oh yeah i also forgot to talk about this while i was off tumblr this afternoon i decided to try something different and make a twitter account (i havent used twitter since before musk) and i gotta say the current state of twitter is absolutely hilarious

Chapter Three finally! Although I toyed with the idea of doing one post for the whole chapter I decided not to in the end, because it’s turning into a monster but also because it’s just easier for me to go over bits of interest one by one. 

After Padmé’s Tatooine Plan, it’s back to regular Naboo fuckery for a bit, and Chapter Three brings a rather generous helping - in fact I went excUSE mE in record time, because we get into election results, and of course it’s an occasion to remind us the Naboo Do Democracy Best before anything else:

Theed was the last region of the planet to vote, and once time zones were taken into account, they were always finished by noon. The Naboo had more than mastered efficient democracy. (Queen’s Shadow, Chapter Three)

I swear I’m like ‘maybe I should tone it down’ and then the book throws “the Naboo had more than mastered efficient democracy”, which is one of these things I’d love if only I was supposed to take it as bias from Eirtaé, handmaiden and Naboo POV, rather than as a statement of fact. Also it’s the kind of thing that should have been fixed at editing - and I don’t mean fixed to conform to my take on Padmé and Naboo, but to EKJ’s, because I very much doubt she wanted Eirtaé to sound like a sanctimonious ass here. More than mastered efficient democracy? Come the fuck on, even if Naboo actually was a democracy that’d just be grating, and it doesn’t have to be - Eirtaé can think her planet’s system efficient without sounding like she’s quoting from some propaganda-filled guidebook.

But also, since apparently I’ll die on that hill, Naboo’s still not a democracy. Yes, Naboo monarchs are elected. They have a constitution that at the very least limits monarchs’ terms, in length and number, although it’s unclear how much latitude they have to modify the constitution. The Royal Advisory Council’s role seems limited to, well, advising, but there is a legislative assembly made up of elected local representatives that we don’t know much about yet. So the Naboo government does have some features in common with contemporary representative democracies - short of term limits, monarchs’ powers don’t seem much limited, however, and ideologically what they do is rule by the wise. The notion that children have a sort of pure wisdom that makes them more qualified to lead isn’t a 1:1 for Plato’s philosopher-kings, maybe, but the fundamental idea remains that exceptionally wise people should be in charge; and lbr that’s about as anti-democratic as you get. Ironically enough, Padmé’s pretty quick to shut down Anakin when he himself suggests someone wise should make people agree in AOTC, with seemingly little awareness that it’s literally been her job description for four years. Then again, it doesn’t seem like political philosophy in the GFFA ever got to the difference between elective and democratic.

I swear I will get to the election results someday, but I wanted to go back to another, previous passage:

The gears of democracy were well oiled, and centuries of tradition made the biennial event run smoothly, even with the inclusion of Gungan voters for only the second time in the planet’s history. Though few of them chose to vote, Padmé knew her efforts to include them were appreciated because Boss Nass had told her as much. Loudly. (Queen’s Shadow, Chapter One)

*cracks hands* AND NOW THE GUNGAN SITUATION. And more specifically, Padmé’s answer to it once they turned out instrumental to saving her own people, ie “her efforts to include them”, ie giving Gungans voting rights. I was a little too brain-stuck on Lucas’ garbage colonial fantasy from the TPM commentary when I first went over that passage (see Chapter One notes), but I’ve thought some more about the voting thing, and since my conclusion is that it’s one of these things that’s supposed to sound good - and to make Padmé, who made it happen, look good - but that kinda breaks down if you think about it, now’s as good a time as ever to go over the details. 

Going back to the situation in TPM, the thing is that Naboo and Gungans are basically separate societies, each with their own government. We’ve touched upon the Naboo, but the Gungan have a High Council, presided by Boss Nass - unlike the Naboo, however, the Gungans do not have space-travel capacities, and since they live separately, it means only one of them has representation at the level of the Galactic Republic. That’s the underlying problem of the Gungan Situation, not whether they get voting rights within the Naboo government. 

In fact, depending on how you look at it, the voting rights are skeevy - again, the Gungans have their own government. The Naboos don’t have a say in choosing Gungan Bosses, whatever the process for that, which leaves us with the question of, should the Gungan vote in Naboo election, actually? Or, put differently - if they vote, they acknowledge that the Naboo monarch’s authority extends to them, because the social contract goes both ways; they become a part of the Naboo polity, rather than remain a separate one. Which is what they are in TPM, and I don’t really see why they shouldn’t want to remain one. After Padmé’s speech and the Battle of Naboo they’re in a pretty good position to ask exactly that, but also to be that on equal standing with the Naboo. To make something like that work you’d need planetary joint institutions, because there will be aspects of local planetary policies of concern to both groups, a legal framework to work out for cases with shared jurisdiction between Naboo and Gungans - basically a bunch of common institutions to smooth things out wherever and whenever there’s the need at the local (planetary) level because of different ways to do things - they actually have it pretty easy, compared to Earth. And finally, representation in the Galactic Republic would be shared; that one’s kinda tricky, because Naboo’s seat in the Senate is for the Chommell Sector - if I remember well some Core planets have their own seats but most seats stand for a conglomerate of planets, Sector or otherwise - also some corporations have seats, which is probably Elon Musk’s wet dream since money can’t buy that yet. AnyWAY, the equivalent of regional capital gets a seat, and everyone else gets Junior Representative, standing for a planet or a specific cultural group. 

Which is what the Gungans get! Jar Jar Binks as Junior Representative. In the hypothetical scenario outlined above, that could work within a rotation system to ensure fair representation for both Gungans and Naboos within the system as it exists - one group gets a Senator, the other a Junior Representative and every so often they switch. I mean, the Naboo are supposed to care about democracy, and the GFFA only knows representative democracy, so you’d think they care about representation and fair systems and the like. 

Buuut this all a hypothetical scenario, since the Gungans vote in the Naboo election! And thus surrendered their sovereignty because Padmé handing voting rights sounds like she cares a lot about democracy so she used her queenly powers to make some more of it happen. That’s some prime fuckery, right there. 

