redeveloped or revamped – whether it is the £45 million renovation of Grade I listed Theatre Royal Drury Lane , a pop-up community theatre in Manchester or a new commercial London venue with flexible auditorium- it's a fair bet that architect Steve Tompkins and his team are involved.
In the past two decades or so, Haworth Tompkins has been responsible a number of high-profile theatre building projects including the Royal Court, the Young Vic, the Bush, and Chichester Festival Theatre. Tompkins celebrated work has also included the recent £13m rescue of Battersea Arts Centre's Grand Hall, which was partially destroyed in a fire, and the 2,135m £25 million refurbishment of Bristol Old Vic, one of Europe's oldest theatres.
Bristol Old Vic Front of House
When I meet Tompkins, 59, he had just flown back from America.
"Well," he begins, "I got back from the States 24 hours ago, so I am in a slightly heightened state, 100% Jet-lagged. We have a new job there, the first project in our studio that involves some flying, so we're working out how to approach that."
"There are two dozen projects on the book at any one time in the studio, ranging from a 1600 seat lyric house to a demountable 200 seat auditorium which can be carried from location to location – by the audience," Tompkins tells me.
Steve Tompkins
Earlier this year, Tompkins was named the most influential person in British Theatre, in the annual 100-strong power list, published by The Stage. Tompkins, who placed 23rd in last year's edition, came in above prolific figures including producer Sonia Friedman and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Where was he when he got the news? "I was in the Lake District for New Year and I was running on the hills and got home to this email with a full-page mugshot," recalls Tompkins.
And it felt like a huge thing? "I suppose it is a huge thing if you want it to be a huge thing," he says, finding a sigh and a smile. "Last year was good with Vicky (Featherstone) – saying we are going to situate you in this spot because it allows us to talk about something arguably more interesting than the usual suspects producing fantastic shows – as they always have and they always will. I think it is interesting to adjust the levers – so that the odd outlier can come through on the rails. Choosing me, representing Haworth Tompkins, meant we can talk about the importance of theatre hardware. I got many lovely messages from friends who are theatre designers and makers saying – fantastic – this feels like it is on behalf of all of us."
He adds: "We've been trying to emphasise collective authorship, so in that sense the personalisation of the Stage thing was a setback but this is on behalf of the whole organisation and the studio gets good acknowledgement and profile."
Reflecting on the studio's journey and the collective endeavour, Tompkins says: "I started the studio with my partner Graham Haworth – we did all the early thinking about what the studio should be about – then Roger Watts (Tompkins' long term collaborator and now co-director) and I took the theatre thinking forward and now we have a team of two dozen people in the performance design group– all of whom are really knowledgeable, technically far more knowledgeable than I am – and who are now building their own client relationships and running their own teams. It is high time that it is seen as not just me because it never was about just me."
Tompkins' first major theatre project was the transformation of the Royal Court in London. Even more remarkable considering his background was in social housing. His first theatre job, though, amuses him. "We got the job in 1995 and it opened in 2000. In 1995 we were a couple of early 30's gobshites who had never done a theatre," he laughs drily.
"We introduced ourselves to Iain Macintosh at Theatre Projects; a great theatre guru and hugely knowledgeable– one of the first books about theatre that I read was Iain's Architecture Actor and Audience. It is the perfect introduction to the field. Again, it is symptomatic of the state the world was in in 1995 – the lottery was starting up – at that time Iain could envisage suggesting an inexperienced architect for the shortlist as a wild card to see what happened. Today that would be seens as too risky, meaning younger practices get less of an opportunity to break through."
The 59-year-old smiles at the memory. "We were interviewed on stage at the Royal Court and I guess we were just enthusiastic because we got the gig."
Liverpool Everyman
Fast forward a decade, Tompkins had won the 2014 Stirling prize for the innovative £27m redesign of the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse – his first theatre built from scratch. Director Gemma Bodinetz believes it is Tompkins' love of theatre-making that makes him so unique. "Steve and his team are wonderful because they understand the art form, how it works and they love theatre; they understand magic," says Bodinetz, who runs the Everyman.
"We were his first all-purpose new build; a complete new build and when you walked into it you felt that it was completely loved. He has a fantastic way of creating democratic theatrical spaces with pure soul and that is what theatre is truly about. Because of an erratic funding landscape – we worked together for 10 years on this Capital project and every so often the process would have to stop."
"A lesser man and architect would have dropped us," she says. "Months at a time the project was frozen. We kept moving the design forward even when we were in this wobbly place – he and his team gave us his complete backing and unwavering belief. When I stopped working with Steve and his team it felt like a bereavement. He is so much more than an architect."
Recently, though, Liverpool Everyman crashed out of Arts Council England (ACE)'s National Portfolio for the 2018-22 period, after a disastrous but acclaimed experiment with a repertory company of actors that pushed it into serious financial trouble. Increasingly theatres are running to stand still. Government cuts and those by local authorities mean that many regional theatre's futures are at risk. "I have watched a brilliant director like Gemma do impeccable work with real courage and creative vision," says Tompkins.
Years of austerity cuts and the national state of Brexit uncertainty make it particularly hard for arts organisations to take risks. Does he think that Capital projects are vital to secure regional theatre's past for its long-term future? "It's a really complex question." He considers it carefully. "The situations are all so different, aren't they? Liverpool Everyman is a building which has garnered a lot of public praise and yet still, still it is really difficult for her and her team to generate financial steerage," he says. "All the recent travails that Gemma and her team have gone through, you think, God, what more can you do, actually. Her commitment to Liverpool is unimpeachable, and so if somebody like her is struggling to find the sweet spot, then it suggests to me that something is fundamentally broken in the funding system."
"I do not know what the long-term answer is but it helps to have a building to that is on your side in terms of theatrical possibility, running costs and capacity to supplement revenue income."
Battersea Arts Centre Grand Hall 3D model
On the subject of saying no to prospective collaborations, "It's not hard," he says quickly. "It's about self-protection and respect for your team. You have to take a hard line on what your capacity is at any given time. In a way it is a self-fulfilling issue, and we have occasionally got it wrong – in both directions. After the Royal Court, we had no work for a year because naively we had put all our creative capital into getting the thing open."
"Brexit is going to be disruptive," he adds, voice trailing off.
Of the many challenges facing society in 2019, the first and most overarching is the one so essential to the future of civilisation itself: the climate emergency . We touch on politics, but you can glean his beliefs from his Twitter feed: pro-European, and climate-change activist. "The international – the debate around the climate and bio-diversity emergencies are taking a huge amount of my headspace – we have to be the exemplars," he says, and he looks genuinely pensive. "All bets are off otherwise – so how do theatres show the way?"
Haworth Tompkins principle aim is to make buildings they design accessible to everyone. "The listed status of many theatre buildings means that many are still trying to get around the problem of providing adequate access to disabled theatregoers," he says.
Theatre Royal Drury Lane Designs
Certainly, relaxed performances are offered at many theatres – these aim to provide performances for those in the autistic spectrum and those with sensory and communication disorders. But progress is slow with many physically disabled audiences still miss out. "A lot of theatre hides behind the fact it is working it of historic spaces and if it doesn't affect the bottom line it feels like it is not a priority," he adds, quickly. "It is absolutely true and less the case in publicly subsidised buildings – we need to get off our asses and get on with it – none of it is that difficult – even at Drury Lane we have managed to make that accessible on all levels – most of those barriers are easy to take down if it's made a priority and the proper resources get committed."
Would he say that success fundamentally depends on client relationships? "Absolutely," he nods. "All projects completely rely on the strength of the relationship between architect and client," Tompkins says. "Nick Starr has been an incredibly important person in our studio's creative life – not just, because we have done so many projects together –now The Bridge and the next one for the London Theatre Company. Roger has the same thing – you have a telepathy and common set of references, which means you, can move very quickly."
The Bridge Theatre foyer, London
Starr's affection and admiration for Tompkins is mutual. "Steve is a genius. Truly. I can feel his respect for Dennis Lasdun – it is very distinguished architecture – the quality of materials, the scale," says Nick Starr who ran the National Theatre for 12 years, collaborated with Haworth Tompkins on London's Bridge Theatre and is currently working with Haworth Tompkins to open a new 600-seat venue in King's Cross in 2021.
"Steve can draw in three dimensions upside down," reveals Starr. "So, when we were looking at a future project – and he is sat opposite you – Steve can take a point and expand. And then you realise he's drawing it so that they are the right way up for you – so that's quite interesting – the hand-eye paper co-ordination allows those early discussions in which the problem solving and creativity is right in front of you."
Architect Denys Lasdun's Royal National Theatre – one of London's best-known and most contentious Brutalist buildings – is a layered concrete landscape that Prince Charles once described as being like "a nuclear power station." I ask Tompkins why he thinks the National's architecture is so divisive. "The more we got to know the detail of the National the more awe and respect we had for the designers," he says. "Of course, the building is flawed in so many ways – it's also kind of magnificent –and it will continue to be magnificent. It had a really difficult birth- it opened to austerity and a loss of nerve around modernism and the classical as opposed to the picturesque."
Asked about the controversial National Theatre's 'no laptop' foyer policy during peak times, Steve's answer is: "I think there is a logic in asking people to vacate the foyers before shows. In one sense, you think its public funding and a democratic space I have a perfect right to be here," he says reasonably.
"I can also understand from the point of an organisation that the publicly funded mission is to host 3 shows and make sure the audiences are having a good time for the price of their ticket," he continues. "If it's impossible to get a seat then that can't be right either – in defence of the National – and I'm not their spokesperson – I think its joyful for them to have the foyers full of people doing their thing and hanging out – it's the same "problem" that the Young Vic foyer has – you come to the show and there's already 300 passers by having a ball in there – if you try to make a foyer that people will find convivial then you can't complain when people find it convivial – I guess there is a civilised conversation to have there– I think it will find its balance – I'm an optimist."
The narrowing of the state school curriculum, squeezing out arts subjects in favour of the more traditional and academic is also a threat to culture for all. For example, young people living in the country's most deprived areas, and those with lower than average attainment levels, are the most likely to miss out on studying creative subjects. "It is about opportunity," he says decisively. "Culture is under threat in so many ways and the government's lack of concentration on arts education is another symptom of a wider malaise. Everyone should have the opportunity to experience and participate in the performing arts early in their lives and its not happening."
"In a way the lack of concentration on arts education is yet another symptom of that more general and tendency – the only thing that will motivate the government – it is about opportunities it and a start in life that you may not have," he says, shaking his head.
An artist's impression of the Theatr Clwyd redevelopmen
Anyway, as if Tompkins and his team aren't busy enough currently the studio is working on a 180-seat pop-up theatre for Manchester Royal Exchange's community outreach work has been announced, complete with canvas roof and cardboard seats. The mobile space will tour disadvantaged areas of Greater Manchester and will be "very low carbon and super-lightweight". Hayworth Tompkins and Theatr Clwyd has also just begun an extensive public consultation on their multi-million-pound redevelopment designed by Haworth Tompkins which will see the 43-year-old north Wales venue future-proofed.
"Theatre Clwyd will be interesting," Tompkins says, "there is a fantastic artistic team with Tamara (Harvey) and Liam (Evans-Ford) making all sorts of waves and leading the way; brave as you like. There is a strong sense of continuity at Clwyd both in term of affection for this friendly giant of a building and in terms of a buy-in for what that team is doing."
"We like to think of us as having accompanied a building for a few years of its life, either from birth or later on. The building will be there after us, as will the organisation. So, I do think architects can have a false idea of their capacity to stop time – we like to think that when we leave the building it will be complete and all will be frozen at that moment. You can acquire more modesty if you imagine yourself entering the life of the building and working with it –working with it and leave it in a healthier state than when you found it. Our approach entirely is instinctive and collegiate and democratic – that's where we feel our power is."
Most significantly, the devastating impacts of global climate change and the part he plays, of all the wide-ranging topics that we discuss is one we keep returning to. Tompkins is instinctively conscientious. "We need to work out what our most positive cause of action is," he says. "That is the overarching project of this studio and should be of anybody's work. Architects actually do have clear possibility of affecting positive change; construction accounts for nearly 40% of energy-based carbon we produce."
Steve Tompkins and Carl
We really covered a lot. So much that the office ceiling could have fallen in and we wouldn't have noticed. It is clear that business as usual is not an option and in the context of social cohesion and the nature of modern society – Tompkins and his team are working through theatre towards something – impressionistic – and bigger than theatre itself.
And there is no doubting his purpose. "If we – as makers – can devise in-roads into the climate emergency that then we can have a direct effect and we don't need to feel helpless."
August 5, 2019 /by Theatre M
Tags: #HaworthTompkins, #LiverpoolEveryman, #royalcourt, #SteveTompkins, #StirlingPrize, #TheatrClywd, #TheatreRoyalDruryLane
https://www.mrcarlwoodward.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FEATURED-IMAGE-AND-IMAGE-2-Steve-Tompkins.jpg 455 700 Theatre M https://www.shwetas11.sg-host.com//wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Copy-of-Carl-Woodward-2-300x66.png Theatre M2019-08-05 04:18:142019-08-06 04:48:30British theatre's most influential person – Architect Steve Tompkins: "We have to think in terms of maximising theatrical affect while minimising resource and energy use, in construction. All bets are off otherwise – so how do theatres show the way?"
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Playwright Brad Birch talks about dealing with rejection, Brexit, En Folkfiende, learning on the job and more.
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We have compiled a list of common questions that folks have asked over the years, plus a list of corrections for Mac's book Featherweight Boatbuilding if you own one of the first editions. If you do not find your question or answer below, please drop us a note by clicking here.
Q: Some of the measurements are off a little in Featherweight Boatbuilding, what are the correct measurements?
Page 87: the length of building board as shown should be Ten foot Seven and one quarter inches. Actually it can be any length, the mold spacing is the only important item here. I often set up a wee lassie on a building board originally made for a much longer canoe. The overhang on each end makes it a little easier in placing the outer stem.
Page 88: Mold #2 – at nine inches it should be 13 3/8″.
The main thing is to fair your points, we use very close spacing on the measurements for just that reason. In a normal table of offsets your points would be three or four inches apart, and mistakes might not be obvious.
Q: Just how thick should the stem be?
A: Five or six 1/8″ thick strips compose the inner stem (more or less-whatever will bend comfortably) . This is mounted to the stem mold with masking tape in between otherwise the boat will never come off the mold!
Q: How long should the building board be?
A: It is really not significant exactly how long or short it is (how far out it sticks beyond the boat.) It is good to have it stick out as far as the stem to put a clamp on it to hold the end of the strips down. Later when you are sanding you may wish it was a bit shorter… Featherweight Boatbuilding shows a reasonable length. To lay up the molds start in the middle and work out both ways using the station locations from the plans.
Q: I ordered the plans for the Wee Lassie 2 from you and I have a question about the spacing on the forms. For the bow section the spacing is clearly 13″ but the stern section is 12″ on the plans. I'm not clear what the exact measurement is. Can you please enlighten me what spacing you use. I'm setting the forms on the strongback and want to get it right.
A: The Wee Lassie 2 is not symmetrical. The dimensions shown (and described in the email question) are correct.
We have posted some videos shot by Dale Andrews while he was taking a class taught by Mac. These may help to visualize some of the common questions that come up during a build. Click here to watch the videos!


