Hsiufan

At the WWDC conference this year, Apple announced their long awaited headset computing device, the Vision Pro. I've long been interested in augmented reality so... couldn't resist writing up some initial thoughts.

As widely acknowledged, the Apple Vision Pro is a very impressive set of interconnected technologies building on Apple's years of advanced silicon, operating system, display, camera, etc. development. It reminds me of this quote from Jony Ive:

There's the object, the actual product itself, and then there's all that you learned. What you learned is as tangible as the product itself, but much more valuable, because that's your future. Jony Ive, 2014

Apple's device of the future currently features:

• 12 cameras, five sensors and six microphones
• 2 cameras, a lidar scanner and a TrueDepth camera track the outside world
• 2 cameras point downward track your hands
• 2 IR cameras and a ring of LEDs to track your eyes
• 23M pixel micro OLED that fits 44 pixels in the space of an iPhone pixel
• 2 speakers next to your ears with raytracing for spatial audio
• A M2 chip and new R1 chip designed for real-time processing of outside world
• 5,000 patents filed over the past few years

So what does all that technology add up to? Apple's Spatial Computing walkthrough leaned into examples that made the most of the immersive display and allowed people to apply new interaction paradigms (made possible through eye and hand tracking) to common use cases like: viewing photos & videos, extending displays, video conferencing.

This lean into the familiar was explicit in Apple's marketing as well:

"Apple Vision Pro brings a new dimension to powerful, personal computing by changing the way users interact with their favorite apps, capture and relive memories, enjoy stunning TV shows and movies, and connect with others in FaceTime."

While the hardware certainly appears capable of more than just placing app screens in your real world environment, very few examples (if any) showed interactions with real world objects. Personally, I've been eager to see these kinds of possibilities brought to life:

Why were these kinds of use cases missing in Apple's narrative about the Vision Pro?

• They could be non-use cases. They seems compelling but when you actually design for and with the Vision Pro, things like media viewing could be much more relevant.
• They could still be difficult. There's lots of objects around you, selecting them is hard, and acting on them requires services not built yet.
• They could be too unfamiliar. At the introduction of an all new device and computing environment, leaning into known use cases is a bridge for everyone.

But with VisionOS and the Vision Pro device making its way into developer's hands next year, we'll likely see what's actually compelling soon enough. As Sam Pullara put it:

"VisionPro looks like the device to figure out if making it smaller, lighter matters. It has all the possible hardware to make great experiences if they exist."

I remain naively excited to find out...

Melissa Gira Grant on how extremist influencers invented an anti-LGBTQ moral panic turned terror campaign #

a surprising 5-4 ruling reaffirming the Voting Rights Act for disenfranchised Black voters in Alabama #

hard to believe these all scan, but they do #

a "pathological liar" that's "worse than useless" #

the default image host for Reddit's early years, this will damage the archives like the yfrog/tinypic shutdowns did to Twitter #

It’s Oscar night! Which means I’m curled up on my couch, watching the ceremony and doing data entry, updating my spreadsheet tracking the illicit distribution of Oscar-nominated films online.

The results are in, and once again, nearly every nominee leaked online in HD quality before the broadcast. All but one of this year’s 30 nominated films leaked online — everything except Avatar: The Way of Water.

But not a single screener for a nominated film leaked by Oscar night — for the first time in the 20 years I’ve been tracking it.

What Happened?

For the first five years of the project, every year from 2003 to 2007, over 80% of screeners for nominated films made their way online. And now, not one screener leaked.

If you’ve read my past reports, you’ll know this is the culmination of a long-standing trend.

Pirating the Oscars 2022: The Rise and Fall of the Screener Over 20 Years

Oscar voters still get access to screeners for every nominated film, now entirely via streaming. But they typically get access to screeners after other high-quality sources for the films have appeared online: typically from other streaming services or on-demand rentals.

This is a huge difference from 20 years ago. Back then, screeners were highly-prized because they were often the only way to watch Oscar-nominated films outside of a theater. Theatrical release windows were longer, and it could take months for nominees to get a retail release.