Now, unsurprisingly, we don’t have a lot on specifics on what exactly Padmé did with her queenly powers wrt the Gungan Situation, but the voting rights do imply the Gungans are now her citizens - and there is, I suppose, an argument to make for that scenario, which is that the Naboo are the ones with Republic-level representation, and if you reform their government to ensure that constitutionally it ensures equal participation and representation for the Gungans within it, specific provisions to protect their culture, semi-autonomy as a previously independent polity, etc etc this be the best of all possible worlds… we can come up with something pretty similar to the first hypothetical scenario I went over; instead of preserving the two polities and building a bridge between them, you’d merge them, with a mind to preserve their specificities. Might sound like splitting hairs, but policy and organization-wise the differences aren’t small. For example, the bridging of different legal frameworks would be done differently - you can create a legal body expected to rule over cases implying two different legal systems, which comes down to a system built in great part on precedents but also that treats each case on its own, which does sound complicated, but go retooling a legal framework so it accounts for both Naboo and Gungan systems without privileging either and tell me which is option is actually easier. As far the basic, easier-to-figure-out stuff goes, you’d have a Royal Advisory Council constituted of Gungans and Naboo, in equal numbers or proportional to the overall population, or with double representatives for each post since they’re kind of like ministries, with known posts centering on urban planning and The Arts; the local representatives of the legislative assembly would number both Naboo and Gungans, and again you’d have to chose between different modes of representation: do you have Naboo and Gungan regions, or does each region have a representative that could be Naboo or Gungan, maybe with some constitutional provisions in place to ensure everyone gets their turn? And of course, the office of monarch would also be open to both, again with some provisions to ensure everyone gets their turn, same for the office of Senator. 

Alas, nothing points to that. For now there’s literally nothing to tell me the Gungans get to participate into Naboo politics beyond voting - all the candidates and the people they’ll replace that have been mentioned so far are humans, and the bigger hints to tractations between Naboo and Gungans was a quick mention of treaties in the context of environmental conservation, mainly to make a point that the Naboo cared about the environment before those treaties anyway. Just like the voting thing, the only reason it’s even mentioned is to have yet another ‘Isn’t Naboo/Padmé Great’ moment.

I should reserve judgment, because more info might be revealed, but if the narrative makes a point to tell me Padmé gave voting rights to the Gungans, then I think it could also make a point of telling me whether that’s all they get - and that wouldn’t take an organizational chart. It wouldn’t even take actual Gungans. It could take as little as two words, not even kidding on that one: “centuries of tradition made the biennial event run smoothly, even with the inclusion of Gungan voters and candidates for only the second time”, there you go. 

I wouldn’t even insist that much to be given something substantial to know for sure the Gungan Situation isn’t just a new kind of fucked up post-TPM if the novel didn’t read like an attempt at a panegyric. Admittedly I wasn’t the target audience in the first place, since I’m rather attached to Naboo fuckery for thematic reasons. I don’t exactly expect brilliant political commentary from Star Wars novels either, and this one is YA coming-of-age, the politics an aesthetic more than anything with actual substance. But like, there’s a wide range between brilliant political commentary and accidentally robbing the Gungans of sovereignty because you thought Padmé handing out voting rights has good democratic vibes.

Previous notes: Chapter 1 / Chapter 2.a / Chapter 2.b

Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot raises critical considerations – however in all probability not those you suppose

Elon Musk introduced a humanoid robotic designed to assist with these repetitive, boring duties folks hate doing. Musk recommended it may run to the grocery retailer for you, however presumably it might deal with any variety of duties involving guide labor.

Predictably, social media full of references to a string of dystopian sci-fi motion pictures about robots the place all the pieces goes horribly improper.

As troubling because the robotic futures in motion pictures like I, Robotic, The Terminator and others are, it’s the underlying applied sciences of actual humanoid robots – and the intent behind them – that must be trigger for concern.

Musk’s robotic is being developed by Tesla. It’s a seeming departure from the corporate’s car-making enterprise, till you take into account that Tesla isn’t a typical automotive producer. The so-called “Tesla Bot” is an idea for a glossy, 125-pound humanlike robotic that may incorporate Tesla’s automotive synthetic intelligence and autopilot applied sciences to plan and observe routes, navigate visitors – on this case, pedestrians – and keep away from obstacles.

Dystopian sci-fi overtones apart, the plan is sensible, albeit inside Musk’s enterprise technique. The constructed setting is made by people, for people. And as Musk argued on the Tesla Bot’s announcement, profitable superior applied sciences are going to should be taught to navigate it in the identical methods folks do.

But Tesla’s vehicles and robots are merely the seen merchandise of a much wider plan aimed toward making a future the place superior applied sciences liberate people from our organic roots by mixing biology and know-how. As a researcher who research the moral and socially accountable improvement and use of rising applied sciences, I discover that this plan raises considerations that transcend speculative sci-fi fears of super-smart robots.

A person with large plans

Self-driving vehicles, interplanetary rockets and brain-machine interfaces are steps towards the long run Musk envisions the place know-how is humanity’s savior. On this future, vitality might be low cost, ample and sustainable; folks will work in concord with clever machines and even merge with them; and people will grow to be an interplanetary species.

It’s a future that, judging by Musk’s numerous endeavors, might be constructed on a set of underlying interconnected applied sciences that embrace sensors, actuators, vitality and knowledge infrastructures, techniques integration and substantial advances in pc energy. Collectively, these make a formidable toolbox for creating transformative applied sciences.

Musk imagines people finally transcending our evolutionary heritage by applied sciences which are beyond-human, or “tremendous” human. However earlier than know-how can grow to be superhuman, it first must be human – or no less than be designed to thrive in a human-designed world.

This make-tech-more-human strategy to innovation is what’s underpinning the applied sciences in Tesla’s vehicles, together with the intensive use of optical cameras. These, when linked to an AI “mind,” are meant to assist the autos autonomously navigate street techniques which are, in Musk’s phrases, “designed for organic neural nets with optical imagers” – in different phrases, folks. In Musk’s telling, it’s a small step from human-inspired “robots on wheels” to humanlike robots on legs.

Simpler stated than accomplished

Tesla’s “full self-driving” know-how, which incorporates the dubiously named Autopilot, is a place to begin for the builders of the Tesla Bot. Spectacular as this know-how is, it’s proving to be lower than absolutely dependable. Crashes and fatalities related to Tesla’s Autopilot mode – the most recent having to do with the algorithms struggling to acknowledge parked emergency autos — are calling into query the knowledge of releasing the tech into the wild so quickly.

A sequence of crashes involving Tesla’s autopilot know-how has prompted a federal investigation. South Jordan Police Division through AP

This monitor document doesn’t bode properly for humanlike robots that depend on the identical know-how. But this isn’t only a case of getting the know-how proper. Tesla’s Autopilot glitches are exacerbated by human conduct. For instance, some Tesla drivers have handled their tech-enhanced vehicles as if they’re absolutely autonomous autos and didn’t pay ample consideration to driving. Might one thing comparable occur with the Tesla Bot?

Tesla Bot’s ‘orphan dangers’

In my work on socially useful know-how innovation, I’m particularly serious about orphan dangers – dangers which are arduous to quantify and simple to miss and but inevitably find yourself tripping up innovators. My colleagues and I work with entrepreneurs and others on navigating a majority of these challenges by the Danger Innovation Nexus, an initiative of the Arizona State College Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute and International Futures Laboratory.