Карачаево-Черкесия. Черкесск карта. Продажа бу сельхозтехники в карачаево черкесии. Автобусы карачаево черкесия.
гостиница WANDA 3* superior tourist Местонахождение: Пригород Адрес: ARMII KRAJOWEJ 15, PL-30150 KRAKOW, POLAND, Телефон: 48-12-6371677, Факс: 48-12-6378518 Количество комнат: 80 Скидки детям: с 5 по 12 лет. Баров: 1 Банкетных залов: 2 Обслуживание: c 700 до 2359 Описание: Расположение SUBURBS 16 km to the nearest airport: KRK 5 km to the nearest station: KRAKOW-GLOWNY 1 minute walk to nearest bus stop. 10 km to the nearest fair site: EXPO-CENTRE Дополнительная информация LOCATION The Wanda stands right next door to the `Continental` hotel, close to the main highway leading into the centre of Krakow. The surrounding area is quiet and very green and it is only 10 min drive to the historical city centre. ROOMS Bedrooms are standard sized and all on the ground floor. Some overlook the garden behind and others have a not so pleasant view of the car park. Rooms are in a fair condition and are decorated in an old-fashioned style with basic dark wood furniture and patterned furnishings. They are all medium-sized. Bathrooms are small, and could do with modernisation. RESTAURANT The restaurant is very large and in the evenings a folkshore show is organised for the dinner guests. EXTERIOR A low one-storey modern building in the `motel` style favoured by hotels along the highway. LOBBY The lobby is medium-sized and a little dark with a small shop and a central seating area for guests to relax on. From the main reception area all the corridors to the rooms lead off, as well as the restaurant and bar. GENERAL Although the decor is old-fashioned, the lively atmosphere and excellent cuisine make up for the lack of elegance in the surroundings. 05 august 1999 Заметки SINGLE CLOSE TO RACK.