But over time, things changed. The MPAA, often at the behest of Academy voters, was committed to the DVD format well into the 2010s, which became increasingly undesirable as 1080p and 4K sources became far more valuable than 480p resolution.

A shift from theaters to streaming meant more audiences demanded seeing movies at home, shrinking the window from theatrical release to on-demand streaming and rentals. Then the pandemic put the nail in the screener’s coffin, as people stayed home.

You can see this trend play out in the chart below, which shows the percentage of nominated films that leaked online as screeners, compared to the percentage that leaked in any other high-quality format.

In last year’s analysis, I wondered if the time between theatrical release and the first high-quality leak online would start to increase again, as more movies return to theaters and studios experimented with returning to longer windows. That appears to have happened, as the chart below shows, but there may be another contributing factor.

Last December, Torrentfreak reported on the notable lack of screener leaks, mentioning rumors of a bust that may have taken down EVO, the scene release group responsible for the majority of screener leaks in recent years. (Update: Three days after the Oscars aired, those rumors were confirmed. Portuguese authorities arrested EVO’s leaders in November 2022.)

Regardless of the reasons, it seems clear that no release group got access to the Academy Screening Room, where voters can access every screener for streaming, or perhaps the risk of getting caught outweighed the possible return.

Closing the Curtain

In 2004, I started this project to demonstrate how screener piracy was far more widespread than the Academy believed, and I kept tracking it to see if anything the Academy did would ever stop scene release groups from leaking screeners.

In the process, this data ended up being a reflection of changes in how we consume movies: changing media formats and increasing resolution, the shift to streaming, and shrinking release windows from theaters to streaming.

I didn’t think there was anything the MPAA could do to stop screeners, and ultimately, there wasn’t. The world changed around them and made screeners largely worthless. The Oscar screener appears to be dead and buried for good, but the piracy scene lives on.

And with that, it seems like a good place to wrap this project up. The spreadsheet has all the source data, 21 years of it, with multiple sheets for statistics, charts, and methodology. Let me know if you make any interesting visualizations with it.

Thanks for following along over the years. Ahoy!

You might have heard that Elon Musk bought Twitter, and among the many recent changes to the platform comes what appears to be an ideology shift. Gerrit De Vynck, Jeremy B. Merrill and Luis Melgar, for The Washington Post, show the shift through the lens of a baseline chart and follower counts among popular Democrats and Republicans.

Tags: Elon Musk, followers, politics, Twitter, Washington Post

David Frum, on Twitter:

I’m doing an experiment. On my computer, I am checking the latest tweets by people I follow. On my phone, I’m checking whether their most recent tweets are showing up in the “Following” column. I’m just getting started, but even in the first dozen cases, Twitter failed to show me an absolute majority of the tweets I had requested to see. That’s the reason your engagement is down, people: Twitter is withholding requested content from those who requested it.

For me, Twitter is most valuable as an information source. But Twitter is now rapidly mutating into a source that capriciously withholds information I asked for - including from such highly official sources as the Tate Gallery in London.

It’s as if, in the days of the old newspaper, my subscription were delivered with random stories scissored out by the publisher itself, for some capricious whim of the publisher’s own.

It’s worse than that, though, because if you were delivered a newspaper with random stories scissored out, you’d know that there were missing stories. You wouldn’t know what they were, but you’d see the gaping holes in the paper. With Twitter now, there’s no indication that you’re missing tweets — let alone a huge number of tweets. And to be clear, Frum is talking about the “Following” timeline, not the “For You” algorithmic timeline. “Following” is the timeline that dates back to Twitter’s very inception: you pick accounts to follow, then you see the tweets those accounts post.

Twitter is no longer able to do that. Here’s a speculative thread explaining what might be going on — sounds like a very solid guess to me. In short: after cutting back on servers and entire data centers, Twitter can no longer keep up with its own content.