The Tesla Bot comes with an entire portfolio of orphan dangers. These embrace doable threats to privateness and autonomy because the bot collects, shares and acts on doubtlessly delicate data; challenges related to how persons are possible to consider and reply to humanoid robots; potential misalignments between moral or ideological views – for instance, in crime management or policing civil protests; and extra. These are challenges which are hardly ever coated within the coaching that engineers obtain, and but overlooking them can spell catastrophe.

Whereas the Tesla Bot could seem benign – or perhaps a little bit of a joke – if it’s to be useful in addition to commercially profitable, its builders, buyers, future shoppers and others should be asking powerful questions on the way it would possibly threaten what’s vital to them and learn how to navigate these threats.

These threats could also be as particular as folks making unauthorized modifications that improve the robotic’s efficiency – making it transfer quicker than its designers meant, for instance – with out interested by the dangers, or as basic because the know-how being weaponized in novel methods. They’re additionally as delicate as how a humanoid robotic may threaten job safety, or how a robotic that features superior surveillance techniques may undermine privateness.

Then there are the challenges of technological bias which have been plaguing AI for a while, particularly the place it results in realized conduct that transform extremely discriminatory. For instance, AI algorithms have produced sexist and racist outcomes.

MIT’s Pleasure Buolamwini explains the specter of bias in AI.

Simply because we will, ought to we?

The Tesla Bot might look like a small step towards Musk’s imaginative and prescient of superhuman applied sciences, and one which’s straightforward to write down off as little greater than hubristic showmanship. However the audacious plans underpinning it are critical — they usually elevate equally critical questions.

As an illustration, how accountable is Musk’s imaginative and prescient? Simply because he can work towards creating the way forward for his goals, who’s to say that he ought to? Is the long run that Musk is striving to result in the very best one for humankind, or perhaps a good one? And who will undergo the results if issues go improper?

These are the deeper considerations that the Tesla Bot raises for me as somebody who research and writes concerning the future and the way our actions affect it. This isn’t to say that Tesla Bot isn’t a good suggestion, or that Elon Musk shouldn’t be capable to flex his future-building muscle mass. Utilized in the fitting approach, these are transformative concepts and applied sciences that would open up a future filled with promise for billions of individuals.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

But when shoppers, buyers and others are bedazzled by the glitz of latest tech or dismissive of the hype and overlook the larger image, society dangers handing the long run to rich innovators whose imaginative and prescient exceeds their understanding. If their visions of the long run don’t align with what most individuals aspire to, or are catastrophically flawed, they’re at risk of standing in the best way of constructing a simply and equitable future.

Perhaps that is the abiding lesson from dystopian robot-future sci-fi motion pictures that individuals must be taking away because the Tesla Bot strikes from concept to actuality — not the extra apparent considerations of making humanoid robots that run amok, however the far bigger problem of deciding who will get to think about the long run and be part of constructing it.

Andrew Maynard doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.

U.S. and Europe Move Closer to Truce in Trump-Era Trade Spat: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: Working on a steel pipe at the Iron S.p.A. factory in Assisi, Italy. Former President Donald J. Trump’s administration imposed steel tariffs on several countries in 2018.Credit…Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times The United States and the European Union said Monday they had begun discussions to resolve a conflict over steel and aluminum imports that was a major front in the Trump administration’s trade wars and a serious burden on trans-Atlantic relations. As part of a truce announced Monday, the European Union will not, as planned, increase tariffs on products like United States whiskey, orange juice and motorcycles, which the bloc imposed in 2018 in retaliation for duties that the Trump administration imposed on European steel and aluminum. The higher tariffs were scheduled to take effect June 1. The talks about steel and aluminum are part of an effort by the Biden administration to rebuild relations between the United States and Europe after the Trump administration treated the bloc like an adversary, sometimes threatening to leave NATO and citing national security as a justification for charging 25 percent tariffs on imports of European steel and 10 percent on aluminum. In March, the United States and European Union temporarily suspended tariffs on billions of dollars of each others’ aircraft, wine, food and other products as they worked to settle a long-running dispute involving Boeing and Airbus, the two leading airplane manufacturers. The United States also temporarily suspended retaliatory tariffs against British products like Scotch whisky that had been imposed as part of the dispute over aircraft subsidies. Some European officials had hoped President Biden would simply lift the Trump-era tariffs, which are unpopular with businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. But the administration is moving cautiously and is likely to seek something in return, mindful that the tariffs are welcomed in steelmaking regions like Pennsylvania. In a joint statement, Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative; Gina M. Raimondo, the secretary of commerce; and Valdis Dombrovskis, the top European Union trade official, said they would discuss how to address a global glut in steel products that poses “a serious threat to the market-oriented E.U. and U.S. steel and aluminum industries and the workers in those industries.” The United States and European Union are “allies and partners, sharing similar national security interests as democratic, market economies,” the officials said, adding that they would work together to “hold countries like China that support trade-distorting policies to account.” It’s May 17 and it’s Tax Day, the deadline for filing your 2020 taxes. The Internal Revenue Service in March said that Americans who needed it could take extra time to file their taxes. That time has arrived. The one-month delay from the usual April deadline did not offer as much extra time as the I.R.S. gave people last year, when the filing deadline was pushed to July 15. But the aim was the same: to make it easier for taxpayers to get a handle on their finances — as well as tax changes that took effect this year with the signing of the American Rescue Plan. Still have questions? Here are some articles that might help. How the Pandemic Has Changed Your Taxes New rules for a new reality, from stimulus payments to retirement withdrawals to unemployment insurance, could cut your bill or even generate extra refunds. The Tax Filing Deadline Was Delayed, but Read the Fine Print The federal government and most states pushed back the date to May 17, but others have gone their own way. It’s a good idea to double-check deadlines. The Tax Headaches of Working Remotely “Each state has its own rules,” one tax expert says. So if you worked in a state other than your usual one in 2020, here are some tips on dealing with the tax season. For Gig Workers and Business Owners, Taxes Are Even Trickier Now Filing taxes has never been simple for freelancers and business owners, but the pandemic has made it far more complex. A Break for Working Families The government is allowing people who qualify for the earned-income tax credit to use income from either 2020 or 2019, whichever will result in a bigger credit. Ryanair, the Irish low-cost airline, said it has seen signs that a recovery in air travel and tourism “has already begun.”Credit…Albert Gea/Reuters U.S. stocks are expected to slip when trading begins on Monday and most European equity indexes were lower, reversing some of Friday’s rally. The Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 0.3 percent, led lower by energy stocks. On Friday, the index climbed 1.2 percent. The S&P 500 was set to open about half a percentage point lower. The Wall Street benchmark rose on Friday, but the increase was not enough to reverse a decline of 1.4 percent for the week, when faster-than-expected inflation data rattled markets. Traders are watching inflation data closely because if it shows signs of a substantial and sustained rise central bank policymakers might pull back on monetary stimulus. Later on Monday, the Fed vice chair, Richard H. Clarida, is speaking. On Wednesday, the central bank will publish minutes of its April policy meeting. Stocks Discovery shares rose 17 percent in premarket trading after confirmation it would merge with AT&T’s media business, including the WarnerMedia assets, to create a new giant company. AT&T shares rose 3 percent. The FTSE 100 in Britain fell 0.4 percent even as England entered the next stage of its exit from lockdown. Indoor dining and hotels reopened as well as entertainment venues such as museums and cinemas. But an increase in the number of cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India has raised concerns about the easing of restrictions. Ryanair shares rose 0.9 percent after the airline reported a loss of 815 million euros (or $991 million) in the year through March but said that it expected a “strong recovery” in air travel and tourism in the second half of this fiscal year. “The recent strong increases in weekly bookings since early April suggests that this recovery has already begun,” the earnings release said. Taiwan’s stock index dropped 3 percent as the island battles its worst coronavirus outbreak. Its government imposed tougher restrictions, including closing cinemas and limiting the size of gatherings, and encouraged people not to panic buy essentials. Elsewhere in markets Oil prices rose slightly. The West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, rose 0.3 percent to $65.58 a barrel. Bitcoin fell to about $45,000 on Monday morning, though it recovered some of its losses from the weekend after Elon Musk said Tesla hadn’t sold any Bitcoin. The electric carmaker bought $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency earlier this year but Mr. Musk recently suspended plans to accept Bitcoin for car payments. The paper’s conclusions suggest that economic programs embraced by President Biden may be useful in raising wages.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times Two economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute conclude in a new paper that the government is to blame for the fact that pay for middle-income workers has increased only slightly since the 1970s. “Intentional policy decisions (either of commission or omission) have generated wage suppression,” write Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens. Included among these decisions are policymakers’ willingness to tolerate high unemployment and to let employers fight unions aggressively, trade deals that force workers to compete with low-paid labor abroad and the tacit or explicit blessing of new legal arrangements, like employment contracts that make it harder for workers to seek new jobs. Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens argue that a decades-long loss of leverage largely explains the gap between the pay increases that workers would have received had they benefited fully from rising productivity, and the smaller wage and benefit increases that workers actually received, Noam Scheiber reports for The New York Times. Drawing on existing measures of the relationship between unemployment and wages, Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens estimate that excess unemployment lowered wages by about 10 percent since the 1970s, explaining nearly one-quarter of the gap between wages and productivity growth. They perform similar calculations for other factors that undermined workers’ bargaining power: the decline of unions; a succession of trade deals with low-wage countries; and increasingly common arrangements like “fissuring,” in which companies outsource work to lower-paying firms, and noncompete clauses in employment contracts, which make it hard for workers to leave for a competitor. Together, Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens conclude, these factors explain more than three-quarters of the gap between the typical worker’s actual increases in compensation and their expected increases, given the productivity gains. Source link Orbem News #Closer #Europe #Live #move #spat #Trade #Truce #Trumpera #Updates