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Jan Robinson
PhD Graduate
jan.robinson@my.jcu.edu.au
Jan left the UK on a short expedition almost 15 years ago and still hasn't found his way back. This may have something to do with the fact that beer tastes better in warm climates. Having completed a BSc in Marine Biology at University College of Swansea, Wales, and then a master's degree in Applied Marine Science at the University of Plymouth, Jan joined the Royal Geographical Society Shoals of Capricorn programme and went to Seychelles. The allure of tropical seas proved irresistible and he went on to become the manager of the Fisheries Research Unit of the Seychelles Fishing Authority (SFA). In 10-years working at SFA, Jan developed research interests focusing on a broad spectrum of tropical fish, ranging from rabbitfish to tunas. His research included studies on the effects of fishing on reef fish spawning aggregations, the impacts of climate change on small-island developing state economies, and the effects of coral bleaching on reef fisheries. He also held numerous responsibilities with regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) and is currently vice-chair of the Scientific Committee of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC). Jan joined ARC CoE to study for a PhD in April 2012. Under the wise guidance of Nick Graham, Josh Cinner and Glenn Almany, Jan will be focusing on how the social behaviour of reef fish influences their vulnerability to fishing.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Deep Signal Recovery with One-Bit Quantization
by Shahin Khobahi, et al.
Machine learning, and more specifically deep learning, have shown remarkable performance in sensing, communications, and inference. In this paper, we consider the application of the deep unfolding technique in the problem of signal reconstruction from its one-bit noisy measurements. Namely, we propose a model-based machine learning method and unfold the iterations of an inference optimization algorithm into the layers of a deep neural network for one-bit signal recovery. The resulting network, which we refer to as DeepRec, can efficiently handle the recovery of high-dimensional signals from acquired one-bit noisy measurements. The proposed method results in an improvement in accuracy and computational efficiency with respect to the original framework as shown through numerical analysis.
Shahin Khobahi
Naveed Naimipour
Mojtaba Soltanalian
Yonina C. Eldar
Signal Recovery From 1-Bit Quantized Noisy Samples via Adaptive Thresholding
In this paper, we consider the problem of signal recovery from 1-bit noi...
Shahin Khobahi, et al. ∙
LoRD-Net: Unfolded Deep Detection Network with Low-Resolution Receivers
The need to recover high-dimensional signals from their noisy low-resolu...
Deep Coupled-Representation Learning for Sparse Linear Inverse Problems with Side Information
In linear inverse problems, the goal is to recover a target signal from ...
Evaggelia Tsiligianni, et al. ∙
Model-Aware Deep Architectures for One-Bit Compressive Variational Autoencoding
Parameterized mathematical models play a central role in understanding a...
Deep One-bit Compressive Autoencoding
Impact of Bit Allocation Strategies on Machine Learning Performance in Rate Limited Systems
Intelligent entities such as self-driving vehicles, with their data bein...
Afsaneh Gharouni, et al. ∙
Onsager-corrected deep learning for sparse linear inverse problems
Deep learning has gained great popularity due to its widespread success ...
Mark Borgerding, et al. ∙
Quantization of signals of interest is an integral part of all modern digital signal processing applications such as sensing, communication, and inference. In an ideal hardware implementation of a quantization system, a high-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with b-bit resolution and sampling frequency of fs samples the original analog signal and maps the obtained samples into a discrete state space of size 2bfs. Generally, a large number of bits is required to obtain an accurate digital representation of the analog signal. In such a case, the quantization process has negligible impact on the performance of algorithms which were typically developed on the assumptions of infinite precision samples, and thus, the high-resolution (in terms of amplitude) quantization process can be directly modeled as an additive noise source. However, a crucial obstacle with modern ADCs is that their power consumption, manufacturing cost, and chip area grows exponentially with their resolution b [1, 2, 3] .
The required high sampling data rate of ADCs used in next generataion communications systems is another obstacle that must be tackled in such applications. For instance, the promising millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) communication technology requires a very large bandwidth, and the corresponding sampling rate of the ADCs must increase accordingly. However, manufacturing ADCs with high-resolution (e.g., more than 8 bits) and high sampling rate are extremely costly and may not be available. Moreover, in other applications such as spectral sensing and cognitive radio, which require extremely high sampling rates, the cumulative cost and power consumption of using high-resolution and extremely fast ADCs are typically prohibitive and impractical. Hence, when signals across a wide frequency band are of interest, a fundamental trade-off between sampling rate, amplitude quantization precision, cost, and power consumption is encountered. An immediate solution to such challenges is to use low-resolution, and specifically one-bit, ADCs. The use of one-bit signed measurements, and more specifically one-bit ADCs, allows for an extremely high sampling rate at a low cost and low power consumption. From a sampling viewpoint, the most extreme case of quantization is to use only one bit per sample. More precisely, one-bit sampling can be seen as a process through which we repeatedly compare the amplitude of a signal (at each sample) to some reference threshold level and use only one bit to convey whether the signal amplitude resides above or below that threshold. Due to its appealing sampling properties, the problem of recovering a signal from its one-bit measurements has attracted a great deal of interest over the past few years [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] . Therefore, it is vital to develop algorithms that can deal with low-resolution samples for different applications.
The fields of machine learning (ML), and more particularly deep learning, are impacting various fields of engineering and have recently attracted a great deal of attention in tackling long-standing signal processing problems. The advent of low-cost specialized powerful computing resources (e.g., GPUs, and more recently TPUs) and the continually increasing amount of massive data generated by the human population and machines, in conjunction with the new optimization and learning methods, have paved the way for deep neural networks (DNNs) and machine learning-based models to prove their effectiveness in many engineering areas (see, e.g., [9, 10, 11] and the references therein).
The main advantage of the deep learning-based model herein is that it employs several non-linear transformations to obtain an abstract representation of the underlying data. Model-based machine learning frameworks (e.g., probabilistic graphical models) incorporate prior knowledge of the system parameters into the inference process. A recent promising approach in bridging the gap between deep learning-based and model-based methods is the paradigm of
deep unfolding [12] . Particularly, iterations of a conventional recursive algorithm, such as fast iterative soft thresholding algorithm (FISTA), projected gradient descent, and approximate message passing (AMP), can be used as a baseline to design the architecture of a deep network with trainable parameters specifically customized to the problem of interest. Such a methodology results in an improvement in accuracy, and computational efficiency of the original framework. The deep unfolding method has already shown remarkable performance improvement in a wide range of applications such as MIMO communications [13, 14] , multi-channel source separation [15] , and sparse inverse problems [16, 17] .
In this paper, we consider the general problem of high-dimensional signal recovery from random one-bit measurements. Specifically, we propose an efficient signal recovery framework based on the deep unfolding technique that has the advantage of low-complexity and near-optimal performance compared to traditional methods. Our proposed inference framework has a wide range of applications in the areas of wireless communications, detection and estimation, and sensing.
2 Problem Formulation
We begin by considering a general linear signal acquisition and one-bit quantization model with time-varying thresholds, described as follows:
Signal Model: y=Hx+n, (1)
Quantization Model: r≜sign(y−τ), (2)
where τ=[τ1,…,τM]T
denotes the vector of one-bit quantization thresholds,
y∈RM denotes the received signal prior to quantization, H∈RM×N denotes the sensing matrix, x∈RN denotes the multidimensional unknown vector to be recovered, and n∼N(0,C) denotes the zero-mean Gaussian noise with a known covariance matrix C=Diag(σ21,…,σ2M). Furthermore, sign(⋅) denotes the signum function applied element-wise on the vector argument.
The above model covers a wide range of applications. For instance, the described model (1)-(2) can be used in MIMO communication systems in which H is the channel matrix, x is the signal sent by the transmitter, n is the additive Gaussian noise in the system, and the base station is equipped with one-bit ADCs, where the goal is to recover the transmitted symbols from r.
2.1 Maximum Likelihood Estimator Derivation
Given the knowledge of the sensing matrix H, noise covariance C, and the corresponding quantization thresholds τ, our goal is to recover the original (likely high-dimensional) signal x from the one-bit random measurements r. In such a scenario, each binary observation {ri}Ni=1
follows a Bernoulli distribution with parameter
pi, given by:
pi=Prob{hTix+ni−τi>0}=Q(τi−hTixσi), (3)
where Q(x)=1−Φ(x) with Φ(x)
representing the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of a standard Gaussian distribution and
hTi denotes the i-th row of the matrix H
. In particular, the probability mass function (pmf) of each binary observation can be compactly expressed as:
p(ri)=Q(riσi(τi−hTix)), (4)
where ri∈{−1,+1}. Therefore, the log-likelihood of the quantized observations r given the unknown vector x can be expressed as:
L(x)=p(r|x) =log{N∏i=1Q(riσi(τi−hTix))} (5)
=N∑i=1log{Q(riσi(τi−hTix))}, (6)
where log{⋅} denotes the natural logarithm. As a result, the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of x can be obtained as
^x=argmaxxL(x). (7)
Observe that the maximum likelihood estimator ^x has to satisfy the following condition:
∇xL(x)=0, (8)
where the gradient of the log-likelihood function with respect to the unknown vector x can be derived as follows:
∇xL(x)= N∑i=1⎡⎢ ⎢⎣−riσi⎛⎜ ⎜⎝Q′(riσi(τi−hTix))Q(riσi(τi−hTix))⎞⎟ ⎟⎠⎤⎥ ⎥⎦hi, (9)
where Q′(x)=−1√2πexp(−x2/2). It can be observed from (9) that the gradient of the log-likelihood function is a linear combination of the rows of the sensing matrix H. Let η:RM↦RM be a non-linear function defined as follows:
η(x)≜Q′(x)Q(x), (10)
where the functions Q(⋅), Q′(⋅), and the division, are applied element-wise on the vector argument x. In addition, let Ω=Diag(r1,…,rM) be a diagonal matrix containing the one-bit observations and ~Ω=ΩC−12 be the semi-whitened version of the one-bit matrix Ω. Then, the gradient of the likelihood function in (9) can be compactly written as follows:
∇xL(x)=−HT~Ωη(~Ω(τ−Hx)). (11)
Recall that the ML estimator ^x must satisfy the condition given in (8), i.e.,
∇xL(x)=−HT~Ωη(~Ω(τ−Hx))=0. (12)
Other than certain low-dimensional cases, finding a closed-form expression for ^x that satisfies (12) is a difficult task [18, 19, 20] . Therefore, we resort to iterative methods in order to find the ML estimate, i.e., to solve (7).
In this paper, the well-known gradient ascent method is employed to iteratively solve (7). Namely, given an initial point x(0), the update equation at each iteration is given by:
x(k+1) =x(k)+δ(k)∇xL(x) (13)
=x(k)−δ(k)HT~Ωη(~Ω(τ−Hx(k))), (14)
where δ(k) is the step size at the k-th iteration. The obtained maximum likelihood estimator derived from the signal model, and the corresponding optimization steps, can be unfolded into a multi-layer deep neural network, which improves the accuracy and computational effciency of the original framework.
In the next section, we unfold the above iterations into the layers of a deep neural network where each layer denotes one iteration of the above optimization method. Interestingly, we fix the complexity budget of the inference framework (via fixing the number of layers), and apply the gradient descent method to yield the most accurate estimation of the parameter in at most K iterations.
3 Signal Recovery via Deep Unfolding
Conventionally, first-order optimization methods, such as gradient descent algorithms, have slow convergence rate, and thus take a large number of iterations to converge to a solution. Herein, we are interested in finding a good solution under the condition that the complexity of the inference algorithm is fixed. This is important since, via unfolding the optimization algorithm, we fix the computational complexity of the inference model (a DNN with K layers in such a case) and optimize the parameters of the network to find the best possible estimator with a fixed-complexity constraint. Below, we introduce DeepRec, our deep learning based signal recovery framework which is designed based on the iterations of the form (14), to find the maximum likelihood estimation of the unknown parameter.
—The DeepRec Architecture. The construction of DeepRec involves the unfolding of k=1,…,K, iterations each of which are of the form (14), as the layers of a deep neural network. Particularly, each step of the gradient descent method depends on the previous signal estimate x(k), the step size δ(k), the scaled one-bit matrix ~Ω, the sensing matrix H, and the threshold vector τ. In addition, the form of the gradient vector (11) makes it convenient and insightful to unfold the iterations onto the layers of a DNN in that each iteration of the gradient descent method is a linear combination of the system paramteres followed by a non-linearity. The k-th layer of DeepRec can be characterized via the following operations and variables:
z(k)=W1k~Ωτ−W2kHx(k)+b1k, (15)
p(k)=η(z(k)), (16)
t(k)=HT~Ωp(k), (17)
where x(1)=0, f(⋅)
denotes a non-linear activation function where in this work we consider
f(x)≜ReLU(x)=max{0,x}, and the goal is to optimize the DNN parameters, described as follows:
Ξ={W1k,W2k,W3k,b1k,b2k}Kk=1. (19)
Figure 1: The performance of DeepRec: (a) demonstrates the NMSE performance of the DeepRec network for different numbers of layers K. (b) shows the performance of the proposed DeepRec architecture and the original gradient descent method of (14) in terms of averaged NMSE for different numbers of one-bit samples M. (c) shows a comparison of the computational cost between the gradient descent method and the proposed DeepRec network for different numbers of one-bit samples M.
The proposed DeepRec architecture with L layers can be interpreted as a class of estimator functions ΨΞ(r,H,τ) parametrized by Ξ to estimate the unknown parameter x given the system parameters. In order to find the best estimator function ΨΞ(r,H,τ)
associated with our problem, we conduct a learning process via minimizing a loss function
R(x;ΨΞ(r,H,τ)), i.e.,
minΞR(x;ΨΞ(r,H,τ)). (20)
In this work, we employ the following least squares (LS) loss function:
R(x;ΨΞ(r,H,τ))=||x−ΨΞ(r,H,τ)||22, (21)
where during the training phase, we synthetically generate the system parameters Θ={x,r,H,τ} according to their statistical model.
4 Numerical Results
We now demonstrate the performance of the proposed DeepRec framework for the problem of one-bit signal recovery. The proposed framework was implemented using the TensorFlow library
[21] , with the ADAM stochastic optimizer [22] and an exponential decaying step size. In the learning process of the network, we employed the batch training method with a batch size of 500
at each epoch and we performed the training for
2000 epochs. In all of the simulations, we assumed N=3, i.e., x∈R3, and we used the normalized mean square error (NMSE) defined as NMSE=||x−^x||22/||x||22, for the performance metric.
The training was performed based on the data generated via the following model. Each element of the vector x
is assumed to be i.i.d and uniformly distributed, i.e.,
x∼U(δxl,δxu)
. The sensing matrix is assumed to be fixed and follow a Normal distribution, where we consider
H∼ N(0,I). The quantization thresholds were also generated from a uniform distribution, τ∼U(δτl,δτu), where the lower and upper bound of the distribution is chosen in a fashion that at least covers the domain of x
. The noise is assumed to be independent from one sample to another and follows a Normal distribution, where the variance of each corresponding noise element is different, e.g., the noise covariance
C= Diag(σ21,…,σ2M), with σ2i∼U(δn1,δnM). Note that we trained the network over a wide range of noise powers in order to make the DeepRec network more robust to noise.
Fig. 1(a) demonstrates the performance of the DeepRec network for different numbers of layers K. It can be observed that the averaged NMSE decreases dramatically as the number of layers increases. Such a result is also expected as each layer corresponds to one iteration of originial optimization algorithm. Thus, as the number of layers increases, the output of the network will converge to a better estimation as well.
Fig. 1(b) demonstrates the performance of the proposed DeepRec architecture and the original Gradient Descent method of (14) in terms of averaged NMSE for different numbers of one-bit samples M. In this simulation, we implemented the DeepRec network with K=90 layers. It can be clearly seen from Fig. 1(b) that the proposed deep recovery architecture (DeepRec) significantly outperforms the original optimization method in terms of accuracy and provides a considerably better estimation than that of the gradient descent method for the same number of iterations/layers. As a fair comparison, we also assumed a fixed-step size of δ=0.01 for the gradient descent method.
Fig. 1(c) shows a comparison of the computational cost (machine runtime) between the gradient descent method and the proposed DeepRec network for different numbers of one-bit samples M. It can be seen that our proposed method (DeepRec) has a significantly lower computational cost than that of the original optimization algorithm for our problem. Hence, making the DeepRec a good candidate for real-time signal processing or big data applications (the results were obtained on a standard PC with a quad-core 2.30GHz CPU and 4 GB memory).
We have considered the application of model-based machine learning, and specifically the deep unfolding technique, in the problem of recovering a high-dimensional signal from its one-bit quantized noisy measurements via random thresholding. We proposed a novel deep architecture, which we refer to as DeepRec, that was able to accurately perform the task of one-bit signal recovery. Our numerical results show that the proposed DeepRec network significantly improves the performance of traditional optimization methods both in terms of accuracy and efficiency.
[1] Bin Le, Thomas W Rondeau, Jeffrey H Reed, and Charles W Bostian, "Analog-to-digital converters," IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 69–77, 2005.
[2] Nir Shlezinger, Yonina C Eldar, and Miguel RD Rodrigues, "Hardware-limited task-based quantization," arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.08305, 2018.
[3] Alon Kipnis, Yonina C Eldar, and Andrea J Goldsmith, "Fundamental distortion limits of analog-to-digital compression," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 64, no. 9, pp. 6013–6033, 2018.
[4] Christopher Gianelli, Luzhou Xu, Jian Li, and Petre Stoica, "One-bit compressive sampling with time-varying thresholds: Maximum likelihood and the cramér-rao bound," in 2016 50th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers. IEEE, 2016, pp. 399–403.
[5] Naveed Naimipour and Mojtaba Soltanalian, "Graph clustering using one-bit comparison data," in 2018 IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers. IEEE, 2018.
[6] Yongzhi Li, Cheng Tao, Gonzalo Seco-Granados, Amine Mezghani, A Lee Swindlehurst, and Liu Liu, "Channel estimation and performance analysis of one-bit massive MIMO systems," IEEE Trans. Signal Process, vol. 65, no. 15, pp. 4075–4089, 2017.
[7] Shahin Khobahi and Mojtaba Soltanalian, "Signal recovery from 1-bit quantized noisy samples via adaptive thresholding," in 2018 IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers. IEEE, 2018.
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"Delving deep into rectifiers: Surpassing human-level performance on imagenet classification,"
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[15] Scott Wisdom, John Hershey, Jonathan Le Roux, and Shinji Watanabe, "Deep unfolding for multichannel source separation," in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). IEEE, 2016, pp. 121–125.
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[22] Diederik P Kingma and Jimmy Ba, "Adam: A method for stochastic optimization," arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.6980, 2014.


