Technology allows you to experience art in a direct way by physically becoming part of the exhibition, and TeamLab is on the forefront of that movement. The Japanese art collective is at it again with a new exhibition at Melbourne's NGV (National Gal...
Using "acoustic shock waves" to promote healing isn't just for Overwatch, as Sanuwave has obtained FDA approval for its Dermapace System (Pulsed Acoustic Cellular Expression = PACE). Its approval is specifically to help heal foot ulcers in diabetic p...
The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively.
So why are costs so high? The NYTimes concludes:
For years, The Times found, public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits.
Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.
Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say.
Consulting firms, which have hired away scores of M.T.A. employees, have persuaded the authority to spend an unusual amount on design and management, statistics indicate.
Where the Times piece goes well beyond what has been discussed before is the detail by which it supports these conclusions and the careful comparison with similar but much cheaper projects elsewhere in the world such as Paris.
It will not escape notice that New York buys subway construction the way all of America buys health care.
Dangerous_Minds shares a report from ThreatPost: Ancestry.com said it closed portions of its community-driven genealogy site RootsWeb as it investigated a leaky server that exposed 300,000 passwords, email addresses and usernames to the public internet. In a statement issued over the weekend, Chief Information Security Officer of Ancestry.com Tony Blackham said a file containing the user data was publicly exposed on a RootsWeb server. On Wednesday, Ancestry.com told Threatpost it believed the data was exposed on November 2015. The data resided on RootsWeb's infrastructure, and is not linked to Ancestry.com's site and services. Ancestry.com said RootsWeb has "millions" of members who use the site to share family trees, post user-contributed databases and host thousands of messaging boards. The company said RootsWeb doesn't host sensitive information such as credit card data or social security numbers. It added, there are no indications data exposed to the public internet has been accessed by a malicious third party. The company declined to specify how and why the data was stored insecurely on the server. "Approximately 55,000 of these were used both on RootsWeb and one of the Ancestry sites, and the vast majority of those were from free trial or currently unused accounts. Additionally, we found that about 7,000 of those password and email address combinations matched credentials for active Ancestry customers," Blackham wrote.
Decades ago, the United States and Portugal both struggled with illicit drugs and took decisive action - in diametrically opposite directions. The US cracked down vigorously, spending billions of dollars incarcerating drug users. In contrast, Portugal undertook a monumental experiment: it decriminalised the use of all drugs in 2001, even heroin and cocaine, and unleashed a major public health campaign to tackle addiction. Ever since, in Portugal, drug addiction has been treated more as a medical challenge than as a criminal justice issue.
After more than 15 years, it's clear which approach worked better. The US drug policy has failed spectacularly, with about as many Americans dying last year of overdoses - around 64,000 - as were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined.
In contrast, Portugal may be winning the war on drugs - by ending it. Today, the Health Ministry estimates that only about 25,000 Portuguese use heroin, down from 100,000 when the policy began.
The number of Portuguese dying from overdoses plunged more than 85 per cent, before rising a bit in the aftermath of the European economic crisis of recent years. Even so, Portugal's drug mortality rate is the lowest in Western Europe - one-tenth the rate of Britain or Denmark - and about one-fiftieth of the latest number in the US. . . .
It's not a miracle or perfect solution. But if the US could achieve Portugal's death rate from drugs, they would save one life every 10 minutes. They would save almost as many lives as are now lost to guns and car accidents combined.
It's a long article and well worth reading. I've always favored legalizing drugs, but I never expected it to lead to less drug use. Is there something here I am missing?
For hundreds of years, families have been cutting down evergreen trees and bringing them into their homes to celebrate Christmas. For much of that time, the Christmas tree has been simple: a live tree, some ornaments. Not much to improve on, right?
Enter American ingenuity. Over the years, inventors have been dreaming up ways to improve on the humble tree, adding features for safety or — as in the case of the Christmas tree vibrator — we're really not sure.
Here are some of the most elaborate and fun proposals for high-tech Christmas trees, found in the US Patent Office archives.
A self-extinguishing Christmas tree
Many of the patents for better trees start with the idea that trees are flammable, and we increase the risk of fire by covering them in electronics. (According to the National Fire Protection Association, firefighters respond to around 210 Christmas tree fires a year.)
Hence the self-extinguishing tree. "The pressurized fire-retardant may then egress through the valve, deflect off a guard located on top of the discharging mechanism, and cover the Christmas tree," the patent explains.
The patent claims the vibrations will "transmit a highly pleasing two-dimensional vibration ... without interference with the decorations."
A Christmas tree watering system disguised as a present
"Moisture level is the single most important factor in assessing the fire risk associated with the use of natural Christmas trees," writes the International Association of Arson Investigators.
An artificial Christmas tree with its own scent and sounds
If you'd prefer to avoid natural trees and go artificial (which can also burn), check out this model, which "incorporates a scent producing element therein." How intriguing. The tree can also "incorporate a sound producing means in the tree trunk body or the tree support, to supply holiday music."
A "simulated" Christmas tree
Or try this modernist twist on a fake tree. "There are ... many occasions where a simulated Christmas tree of mechanical construction may actually be preferred," the patent claims.
Christmas tree hood ornament holder
I'm told the future of technology is mobile. The same should be true of our Christmas trees. This invention allows a motorist to attach a Christmas tree to the hood of the car, and to hook up the lights to the car's battery.
Why decorate a tree by hand when you can use a gun?
"Tinsel issues through the muzzle from off a supply roll mounted at the stock," the patent explains.
Christmas tree trash bag
If your tree makes it through the season without burning down, try this container "for disposing of the carcass of the Christmas tree at the end of the Christmas season."
Naughty or nice detector
Not a tree, but it's still fun. "Originally conceived for Christmas, the 'Naughty or Nice Meter' has widespread applications and can be used for other seasons of the year or events," the patent reads.
Theranos has come a long way from the days when it was a darling in the biotech industry. The Wall Street Journal's sources have claimed that the blood-testing firm has avoided bankruptcy by securing a $100 million loan from Fortress Investment Grou...
Enlarge / This row of iced tea bottles kind of looks like a blockchain. (credit: Long Island Iced Tea Corp.)
The Long Island Iced Tea Corporation is exactly what it sounds like: a company that sells people bottled iced tea and lemonade. But today the company announced a significant change of strategy that would start with changing its name to "Long Blockchain Corporation."
The company was "shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology," the company said in a Thursday morning press release. "Emerging blockchain technologies are creating a fundamental paradigm shift across the global marketplace," the company said.
The stock market loved the announcement. Trading opened Thursday morning more than 200 percent higher than Wednesday night's closing price.
Jones is a civil rights attorney, best known for prosecuting members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Deep-red Alabama has elected a Democrat to the US Senate for the first time in 25 years: Civil rights attorney Doug Jones will be going to Washington after defeating Republican Roy Moore.
For much of the race, Jones lived in Moore’s shadow. Even before Moore was embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal, he was known for his fundamentalist and far-right Christian views on same-sex marriage and abortion — as well as his opposition to Muslims serving in government and his belief that portions of the country are already under Sharia law.
Like Moore, though, Jones has been a known entity in Alabama for some time. He is a longtime prosecutor and former US attorney from Birmingham, best known for prosecuting notorious cases, especially that of Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry — the two Ku Klux Klan members who were finally convicted in 2001 of murdering four little girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963. Jones also led the prosecution of domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph.
And compared to Moore’s antics throughout the campaign, Jones kept a much lower profile on the national stage. He tried to avoid talking about the allegations against Moore at his campaign events, preferring to stick to issues like jobs and health care.
Jones is a moderate red-state Democrat who had been careful to keep his distance publicly from the national party and not appear too closely aligned with Democratic leadership in Congress, especially trying to appeal to Alabama’s conservative Democrats and independent voters. One of the main lines of attack on Jones came from President Trump, who frequently tweeted that Jones would be a “puppet” of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
But as the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel pointed out in a profile, many of the issues Jones espouses point to a progressive agenda.
For instance, Weigel wrote, Jones is against the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding from going to abortions, and has indicated he would support Medicaid expansion in his state. He also made it clear he wasn’t going to serve in the vein of previous Alabama senator and current US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“People don’t want a lap dog for Mitch McConnell, but they don’t want an attack dog, either,” Jones told Weigel. “Unfortunately, Jeff Sessions’s voice is what people think of when they imagine the typical Southern politician. And that’s not true. There’s a lot of folks on the other side who might be concerned about the rollback of civil rights we could see under Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department.”