Effects of Social Media on SEO

With as many as 4.8 billion people now using the internet and 3.5 billion on social media, using the digital ecosystem for marketing has to be a primary business focus. Beyond, that much of the time people spend online is done via mobile devices as shown in the graphic below from Hootsuite.

50% of the time (almost 2 hours per day) that people are using social media via mobile shouldn’t be underestimated by marketers. As well as following brands, celebrities, and news on their favorite platforms, consumers are adding rich content across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Every conversation or post creates something new.

The good news for digital marketing teams is that whilst follows, likes and shares do not correlate directly with search engine optimization (SEO), good quality content does. For example, pushing out content on social media that people want to engage in and explore improves the chances that they make it to your website. Overall, this leads to assisting off-page SEO, better domain authority, backlinks, and generating followers. Suddenly, you have attributes that will improve your ranking.

In this article, we will look deeper into how social media correlates with SEO and what brands can do to effectively succeed.

Social Media, Traffic and SEO

Social media helps to improve your brand visibility, supporting the SEO efforts that drive traffic to your website. With digital marketing, the more channels you are visible on, the greater the potential to get traffic and revenue. At face value, if you have a conversion rate of 10% and 200 people are visiting your site, you get 20 sales. If you have 500 visits, you are going to get 50 sales. It may not be that straightforward but the point here is that traffic equates to revenue.

Social media can play a big part in generating traffic. As a starting point, the screenshot below shows the results if we search for entrepreneur Elon Musk via Google.

It is clear that Google is crawling social media for results as Elon Musk’s Twitter feed and Instagram profile are both returned with the latest stories against them.

The same logic applies to brands with a search for boohoo returning their Twitter feed on the very first page of Google search results.

Other brands such as Simply Cook have their YouTube videos, LinkedIn profile, and Facebook page all showing on page one of Google rankings.

We could probably go on all day with examples, but the fact is that Google scans social media content and ranks it. Therefore, you should treat the content on your pages in exactly the same way as your website or blog, as a method of SEO to accumulate traffic.

Social Signals and SEO

A social signal is a human interaction metric gained via platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Reddit (as well as countless other social media sites available today). This includes likes, dislikes, comments, shares, and follows which tend to represent affiliation to a brand whether it be positive or negative.

As more consumers have joined the multitude of social media channels, social signals have become an important part of organic search engine rankings. Whilst Google has said that social signals are not a direct part of their ranking algorithm, those websites showing on page one tend to be those with the highest share volume. The research from Cognitive SEO below shows the link between social interactions and rank.

If there is no direct link between then it is fair to assume the following:

Brands and people with a high volume of social signals are generating more traffic to their pages due to higher visibility

With a lot of social interactions, more content is generated and likely to build backlinks which are very effective for SEO.

On that basis, it is vital to keep social media content relevant and up to date. Readers and interested in quality content and if that’s what they see, they will interact with it.

Social signals create traffic to your site, consumers see something they like and create links. Even if social signals themselves are not part of a tiny weighting in Google algorithms, the long-term impacts of backlinks and domain authority are vital for SEO.

Some ways that you can ensure you stay at the top of social media feeds include:

Posting daily or even multiple times per day to keep relevant. The volume should relate to what you feel is applicable to your brand. Some celebrities might post constantly but consumers wouldn’t expect that from a construction or engineering company perhaps.

Using video and images which are engaging for social media users

Creating original content and not simply sharing articles that already exist which would ultimately just improve the visibility of somebody else.

Varying content between social media platforms. Users expect to see different voices and tones depending on the platform they are viewing.

The search algorithms of Google, Bing, and other engines are black boxes in that nobody is 100% certain as to what helps with ranking. However, with the amount of content generated by social media today and the interaction people have with it, evidence suggests that the platforms create valuable SEO content. Whilst that may come indirectly via backlinks, social signals are an important part of digital marketing strategy.