text:
Stocks to Sell / Block Could Get Rocked on Year-Over-Year Comparisons
Block Could Get Rocked on Year-Over-Year Comparisons
Current volatility is only one of the many problems for SQ stock
March 8, 2022 By Alex Sirois Mar 8, 2022, 6:15 am EST March 8, 2022
Block (NASDAQ:SQ) stock has had a bumpy ride down, off more than 40% on the year.
Source: Sergei Elagin / Shutterstock.com
The company changed its name last year from Square, but essentially it's still the same tech company that operates through a suite of products.
Those products help business owners operate and allow consumers to invest and send money. They also enable customers to trade and invest in Bitcoin (BTC-USD), and touch on blockchain technology in various ways.
Gen Z and Millenials could provide SQ stock a real boost. Citigroup (NYSE:C) analyst Peter Christiansen notes that growth in those groups is "admirable considering the bulk of this age group is still several years from reaching its earnings potential."
Gen Z and Millenials collectively comprise people ages 10 to 41. Gen Z accounts for 72 million people, and Millennials are predicted to remain the largest cohort of the population in 2022.
Christiansen was referring to Cash App users when he made that comment prior to the Feb. 24 Q4 earnings report. He believed that Cash App gross profit growth would reach 70% for all of 2021.
Earnings Results
Cash App's gross profit growth reached 69% for all of 2021. Although that figure was slightly below what the Citigroup analyst was looking for, it didn't harm Block. Share prices moved up sharply from $95 to $119 on the news.
There's plenty of positive news that relates to Cash App. Cash App is a key driver of the overall business. It provided $2.07 billion of the firm's $4.42 billion in 2021 gross profits.
The important thing to note is that Cash App has stabilized. It was a significant bneneficiary of the digital payment boom during the pandemic.
Cash App reported 2nd and 3rd quarter sequential gross profit drop-offs. That seemed to reinforce earlier worries that Cash App's success was due to pandemic tailwinds. Investors worried that Cash App wouldn't rebound, but rebound it did.
It popped up in Q4 which has led investors to see a stabilization of its former issues. That sounds promising but there's a catch: Growth could dip in Q1 when Cash App will be compared to results from a year earlier when stimulus checks were sent out.
That has caused trepidation on the part of Wall Street. Citigroup has given SQ stock a "buy" rating but dropped its target price to $220 from $320. Wedbush analyst Moshe Katri has it rated "neutral" and gives it a $140 price target.
That's less than the average target price Wall Street has assigned to Block which sits at $182.18. That implies significant upside from current price levels. SQ trades today at about $97.50.
However, there's the caveat that Square faces a Q1 which will be compared to a year earlier when consumers were flush with stimulus cash.
That could really hurt it in a few months
Block is probably in the best position right now. That means it is doing well on the afterglow from its earnings. Consider that things could change in a few months again.
I wouldn't buy in now because there's little to signal that investors want to pursue growth stocks.
On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
Alex Sirois is a freelance contributor to InvestorPlace whose personal stock investing style is focused on long-term, buy-and-hold, wealth-building stock picks. Having worked in several industries from e-commerce to translation to education and utilizing his MBA from George Washington University, he brings a diverse set of skills through which he filters his writing.
Alex Sirois is a freelance contributor to InvestorPlace whose personal stock investing style is focused on long-term, buy-and-hold, wealth-building stock picks.Having worked in several industries from e-commerce to translation to education and utilizing his MBA from George Washington University, he brings a diverse set of skills through which he filters his writing.
Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2022/03/sq-stock-could-get-rocked-on-year-over-year-comparisons/.