Jones was always a good candidate — but he was a long shot
As Vox’s Matt Yglesias wrote, Jones was a strong candidate from the beginning. But at first, it looked like the national Democratic Party was hesitant to challenge Moore in a state many believed would stay inevitably red:
To win statewide in Alabama, a Democrat would need to thread the difficult needle of securing a strong black turnout while also appealing to at least a slice of the state’s very conservative white population. A former prosecutor whose “tough on crime” record includes toughness on notorious civil rights criminals offering a modest but sensible platform focused on pocketbook issues is probably just about the best Democrats could hope for.
Eventually, the Democratic apparatus started getting more serious about Jones. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee jumped into action, helping to mobilize field teams on the ground in recent weeks.
Even as Moore dominated the national headlines, increased campaign contributions from Democrats, Super PACs, and outside donors combined helped Jones blanket the airwaves with campaign ads up to election day. In fact, Jones raised $11.5 million in individual contributions since May — more than double the $5.2 million raised by Moore, according to federal campaign finance data.
On Tuesday night, all of those efforts paid off in a historic night for Democrats.
“We have come so far, and the people of Alabama have spoken,” Jones said in his victory speech Tuesday night. “It has never been about me; it’s never been about Roy Moore; it’s about you.”
…a recent report by Yale University concluded the country is suffering the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world with 40,000 people, nearly 1 per cent of the population, living on the streets or in emergency housing or substandard shelters.
…“The big change in homelessness is the number of working families struggling to find homes and pay rent,” says Ms Rutledge, who adds the situation is the worst she has seen in her 13 years working in homeless services in Auckland. Nationwide, some 5,844 people were on the social housing waiting list in September, a 42 per cent increase on the same month two years ago.
This FT article indicates the country will respond by banning foreign purchases of Kiwi homes — I guess the country is too crowded to allow for an elastic supply response.
With all the frenzy over the special election in Alabama gripping the nation it was probably easy to overlook the fact that there were a huge number of elections held yesterday. Of course, they were in Venezuela, so you’re to be forgiven if you didn’t hear anything about it.
Venezuela didn’t hold a national election for President, of course. Nicolas Maduro may have taken dictatorial control of the country this year, but he’s not yet ready to risk allowing his starving people to go to the polls and express an opinion on his fate. These were the next round of mayoral elections in cities across the country. They were being closely watched because Maduro has scheduled other elections to come because he didn’t care for the results of the last races where the peasants in certain regions had the temerity to vote against his preferred candidates. And, predictably, his socialist party delivered just what he was looking for, with victories in nearly every one of yesterday’s contests. (Associated Press)
Venezuela’s ruling socialists swept nearly all the races for mayors across the country, and President Nicolas Maduro is now threatening to ban key opposition parties from future elections in the oil-rich country wracked by economic crisis.
Hundreds of supporters shouted “Go Home, Donald Trump” to interrupt Maduro at a rally late Sunday in the colonial center of Caracas, where he announced that pro-government candidates grabbed more than 300 of the 335 mayoral offices.
Sunday’s voting marked the last nationwide elections before next year’s presidential race when Maduro is expected to seek another term despite his steep unpopularity.
“The imperialists have tried to set fire to Venezuela to take our riches,” Maduro told the crowd. “We’ve defeated the American imperialists with our votes, our ideas, truths, reason and popular will.”
Well, isn’t that just remarkable? Nicolas Maduro is running the socialist playbook line for line and thus far it’s working perfectly. His supporters are taking to the streets and shouting slogans accusing President Trump of causing their problems. (Turning the United States into “the common enemy” is a traditional tool of tyrants.) Three of the four major opposition parties either boycotted or were cowed out of these mayoral races in nearly every city and village, leaving the path clear for Maduro’s party to “win” an astounding 300 contests. Opposition leaders are filling up the jails, abandoning their campaigns or, in some cases, fleeing the country.
Meanwhile, inflation in Venezuela is running at roughly 800% through October of this year and the International Monetary Fund predicts that it will go as high as 2,300% in 2018. The money that the Venezuelans are carrying around is basically worthless and is reminiscent of the days in Italy under Il Duce when Italians would bring a wheelbarrow full of lira to the store hoping to buy a single loaf of bread. (And this is despite Maduro attempting to enact a scheme where he would create his own new cryptocurrency.)
At the same time, basic medicines, vaccinations and even baby formula are beyond the reach of all but the socialist party elites, creating what journalists in the country are describing as a race for survival in the streets of the nation’s major cities. Malaria is ravaging the nation and people are literally dying from wholly preventable or treatable illnesses because they have no access to medical care.
In the midst of all this chaos, Nicolas Maduro stated yesterday that the parties who “boycotted” the elections are done. In other words, he will ban the oppostion parties from even attempting to field candidates in upcoming elections. Watch closely, kids. A real-life experiment is playing out in Venezuela which you would be wise to monitor. This is how socialism always ends. The death throes of a once prosperous nation are the result of a generational shift toward centralized power under a tyrant. And the world can do basically nothing about it at this point.
Good, old-fashioned goats and the ancient Hindu practice of yoga are two things that don't seem to go together.
And yet, last year, a small farm in Corvallis, Oregon started offering classes that combined the two. Goat yoga is exactly what it sounds like: the practice of yoga in the presence of goats.
Soon these classes had a 900-person waiting list for an hour of ritual calisthenics with a bunch of horned ruminants. Within a year, the unlikely trend had spread across the nation.
"We would go through the different asanas and the different flows," explains Amanda Bowen, a goat-yoga instructor with GoatToBeZen in Maryland, "and the goats will come around and interact with people as we're doing the class."
And then the unstoppable force of goat yoga locked horns with the immovable object of the Washington, D.C. Department of Health. When Congressional Cemetery Director Paul Williams applied for a livestock permit in the District of Columbia, he was greeted by four lawyers "ready to throw every curve ball they possibly could at me to prevent goat yoga."
But goat springs eternal. Since Manchester, CT. reversed its ban late last summer, the only place in the country where risk-averse municipal bureaucracies are undermining this fitness-to-farm trend threat is the nation's capital.
Produced, shot, narrated, and edited by Todd Krainin.
Music:
J.S. Bach, BWV 536 Prelude and Fugue in A Major, performed by James Kibbie http://www.blockmrecords.org/bach/
J.S. Bach, BWV 546 Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, performed by James Kibbie
Front Porch Sitter, by Audionautix
Microsoft has unveiled plans for a complete rebuild of its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, in the eastern suburbs of Seattle. Corporations have long wanted to make their headquarters feel like universities — hence their love of the word campus — but this one is much closer to delivering on that image. complete with retail, generous plazas and open space, and — very important — the removal of through car traffic.
It’s most important feature is its relationship to the new light rail station that will open on the edge of the campus in 2023. A central axis of the campus points right to the station, minimizing walk distances to all campus destinations. The station is just off the image to the upper right. It’s not the town of circa 1900 town where density crowded around the station, but then rail stations in 1900 weren’t in ravines next to freeways. This campus represents the best of what you can do given the suburban nature of the urban fabric, land ownership, and transportation infrastructure. It’s no substitute for locating in the old fabric of a dense city — as Amazon and Twitter did and Google is planning to do — but it’s a great start toward building a more human urban environment in a difficult context.
None of the materials I’ve seen mentions the parking ratios, however. How many spaces per employee? Too much parking would destroy the whole point.
Albuquerque’s new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line is open, and it’s different from most such projects that we’re seeing in US cities of similar size. Quite simply, most of it is protected from traffic congestion, thanks to a median bus-only lane. It’s the red segment (with green stations) on this map (full map here)
Albuquerque BRT alignment. Red with green stations denotes exclusive bus lanes.
Yes, the lanes are red. No excuse for not seeing them. (Photo: Albuquerque Rapid Transit, http://www.brtabq.com/)
Many, many US BRT projects start out with exclusive lanes, but then make too many compromises along the way. In the worst cases, they end up as a bunch of nice infrastructure but little or no improvement in travel times. My own view is that if a bus does not have protection from traffic in the segments where it is needed to deliver a reliable operation, then it’s not BRT. For example, Las Vegas has a fine segment of busway that delivers buses from the traffic jam of downtown to the traffic jam of the Las Vegas Strip, but it doesn’t exist where it’s most needed, which is to get through those jams.
Albuquerque’s looks like a breakthrough in this regard.
And no, it’s not a problem that the buses continue beyond the end of the right of way to do further things in mixed traffic at the east end of the line. One of the great virtues of BRT is that it can do this. The vehicles are not confined to the infrastructure, as rail transit is, so they can continue to key destinations beyond the busway itself. Of course, if those mixed traffic segments become too congested, the busway will eventually need to be extended further.