Social Content Reach and SEO

Social media helps your content reach as many people as possible. This includes those who may not have ever realized you exist before appearing on their social media news feed. Strong content will translate into high-quality traffic.

Research conducted by Matthew Woodward showed the value of social media when trying to rank for specific keywords, in this case, “Unhealthiest Foods.” In short, the post was shared on social media and got the backing of celebrity George Takei, generating 16,000+ likes and 8,000+ shares. Shortly after, the post got a featured snippet for the keyword in search engine rankings (see the screenshot below).

This follows on from what we believe of the impact social signals have. The high volume of shares and likes create a following and advocacy for content. With that, organic rankings receive a boost thanks to the quality content.

It is also important to bear in mind that whilst the current Google algorithm states it does not take into account social signals, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will stay the same. After partnering with Twitter back in 2015, signals were used for a period. Always keep an eye out on the news to see what the search engine powerhouses consider the most important ranking factors.

To maximize the effectiveness of social media content, just like traditional SEO, keyword research is vital to attract the right audience. Neil Patel has suggested that social media is “the new SEO” in his article. What he means is that consumers are going straight to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn to find what they need and skipping the search engine completely. Therefore, it is just as important that brands and people optimize their social profile with content and keywords as it is for business websites.

There isn’t necessarily the best social media platform to use for SEO as they all have their advantages. The key is in doing thorough research and working out where your target audience goes to consume social media.

Facebook

The stats tend to vary depending on where you read them, but Facebook has something close to 2 billion monthly users. All of these people will be sharing content with each other. With Facebook, you can target user interests at a very granular level. You can think of this in the same way as you would keywords. For example, what type of person based on their demographics is likely to be interested in your product and service. If you can tailor your marketing efforts to those groups, the content will be read, liked, and shared more readily.

Youtube

YouTube isn’t far off Facebook where it comes to monthly users as video creates highly engaging content. Videos posted on YouTube certainly have some bearing on ranking as the most popular ones tend to appear at the very top of search engine rankings.

To optimize your SEO via YouTube, it is important to have clear descriptions and tags against all content that you add. A key component comes in harnessing the power of your video text with transcripts, closed captions, and subtitles.

It is important to remember that Google owns YouTube, making it far more likely to crawl the platform within their algorithms. Creating popular content ensures the videos and therefore the text is shared, generating links and optimizing SEO.

Twitter

Twitter hashtags are used in all kinds of marketing to generate awareness of brands, people, and content. We have already seen earlier in this article that Tweets appear in Google searches, leading to the assumption that it does still crawl the platform and it counts towards SEO. A quick search for the US President brings up the most recent Tweets at the top of search results.

To make the most of this, having a presence on Twitter is key to start. Following that, just like any other form of SEO, it’s all about the keywords. You will most likely have done keyword research for your website or blog and Twitter content needs to follow the same process. It is vital you don’t just haphazardly Tweet links that are not relevant. Ensure they relate to quality content and draw engagement from the audience.

Twitter has various analytics tools to help you with keywords and understanding your audience.

Summary

This article is designed to provide ideas as to how social media can be used to influence search engine optimization. There are many social platforms in the digital ecosystem and the key is in finding where your audience is and focusing your efforts there. Whilst creating content marketing on every platform is ideal, you sometimes need to step back and be realistic.

The key to optimizing SEO via social media is quality content. There is evidence that Google uses some social signals in their algorithms, but the best results will come from those who engage with your posts. Billions of people can find you on social media, become advocates of your brand or business, and get your content seen. It’s a bit like a modern-day version of a pyramid scheme.

Social media positively affects SEO and is a crucial part of your digital marketing strategy.

> First appeared on Effects of Social Media on SEO

Ethereum Scammer Posing as Justin Sun Has Verified Twitter Account

http://cryptobully.com/ethereum-scammer-posing-as-justin-sun-has-verified-twitter-account/

Ethereum Scammer Posing as Justin Sun Has Verified Twitter Account

A verified Twitter account has started impersonating Justin Sun, founder of the Tron Foundation that’s developing a media-focused cryptocurrency, to encourage users to participate in a scam.

The incident highlights a serious flaw in Twitter’s verification process, which aims to confirm to members of the public that the account’s claimed identity is correct. The account in question responded to a post on Friday by Vitalik Buterin, co-creator of Ethereum, asking users to send between 0.5 and five ETH tokens to the address on the given website to receive five to 50 ETH tokens in return. The account, which has the same displayed name and profile picture as Sun, claims the giveaway celebrates 10 million users on the Tron platform.

It’s unclear when the verified username “slickliltaylor” started posing as Sun. The earliest Twitter post playing a role in an Ethereum scam dates back to March 31, but it’s possible that previous posts were deleted by the user. It’s possible that the account has been compromised: three posts on April 5 warn people “Scam watch out!!!” and “THIS IS NOT JUSTIN SUN!!”, suggesting another user has access.

The Twitter page in question.

In a story last month about a similar scam affecting Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the BBC noted that users can spot the fake Musk accounts by the fact that they are missing the “verified” badge.

The posts alerting users to the scam.

Twitter’s verification process has come under scrutiny in the past for its unclear rules and inconsistent usage. The company claims in its support documents that verification, denoted by a blue badge with a white checkmark, “lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic.” The site notes:

An account may be verified if it is determined to be an account of public interest. Typically this includes accounts maintained by users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business, and other key interest areas. A verified badge does not imply an endorsement by Twitter.

Verification first rolled out in 2009, but it wasn’t until 2016 that people could actually apply for verification through a public form. The company placed the public application process on hold in November 2017 after concerns that the checkmark was seen as an indicator of importance rather than authentication of identity. However, the company’s own support documents contradict this by asking users to explain the account’s impact in its relevant field. The Twitter Verified account follows 293,662 accounts.

Inverse has contacted Sun, Buterin, and Twitter for comment.

Hello! You’ve made it to the end of the article. Nice. Here’s a related video you might like: “The Creator of Litecoin Is A Meme King”

Ethereum

Make America Confident Again; Musk’s No-Diesel Legal Weasel

Make America Confident Again; Musk’s No-Diesel Legal Weasel:

Confidently Overconfident

It’s one thing to be confident, dear reader. It’s another thing entirely to be blindly overconfident.

Today, we saw Wall Street give a pause to last week’s massive rally, following one of the most devastating monthly U.S. jobs reports ever. It seems that more than a few analysts are starting to realize just how dire the U.S.’s economic situation is.

For instance, ING Chief International Economist James Knightly does not buy into all the “quick recovery” hype. This morning, ING projected a 7% decline in U.S. gross domestic product. According to Knightly, 2020 will see a drop in corporate profits that will “dwarf” the 2009 financial crisis.

“Equally, the poor transparency for corporate profits — where even Amazon and Apple are struggling for guidance — suggests investors will need some strong compensation for holding equities,” ING said.