If you've never heard of the concept of writing a letter to your 16 year old self, let me explain.
The idea is fairly simple, you, whatever age you are now, write a letter providing advice or just general babble to what was your 16 year old self. You are writing from your present to your past.
Get off your laptop and get a job. Start applying everywhere and anywhere, you can't afford to be fussy. You'll kick yourself later in life because experience is everything. Refine your CV and put yourself out there. The shell you've become comfortable in, isn't going to get you where you want in life and it won't protect you from the big bad world forever.
Revise, revise, revise, do your homework, do extra reading and then revise some more. As Mum always says, its in there you just need to work hard. Its easy I promise you, the harder stuff comes later on.
Speaking of the hard stuff... You know people don't live forever and it's not our place to know when how and why they leave us but know its not the end. You're allowed to be upset, angry and confused. I understand. Adult life is complicated and he didn't want to bother us but know he's so so sorry for all the pain and upset hes put us through these past 16+ years.
Please know that although hes gone, you gain 3 beautiful, energetic, funny, kind sweet new family members. They make you smile every time you think about them and they call you Auntie Cake and that makes you smile inside and out.
You're going to travel to lots of new places, it'll be fun. Start a scrapbook or travel journal and look back on it every year!
By now Kate you've probably made the biggest mistake of your life so you need to come clean about it. You royally f-ed up and you HAVE to hold your hands up, it'll eat away at your for years I promise. Remember every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That's how karma works and its gonna take a few years to come back round but its not worth the pain. Don't keep things bottled up, talk about them or write them down anywhere.
Your biggest problems now are so small its not worth the heartache. Your pain is purely self-inflicted and only you can make you happy right now.
I could honestly kick 16 year old Kate for thinking things were gonna be okay after doing that.
But know, present day Kate is working on saying sorry, she's digging deep for the courage she lacked when she was your age. Courage shouldn't take 6 years to muster up, it should be what allows you to tell the truth from the start.
Slow down, stop willing things to happened and stop rushing into decisions you know you shouldn't make. Just because the world keeps going when you stand still doesn't mean you need to run to catch up. Let it float past and start again when you're ready.
Work hard at making your own grass greener, do you, stand up tall, know that the ones we love never really leave us and if its not okay, its not the end.
Dream bigger everyday, your limits are endless and all good things come to those who wait.


New Hamburg is the most northern Hudson Line station before Poughkeepsie although there is a wide 9 mile gap between here and Poughkeepsie. The station has an interesting history because it was closed by the New York Central in 1962 and then reopened by the MTA in 1981; at that point service was under contract to Conrail with Metro-North Railroad created in 1983. The current station has two high-level side platforms that can each accommodate 6 cars for what is now a two-track line (I believe there were four tracks here at one time and the layout of the pedestrian tunnel confirms this). These concrete platforms were clearly built in the 1980s before the ADA laws because they lack tactile warning strips, just a simple yellow line with a tactile warning area and because although each platform has black fencing and a simple ramp up to it since the station is at street level there isn't an ADA connection between the two platforms. The area of the line is grade-separated and regular passengers use a pedestrian tunnel with steps at each portal that have bricks around them. The interior of the tunnel was clearly once concrete but has been given a beatification attempt with faux-marble siding walls. The portal along the New York-bound platform is directly next to the platform while the portal on the Poughkeepsie-bound side is on the opposite side of the parking lot from its platform.
The station is located near the backs of the Hudson River (the river is visible through the trees at the southern end of the platform) with the small hamlet of New Hamburg and splits Main Street into two (the pedestrian tunnel connects the two segments, there was a grade-crossing at one time). Vehicle traffic must use Bridge Street just beyond the northern end of the platforms although this 75-year old bridge is currently being rebuilt (as of November 2013, to be finished in the second quarter of 2014) at a cost of $3.6 million. All traffic wanting to cross the tracks and reach the heart of the hamlet of New Hamburg must use the Reed Avenue Bridge a few blocks north. (A step-free change of platform trip right now would be nearly a half-mile loop).
All access to the New York-bound platform is in the middle of the platform via a single ramp and staircase around the pedestrian underpass at the foot of Main Street (that curves and becomes Railroad Avenue). At street level along the tiny parking lot here is a small modular shed-kiosk called Cafe Con Leche that began in 2013 and is open during morning commute hours for commuters buying their morning coffee kick. The Poughkeepsie-bound platform is along the station's large (about 600 space) parking lot with a number of staircases down to it and a simple ramp with black railings in the middle of it. The main entrance is from the end of Main Street (where a few signs have an incorrect MTA logo) with an exit only driveway at its southern end directly to New Hamburg Raod.
For waiting passengers: the New York-bound platform is has a canopy for about half its length with green framework, the lampposts are modern and also green. The station's only two TVMs are under this canopy as well. The Poughkeepsie-bound platform is completely exposed to the elements except for a long and black (with doors) heating shelter that lacks benches. There is a similar one beneath the canopy on the New York platform.