So congratulations to Albuquerque. It looks like the opening day went well. I hope the system helps other cities see the benefits of not compromising on the most critical element of BRT — protection from traffic delay.
Even in coal's heyday, Appalachia was still relatively poor and backward. At the time, policy makers blamed its lack of economic development on mountainous inaccessibility. Their solution: End the region's isolation with massive infrastructure projects, most notably a network of four-lane highways that would connect the region to the rest of the country.
So in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Appalachian Regional Development Act, creating the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). Over the subsequent five decades, ARC has spent $27 billion (in 2015 dollars) to build nearly 3,000 miles of the Appalachian Development Highway System that is threaded throughout the mountains.
The highways, constructed along officially designated "Corridors," are splendidly engineered—and largely empty. They utterly failed to spark an economic renaissance. Despite tens of billions in federal money, the "region's performance relative to the national average is similar to its position in the 1960s," reported economists Carl Kitchens and Taylor Jaworski in a 2016 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. They calculate that the gigantic transportation investment boosted incomes in the region by just $586 per capita.
Far from being discouraged by this result, policy makers are at it again. This time, they want to drag Appalachia into the 21st century over newly installed information superhighways, known—God help us—as "eCorridors."
Here's the plan: First lace the mountains with high-speed broadband fiber-optic networks to connect the region to opportunities in the outside world. Then train unemployed miners in the art of computer coding. The first step aims to generate new jobs by luring companies to the area; the second is supposed to let people stay put and work.
I grew up as a hillbilly in central Appalachia, on a dairy farm in Washington County, Virginia. Like many folks, I left to seek an education and better opportunities beyond the confines of the Mountain Empire. I returned for a week in June to cruise the mountainous Corridors and meet with some of the people in Eastern Kentucky and Southwestern Virginia who are trying to jumpstart a hillbilly tech revolution. But instead of a burgeoning tech sector fed by glorious new fiber-optic cables, I found pure deja vu: Underutilized, debt-saddled infrastructure projects and an ever-growing number of Appalachians being expensively trained for jobs that are unlikely to show up.
Hope or Hype?
"Silicon Holler: How workforce retraining is bringing tech jobs to Appalachia," blares the headline in TechRepublic. "Can an Appalachian 'Silicon Holler' rise in coal's shadow?" asks Reuters. The Guardian informs us that the fiber-optic cables being built across Kentucky could transform coal country into "a new place on the map the hopeful call 'Silicon Holler.'"
The hype began as far back as 1999, with a project launched by Bristol Virginia Utilities (BVU), the city agency in charge of providing water, sewer, and electricity services to the 17,000 residents of Bristol, Virginia. That year, the utility proposed and the City Council approved a fiber-optic network to connect its eight electric substations and all city offices, including City Hall, public schools, libraries, and the police and fire departments.
That might have been seen as a logical extension for a utility company. But mission creep was inevitable, and in 2002, BVU began deploying a fiber-to-the-home network for residential customers. At the same time, it started to expand its OptiNet broadband network into Southwestern Virginia using revenue bonds, plus grants from the federal and state governments and tobacco settlement money—for a total of $132 million spent. In the end, OptiNet managed to pick up 13,000 customers and get spun off into an independent authority with its own board of directors.
"Everyone knew that broadband would help the economy in the future, but nobody knew how."
Cash inflows from successive government grants enabled OptiNet to function like a Ponzi scheme, masking the fiscal rot at the heart of the enterprise. Eventually in 2013, an audit found extensive misuse of funds—personal trips, bribes, and kickbacks—by board members, officers, and contractors. In 2016, nine people associated with the BVU Authority, including its CEO, chief financial officer, and board chairman, were sent to prison for conspiracy and fraud. The state government's 2016 final report noted that the OptiNet division was operating at a net loss, that this was expected to continue, and that therefore it was unlikely to generate enough cash to pay both the principal and interest owed on $45.5 million in bonds it issued in 2010.
The audit also found that the BVU Authority used an improper methodology to account for and cancel debt when it became an independent entity, and as a consequence it now owes the Bristol city utility division nearly $14 million. The auditors' blunt assessment: "These conditions raise substantial doubt about OptiNet's ability to continue as a going concern."
Fiber-Optic Funeral Home
"If you don't have broadband, you can't compete," says Paul Elswick. Elswick's office is located in a repurposed funeral home in an office park in Duffield, Virginia—a setting that would be a little too on-the-nose in a work of fiction. His company, the thematically named Sunset Digital Communications, provides fiber-optic broadband service in the mountain counties of Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Tennessee.
As the BVU Authority's problems mounted, Elswick and Sunset Digital, backed by a Miami-based private equity firm, swooped in and made an unsolicited bid of $50 million for OptiNet in February 2016. No strangers to working within the Appalachian aid-industrial complex, Elswick and his son Ryan have already deployed broadband networks in Southwestern Virginia and Northeastern Tennessee for regional development agencies funded by government grants and loans. In 2010, Sunset applied for federal stimulus funding and received $24.5 million—90 percent grants and 10 percent loans—to construct 279 miles of fiber-optic broadband in Claiborne and Hancock Counties in mountainous Northeastern Tennessee. "Everyone knew that broadband would help the economy in the future, but nobody knew how," says Elswick.
Since there are many local and regional government stakeholders in BVU OptiNet, the process has taken nearly two years to negotiate, but Sunset apparently cleared the final hurdle when the Virginia Coalfield Coalition voted to approve the purchase in August. If the deal holds, Sunset will have bought assets that cost various government agencies $132 million to build for only $50 million—less than 40 cents on the dollar.
This was a smart move for Elswick: Since the public networks have been purchased so cheaply relative to their construction costs, it is highly likely that the new private proprietors will be able to operate them at a profit. In the meantime, any outstanding bond payments will be borne by hapless taxpayers.
'Will Your Bill Go Up?'
A similar story has been playing out in nearby Dickenson County, where the board of supervisors created the Dickenson County Wireless Integrated Network (DCWIN) authority in 2004 as a way to connect businesses, government agencies, and residents to the internet. "Without wireless communications services the county will grow further isolated from the industrial and technical advances" in the rest of the country, the supervisors warned. This, they promised, would "be an outstanding investment for the future of Dickenson County and its citizens."
In 2005, the Board of Supervisors authorized a bond issue of $1.5 million to finance DCWIN's system of 10 high-speed cell towers. The minutes from that public meeting show county resident Gary Harless objecting, arguing that the bond issue would in effect "be mortgaging everyone's property for 15 years." He pointed out that DCWIN at the time had only 150 customers and would need to expand to 1,500 in order to earn the cash to pay off the bonds.
Harless' observations proved prescient. Five years later, the Board of Supervisors dissolved the authority and assumed its debts. A review of DCWIN's budgets since 2009 finds that expenditures always exceeded revenues. In July 2017, the county finally offloaded the wireless network to a local company, Hillcom Inc., for $227,000.
The minutes from a previous Board of Supervisors meeting show that Hillcom founder Brandon Hill had tangled with DCWIN a decade earlier. He'd heard rumors that the authority was trying to put him out of business after he set up high-speed connections to 20 of his neighbors, and he was worried. Looks like he'll have the last laugh.
The Hillcom site minces no words: "Will your bill go up? Well, there was a reason DCWIN was sold. It was not profitable. $39.95 is an extremely low price for internet." The new owner plans to upgrade the service, offering 40–100 megabits per second (mbps) download and 15–60 mbps upload speeds for $100 per month. The company hopes to have 500 customers eventually using its refurbished wireless network. That'll keep it profitable, thanks to the enterprise's ability to grab wireless infrastructure at fire sale rates.
If You Build It
Despite this well-established track record of failure, publicly funded internet infrastructure improvement projects in Appalachia keep getting bigger and more ambitious.
In 2013, Kentucky announced plans to get middle-mile broadband into every one of the state's 102 counties—3,400 miles of fiber by January 2017. The KentuckyWired network was supposed to be finished in the Appalachian counties by April 2016. After $30 million from the state budget, $23.5 million in federal ARC grants, and $232 million in bonds, all the project has to show for itself are 129 miles of not-yet-lighted fiber. In July, Kentucky Communications Network Authority director Phillip Brown flatly declined to set a firm completion date for the entire network.
What's worse, the network threatens to push out private development. Before it began, the state had an agreement with AT&T to bring broadband to Kentucky's 173 public school districts. Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear promised to break that deal to guarantee anchor clients for the network and make the math work to put KentuckyWired in the black—which would also mean the state's taxpayers would foot most of the bill for paying off the bonds. After AT&T threatened to defend its contract in court, the matter was quietly dropped.