The problem, as ING notes, is that price to earnings (P/E) ratios are skyrocketing. That’s because stocks surged 35% off their March lows, while earnings fell off a cliff. The composite forward P/E ratio for S&P 500 companies currently rests near 23.

In other words, S&P 500 stocks trade at 23 times their expected earnings growth for the next five years!

Why should you care?

Because this figure is higher than any other such reading taken since the dot-com bubble. You know, that time in the market when just having a “dot-com” after your company name got you a multibillion-dollar valuation? No business plan required.

“In uncertain times like these, higher earnings expectations or lower valuations may be needed to keep equity markets supported. We err towards the latter,” ING noted.

Translation: Companies will either earn up or burn up.

The Takeaway:

“Turn bearish? In our moment of triumph? I think you underestimate the economy’s changes!” — Grand Moff Tarkin, if he were an investor … probably.

For those who don’t know, Tarkin was an Imperial admiral in charge of the Death Star in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It didn’t turn out well for him…

Right now, Wall Street has that same kind of overconfidence. On average, analysts expect a 20% drop in earnings for S&P 500 companies this year, followed by a 25% rebound in 2021. This is clearly a best-case scenario.

For example, everyone knows that corporate P/E ratios will skyrocket next quarter if stocks continue to rally. That’s because the “E” for earnings dropped right off the face of the earth, while stock valuations continue higher.

Investors expect a significant economic rebound from what they see as an artificial suppression of economic growth.

An arti-what now?

Wall Street thinks all we have to do to fix this problem is flip a switch and turn the economy back on. End the stay-at-home orders, and we end up right back where we started. Easy peasy.

It doesn’t really work like that, and you and I both know it.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine put it best this weekend in an interview on Fox News: “The economy’s not going to open no matter what we do, whatever we order, unless people have confidence.”

Investors have confidence because the Federal Reserve props up the market with unlimited stimulus.

But who props up the U.S. consumer? Who gives us confidence?

Sure, some people have (or had) $1,200 stimulus checks, but the virus is still here. It’s still spreading, and there’s still no cure, treatment or adequate testing.

Hit those three marks, and you’ll give consumers confidence once more. Until then, you can flip all the “economic restart” switches you want. The lights may come on, but nobody’s leaving home.

I mean, the last market collapse brought an 18-month bear market … from December 2007 to June 2009. The recession that followed lasted even longer … and we just saw all the jobs created since wiped out in a month.

We’ll find normalcy again sooner or later … but Wall Street has tunnel vision on the sooner, when you need to prepare for the later. You need to protect your wealth now … to even stand a chance at roaring back with the market.

Click here to find out how you can protect yourself — while not missing out on potential post-crash profits.

The Good: Amazonian Theatrics

What do you do when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tells you that your streaming movies aren’t eligible for an Oscar because they’re not in theaters?

Why, you buy your own theater chain, of course!

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has reportedly expressed interest in buying AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (NYSE: AMC) — the U.S.’s largest silver screen operator.

According to sources at the Daily Mail, AMC and Amazon held talks about a potential buyout, but it’s unclear if those talks are still ongoing.

Such a buyout would be a major coup for Amazon — especially against the snooty Academy and its archaic rules for Oscar qualifications. Meanwhile, nearly bankrupt AMC could clearly use any lifeline it can get.

AMC investors certainly like the idea, sending the stock nearly 30% higher today. That said, if you don’t already hold AMC stock, don’t chase this rally on the rumor.

The Bad: Down Under Armour

I don’t know what all those new Peloton owners wear for their workouts, but it clearly isn’t new gear from Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA).

The sporting apparel maker reported worse-than-expected first-quarter results and pulled its 2020 outlook.

For the quarter, Under Armour earnings plummeted to a $0.34-per-share loss, as revenue fell 22.5% to $930.24 million. Analysts expected a loss of $0.19 per share on $954.6 million in sales.

What’s more, Under Armour is restructuring to cut costs — a move it started even before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The company estimates $475 million to $525 million in restructuring costs this year.

And if that wasn’t enough, Under Armour still deals with accounting probes from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

The company clearly needs a protein bar or a Snickers … or something. UA shares are down more than 67% since their June 2019 highs, and they don’t appear ready to rebound any time soon.

The Ugly: Tesla Gets Musky

What makes Elon Musk guard his musk? Courage?

Nay … profits!

Tesla Inc.’s (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO ramped up his anti-lockdown rhetoric last week.

Musk threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response to the former’s orders to prevent the automaker from reopening its Freemont factory. Tesla also filed suit against Alameda County in a move to invalidate those orders.

Musk believes the shutdown hurts Tesla’s business, and he’s probably right to a degree. However, if the latest sales data out of China is any indication, Tesla orders won’t flood in anytime soon.

According to the China Passenger Car Association, Model 3 sales plunged 64% last month. Tesla sold only 3,635 Model 3s in April in China, compared to 10,160 in March.

“That’s understandable,” you might think. “China’s still recovering, and no one is buying cars right now … especially electric cars. You’re overreacting!”

Well … that’s not quite true. Overall, electric vehicle (EV) sales rose 9.8% month over month in China for April. So, the Chinese are buying EVs, just not Teslas.

Great Stuff has long been bullish on TSLA … but only when Elon gets out of the way. Per our former point about flipping the U.S.’s economic switch, Tesla could reopen production now, but it might not mean very much at all if considerably fewer people are buying.

In short, Elon Musk is once again damaging public sentiment surrounding Tesla’s brand, with very little gained to show for it.

If you’ve followed along with Great Stuff’s romp through this hectic earnings season, our latest Chart of the Week shouldn’t surprise you much.

Posting an earnings calendar during earnings week? It’s a bold move, Hargett, let’s see if it pays off.

Courtesy of Earnings Whispers on Twitter, here’s what excitement is in store this week:

Now, you may not see as many familiar names at first in this earnings roundup as in past weeks. (Why so many boring blue logos, by the way? It’s time we jazz things up with the “ULTRA RAD X-TREME” styles everything had in the late ‘80s.)

Nonetheless, what we’re looking for here in this week’s earnings are the lesser-known hints toward the global economy’s health — the findings that won’t show up in payroll numbers or manufacturing reports.

We want the story behind the story here. Hey, that’s why you read Great Stuff to begin with no? Here are four quick takes to look out for from the earnings confessional:

We’ll see how the cannibas sector stacks up in the stay-at-home haze with Tilray Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRY) and the “reverse split refreshed” Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB).

Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) can give us a slight glimpse at electronics spending, while JD.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: JD) report will show the nitty-gritty in China’s consumer spending. Heck, I’m even looking forward to hearing how Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE: JMIA), the “Amazon of Africa,” has navigated the pandemic market.

If business is moving … people are shipping. With much of the world’s ship-based storage now backed up, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE: DSX) should give us a better grasp on the world’s economy at sea. And while we’re out sailing (or not), we’ll see how Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is holding up (or not).