I remarked over a week ago that I was no longer seeing mentions or replies directed at my Twitter account. For a day or two I was seeing a handful of them, but now they’re gone. At this writing I see a grand total of one mention for my account going back to January 5. My Twitter mentions are nearly completely useless. For well over a decade, Twitter mentions have been my primary way of interacting with the Daring Fireball audience. Obviously that’s no longer possible. So be it. All the good action is over on Mastodon now, anyway. I’m more active there now, and just like I used to at Twitter, I read all my mentions there. I’ve updated my Contact page accordingly.

Several months ago, one of the cops in my town donated a near mint condition bike that used to be his daughter’s. “Barely a scratch on it,” he said. 

“You could donate it to the thrift barn,” I told him, referring to a local outfit that accepts books, clothes, and toys, sells them for a song, and then gives to money to local charities. “I’m sure some kid will be happy to get it.” 

“No,” the cop said. “I don’t want some picker to buy it and sell it for a profit.” Message received and understood. He wanted it to go to someone who really could use it.  That bike, however, has been taking up space in my office for months, waiting for someone who meets the cop’s criteria.  But it’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened to me. 

Several years ago, a man came to my office looking to donate a large medieval castle set complete with four inch figurines of lords, ladies, knights and horses. In pristine condition, it was made in the 1980’s and looked very expensive. 

“I bought it at FAO Schwartz for my son,” the donor told me. “But he died before he got a chance to play with it. I’ve held on to it for years, but now I’m at the point where I can finally let it go.” 

Being a father myself, I thought about all my daughter’s toys and what I would do if the unthinkable happened. I could see myself not letting go, maybe leaving Natalie’s room with all her stuffed animals on her bed – waiting for a return that would never happen. I wondered if this man kept his son’s room as a shrine for thirty years. I could not and had no wish to try imagining his pain. 

“I’ll make sure it goes to someone who could use it,” I told him.

I thought unloading the castle would be a piece of cake. I was wrong. None of my clients wanted it, saying that it was “too big.” I tried calling several children’s hospitals, but they demurred citing “liability reasons.  So, the castle remained in storage, making me wince with guilt every time I saw it. I had made a promise and failed to honor it, making me worry what would happen if that father popped in and saw it still unloved and unused. But I never saw him again. 

After several years, I thought of donating it to the Thrift Barn but decided against it for the very reason the cop didn’t want to bring his daughter’s bike there – because some sharp eyed picker would buy it for twenty bucks and then sell it for hundreds on eBay.  Lining some guy’s pockets with another person’s tragedy just seemed wrong so I waited. And waited. Then a day care serving underprivileged kids operated by Head Start came to me looking for food donations. After giving them a carload of food, inspiration struck. “I have this lovely toy castle set,” I said.  “Would you like to have it?” When I showed it to them, they smiled. 

“Yes, they said. “Our children would really enjoy it.”

Now dozens of tiny tots are playing with that castle set.  I have no doubt they’ve put some wear and tear on those lords, ladies, knights and horses – but it’s bringing delight to poor children who’re now imagining a world of filled with chivalry, tourneys, dragons and magic, exactly what that bereaved father wanted. Mission accomplished – finally. Eventually that bike will also find a deserving home. I just need to be patient.

I think about that father often. During my tenure I’ve encountered several parents who’ve lost their children and it always frightens me. The possible death of a child is a specter that hangs over every parent’s head, mine included, though I suggest you keep such dreadful musings to a minimum. Now, when I see that bike, I always think about that man’s dead son. I hope he’s found some measure of peace, knowing in a way that surpasses understanding that is son is now happy – eternally playing with infinite joy in that Great Big Castle In The Sky. 

The post Castles In The Sky appeared first on Waiter Rant.

outstanding reporting covering a truly terrible acquisition; love the "Elon net worth-o-meter" #

scoop from Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton; Elon Musk's buyout attempt shifted their focus to spam bots #

In the mid-nineties, Australian artist Craig Walsh created his first projection at Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland. Made with photographic slides, the massive installation temporarily transformed a tree into a large-scale portrait, enlivening the canopy and initiating what’s become a 30-year project.