This is common. A 2016 analysis from the State Government Leadership Foundation notes that such subsidized broadband networks first remove a major anchor tenant (the government) from private networks, thereby weakening the economic case for private investment. Second, the subsidized networks seek to capture market share from already established private-sector providers. And third, the mere threat of government broadband tends to reduce private-sector investment. Thus, government-subsidized broadband likely impedes rather than speeds up the delivery of broadband service to customers in relatively remote areas.
In 2013, Kentucky announced plans to install 3,400 miles of fiber-optic cable by January 2017. Almost $300 million later, all the project has to show for itself are 129 miles of not-yet-lighted fiber.
"Our big problem with these public-private partnerships is that they never have the private-sector companies carrying most of the risk," says Jim Waters, head of the Lexington-based pro-market Bluegrass Institute. He's right. Macquarie Capital—which holds the contract to build, maintain, and operate the system over a 30-year period—and other private partners are being reimbursed through a fixed set of availability payments over the life of the agreement, regardless of any revenues earned. Kentucky's taxpayers bear the entire risk of revenue shortfalls with respect to the network.
Alarmed by the delays and escalating costs, Republican Kentucky state Sen. Chris McDaniel said at a July hearing, "I want a shutdown plan, with financial costs to shut it down, stop work. What's it going to cost us to get out of this?" McDaniel is right to be concerned. The private partner in a very similar project in Massachusetts, MassBroadband123, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
Waters agrees that the state should cut its losses now. "The way things are going, it might take $700 million, $800 million, or even $1 billion to complete the project," he says. Waters also makes the salient point that progress and advancement could make this decadeslong enterprise obsolete. "What about technological change?" he asks. "How do we know that this is the type of infrastructure we will need in 30 years?"
Even as officials were concocting KentuckyWired, access to broadband networks was steadily expanding throughout the state, rising from 85 percent in 2014 to nearly 94 percent in 2016. Waters argues that the bigger problem in Appalachia is not lack of access but the failure to adopt broadband when it's available. This notion is backed up by a 2014 study in The Annals of Regional Science by the Oklahoma State University economist Brian Whitacre and his colleagues. They found that increases in broadband adoption between 2008 and 2011 in non-metro counties did bring increases in income and the creation of new businesses. But "simply obtaining increases in broadband availability (not adoption) has no statistical impact on either jobs or income." If you build it and they don't come, there's little benefit.
Instead of spending hundreds of millions on KentuckyWired, Waters argues, a public information campaign explaining how broadband services can help businesses in Appalachia would be more effective at boosting employment and economic growth.
Coal Miners to Coders
If it's wishful to think you can spark growth with a policy of "if you build it, they will come," it sounds even more fanciful to form a strategy around "if you build it, they will stay." Yet the government has embraced exactly that idea.
The feds think subsidized high-speed internet connections could support newly trained digital workers. In 2015, the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program Inc. (EKCEP)—which was still pushing training for coal jobs as recently as 2006—began dispensing federal grants to train mountain folk in the art of computer coding.
The Corridor G highway leading into Pikeville is impeccable. Thanks to the presence of a university and a regional medical center, its downtown, unlike that of many other fading Eastern Kentucky communities, remains relatively vibrant. The electronic sign outside the courthouse proudly declares that Pike County is "America's Energy Capital." In 2016, Fortune listed Bit Source, which is headquartered there, as one of "7 World-Changing Companies to Watch," and in 2017 Fast Company declared its president "one of the most creative people in business."
The outfit is the brainchild of local entrepreneurs Charles "Rusty" Justice and M. Lynn Parrish, who developed the idea in 2014 after a fact-finding trip to a computer-coding incubator in Lexington. Fueled by $150,000 in National Emergency Grant funds from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bit Source selected 10 former coal industry workers out of 900 applicants to be interns. Ranging in age from 33 to 48, they were paid $15 per hour during a 22-week crash course in HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Drupal. All 10 of the selected applicants made it through the training—funded by another $166,000 federal grant—and are still working for the company. Bit Source's software developers now earn from $21 to $23 per hour.
James Johnson, 47, grew up about 8 miles outside of Pikeville. He worked for years selling heavy equipment to coal mining companies for Brandeis Machinery; as the mines shut down, Brandeis downsized and Johnson lost his job. When I meet him at Bit Source's headquarters in a refurbished Coca-Cola bottling plant, I ask why he didn't leave to seek employment elsewhere. "My wife has a good job at the local hospital and my two sons were in school," he replies.
He applied for a lot of jobs at lower wages than he had been earning, but he couldn't get hired. Then Johnson heard about Bit Source and dutifully put in an application without much hope. "By that time, I was so heartbroken and filled with a sense of failure that I didn't think that there was much of a chance that I would be accepted," he recalls. The training was intensive but he found that he could handle it. Did he like coding? "My old job was very routine, very comfort zone." He smiles. "This job is a lot more exciting. You never know what new thing you've got to learn. You sit at your computer and make things out of nothing."
Johnson is convinced that his fellow Appalachians can compete with coders in India, Europe, and South America. "We just need a fast-flowing internet," he says. "We are hoping real hard for the KentuckyWired fiber."
Bit Source Creative Director Payton May, a 29-year-old native of the area, spent two years in architecture graduate school at the University of Virginia studying urban and environmental design. "At 18, I never thought I would be back here," he says. "I now see the value that the area really has. It's home and it's family." One interesting tidbit from May: He says the company's connection to the internet has 15–50 mbps download and 15 mbps upload speeds, well within the parameters of the formal definition of broadband.
The next day, I drove up another congestion-free highway to Paintsville, Kentucky, to talk with several people in a computer training program at the downtown campus of Big Sandy Community and Technical College. The program was being run by Interapt, a Louisville-based software development company that specializes in mobile applications and wearables.
Unlike Pikeville, Paintsville had clearly seen much better days. The main street was mostly deserted and lined with empty storefronts, although a Pokémon Go charging station was attached to a lamppost downtown. Some of the yards sported "Friends of Coal" signs urging people to "Support Kentucky Jobs!"
Interapt's TechHire Eastern Kentucky (TEKY) program involves 16 weeks of intensive training followed by a 16-week apprenticeship at the company. The TEKY program was funded with $2.75 million in grants from ARC, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Labor. Fifty participants were selected from a pool of 850 applicants. None of the Interapt coding trainees had previously been coal miners.
The participants were paid $10 an hour during the training period. "You can't expect people to learn something hard if they are worried about how to feed their families," says Interapt founder and CEO Ankur Gopal. If all 50 completed the program, that would have amounted to $320,000. According to Gopal, between eight and 15 of the company's engineers and designers were typically on site at TEKY. Those staffers charged less per hour than they would for regular client services. Only 33 of the initial 50 students made it through to the apprenticeship phase.
Alex Hughes, 43, grew up in nearby Prestonsburg. He worked for 15 years as a self-employed videographer, often for local law firms. As with much else, the collapse of the coal industry caused that source of work to dry up. He stayed in Eastern Kentucky because "that's where my family is."
Melissa Anderson, 40, grew up in Vergie, near Pikeville. She had worked in administrative positions at a local law firm and then at Big Sandy Community College. Budget cuts at the school resulted in her being laid off in January 2016. She and her fiancé went to Florida for two months looking for jobs, but came back when he could not find steady construction work. She found the TEKY program a "little strenuous" and didn't think she'd make it through to the apprenticeship program. So, taking her business background into account, managers at Interapt offered her a position starting in May as a marketing analyst.
As with the highway construction project before it, the internet infrastructure push has not created a detectable boom. Population in the counties covered by various government-subsidized broadband networks continues to fall.
Lucas Lell, in his early 20s, was the youngest TEKY graduate in the group. Reared in the town of Stopover, he was warned as a boy not to go to work in the coal fields. "You'd be broken by your 40s," his parents told him. Lell had just finished his associate's degree in science at Big Sandy. He was thinking of attending Morehead State, just an hour and a half from Paintsville, when he heard about the Interapt TEKY program. "I've always had a passion for computers," he says. At the end of the apprenticeship program, Interapt offered him a full-time job as a quality assurance analyst. "I do want to stay around here," says Lell. "I'm already far away from my true home, Stopover."
Ultimately, Interapt hired 15 of the TEKY program participants, most of whom work remotely from locations in Eastern Kentucky. Their salaries range from $37,000 to $42,000 a year. Some other participants found tech jobs in the area, but many are still searching. One way to look at the TEKY computer coding program is that it subsidized the training of Interapt's new employees at the rate of $180,000 per hire. Bit Source managed to train folks for considerably less: about $31,000 per employee.