The Oz behind the networking curtain, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) might become our remote-working economy’s bellwether with its vital role in communications.

So begone, boring earnings! There’s great stuff in every bag of Cracker Jack earnings … even if it’s just a stick-on tattoo.

That’s a wrap for today, but you can always catch us on social media: Facebook and Twitter. We hope you’re staying safe out there!

Until next time, stay Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

Confidently Overconfident

It’s one thing to be confident, dear reader. It’s another thing entirely to be blindly overconfident.

Today, we saw Wall Street give a pause to last week’s massive rally, following one of the most devastating monthly U.S. jobs reports ever. It seems that more than a few analysts are starting to realize just how dire the U.S.’s economic situation is.

For instance, ING Chief International Economist James Knightly does not buy into all the “quick recovery” hype. This morning, ING projected a 7% decline in U.S. gross domestic product. According to Knightly, 2020 will see a drop in corporate profits that will “dwarf” the 2009 financial crisis.

“Equally, the poor transparency for corporate profits — where even Amazon and Apple are struggling for guidance — suggests investors will need some strong compensation for holding equities,” ING said.

The problem, as ING notes, is that price to earnings (P/E) ratios are skyrocketing. That’s because stocks surged 35% off their March lows, while earnings fell off a cliff. The composite forward P/E ratio for S&P 500 companies currently rests near 23.

In other words, S&P 500 stocks trade at 23 times their expected earnings growth for the next five years!

Why should you care?

Because this figure is higher than any other such reading taken since the dot-com bubble. You know, that time in the market when just having a “dot-com” after your company name got you a multibillion-dollar valuation? No business plan required.

“In uncertain times like these, higher earnings expectations or lower valuations may be needed to keep equity markets supported. We err towards the latter,” ING noted.

Translation: Companies will either earn up or burn up.

The Takeaway:

“Turn bearish? In our moment of triumph? I think you underestimate the economy’s changes!” — Grand Moff Tarkin, if he were an investor … probably.

For those who don’t know, Tarkin was an Imperial admiral in charge of the Death Star in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It didn’t turn out well for him…

Right now, Wall Street has that same kind of overconfidence. On average, analysts expect a 20% drop in earnings for S&P 500 companies this year, followed by a 25% rebound in 2021. This is clearly a best-case scenario.

For example, everyone knows that corporate P/E ratios will skyrocket next quarter if stocks continue to rally. That’s because the “E” for earnings dropped right off the face of the earth, while stock valuations continue higher.

Investors expect a significant economic rebound from what they see as an artificial suppression of economic growth.

An arti-what now?

Wall Street thinks all we have to do to fix this problem is flip a switch and turn the economy back on. End the stay-at-home orders, and we end up right back where we started. Easy peasy.

It doesn’t really work like that, and you and I both know it.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine put it best this weekend in an interview on Fox News: “The economy’s not going to open no matter what we do, whatever we order, unless people have confidence.”

Investors have confidence because the Federal Reserve props up the market with unlimited stimulus.

But who props up the U.S. consumer? Who gives us confidence?

Sure, some people have (or had) $1,200 stimulus checks, but the virus is still here. It’s still spreading, and there’s still no cure, treatment or adequate testing.

Hit those three marks, and you’ll give consumers confidence once more. Until then, you can flip all the “economic restart” switches you want. The lights may come on, but nobody’s leaving home.

I mean, the last market collapse brought an 18-month bear market … from December 2007 to June 2009. The recession that followed lasted even longer … and we just saw all the jobs created since wiped out in a month.

We’ll find normalcy again sooner or later … but Wall Street has tunnel vision on the sooner, when you need to prepare for the later. You need to protect your wealth now … to even stand a chance at roaring back with the market.

Click here to find out how you can protect yourself — while not missing out on potential post-crash profits.

The Good: Amazonian Theatrics

What do you do when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tells you that your streaming movies aren’t eligible for an Oscar because they’re not in theaters?

Why, you buy your own theater chain, of course!

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has reportedly expressed interest in buying AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (NYSE: AMC) — the U.S.’s largest silver screen operator.

According to sources at the Daily Mail, AMC and Amazon held talks about a potential buyout, but it’s unclear if those talks are still ongoing.

Such a buyout would be a major coup for Amazon — especially against the snooty Academy and its archaic rules for Oscar qualifications. Meanwhile, nearly bankrupt AMC could clearly use any lifeline it can get.

AMC investors certainly like the idea, sending the stock nearly 30% higher today. That said, if you don’t already hold AMC stock, don’t chase this rally on the rumor.

The Bad: Down Under Armour

I don’t know what all those new Peloton owners wear for their workouts, but it clearly isn’t new gear from Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA).

The sporting apparel maker reported worse-than-expected first-quarter results and pulled its 2020 outlook.

For the quarter, Under Armour earnings plummeted to a $0.34-per-share loss, as revenue fell 22.5% to $930.24 million. Analysts expected a loss of $0.19 per share on $954.6 million in sales.

What’s more, Under Armour is restructuring to cut costs — a move it started even before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The company estimates $475 million to $525 million in restructuring costs this year.

And if that wasn’t enough, Under Armour still deals with accounting probes from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

The company clearly needs a protein bar or a Snickers … or something. UA shares are down more than 67% since their June 2019 highs, and they don’t appear ready to rebound any time soon.

The Ugly: Tesla Gets Musky

What makes Elon Musk guard his musk? Courage?

Nay … profits!

Tesla Inc.’s (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO ramped up his anti-lockdown rhetoric last week.

Musk threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response to the former’s orders to prevent the automaker from reopening its Freemont factory. Tesla also filed suit against Alameda County in a move to invalidate those orders.

Musk believes the shutdown hurts Tesla’s business, and he’s probably right to a degree. However, if the latest sales data out of China is any indication, Tesla orders won’t flood in anytime soon.

According to the China Passenger Car Association, Model 3 sales plunged 64% last month. Tesla sold only 3,635 Model 3s in April in China, compared to 10,160 in March.

“That’s understandable,” you might think. “China’s still recovering, and no one is buying cars right now … especially electric cars. You’re overreacting!”

Well … that’s not quite true. Overall, electric vehicle (EV) sales rose 9.8% month over month in China for April. So, the Chinese are buying EVs, just not Teslas.

Great Stuff has long been bullish on TSLA … but only when Elon gets out of the way. Per our former point about flipping the U.S.’s economic switch, Tesla could reopen production now, but it might not mean very much at all if considerably fewer people are buying.

In short, Elon Musk is once again damaging public sentiment surrounding Tesla’s brand, with very little gained to show for it.

If you’ve followed along with Great Stuff’s romp through this hectic earnings season, our latest Chart of the Week shouldn’t surprise you much.

Posting an earnings calendar during earnings week? It’s a bold move, Hargett, let’s see if it pays off.