Now encompassed within the artist’s Monuments series, the digital works continue to animate landscapes and public spaces around the globe, and they’ve evolved in breadth and scope, sometimes incorporating live video and sound that allows viewers to interact with the illuminated characters. Blinking, yawning, and displaying various facial expressions, the emotive figures address both connections between people and their surroundings and conversations around whose stories are upheld and disseminated. “The work in the early days conceptually linked more to how the environment we exist in influences the human condition,” Walsh tells Colossal. “Surveillance was another interpretation.”

 

Today, the responsive installations more directly address traditional narratives and challenge “the selective history represented in our public spaces,” he says. Many of the Monuments celebrate people who significantly impacted their communities, and yet, might be overlooked. His 2017 piece, “Churaki Hill,” for example, pays homage to Churaki, an Aboriginal man who was responsible for many successful water rescues in the Tweed region in the early 1900s.

Similarly, Walsh’s recent installation in Charlotte, North Carolina, honors the descendants of Mecklenburg County’s Black residents. Created for the annual Charlotte SHOUT! festival, the trio of works occupies Old Settlers’ Cemetery, the burial ground for the city’s wealthy residents throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. He shares about the project:

Much like today, Charlotte was a diverse city in its founding century…By 1790, the census for Mecklenburg County lists a total population of 1,608 enslaved African Americans or 14 percent of the town’s population. By 1850, enslaved African Americans accounted for 44 percent of the total population inside the city limits. While their graves are not marked, the north quadrant next to Church Street is the final resting place for the formerly enslaved members of Charlotte’s first one hundred years.

On display earlier this year, the installation features folk artist Nellie Ashford, filmmaker and counselor Frederick Murphy, and DJ and musician Fannie Mae. Honoring the deep family ties and legacies these three hold within the city, the portraits memorialize their continued contributions to local culture.

Walsh is currently based in Tweed Heads, New South Wales, and his latest project is on view at Victor Harbor, South Australia, through September 11. Explore more of the Monuments series on the project’s site and Instagram.

 

TikTok is now fully half of new memes tracked on the site #

new Pandora's box just dropped #

It's been less than four months since Snap unveiled a selfie drone called Pixy, but it seems the company is already giving up on the device. CEO Evan Spiegel told employees that Snap is halting further work on Pixy amid a reprioritization of resources, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The $250 drone can take off from and land in your hand. It has four preset flight paths and can capture photos and videos that you can transfer to and share on Snapchat. For now, at least, Pixy is still available to buy from Snap's website. The Journal suggests Snap will keep selling Pixy for the time being. Snap declined to comment.

Like many other companies, Snap has been feeling the brunt of a broader economic slowdown. In July, it posted its weakest quarterly sales growth to date, which sunk its share price by around 40 percent. Snap's stock has fallen by around 80 percent over the last year. The company also said last month that it would significantly slow down hiring.

Several major tech companies have been shifting priorities in recent months. Meta, for instance, reportedly shelved plans for a smartwatch with two cameras and it's said to be refocusing Portal devices as enterprise products. Others have slowed downhiring plans and laidoffemployees.

If you’ve eaten at a restaurant lately, you might have noticed a substantially higher bill than you’re used to. You’d be right to assume that it’s because of things like inflation and pandemic-induced prices, but you might not realize how much the cost of ingredients, labor, and a new takeout business model has gone up for restaurants. Priya Krishna and Umi Syam, for The New York Times, redesigned a single receipt to show a more detailed breakdown.

The receipt presentation and color-coded scrolling are tops. It’s a well-made table that works with the copy to highlight items.

Tags: inflation, New York Times, receipt, restaurant

In preparing for her own design projects, Tokyo-based architect Kei Endo sketches elaborate diagrams of hotel rooms. The watercolor works depict overhead views of floor layouts, color schemes, lighting, and the details of special amenities from hairdryers to soap bottles paired with precise dimensions. While focused on the uniform details of spaces like Hotel Siro in Toshima-ku or The Okura Tokyo, the drawings reveal how the designer’s attention to space, comfort, and lodgers’ needs inform every inch of the room.