By comparison, the nonprofit Eleven Fifty Academy across the Ohio River in Indiana offers a highly regarded 12-week coding boot camp for $13,500. Students at Big Sandy Community and Technical College can take a year's worth of computer programming classes toward an associate's degree for under $15,000, including tuition, books, room, and board. In July, Gopal suggested that the company would relaunch its TEKY program this fall, but EKCEP has announced that it will not use Interapt in its job training programs in the future.
A Future for the Holler?
I loved meeting the folks in Southwest Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, and I was impressed by Sunset CEO Paul Elswick's business savvy and determination to provide new opportunities to people who live in the region he loves. The drive, enthusiasm, and optimism of the newly minted coders at Bit Source and Interapt was likewise invigorating. Nevertheless, it is hard to see the seeds that are supposed to someday sprout and grow into a nascent Silicon Holler.
It's difficult to tell how many employers, if any, have decided to relocate to Southwestern Virginia due to better access to high speed data networks. As with the highway construction project before it, the internet infrastructure push has not created a detectable boom. Population in the counties covered by various government-subsidized broadband networks continues to fall, dropping from 334,000 in 2000 to 324,000 now. Between 1980 and 2000, by contrast—without any high-speed internet to speak of and with the highways uncompleted—the area's population dropped by a smaller amount, from 336,000 to 334,000.
For more than 50 years, the feds have poured billions in job training and infrastructure funds into central Appalachia with the goal of spurring economic growth and reducing endemic poverty. There is very little to show for all that effort.
In September, I contacted Dickenson County resident Gary Harless, the brave citizen who spoke up at that Board of Supervisors meeting 12 years ago to warn that poorly conceived infrastructure investment would end up "mortgaging everyone's property." I asked him what he thought now. "Looking back, I just feel sorry for the county," Harless told me. "I don't feel smart; I feel like it was just basic economics. Government has never been good at management."
There's a better way to do basically everything the Republican tax bill is trying to do.
Republicans had a decade at least to come up with a comprehensive tax reform plan that achieves their goals without raising taxes on the middle class. They failed.
The Senate plan causes about 13 million fewer people to have health insurance by repealing the individual mandate and hurting enrollment in both Medicaid and Obamacare exchanges. That will, according to the best evidence we have, lead to an increase in preventable deaths on the order of 15,600 people per year. It will also increase individual health insurance premiums even for people who still do purchase insurance.
By 2027, poor and middle-class people will see their taxes go up across the board. People making between $10,000 and $20,000 a year, the working poor, will see their income go down by 1.5 percent. Millionaires will see their income go up by 0.4 percent:
Even before major individual tax provisions expire at the end of 2025, the bill raises taxes on a significant share of people. In 2018, economist Ernie Tedeschi estimates that 11 percent of taxpayers will be paying more. The bill’s tweaks to tax brackets, doubling of the standard deduction, elimination of personal exemptions, and expansion of the child tax credit interact in sometimes unpredictable ways. Some families win, but others lose. Even in the early years, it’s not an across-the-board tax cut.
The bill cuts alcohol taxes on wine, beer, and liquor. We know that alcohol taxes are effective at reducing drunk driving, violent crime, and liver cirrhosis, and that increasing them saves thousands of lives a year. Raising the cost of a six-pack of Bud Light by 50 cents could save 2,000 to 6,000 lives every year. So cutting alcohol taxes, as the tax bill does, will likely increase preventable deaths in the US significantly.
It didn’t have to be this bad
Here’s the thing, though: Whatever the goal Republicans have, it didn’t have to be achieved this way. There is for each and every purpose a better bill that could be written.
Suppose Republicans wanted an across-the-board tax cut that helped both middle-class and rich people. They could’ve simply cut the 10 percent tax bracket to 8 percent, or that plus cut the 15 percent bracket to 12 percent. That helps middle- and upper-class people (though not the poor) and creates no losers. If they wanted to conform to Senate rules, they could have it all expire after eight or 10 years, just as the current legislation does. If they wanted to make it permanent, and cared deeply enough, they could’ve gone nuclear on the filibuster and passed a permanent cut with 51 votes.
But Republicans also want a lower, permanent corporate tax rate. Also doable: You can finance substantial rate cuts by removing tax breaks from the corporate code. Robert Pozen at Harvard Business School has estimated that eliminating the deductibility of interest payments on corporate debt would enable a cut in the corporate rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. If you wanted to, at the same time, allow 100 percent deductibility of all investments at the time they’re made, the rate would have to go up somewhat. But you could definitely cut the corporate rate, and pay for it permanently, by eliminating certain deductions and broadening the base. You don’t have to raise taxes or take away health care from middle-class people.
Republicans have grander aspirations than that, however. If you read the “Better Way” tax framework released by House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady in 2016, you’ll see page after page of arguments for transitioning away from taxing income to taxing consumption. A lot of economists agree with that goal, even progressive ones (though others insist taxing consumption is inherently regressive).
Luckily there’s a plan in Congress that achieves that goal, is revenue-neutral, and doesn’t raise taxes on the poor or middle class. It’s Sen. Ben Cardin’s (D-MD) Progressive Consumption Tax Act. Cardin would exempt the first $100,000 of income for couples from income tax ($50,000 for singles, $75,000 for single parents), meaning that the vast majority of people would no longer pay income taxes. He'd consolidate rates to three — 15, 25, and 28 percent — and cut the corporate tax to 17 percent. That's a lower top individual rate, and a lower corporate rate, than the Senate is proposing. To pay for it, he'd introduce a value-added tax, the kind of consumption tax used in most other rich countries, and add a rebate so that poor people don’t see their taxes go up.
The plan, based on a proposal by Columbia tax law professor Michael Graetz, accomplishes basically all of Republicans’ substantive tax reform goals. It lowers income tax rates, and dramatically lowers the corporate tax. By exempting the majority of Americans from income taxes, it reduces the importance of deductions and credits. And it shifts the tax burden to consumption by adding a VAT.
But unlike the Senate or House tax bills, it doesn’t increase the deficit, and it’s not regressive. The Tax Policy Center modeled the Graetz plan back in 2013 with a VAT rate of 12.9 percent, and slightly tweaked individual tax brackets (14, 27, and 31). TPC found that it would cost $0. It’s completely revenue-neutral. And it's progressive. The top 0.1 percent would see their income fall by 0.9 percent, and the poorest fifth would see their income grow by 1.2 percent.
If Republicans really want to give needy people a tax cut while shifting the tax code to consumption and lowering individual and corporate tax rates, there’s your plan. You can work with Cardin on putting together a passable version right now.
Perhaps a VAT is too dramatic a step. I have a plan for then, too! Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden has for years put out bipartisan tax reform plans, first with Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) and then with Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN), who have both since left the body. The plan sets a top rate of 35 percent, lowers the corporate tax rate to 24 percent, and, according to a 2010 analysis from the Tax Policy Center, would have made the tax code slightly more progressive. That analysis came before some of the high-income Bush tax cuts were revived, so the effect relative to today's laws would be different. But it’s a model for a way to cut corporate rates and simplify the code while not making the tax code more regressive.
Republicans have to ask themselves what they’re in this for
I don’t know what’s in the hearts of Orrin Hatch or Kevin Brady or Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell. I don’t like to assume malign motives of politicians, even ones I vehemently disagree with. But the details of this tax bill are less consistent with an honest desire to achieve certain principled changes to the tax code — to make it simpler, or more pro-investment, or more tilted at taxing consumption rather than income — than with a desire to get the tax deal done fast, a desire to help important constituencies, and a desire to thumb the eyes of perceived ideological enemies.
That explains why, rather than paying for corporate cuts by offsetting an appropriate number of corporate tax breaks, the Senate wants to cut Medicaid and Obamacare. It sticks it to programs that are important to Democrats, furthers the GOP’s long-running interest in undermining Obamacare, and avoids making hard decisions about corporate benefits that might delay passage.
It explains a variety of anti-university provisions inserted into the bill. If you care about lowering tax rates on savings and investment, you do not insert a random excise tax on the earnings of big university endowments. But if you care about sticking it to coastal elite universities that are full of liberals, that provision makes sense. So does treating tuition waivers for PhD students as taxable income. This will hurt the economy dramatically in the long run by undermining human capital developments and creating a less educated workforce. It might even cost lives by impeding biomedical research. But it’s a good way to own the libs.
Republicans had years to put together this tax bill. They had the whole Obama administration, even the last two years of the Bush administration when they were in the minority. They could’ve done better. They had the tools and resources to do better. Other politicians and policy analysts had come up with ideas to help them do better.