Looking for the best Skype Alternatives? Well, here are some of the best alternatives for Skype which are available in the market.
Skype is one of the well-known for video calling around the globe for its quality of audio call and video calling. Skype has now made restrictions to make a group call and asking to become a premium member to use all of its functionalities.
However, many other applications and service providers offer similar and better features compared to Skype.
We have listed down top 10 best Skype alternatives for regular use and business usage.
Let's discuss few best video calling applications which help to connect with friends and family.
Well, if you are a regular user of Google products you might be knowing about Google Hangouts application it connects users based on the Email.
The quality of video calling and the connectivity is quite impressive and the secure. It is a 100% free product which don't have any hidden charge or monthly subscription. You can use Google Hangouts for both personal and business purpose. As this is a Google product all you need to have is a Gmail ID to use it.
You can broadcast any of your events using Hangouts on air option and later it can upload to your YouTube channel for future reference. It is a perfect choice if you plan for a webinar or video conference for your important business events.
Viber is a chat application that helps to connect friends and family. It has both texting and video calling feature enabled, and you can connect based on your requirement.
Viber has a beautiful mobile application which makes you addictive with its stickers. Calling connectivity of Viber is not bad, and you can chat or have a video conversation from mobile to desktop or vice versa.
All you need is to ensure Viber has installed in the recipient device. Viber also offers voice calling to worldwide mobile numbers at an affordable cost.
Viber is completely ads free application and a recommended for an everyday usage to stay connected with family and friends.
Oovoo is a well know social chat application which has more than 185 million users. Oovoo offers high-quality video chat and instant messaging.
You can create new short video and share with your friends and the other members in oovoo to build up new connections and friends.
Some of the key features of oovoo are you can send HD videos to friends, Upload and send high-quality pictures without compression of quality, creating new groups and making an engaging community.
You can have eight people video conversation with high quality at a time.
ICQ is a similar application like Skype where you need to install in both the devices and get connected. You can have a group conversation both audio and video.
It offers many stickers in its application which can be used instantly while having a live chat with friends or family members.
You can send voice messages to another person if he is not available online, ICQ has a feature to sync the previous conversations and secure them. Security levels ICQ is high, and you can have a safe conversation with friends or family.
The duo is an only video calling application that helps to make a high-quality video calling with your partner on the go without any hurdles; Google claims that it is the fastest and high-quality video call application which is available on the market.
Calling experience in Duo is excellent if you have a high-speed internet connectivity. Unlike Google Hangouts you can use Duo using your phone number to contact your friends.
IMO is a mobile chat application which is available for both Android and iPhone users. It is a basic chat application which has Video calling feature that helps to make video calling.
IMO help to make a video calling in low signal strength, and this is one of the apps which is beeing used in the places where is there are data restrictions and poor internet connectivity.
Voice and Video calling quality are not bad compared to the other mobile application which offers texting can video calling features.
Well, in the above list we have discussed alternatives to Skype which offers basic video calling functions that help a regular user to stay connected with family and friends.
Skype widely used in various business for making live conferences with the clients and the inbound team members.
One of the major features of Skype for business is sharing the desktop which helps to give presentation among a group. And Skype is not only the one who provides this type of the solution, and many other applications do this job and let us discuss them.
Webex is by Cisco a leading networking agency who offers networking solutions for many MNC. Cisco Webex is a video calling application that helps business to set up video conference anywhere in the globe and share their screens.
It is one the most secure application to have some important and confidential meeting as security levels of this application are high. It helps to stay connected with the team members if you have a team from various location.
Cisco Webex also has a mobile application so that one can stay active even traveling.
Jitsi is an open source project which helps you to deploy secure video conference. It is one of the best alternatives to Skype, one of the major feature in Jitsi is there is not limit for people involving in a video conference.
There is no external signup required for this all you need is to generate a link for the conference and share it with the group, and people can enter into the conference by following the link.
Jitsi has good voice calling as well as video capability while making a group conversations or meetings.
Gotomeeting used for making live webinars or events as it offers timely reminders and sign ups.
GoToMeeting is the best solution if you plan for a lecture with people.
If you are and individual and don't want to mess up with many technical things by inviting people to webinars or online conference, then GoToMeeting is the best solution that solves all these problems.
We have listed these based on the security levels offered by the applications, as we always give importance to user privacy and safety.
Do you know any other best alternatives of Skype or let us know which application use as an alternative otoSkype in your daily life.