In addition to her travel-based works, Endo also deconstructs desserts with similar measurements, and you can find more of her renderings on her site and Instagram. (via Spoon & Tamago)

 

Excess deaths is the difference between expected deaths based on historical data and actual total deaths. It’s an estimate for how many people really died from covid. For Axios, Will Chase and Caitlin Owens charted excess deaths for Republican-leaning states compared against Democratic-leaning states, between March 2020 and March 2022.

Tags: Axios, coronavirus, partisanship

Last August, I entered a loft in downtown Portland, walked through a door, and met someone I’ve wanted to talk to for the last 20 years: Ghyslain Raza, the unwilling subject of the “Star Wars Kid” meme, the biggest viral video of the pre-YouTube era.

Since the video and its remixes exploded online in 2003, Ghyslain has refused all interview requests, except for the 10th anniversary of the video’s release in 2013 for an interview with a French-Canadian journalist for L’actualité magazine, which was translated into English for partner magazine Maclean’s.

But over the last couple years, he’s quietly worked with a group of documentary filmmakers to tell his story for the first time, in his own words. The full-length film was released today in French and English, as you’d expect from Quebec-based filmmakers. In English, it’s being released as Star Wars Kid: The Rise of the Digital Shadows, but I’m partial to the French title, Dans l’ombre du Star Wars Kid, which translates to “In the Shadow of the Star Wars Kid.” It feels much more fitting to the story they told.

It’s now available for streaming free from the National Film Board of Canada’s site, and I highly recommend watching it. I was lucky enough to get an advance screener and it’s a powerful film expertly told. Update: After a short window, the documentary can now only be viewed in Canada. No word on when it’ll be available elsewhere.

Making the Documentary

In February 2021, the documentary’s director, Mathieu Fournier, reached out to see if I’d speak to them about my role in the video’s initial spread and the fundraiser we held for him, my ultimately-futile attempt to shift the narrative to a positive light.

I’ve declined every interview request about this subject since 2003, but was surprised to hear that Ghyslain himself was deeply involved in the production, so I immediately agreed to participate.

The production team came to Portland for the filming, where I was interviewed for a couple hours by the filmmakers. Then, Ghyslain and I sat down for a long one-on-one conversation on camera about everything that happened 20 years ago, the impact it had on his life, and how he looks back on it now.

I’ve never talked about it publicly, but I regret ever posting it. From the start, it was obvious it was never meant to be seen, and mirroring it on my site without consent was wrong in a way that I couldn’t see when I was in my 20s, one year into blogging. I removed the videos once it was clear how it was affecting him, but I never should have posted them in the first place.

Meeting Ghyslain gave me the opportunity to tell him all of that in person, as well as in my interviews, some of which made it into the finished film.

As a side note, it was fascinating to get answers to questions I’ve wondered about for 20 years. Yes, Ghyslain actually received the iPod we sent him from the fundraiser, and used the gift cards we sent him to buy an iMac G4, both of which he kept to this day. He managed to avoid most of the remixes and media coverage, except for Arrested Development, which he watched live as it aired.

But more than anything, it was great to finally talk to him in person and see that he’s doing well. By all accounts, he handled everything that happened back then with a profound emotional maturity, despite how painful it was, and emerged on the other side with a uniquely interesting perspective that’s worth listening to.

Afterwards

After the documentary taping, we all met up for drinks on the roof deck at Revolution Hall, where we hold XOXO every year, and then went out for dinner and more drinks until late at night.

This time, Ghyslain and I were able to talk privately off camera, about our lives and families, about the Commodore 64 and typography, finding natural common ground. When he was younger, he was really into computers, but for obvious reasons, Ghyslain spent much of his life offline after 2003.