Construction has begun on a light rail on a floating bridge in Seattle, Washington.
Set to be complete by 2023, it will likely become the first floating light rail line in the world.
It's part of a larger $3.7 billion project to construct a light rail corridor that connects Seattle with Bellevue, Washington.
Seattle, Washington is no stranger to ambitious transportation projects. The city is already home to four of the world's longest floating bridges. (Unlike a traditional bridge, a floating one often uses massive pontoons — watertight concrete blocks filled with air — to support its road deck.) Earlier this year, Seattle also completed an earthquake-resistant bridge.
Now the city is embarking on an even more ambitious transport project. Local transit agency Sound Transit is build the world's first light rail (a passenger train designed for light traffic) — on a floating bridge over Lake Washington by 2023.
The bridge will include two pairs of 300-ton trains that will travel up to 55 mph. It's part of a larger $3.7 billion project to construct a light rail corridor that connects Seattle with Bellevue, Washington.
As The Seattle Times notes, there's not a lot of room for error with the project's floating component. Sound Transit is expecting 50,000 daily riders for the new rail. If a train were to go off the bridge's tracks, it would sink 200 feet to the bottom of the lake.
Like Seattle's other floating bridges, over two dozen giant pontoons will connect to make it buoyant, according to CityLab. Below the deck, steel cables will anchor the pontoons to the lake bed, which will protect the bridge from rocking during strong waves or wind. The city will also perform routine maintenance checks for cracks.
According to the Times, two of the project's goals to reduce car traffic and carbon emissions in Seattle. Sound Transit has said that it aims to double the city's light rail system over the next 25 years. If successful, it would be one of the largest transit projects in the United States.
Other cities around the US have similar efforts to increase their public transit options. Los Angeles's City Council recently approved the Mobility 2035 Plan, which aims to build a new network of bus-only lanes and bike lanes. Meanwhile, Phoenix, Arizona plans to extend its existing streetcar and rail systems in almost every direction.
MoviePass is offering a limited time one-year subscription plan of $89.95.
That's $7.50 a month, less than the average ticket price ($8.93).
The number of subscribers using the startup since the $9.95-a-month price change in August has hit 600,000.
MoviePass is not letting up on disrupting the movie theater ecosystem.
The startup has announced an annual subscription plan that's hard to beat.
For a limited time a one-year subscription to MoviePass will only cost $89.95 ($6.55 processing fee included). If you do the math, that's $7.50 a month. The average domestic movie ticket is currently $8.93. That's quite a deal.
Existing MoviePass members will save 25% on their current $9.95 a month plan if they switch.
MoviePass, backed by Helios and Matheson Analytics, Inc., has been a hot topic in the movie business since August when it announced it was dropping its monthly subscription plan, which allows its members to see one movie per day, to under $10 a month. AMC, the largest theater chain in the world, has been trying to find a way to block the service at its theaters since August.
Though there have been complaints since the end of the summer by customers about the wait time to get membership cards, and how long it takes to get reimbursed if you have to pay for a ticket out-of-pocket (Business Insider has looked into a few of these complaints and found — though it takes a frustrating long time — people have been getting cards and reimbursed), MoviePass has seen its subscription number hit 600,000 since the price change.
Domino’s Pizza CEO Patrick Doyle pointed out a key difference between the chain's “pizza profiles" and Walgreens' loyalty program.
He says the chain doesn’t need extra info from customers because it can get that data from their orders, and hates how much info other stores ask customers to give.
Big data is transforming every industry, and pizza is no exception.
Domino’s "pizza profiles" loyalty program, which the chain launched in 2013, lets you earn free food after ordering a set amount of pizza from within the company's app. But the company wants to draw a key distinction between its loyalty rewards program and those of competitors — Domino's didn’t want to ask you for mountains of data.
"Every single time I go to Walgreens, the nice lady at the cash register asks if I’m a member and I say no. And she tells me you know you’re going to pay more and I say yes but I’m not going to spend 20 minutes filling out your forms,” CEO Patrick Doyle told Bernstein analyst Sara Senatore at an event last week.
“We already had the data. It was a big advantage and we are not going to complicate our loyalty program until we know that everybody understands our loyalty program."
So far, the loyalty program, alongside renovated stores, seems to be paying off for the Michigan-based pizza chain. Domino’s could overtake Pizza Hut as the largest national pizza chain by sales numbers this year, Nomura-Instinet analyst Mark Kalinowski said this summer. Domino’s rising sales numbers — up 8.4% during its most recent earnings report in October — are backing up his thesis.
Doyle also pointed to Starbucks' loyalty program, known as My Starbucks Rewards, as something Domino’s is looking to model.
“I think Starbucks is best in class in the restaurant industry in on-premise,” he said. “And what they are doing with technology there from a payment standpoint, from what they are doing to speed up the lines, all the rest of it — they do a terrific job there.”
Shares of Domino’s are up 12.43% so far this year. Wall Street consensus is that the stock will continue to climb to $216, or 21% above Friday morning's price of $178.10.
Walmart will be among the first companies to try Tesla's new electric trucks.
The retailer plans to test them in the United States and Canada.
The trucks have impressive design, speed, range, and technology specs.
The competition between Wal-Mart and Amazon may have a new wrinkle.
After Tesla introduced its electric truck, the Semi, on Thursday night, Walmart said that it will purchase and try out some of the trucks in the United States and Canada, according to CNBC.
"We believe we can learn how this technology performs within our supply chain, as well as how it could help us meet some of our long-term sustainability goals, such as lowering emissions,” the company said to CNBC.
In recent years, Walmart has made substantial investments in its quest to compete with Amazon, including its purchase of Jet.com and tests of an online grocery delivery service with Uber and Lyft.
Tesla's Semi has an impressive list of features, including a 500-mile range per charge, technology that allows it to travel autonomously in a group of other Semis, and the ability to go from 0-60 miles per hour in five seconds when there is no trailer attached. It can also hit the same speed in 20 seconds when it is hauling 80,000 pounds of cargo.
What's more, the vehicle can charge 400 miles in just 30 minutes when using one of Tesla's new high-speed Megachargers.
Tesla has also decked the vehicle out with high-tech details including a windshield made of glass that doesn't break upon impact and a regenerative braking system that Tesla claims will not ever break down. In fact, Tesla guarantees that the truck will not break down for one million miles.
Tesla is currently taking reservations for the vehicle for $5,000.
Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“My conscience—as an activist, a strategist—is very clear,” Donna Brazile said in September 2016, not long after admitting that she had leaked primary debate questions to Hillary Clinton. But perhaps her conscience was not as pristine as she claimed. An excerpt from her upcoming book Hacks, published in Politico on Thursday morning, indicts both the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign for what, in Brazile’s eyes, amounts to political corruption. Most public reaction has centered on her revelations about the Joint Fundraising Agreement that the DNC struck with the Clinton campaign in 2015. That agreement sucked state parties dry and transferred control of the party to the campaign—all while Clinton faced a primary challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders.
Brazile’s account raises a set of questions. Was the primary race, in fact, “rigged” in favor of Clinton? Was Brazile, a high-ranking member of the DNC before becoming its interim chair, really so innocent of all these shenanigans? But her tell-all confirms widespread suspicions that Brazile herself once denied: The DNC was, indeed, in the tank for Clinton. Beyond that, it raises more troubling implications that are also undeniable: The DNC is in rotten shape, a problem that predated the primary and has yet to be resolved. The organization charged with electing Democratic candidates across the country has floundered at the state level, all while sustaining a leech-like consultant class that sucks up too much of its money.
Brazile claims that when she replaced Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the head of the DNC, she discovered a party deeply in debt, losing $3.5 million to $4 million every month, which necessitated an intervention from the Clinton campaign to keep it afloat:
I gasped. I had a pretty good sense of the DNC’s operations after having served as interim chair five years earlier. Back then the monthly expenses were half that. What had happened? The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.
These details mostly confirm existing facts. We already knew there was too much overlap between the Clinton campaign and the DNC, not least because the Sanders campaign complained about the Joint Fundraising Agreement back in the spring of 2016. And after Clinton had secured the nomination, her campaign took control to an unprecedented degree. “A presidential campaign taking over the party committee post-convention is standard, but what happened in 2016 was more intense than veterans remember,” Politico reported in an election post-mortem. “People at the DNC and in battleground states speak of angry, bitter calls that came in from Brooklyn whenever they caught wind of contact between them, adamant that only the campaign’s top brass could approve spending or tactical decisions.”