text:
Practical Implications of Non Compete / Non Solication Clauses
I have just recieved an offer for a job I am very interested in, but looking through the documents I would have to sign, I noticed that they are also expecting me to sign a Non Compete / Non Solication agreement, something which I have never signed for any of my other jobs. The condtions are 6 months of Non Compete with any direct / indirect competitors and 12 months of Non Solication.
How normal are agreements like this when signing full time contracts? If I do want to switch jobs later on, how would I know if a company is considered a indirect / direct competitor? Is there a legal definition or is more of a question of opinion? How often do companies actually pursue legal action because of Non Compete clauses?
My location is Ontario, Canada.
job-offer legal competition
What is an "indirect competitor" by their definition? As I understand the term it cuts a pretty wide swath. You might find yourself unemployable in your primary line of work if you leave. Note also that such clauses are not permitted by law in some places.
– jwh20
What kind of job is this? Is this for flipping burgers at a fast food joint? Or is this for a VP of Sales position? How much money will they be giving you during those six months?
Non-competes in Ontario are hard to enforce. See shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/… Unless you are in very high level position, they will not come after you.
– Hilmar
They are extremely common. Depending on your status, and a million other factors, some terms may be negotiable. Or they may say take it or leave it. Regardless, I would go over the language in detail. Some contracts are reasonable, some are maximalist (probably just to simplify things for the lawyers working with it), and if taken literally, would limit your future ability to work on similar projects, or in the same industry if your employer's client is the "one big company". Another school of thought is sign it and ignore whatever it says (I am strongly opposed to this way of thinking)
I've had to sign a non-compete/non-solicitation for every job I've had (also located in Ontario, Canada). In general, they are very restrictive in terms of what is defined by "competition" and "solicitation".
The way most of the terms I've seen have been written is that "competition" means that you are prohibited from doing the same job for a company that is in direct competition with the company you are working for, in the same department as you were working, with similar responsibilities as to what you were working on. For example, if you worked for Amazon in their big data department, then you would be able to work for Shopify as a frontend developer, even though Amazon and Shopify are direct competitors; the knowledge and information you would have gained regarding Amazon's IP as a big data developer would not be applicable to your work at Shopify.
The way "solicitation" is usually defined is that you would be unable to use any industry contacts you made as a result of being customer-facing at one organization to help another, competing organization. For example, if you were a customer success associate at Amazon, working with some clients to get their Amazon-hosted stores up and running, and then you went and became a customer success associate at Shopify (ignoring for a moment the above concerning non-compete which would likely make this illegal), you couldn't then call that customer and be like "hey, I work at Shopify now, how about you come work with us instead of Amazon?".
Of course, your case may differ and you should read the contents of the contract carefully, and if you have any questions you should ask a lawyer, or you should get clarification from the company in particular about what you can/can't do. But at least in my experience, the definitions of the terms in those kinds of clauses tend to be very restrictive in favor of the employee.
Ertai87Ertai87
This is a bad answer. "The way most of the terms I've seen have been written is that "competition" means that you are prohibited from doing the same job for a company that is in direct competition with the company you are working for, in the same department as you were working, with similar responsibilities as to what you were working on." Obviously, that's not the situation here, the OP specifically mentioned direct & indirect competitors. "Of course, your case may differ and you should read the contents of the contract carefully..." No, no. His case is definitely different.
You haven't told us what type of job you're referring to. But that "direct/indirect competitors" wording is very suspicious.
In my own field, which is Android mobile software programming, having such a clause would be a deal-breaker for me (unless they were paying me a significant percentage of my regular salary to sit on my ass and do nothing during those 6 months).
If I were you, I would email them and ask them:
What did you mean when you said "direct/indirect competitors"? Can you provide a list of examples you're talking about.
If they say "Don't worry about it, we won't enforce that." Then, strike that clause off from the contract and ask them to initial the change. Don't ask them for permission. Simply do it and email them the new contract, asking them to initial the change.
Or if they give you a perfectly reasonable interpretation of that clause, then do the same thing. Insert the reasonable interpretation they gave you into the contract, email the contract back to them, and ask them that they initial the change you've just made. But again, don't tell them that you're going to modify the contract, just modify it, and then ask them to review and initial the change (before you sign it).
How normal are agreements like this when signing full time contracts?
Unfortunately, these kind of clauses are very common, even for minimum wage workers such as waiters or supermarket cashiers.
But does that really change anything? Some toxic workplaces are very common. That doesn't mean you should accept such unreasonable and overly broad clauses.
If I do want to switch jobs later on, how would I know if a company is considered a indirect / direct competitor?
You wouldn't. That's the entire point of this clause. It tries to give them power over you (whether it's legally enforceable or not).
It's like they expect you to ask them for permission before you apply to any company.
Is there a legal definition or is more of a question of opinion? How often do companies actually pursue legal action because of Non Compete clauses?
The rest of these questions are for an employment lawyer in your specific jurisdiction.
But again, even if the company doesn't sue you, does that really matter? At the very minimum, signing such an overly broad clause would give them the idea that they should be able to harass you and harass your new employer.
And even if they don't know where you're going, they may still find out through the grapevine, or when the new company calls to double-check your employment history.
Stephan BranczykStephan Branczyk
Have you ever had pushback on the just-change-it-and-initial-it tactic?
@PeteW, Can you lose a job offer if you push back? Sure, I didn't mean to imply that this wasn't a possibility. And I know at least one person who had his job offer rescinded because he questioned the non-compete. In my case however, overly broad non-competes are not usually a problem for me because I am in California. And the only contracts I've personally modified were not strictly employment related. In either case, it's all part of the negotiation. If you see too many red flags with a potential employer, you have to be willing to walk away. Not all job offers are necessarily good offers.
Thanks for the reply. I was less concerned with losing the job offer for daring to ask (which would be a win-win outcome, given what it would indicate about the employer's attitudes). I was asking more out of curiosity about this tactic vs a more lengthy, but polite, written explanation, justifying the request.
@PeteW, A lengthier explanation, justifying your request, may still work, but it's much less likely to work. It's just too easy for them to say "no" to it, or to imply that you're holding up the process, or to say that the decision maker is on vacation, or to lie to you and say that they'll have the new contract ready on your first day, etc. Besides, this request doesn't need an explanation. They know damn well what they were trying to do with this clause. Do not explain and do not justify yourself. If you're not assertive with your request, they're going to assume you're going to fold.
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged job-offer legal competition .
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text:
The social-media video, which is gaining newfound attention, was taped before the event turned into a riot at the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead, including a police officer.
Biggs strenuously denies any involvement with the Wednesday event. Gosar's chief of staff did not respond to an inquiry by The Arizona Republic.
Both men have figured prominently in the GOP's rejection of President Donald Trump's election loss, but they have done so in different ways.
In the video, Ali Alexander is seen speaking into the camera describing how the gathering in Washington was coming together.
"I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and then Congressman Andy Biggs," Alexander said. "We four schemed up of putting max pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we couldn't lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside."
In a statement, Biggs' spokesman, Daniel Stefanski, pushed back against any involvement.
"Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point — let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest," Stefanski said. "He did not have any contact with protestors or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests. ... The people who committed the violence at the Capitol are solely responsible for their crimes."
Alexander did not respond to a request to clarify his remarks as it related to Biggs and Gosar.
Before D.C., a Phoenix rally
While Biggs maintains he wasn't involved with Alexander or organizing for the Jan. 6 event, another video from a Dec. 19 "Stop the Steal" rally at the Arizona Capitol shows he played a small role.
At that rally, Alexander said, "Congressman Andy Biggs sent us a video" message for those in attendance. From his cellphone, Alexander played the 80-second message from Biggs.
"Andy Biggs here, I wish I could be with you. I'm in the D.C. swamp fighting on behalf of Arizona's residents and freedom fighters all over the country," Biggs is heard saying.
He goes on to say, "I wish I could be with you today" and "We are going to keep fighting, and I implore you to keep fighting, too. God bless you for being here today. And God bless this great country."
When it ended, Alexander leads the crowd in chanting "Biggs, Biggs, Biggs."
Stefanski said Biggs provided the taped statement to Gosar's aides at their request. Biggs did not mention Alexander during his remarks.
After playing Biggs' statement, Alexander told the crowd what to expect on Jan. 6.
"I want you guys to know, we are all marching to D.C. on January the 6th, and we are going to plop our asses on the U.S. Capitol with or without a permit," he said to cheers. "And those members of Congress will hear from us after they exit that chamber January 6th."
Biggs has throughout the post-election period repeated the unfounded allegations of election fraud in Pennsylvania and called for an audit of Arizona's election systems.
It does not appear that he pointed his social media followers to Alexander or the "Stop the Steal" gatherings.
Gosar, Alexander ties on social media
By contrast, Gosar has repeatedly used his Twitter account to point to Alexander or his efforts to thwart the election results.
Gosar's personal Twitter account points to Alexander's account at least 23 times since the Nov. 30 meeting in Phoenix that included Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani outlining what participants viewed as the case for fraud in Arizona's election results.
Gosar tweeted various versions of "StoptheSteal" at least 25 times in the same span.
ARIZONANS ARRESTED:These Arizonans arrested after rampage at U.S. Capitol
For Alexander, crime and politics
Alexander is a national organizer for "Stop the Steal," an organization that falsely contends that widespread fraud took place during the 2020 election to deny Trump victory over challenger Joe Biden.
On his Patreon web page, Ali Akbar Alexander describes himself as public figure with more than a decade of political experience.
A biography describes Alexander as a petty criminal who capitalized on the right-wing blogosphere to recast himself as a conservative guru.
"In 2007 he broke into a van, stole a debit card and tried to use it. He was caught, arrested and convicted on felony charges," Bill Schmalfeldt wrote in a biography of Alexander titled "Vice and Victory: With the Emphasis on the Former."
Alexander, 35, has lived in Texas, Louisiana and Virginia.
Even as he pleaded guilty to credit card fraud in 2008, he got a job at the Republican National Convention that year, according to published accounts.
Gosar, Biggs spoke in debate over vote certification
Apart from their social media differences, Biggs and Gosar were key players in the failed effort Wednesday by most House Republicans to block the certification of election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Gosar was the House member who formally challenged Arizona during the joint session of Congress.
Biggs, who heads the House Freedom Caucus, spoke early on in the subsequent debate in the House of Representatives on the case against Arizona's election system.
Stefanski emphasized that Biggs' primary concern is upholding election integrity.
"He was focused on his research and arguments to work within the confines of the law and established precedent to restore integrity to our elections, and to ensure that all Americans — regardless of party affiliation — can again have complete trust in our elections systems," Stefanski said.
AZ lawmakers who pushed 'Stop the Steal' face scrutiny for presence at riot Arizona's major corporate political donors rethink campaign contributions Immigration agency leader resigns after weeks on the job Trump impeached 2nd time; Arizona voted along party lines again
'No signal'
While Gosar had been prolific in touting election protests and the intended rally in Washington on Jan. 6, he has been relatively quiet on social media in the days since.
After no public tweets on Thursday, his first on Friday was a message with the image saying, "No signal" and the color bars sometimes used on TV.
By contrast, Biggs has repeatedly tweeted his appreciation about law enforcement in recent days. On Saturday, for example, he noted it was Law Enforcement Appreciation Day.
Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this article.
Reach the reporter Ronald J. Hansen at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4493. Follow him on Twitter @ronaldjhansen.
Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
Subscribe to our free political podcast, The Gaggle.


Today is Guinness World Records Day – the fourteenth year of the annual celebration which commemorates the 8th of November, when Guinness World Records became a bestselling book in 2004. The GWR Day aims to inspire people to discover their true potential and attempt record-breaking activities around the globe. It unites people across the planet from all walks of life, to work towards a common goal – to be officially amazing! And bask in how officially amazing you are, once you do break that record.
There are myriad ways to get involved in the day's celebrations. One can attempt a Guinness World Records title – the website provides guidelines on how to apply, prepare for, and attempt your record-breaking initiative. If you already have a GWR title and are listed in the record books, share your activity with the world. Aside of the individual title holders, there are mass participation categories as well – the largest number of people attempting any given endeavor. Browse through the GWR website and see if you can gather a larger group to break someone else's record.
The first was for the most people holding the abdominal plank position for a minute. That's not too long for planking, but the challenge required every individual to stay up for a minute – which comprised 1,623 of us in the mass gathering. Any one who dropped before a minute was up, or started after the timer began, was omitted from the final count. We achieved our official record in the second attempt. (GWR gives you three attempts.) The event was organized by the sporting giant Puma, and only women were allowed to participate. Though the GWR certificate does not specify "women", the aim of the record-breaking event was to highlight the importance of women's health. Oh, and we received Puma tees too!
My second "officially amazing" certificate was for the largest gathering of people performing Zumba in capes. (Yes, you can aim for a record in just about anything. Provided the GWR officials authenticate your attempt as an actual record not achieved by anyone else before you.) The beverage company Tetley had organized this dance bonanza – a total of 1,335 people dancing Zumba for ninety minutes, with capes (so you feel like a superhero after breaking the record.) And we got tea here. Lots of it in various flavors!
The third record-breaking event I was part of was the largest drum circle. Organized by The Drum Cafe, the drumming festival had a large number of people playing the djembe in unison for about fifteen minutes. At a total count of 2,100 participants, the drumming company even provided drums to each of us. All we got here was the drum, which had to be returned post the event.
I haven't thought about breaking any record in the individual category, but these mass participation events have been fun. It is always a pleasure to connect with like-minded people, and when a record is being attempted, you find even more from your tribe. Guinness has provided a list of fun activities to try out at home, using everyday household objects. If attempting official records is not your thing, you can test your skills on challenges provided on the GWR website. Follow the instructions on their page – there's a leaderboard and everything so you can track your scores and compare how you fared against people from around the globe. Fun stuff!