Like so many others, I saw my geeky teenage self when first watching the Star Wars Kid video, and sitting across from this 34-year-old man, I saw a parallel-world version of myself in my 30s. I first fell in love with the internet at age 15, the age Ghyslain was when he made the video.

That night, I couldn’t help but wonder how his life would have changed if it never happened. I was surprised to see that in the final film, there’s a moment where Ghyslain talks about our meeting, and wonders exactly the same thing. I hope you take the time to watch it.

Thanks to Ghyslain for his generosity and empathy, and thanks to the filmmakers for making this meeting possible: something I’ve quietly hoped would happen for 20 years.

The WSJ article Why Target-Date Funds Might Be Inappropriate for Most Investors (free gift article) discusses new research using “deep learning” artificial intelligence to find the optimal asset allocation over time. There are several interesting insights that also agree with common sense. For example, one size doesn’t fit all. Wealthier investors can withstand the volatility from holding a much higher stock allocation, whereas lower net worth investors need to be more conservative to avoid a hitting zero due to a bad sequence of returns.

Here is how the optimal glide path for the average investor differs between Deep Learning analysis vs. actual Target Date Funds:

Though the primary insight of this modeling is that one size doesn’t fit all, the research did reach one conclusion that does apply to all of us on average: The typical glide path used by target-date funds is too conservative starting at the age of 50. In contrast to an equity exposure level that drops to 50% by retirement age and to as low as 30% during retirement, the average recommended equity exposure in the researchers’ model never falls below 60%.

While I don’t know the details regarding the underlying assumptions of this research, the red AI line caught my eye because I also don’t plan on going below about 60% stocks ever in my lifetime. My reasoning is that I am going for a “perpetual withdrawal rate” scenario where my I just live off a base of growing dividends and interest. (I’m not talking about owning only extreme high-yield products like closed-end ETFs, junk bonds, and leveraged REITs). After reaching the “safe withdrawal rate” number that is based on a very high likelihood of not dying with zero, I wanted even more margin of safety. It can be counterintuitive, but over the long run owning businesses can be “safer” than just own a big bag of cash that is constantly exposed to inflation risk.

“The editorial content here is not provided by any of the companies mentioned, and has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are the author's alone. This email may contain links through which we are compensated when you click on or are approved for offers.”

Optimal Target Date Fund Glide Path, Per Deep Learning AI from My Money Blog.

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For The Washington Post, Bonnie Berkowitz and Artur Galocha report on several facets of Russia’s logistics, from poor protection, to poor communication, to vehicle breakdowns.

Tags: logistics, Russia, war, Washington Post

starting with new TikTok accounts using IP addresses located 50 miles apart, the difference is stark #

Jeff Bezos’ wealth is difficult to understand conceptually, because the scale is just so much more than what any of us are used to. So for NYT Magazine, Mona Chalabi took a more abstract approach, focusing less on monetary values and more on how many multiples more Bezos has compared to the median household.

See also The Washington Post’s comparison from a couple of years ago, scaling things down to spending equivalencies. I think Chalabi’s comparison works better. It’s abstract compared with abstract.

Tags: illustration, Jeff Bezos, Mona Chalabi, scale, wealth

Population.io by World Data Lab asks your birthday, country of residence, and gender. It spits out tidbits comparing your age to the rest of the world population, such as how old you are compared to others and how many people you might share a birthday with. Fun.

It also provides a few back-of-the-napkin calculations for life expectancy based on averages, with maybe a bit too much certainty for your expected date of death. For more uncertainty but more accuracy for what is known, see also this look at mortality.

Tags: age, population, World Data Lab

Over time, more and more people are seeing the benefits of investing in stocks and bonds through low-cost index funds. Here is a chart from Morningstar showing the overall flow of assets out of actively-managed and into passively-managed US equity funds over the last 15 years.

For a while, people wondered if low-cost digital advisors that managed a portfolio of index funds for a modest fee would take over. The picture looks a little different today.