We knew, too, that consultants grip the party tight, that they are increasingly at odds with the party’s base, and that they are not very good at winning elections. “The ‘election industrial complex’ is spending millions of dollars, and [Democrats] are not putting our money where our people are,” Jessica Byrd of Three Point Strategies told Fortune in July 2016. But instead of punishing failure, and thus creating some measure of accountability, Democrats continue to funnel money to outfits like Mothership Strategies, whose notoriously hyperbolic email fundraising strategies have little success to recommend them, and Precision Strategies. More recently, the party ostensibly “fired” its top fundraiser, Emily Mellencamp Smith, for poor performance, only to keep her on in a consulting capacity.
Clinton herself helped establish this pattern, with her never-changing inner circle. Nobody flunks out, and the consultant class self-perpetuates. The most glaring consultant sin, however, is the slow gasping death of Obama for America, the grassroots organization that emerged from Obama’s successful presidential bids. It languished and eventually died under consultant control, a sort of negligent homicide that botched a key chance for the party to build a viable political movement.
Meanwhile, the party’s state branches wither. The Joint Fundraising Agreement simply reflected the party’s existing political priorities; it has entrenched itself in states it believes it can win, while writing off more conservative states. It surrendered state legislatures while keeping Barack Obama in office for eight years. As important as the White House is, it’s impossible for the party to govern effectively as long as the far-right controls most state legislature seats.
And its state-level weaknesses will have long-term effects. Not only is the party ill-positioned to fight further redistricting efforts, it’s harmed its candidate recruitment efforts. As asserted by the National Conference of State Legislators, 22 presidents first served in state legislatures—so did 22 sitting senators and 220 current members of the House. Building the party’s future starts with the states, and that means money can’t just flow to the top.
The other certainty we can draw from Brazile’s account is that she believes the future of the party lies with the Sanders wing. In throwing a bunch of establishment figures (Clinton, Wasserman Schultz, Obama) under the bus as she raced to ally herself with Sanders, she transparently indicated that Sanders is the de facto leader of the party. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a likely contender for the 2020 nomination, said as much on Thursday afternoon:
WOW. Elizabeth Warren just told @jaketapper that she believes that the DNC/Primary situation was rigged for Hillary Clinton.
But that future is stillborn unless Democrats divest themselves of their Rasputins. It must democratize its functions and build up a popular movement. It must rebuild its state parties, yes, but it also needs to firm up its identity. Sanders’s small-donor success is an important lesson for the DNC, and perhaps one of the most important lessons to come out of the 2016 primary in general—but that approach doesn’t work without a compelling political message. And nearly every day, there’s new evidence that this identity should be more egalitarian, and further left, than the Clintonite centrism Brazile herself has historically supported.
According to a Washington Post report on new polling from Stan Greenberg and Nancy Zdunkewicz, voters aren’t particularly interested in the ongoing drama involving Trump and Vladimir Putin. They’re motivated by simpler measures of self-interest. “Because voters do not hear Democrats expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo on economics or the balance of power when so many are concerned about the direction of this country, only 4-in-10 … voters say Democrats ‘know what it’s like to live a day in my shoes’ and are ‘for the right kind of change,’” Greenberg and Zdunkewicz concluded.
That change should start with the Democratic Party itself. It means listening to what liberal voters—not consultants, not party mandarins, not fundraisers—are saying.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was nothing if not complicated. Jinnah, an alcohol-drinking, pork-eating, English-loving barrister, was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Yesterday, his only child Dina Wadia died and that too is complicated.
Dina Wadia was the daughter of Jinnah and his Parsi wife Rattanbai Petit whom he proposed to at 16 and married at 18 when he was 42. Rattanbai was the daughter of one of Jinnah’s friends, who never forgave him. Jinnah and Petit’s daughter, Dina, was born in 1919 shortly after their marriage. Rattanbai died only ten years later.
Dina herself married young, to the Parsi Neville Wadia whose successful family-business went back to the days of the East India Company. But Jinnah was furious that she had married outside the faith telling her “There are millions of Muslim boys in India,” and she could marry any one of them she chose. Dina promptly replied, “Father, there were millions of Muslim girls in India. Why did you not marry one of them?” Jinnah did not attend the wedding.
When India’s partition came, Jinnah’s family was partitioned as well. Jinnah went to Pakistan and his daughter stayed in India, never to see him again. Her son, Nusli Wadia, became one of India’s richest men. Thus the descendants of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan are successful Indian Parsis. The last twist perhaps in Jinnah’s complicated tale.
In her later years, Dina Wadia moved to New York where she died yesterday.
As the streets fill with gunfire and tear gas, shortages of basic supplies continue to plague Nicolas Maduro's socialist Venezuela. In July, opposition leader Miranda Gov. Henrique Capriles tweeted a series of photos of soldiers being rewarded for their service with the most coveted rarity of all: toilet paper.
Gaming company Razer is getting into the smartphone business.
And, as you might expect from the maker of high-powered gaming laptops, its new phone has outrageous specs and is geared for video games.
Indeed, judging from its specs, the Razer Phone, which the company announced Wednesday, could handily beat Apple's iPhone X, Google's Pixel 2, Samsung's Galaxy devices, and other top smartphones, when it comes to performance.
But the Razer Phone has another thing going for it that could even tempt non-gamers — its $700 price. That's a lot cheaper than many other top phones.
Check out Razer's new Phone:
The Razer Phone has some seriously impressive power.
YouTube/Razer
Looking purely at its specs, Razer's phone is one of the most powerful smartphones on the market. It has:
- A 5.7-inch Quad HD (1400p, or 2K resolution) display with a wide color gamut and a 120-hertz refresh rate.
- An all-aluminum case.
- Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 processor, the same powerful chip found within Google's Pixel 2 and Samsung's latest Galaxy phones.
- 8GB of RAM, which is equivalent to the amount of memory that comes in many PCs. By contrast, most phones typically include around 4GB of RAM.
- 64GB of built-in storage. You can also augment that amount with a microSD card.
- Dual front-facing speakers that are certified to meet Dolby's Atmos high-end audio standard. Each speaker is powered by its own dedicated amplifier.
- A large, 4,000mAh battery.
- Fast charging via USB-C.
- A dual-lens rear camera system, with each camera offering 12 megapixels of resolution. The system includes both a standard wide-angle lens and a 2x optical zoom lens, similar to both the iPhone X and the Galaxy Note 8.
- An 8-megapixel front camera.
- A fingerprint sensor on the power button, which is located on the side of the device's.
The Phone has some features that hardcore gamers can appreciate.
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Razer is targeting the most discerning gamers with technology that you'd typically find on the highest of high-end gaming PCs.
One of those features is the Phone's 120-hertz refresh rate. That frequency rates up there with gaming-quality PC monitors. It should yield ultra-smooth video and gameplay and allow you to play games or videos at 120 frames per second.
By contrast, Microsoft's upcoming Xbox One X will play games at 60 frames per second, albeit at a higher resolution. Razer's CEO Min-Liang Tan said the Phone's ultra-fast refresh rate will prevent motion lag, stuttering, and ghosting, which is when a screen displays an older and newer image at the same time.
Tan also boasted about Razer's Ultramotion feature. Similar to Nvidia's G-Sync and AMD's FreeSync, Ultramotion is a technology that synchronizes the graphics chip in the Phone with its screen, which helps it offer smooth gameplay at high frame rates. That kind of feature is coveted in the PC gaming community.
Still, the Phone lacks some of the latest features found on other flagship devices.
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While Tan touted the Phone's performance against other flagship phones, the company's brand-new device is missing a few features found on those gadgets, including:
- Water resistance
- An OLED screen
- Ultra-narrow borders around its display (a sacrifice Razer had to make to include its large dual front-facing speakers)
- Wireless charging
Unfortunately, the Razer has copied its rivals in one way. Like many other recent high-end smartphones, the Phone lacks a standard headphone jack.
Humans still have an edge over artificial intelligence in "StarCraft," one of the world's most popular computer games.
A professional StarCraft player beat four different bots, including one developed by Facebook's artificial intelligence research lab.
Experts predict that bots will eventually beat professional StarCraft players once they are trained properly.
In the computer game StarCraft, humans still have an edge over artificial intelligence.
That was clear on Tuesday after professional StarCraft player Song Byung-gu defeated four different bots in the first contest to pit AI systems against pros in live bouts of the game. One of the bots, dubbed “CherryPi,” was developed by Facebook’s AI research lab. The other bots came from Australia, Norway, and Korea.
The contest took place at Sejong University in Seoul, Korea, which has hosted annual StarCraft AI competitions since 2010. Those previous events matched AI systems against each other (rather than against humans) and were organized, in part, by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a U.S.-based engineering association.