Nora Chau loves a good story. She is a member of the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab, a former ABC/Disney Grant Recipient for New Talent in Screenwriting, an ABC/Disney Writing Fellowship finalist, and a Women's Project Lab finalist. Her short plays have been published by Smith & Kraus and you can see her crazy web serial atprettypreciousunicorns.com. She is currently working on her first novel and attempting to write a graphic novel with her artist husband – that is, if he doesn't kick her off the project.


text:
P10, P 10  eller P-10 kan syfta på:

P 10 IF – en idrottsförening i Strängnäs.
Nissan Primera P10 – en personbil från Nissan Motor Company.
P 10 Strängnäs – ett pansarförband inom svenska armén åren 1942–1957, samt 1963–2004, se Södermanlands regemente (pansar)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The fish below are yet extinct.
But only shadows move around.
So finely I can call for help.
Because I�m chanceless on my own.
and let me whet you with my tears.
Cause it is you that set me free.
It is you that let me to be.
So I am your responsibility.


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it couldn't be further from that. The atmosphere of the story actually feels very placid on the surface, while below the layers there's this undercurrent of tension threatening to break that bubble.
Deborah Smith's translation is minimalistic, stripped back and effortlessly beautiful. The style of narration is another aspect which I found very unique . You follow the main character through the perspectives of her husband, her brother -in-law and lastly, her sister. And the narrative of each section is sequentially spaced by a few years and in the process you slowly unravel her story. The last section is the most psychological and dense part and it could warrant a re-read just to mull over and unpack the essence of the novel further.
The Vegetarian is so much more than a woman's choice to give up eating meat and the repercussions that ripple afterward. It's an exploration of the darker side of human intellect, the blurring of boundaries, of self-loathing and hate and how it manifests.
All in all, The Vegetarian is a deftly handled psychological study executed with such finesse and a very unique piece of literature.


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21-year-old charged for hit-and-run that killed federal agent (VIDEO)
by Jennifer Cruz January 28, 2016
An agent with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations died after he and another agent were struck by a vehicle while hailing a cab in Miami Beach earlier this month.
Authorities say just after 2 a.m., Scott McGuire and another agent were waiting for a cab when 21-year-old Jordana Rosales made a wide U-turn in her 2015 Mercedes E250 and drove up onto the sidewalk, running over both agents. Rosales drove away without stopping, but her vehicle, which had a badly damaged windshield, was later located and she was arrested.
McGuire suffered serious injuries and later died, while the second agent suffered a broken leg.
Rosales was originally charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving serious bodily injury, but the charges will likely be upgraded since McGuire died. Rosales is currently on house arrest after posting a $100,000 bond.
McGuire, who left behind a wife and young son, was described as selfless.
Both agents were on duty at the time of the accident.
[ Miami Herald ]
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Specifically, this research is intended to extend the use of the seismic reflection method to materials for which traditional linear wave analysis is insufficient.
Smith, Andrew M., "Numerical Simulation of Nonlinear Wave Propagation with Application to Geophysical Prospecting" (2011). Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection. 103.


As malls lose not just their anchor tenants but in-line tenants too, people have fewer and fewer reasons to shop there.
In the final analysis, malls have to adopt a whole new business model, one focused on the consumers and shoppers, not on stores and leasing spaces.
Just as we welcome the New Year with retail sales up 4.2% through November and early reports from Mastercard SpendingPulse that retail sales rose 4.9% from November 1 through Christmas Eve, Green Street's Advisory Group comes out with a new white paper suggesting that shopping malls are not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. If authors Jim Sullivan and Otto Aletter's analysis is right, the retail apocalypse may not even have started as the price for retail overbuilding is shortly coming due.
Business Insider just gave early warning that the trend of massive retail closings will continue this year. Through September 2017 Business Insider counted some 6,403 store closures and while it predicts that retail closures will slow in 2018, the trend is hardly over, with another 3,600 by early count slated to close.
The list of silent retail closings includes Stride Rite, Hallmark, Subway, Regis Salon, Things Remembered, Claire's, MasterCuts, Men's Warehouse, Bakers, Kenneth Cole, The Body Shop and Papaya. These are mall's in-line tenants, less visible than the anchor tenants, but the very ones that Green Street considers a bellwether of the health of mall properties.
And while the report notes that there are still retailers opening locations, some 775 stores by their count including expansions by H&M, White Barn Candle Co., Francesca's, Finish Line, Alex and Ani, Build-a-Bear Workshop, Pandora, ULTA, Lululemon and others, in the final analysis more national retailers are closing stores than opening them. So the competition to backfill in-line mall locations with new tenants is intensifying.
About these potential new tenants, the report says, "are being more discerning about mall quality and ownership and they are opening stores at a slower pace than seen in the past from successful retailers." So the competition for new tenants is fierce with many of the better malls already home to national retail tenants with few new prospects available, while the lower-quality malls are simply not able to retain existing tenants or attract new ones.
These trends are setting up a vicious downward cycle. As malls lose not just their anchor tenants but in-line tenants too, people have fewer and fewer reasons to shop there. The result is that C and D malls get even weaker, with B malls potentially slipping into the C and D category, and even the A malls struggling to attract new tenants, who will demand more concessions from the mall operators, who then get weaker and so a downward cycle goes.
The call is for mall operators to find new, different ways to engage customers. And that seems to be the sticking point. Mall operators must think about their businesses in new ways. Their primary job is not about real estate any longer, but transforming their business model to one focused on attracting shoppers so that they can then attract tenants, not the reverse as in the past.
Mall operators tend to rely primarily on basic demographic data to assess the opportunities in particular markets. But demographics, such as the numbers of households, income distribution and household composition, only tells part of the story. And with incursion of ecommerce, shopper demographics are even less important now that ever in assessing the potential to attract shoppers to a particular mall.
Most communities are not experiencing a huge influx of people ready to patronize new stores and malls. Rather most mall operators must capture new shoppers by pulling them away from their current shopping patterns.
So mall operators need to delve deeply into their communities to understand where their best prospects are currently shopping and what kinds of mall shopping experiences would appeal to them enough that they will change their current habits and adopt new ones. And changing people's ingrained habits is not an easy task by any means.
Already malls are trying to reinvent themselves around a more community-centered model, adding community-based services like medical facilities, fitness and workout centers, residential, offices, hotels, theaters and other attractions, not to mention more restaurants and pubs and elevating the food court into food halls. But retrofitting malls into community centers takes major capital investment with an unknown return.
Peter Muoio chief economist and head of research at Ten-X, a commercial real estate firm, says "The question becomes 'what else can this space be used for?'" and suggests one option is to become a last-mile distribution center for retailers with pick-up and return services.
Other ways malls could reimagine their spaces is to create a local Main Street experience, filling empty spaces with local retailers offering locally-sourced products. Mall of America has been successful thinking more locally with its Minnesot-ah! boutique and its MOA owned and operated Debut shop that fills the gap in clothing, accessories and home goods brands not currently offered by any existing tenants with featured brands rotating in and out regularly.
And for more on ways to reimagine mall spaces, commercial real-estate firm Transwestern published a study looking at the trends in the reuse of malls that gives an excellent overview of the options.
And as I review mall marketing strategies, they seem to be cut from the same cloth. The malls' marketing messages are focused on the mall and what the mall has on offer, not on the customers and shoppers and what's in it for them. The standard mall marketing model is push oriented and focused on the 4Ps – Product, Price, Promotion, Placement. It needs to be transformed according to a pull approach around the new 4Es model of marketing – Experiences, Exchange, Evangelism, Everyplace.
In the final analysis, malls have to adopt a whole new business model, one focused on the consumers and shoppers, not on stores and leasing spaces. Malls need to make themselves relevant again to their local communities.
It's going to take hard work and a major investment to accomplish that. The question is will they commit to implementing the necessary changes. If they take too long, they may well run out of time and money.


This software training is for offices that are not set up with the Weave Phone System. All users in your office should watch this training. It is about 16 min. long and covers everything you will need to know about the Weave software.


Globalisation, pressure on margins and the growing demands placed on speed in transaction processing call for an increasing electronic networking with business partners.What is required is the easy, flexible and secure electronic exchange of business documents.
simultaneously receive full transparency in the process.
evaluate them for everyone as needed.
Even the standard version of Microsoft BizTalk Server support all standard XML as well as many EDI formats and protocols (e.g. EDIFACT, X12, AS2, SWIFT, RossetaNet).
For many processes in sales, purchasing, logistics, transactions, etc. (e.g. ORDERS, INVOIC, DESADV, SLSRPT, RECACK etc.), we have robust, legally compliant process templates that we use in projects and specifically adapt to your needs.
With the Business Activity Monitoring features, you can evaluate in real time and visualise for your department both what runs through the BizTalk Server (order receipts per partner, out-of-stock-quotes per item, etc.) and when, how fast, etc. (process KPIs) – including individual alerting.
As a result, you can achieve significant time and cost savings. You thereby receive a high-performance, flexible and expandable EDI solution that is characterised by maximum interoperability and allows full transparency.
With QUIBIS EDI, we offer a packaged product solutions for EDI integration scenarios based on the BizTalk Server. We have pooled our experience, best practices and reusable components in QUIBIS EDI into a large number of EDI projects.
Regardless of whether they are used as a solution in their standard version (without in-house development) or whether they are used as the basis for the development of a custom solution – their use can save on development costs and significantly shorten project durations.