Wealthfront was one of the early digital-only startups, promising to manage a diversified portfolio of low-cost ETFs for you for a modest 0.25% of assets, even if you had as little as $500 to invest. They tried a few different things over the years, including changing up their model portfolios, trying to add a in-house risk-parity fund, and even recently adding crypto and individual stock options. Their final move came this week, when they announced they would be sold to UBS for $1.4 billion. This wasn’t exactly a huge exit, given the huge amount of venture capital they had burned through over the years. As usual with such acquisitions, they promise both “nothing will change” and “things will only get better”.

In hindsight, I am relieved that I didn’t let Wealthfront handle my assets. They clearly had no firm guiding principles, tweaking their portfolios with each new trend. Based on the reporting, it looks like they sold their customers to the highest bidder, as UBS is not exactly known for low-cost passive investing. This play is widely seen a way for UBS to obtain young investors that will one day be rich (read: one day will generate lots of wealth management fees). See UBS Buys Wealthfront for $1.4 Billion to Reach Rich Young Americans and Why a Bank for the Super Rich Is Taking Aim at the Younger Merely Rich.

Is this move what is best for Wealthfront’s customers? Or what was best for Wealthfront’s investors? Mark the date. I will be checking to see what Wealthfront clients own in 5 and 10 years, if that is still possible. Keep in mind that any portfolio changes usually result in taxable events.

Funds flowed into index funds for a simple reason: they performed better and made folks more money. Index funds performed better primarily due to low costs and low turnover (low tax costs). However, it doesn’t appear that Wealthfront could operate successfully independently while offering low costs. One way or another, the new owners are going to try and extract more money per client either via portfolio changes or higher fee products.

Unfortunately, I worry that even Vanguard, in its pursuit of growth, is gradually going down the same path as many large nonprofits. Many “nonprofits” are huge bureaucracies that chase money as eagerly as any corporation – more money means bigger salaries to management, more political power, and greater career advancement. (Side note: I thought that Vanguard got away with their huge Target Date fund capital gains distribution with little media attention, but now see: Massachusetts investigating sales of target date funds to retail investors after word of surprise tax bills.)

I don’t write much about robo-advisors any more. They showed promise initially, but apparently the business model just isn’t working.

“The editorial content here is not provided by any of the companies mentioned, and has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are the author's alone. This email may contain links through which we are compensated when you click on or are approved for offers.”

Will Your Robo-Advisor Stay The Course? UBS Buys Wealthfront from My Money Blog.

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Eggs aren’t always white, which is oddly calming in this photo by way of Bergs Fairytale Garden. [Thanks, all]

Tags: color, egg, physical

WaPo turns manipulated election maps into a colorful game #

Comments

Last week, the Miss America Organization made history in its 100th anniversary by crowning the first ever Korean American, Miss Alaska Emma Broyles, as Miss America:

“The newly crowned Miss America has made history, becoming both the first Korean American and the first Alaskan to hold the title in the competition’s 100-year history. …

Broyles, 20, said her grandparents immigrated from Korea to Anchorage about 50 years ago, before her mother was born.

“Although my mom is full Korean, she was born and raised right in Anchorage, Alaska,” Broyles said.

The Miss America Organization “believes Emma is the first Korean-American to win the crown,” spokesperson Matt Ciesluk said in a text message to the AP.

Her mother is a special education teacher at Service High School in Anchorage, the same school Broyles attended.

Broyles has chosen the Special Olympics for her social impact initiative. Besides her mother’s position, her older brother, Brendan, has Down syndrome and competes in athletic events with Special Olympics Alaska.

“I’ve seen firsthand the impact that Special Olympics has on the families of people with intellectual disabilities. And I know how important Special Olympics is to our community here in Anchorage and here in Alaska, as well as the communities all over the country and all over the world,” she said.

Broyles said she looks forward to working with Special Olympics to promote inclusion, compassion and open-mindedness through sports.”

Broyles is currently a junior at Arizona State University studying biomedical sciences and voice performance and plans on attending medical school.

As part of winning the $100,00 scholarship, she’ll be taking a leave from school to travel across the United States on behalf of the Miss America Organization.