Though it has not attracted as much global scrutiny as the March 2016 tournament between Alphabet’s AlphaGo bot and a human Go champion, the recent Sejong competition is significant because the AI research community considers StarCraft a particularly difficult game for bots to master. Following AlphaGo’s lopsided victory over Lee Sedol last year, and other AI achievements in chess and Atari video games, attention shifted to whether bots could also defeat humans in real-time games such as StarCraft.
Unlike Go, which allows bots and human players to see the main board and devote time to formulating a strategy, StarCraft requires players to use their memory, devise their strategy, and plan ahead simultaneously, all inside a constrained, simulated world. As a result, researchers view StarCraft as an efficient tool to help AI advance.
A number of professional StarCraft gamers have said they welcome the challenge of playing against bots. Two leading playerstold MIT Technology Review earlier this year that they were willing to fight bots on broadcast TV, as in the AlphaGo match, if asked. Executives at Alphabet’s AI-focused division, DeepMind, have hinted that they are interested in organizing such a competition in the future.
The event wouldn’t be much of a contest if it were held now. During the Sejong competition, Song, who ranks among the best StarCraft players globally, trounced all four bots involved in less than 27 minutes total. (The longest match lasted about 10 and a half minutes; the shortest, just four and a half.)
That was true even though the bots were able to move much faster and control multiple tasks at the same time. At one point, the StarCraft bot developed in Norway was completing 19,000 actions per minute. Most professional StarCraft players can’t make more than a few hundred moves a minute.
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Song, 29, said the bots approached the game differently from the way humans do. “We professional gamers initiate combat only when we stand a chance of victory with our army and unit-control skills,” he said in a post-competition interview with MIT Technology Review. In contrast, the bots tried to keep their units alive without making any bold decisions. (In StarCraft, players have to destroy all of their competitors’ resources by scouting and patrolling opponents’ territory and implementing battle strategies.)
Song did find the bots impressive on some level. “The way they managed their units when they defended against my attacks was stunning at some points,” he said.
Kim Kyung-joong, the Sejong University computer engineering professor who organized the competition, said the bots were constrained, in part, by the lack of widely available training data related to StarCraft. “AlphaGo improved its competitiveness and saw progress by learning from data [about the game Go],” Kim pointed out.
That will change soon. In August, DeepMind and the games company Blizzard Entertainment released a long-awaited set of AI development tools compatible with StarCraft II, the version of the game that is most popular among professional players.
Other experts now predict that bots will be able to vanquish professional StarCraft players once they are trained properly. “When AI bots are equipped with [high-level] decision-making systems like AlphaGo, humans will never be able to win,” says Jung Han-min, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Science and Technology in Korea.
Obamacare will become what could be seen as an expanded version of Medicaid.
The average subsidy for Obamacare consumers will grow by 45%, making net premium cost even lower for many people.
Insurance companies may not benefit, despite President Donald Trump’s statement that subsidies are a “bailout” payment allowing them to “make a killing” on their Obamacare policies.
In a great irony, the Republicans, who promised to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and roll back Medicaid expansions, are in essence about to do the reverse – at a huge cost to the U.S. Treasury. This year Obamacare will become what could be seen as an expanded version of Medicaid.
From my perspective as a finance professor and former insurer CEO, I predicted trouble when President Trump said last summer that he would let Obamacare fail. He didn’t say at the time that he’d help make sure that happens by driving up premiums – or that millions will rejoin the ranks of the uninsured while the federal government spends billions more in the process.
Yet that almost certainly is in the cards now.
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How could this be?
An ineffectual Congress unable to pass even minimal corrective legislation and bullying actions from the White House have produced an enormous increase in nominal premiums of at least 34 percent for 2018 plans offered on the individual exchanges. The increases came about as plans scrambled to cover the higher risk of expensive care. Meanwhile, large group premiums continue to grow at a little over 6 percent.
But not all marketplace consumers will pay for those increases – taxpayers will. The average subsidy for Obamacare consumers will grow by 45 percent, making the net premium costs even lower for many!
This anomalous result comes from the way that Obamacare subsidies are calculated. Subsidies are determined by taking the difference between stated premiums and a fixed percent of an enrollee’s income (2 percent for those just above the poverty level; up to 9.5 percent for at the top).
Premium prices rose this year not only because insurers left the marketplace. Insurers also had to incorporate losses caused by Pres. Trump’s suspension of cost-sharing subsidies into their premiums and uncertainty about who would enroll.
The president would want us to see the rising premiums as signs of the Obamacare “implosion” he predicted. But in reality, they are steps leading to a redefinition of the exchanges. Originally, sliding-scale subsidies based on income were to make access affordable for everyone. But sky-high premiums mean that only those qualifying for these subsidies are likely to purchase insurance on the exchanges, while others are priced out.
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So Obamacare becomes an extended Medicaid expansion
This latest scenario looks a lot like the Republican plans for Medicaid under the waivers, as enacted by Indiana and planned widely in red states.
These Medicaid waiver programs for the poor require enrollees to pay some portion of premiums and cost of care to independent private insurers, just like the exchange plans do. But the level of eligibility for subsidized exchange plans goes far beyond Medicaid range for states that took the option to expand. These states cover enrollees up to 138 percent of the poverty level ($16,623 for an individual) while the exchange plans subsidize coverage up to 400 percent of the poverty level ($48,240).
The typical conventional working-age Medicaid enrollee qualifies for care for less than nine months until he or she gets a job and loses coverage (kids and the elderly stay on far longer). These enrollees typically regain Medicaid coverage after a “spend down” period when they have a medical event that they can’t afford which eats up their cash or dumps them out of the job market.
Effectively, many of the same people rotate between conventional Medicaid and the Obamacare insurance exchange. Thanks to the subsidies under the ACA, these folks will not suffer the 34 percent increase in premiums and will stay with exchange plans. Since subsidies are rising, many of them may pay far less, or even zero premiums.
As over three-quarters of those on the exchange receive substantial subsidies, the enrollment on the exchanges will not drop precipitously although government outlays will jump.
AP/Evan Vucci
Who loses?
However, the other quarter are out of luck. They will have to pay far more. Thanks to lax enforcement of the individual mandate to acquire health insurance or face tax penalties and President Trump’s executive order allowing lower-priced, stripped down, non-exchange options, these folks are almost certain to exit the exchanges.
So the bottom line is that most folks left in Obamacare will be those still receiving significant subsidies. These are the people who look a lot like conventional Medicaid enrollees – because they were enrolled before or are on the edge of eligibility now. Effectively, we have expanded the Medicaid program to them through the back door.
Unfortunately, this is a very expensive way to expand Medicaid.
There are two big losers. One is those individuals who relied on exchange plans but don’t receive subsidies. The other is the federal deficit. The former often are the near-elderly or those with preexisting conditions who couldn’t get coverage before at a reasonable rate. They are stuck with high premiums necessary to cover the extra risk induced by the chaos of repeal and replace efforts. The second are the taxpayers, who have to absorb the higher subsidies, amounting to over $7 billion.
The winners are certainly not the insurance companies, in spite of Mr. Trump’s statement that the subsidies are a “bailout” payment allowing them to “make a killing” on their ACA policies.
The only winners here may be those low-income people who now have higher subsidies and a lower net cost of insurance. Virtually no one else comes out ahead – not insurers, not other individuals, not the government.
If they knew this, even rock-ribbed conservatives might well join their liberal friends in opposing this incremental approach to health policy, even though the alternatives they favor would differ greatly.
Technology allows you to experience art in a direct way by physically becoming part of the exhibition, and TeamLab is on the forefront of that movement. The Japanese art collective is at it again with a new exhibition at Melbourne's NGV (National Gal...
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Theranos has come a long way from the days when it was a darling in the biotech industry. The Wall Street Journal's sources have claimed that the blood-testing firm has avoided bankruptcy by securing a $100 million loan from Fortress Investment Grou...
And yet, last year, a small farm in Corvallis, Oregon started offering classes that combined the two. Goat yoga is exactly what it sounds like: the practice of yoga in the presence of goats.
Harless' observations proved prescient. Five years later, the Board of Supervisors dissolved the authority and assumed its debts. A review of DCWIN's budgets since 2009 finds that expenditures always exceeded revenues. In July 2017, the county finally offloaded the wireless network to a local company, Hillcom Inc., for $227,000.
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As the streets fill with gunfire and tear gas, shortages of basic supplies continue to plague Nicolas Maduro's socialist Venezuela. In July, opposition leader Miranda Gov. Henrique Capriles tweeted a series of photos of soldiers being rewarded for their service with the most coveted rarity of all: toilet paper.
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