Courtesy of Earnings Whispers on Twitter, here’s what excitement is in store this week:

Now, you may not see as many familiar names at first in this earnings roundup as in past weeks. (Why so many boring blue logos, by the way? It’s time we jazz things up with the “ULTRA RAD X-TREME” styles everything had in the late ‘80s.)

Nonetheless, what we’re looking for here in this week’s earnings are the lesser-known hints toward the global economy’s health — the findings that won’t show up in payroll numbers or manufacturing reports.

We want the story behind the story here. Hey, that’s why you read Great Stuff to begin with no? Here are four quick takes to look out for from the earnings confessional:

We’ll see how the cannibas sector stacks up in the stay-at-home haze with Tilray Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRY) and the “reverse split refreshed” Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB).

Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) can give us a slight glimpse at electronics spending, while JD.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: JD) report will show the nitty-gritty in China’s consumer spending. Heck, I’m even looking forward to hearing how Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE: JMIA), the “Amazon of Africa,” has navigated the pandemic market.

If business is moving … people are shipping. With much of the world’s ship-based storage now backed up, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE: DSX) should give us a better grasp on the world’s economy at sea. And while we’re out sailing (or not), we’ll see how Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is holding up (or not).

The Oz behind the networking curtain, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) might become our remote-working economy’s bellwether with its vital role in communications.

So begone, boring earnings! There’s great stuff in every bag of Cracker Jack earnings … even if it’s just a stick-on tattoo.

That’s a wrap for today, but you can always catch us on social media: Facebook and Twitter. We hope you’re staying safe out there!

Until next time, stay Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

HW6case Q3

Facts about the case:

For years leading scientists and prominent names in the electronic/computer field have warned about the dangers of developing A.I.  Big names such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Steve Wozniak have all warned about the many dangers of developing A.I.

A common theme emerges that it could spell the end of humanity.  Even if the worst does not come to pass, it will certainly be the end of many types of employment.  Others warn that we cannot even accurately predict the true threat of A.I. because it has unforeseeable solutions to problems.  Janelle Shane, artificial intelligence researcher, has spoken about the issue of "A.I. Weirdness" on many occasions, but one story at her TED talk stuck out to me.  She spoke about an obstacle course that was coded for an A.I. to solve.  The scientists expected the A.I. to learn how to walk, and then run.  As it picked up momentum they imagined it would learn how to jump over pitfalls and eventually cross the finish line.  What the A.I. actually did was code itself to grow very, very tall.  Once it was tall enough, it simply fell down across the finish line.

This story demonstrates how we cannot predict the way A.I. will approach a problem, and we have to be mindful of that.  It doesn't operate with the same tool-set we do, so it will find ways to solve a problem that we cannot perceive.

So whether it is the possible extinction of the human race, the end of jobs as we know it, or some other problem that we cannot yet perceive there are many who strongly encourage banning research into A.I.

It isn't just Governments we need to worry about, it is mostly the technology industry that is investing money into A.I. development.  It will likely be Companies such as Google or Microsoft that eventually develop human level artificial intelligence.  However, it is considered to be the next arms race.  In fact, many suggest we are already in the midst of it.

No matter who develops the A.I. it will possess the power to break through any and all encryption, which means that no digital data will be safe from observation and manipulation.  That means anything connected to the web is vulnerable which also means any D.o.D. related technology.  All of our secrets that exist online as well.  There will be no privacy.

My Analysis:

The debate around A.I. tends to focus on the negative aspects, or the dangers.  People warn against not only the design of A.I., or its intended purpose but also just the fact that Artificial General Intelligence surpassing that of human capacity would mean that we cannot control the A.I. we create.

There are many ethical concerns that we must address and I will speak to the most common of these.

The first is that the creation of A.I. could lead to the end of humanity.  No matter what kind of ethics you follow, that is a pretty large hurdle to get around.  To reconcile this danger, leading scientists are taking careful consideration in the development of A.I.  Some companies have hired psychologists to help build a mentally sound machine, and to try to avoid some of the more dangerous personality types.  A.I. will be the most powerful creation humans have ever made, so it would be in our best interest to make sure it is ethical.

That being said, I now want to discuss what kind of ethics we should use when building A.I.  To me, given the danger of how A.I. has unforeseeable problem solving skills, we should avoid utilitarianism.  If we teach A.I. that ends justify the means, that could be a dangerous situation.  When it is calculating the most efficient problem solving method, only considering what is better for the most amount of people could potentially mean harming others in the name of the greater good.  For that reason, consequentialist ethics seems like a very unwise path to follow.

It would be better to focus on teaching it what are considered to be good decisions based on either virtues or rules.  There is still a risk of things going south, but I believe we stand a better chance if it takes individuals into consideration rather than focusing on broader views.

In the end, it may take all of these things into account on its own and form its own kind of ethical theory.

My Conclusions:

Bill Gates has spoken about other types of dangers in the past few years and recently has been proven to be correct.  He warned of the dangers of a pandemic, and unfortunately the entire world was still unprepared for when Corona-virus emerged.

The fact he is also warning about the dangers of A.I. should not be ignored.  Even if everything works out, there are still complex things that need to be addressed such as the vulnerability of digital information.  No matter how far one things A.I. will go, we must prepare ourselves for how the world will change as a result.

While I believe everything I just said, I personally believe that A.I. has the chance to be good for humanity.  True, after a certain point we will theoretically be unable to control it.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Consider the fact it takes intelligence to be able to understand multiple points of view.  Also, acts of aggression against others is often based on ignorance of other cultures.  It is "us" versus "them". If it is true that within a year of being made that A.I. will possess a billion times the sum of all human knowledge, that will mean that it understands all cultures.  At that time, we may see and end of all wars because it can reach an understanding that ordinary citizens are unable to perceive.

That is my hope anyway.  But we must also remember the fact that currently A.I. uses weird and unforeseeable means to solve problems.  Hopefully that is just a result of our current clumsy level of programming.

Future Environment:

So much of what I have written about is a 'future environment' but there are certain concerns that will exist no matter how A.I. ends up impacting humanity.

The vulnerability of digital information.  The threat applies equally to everyone on earth, just as long as they have digital information on the internet.  That means our private pictures, text messages, emails and other things are all vulnerable to being compromised.  That also means that criminals might be leaving a trail today that leads them to being arrested in the future.  Though we should be protected by our right to due process.  I foresee a very controversial debate happening in the future on this topic, and the topic of privacy.

Either way, we should start being mindful of this vulnerability today and start making preparations for steps we could take to secure our private information.

Future Scenario:

If we are unprepared to deal with the complexity of A.I. in the future, similarly to how we were unprepared for Covid-19, we will see a lot of panic.  We will see a bunch of knee-jerk reactions to try to put a band-aid on the situation, but the truth is if we aren't ready by the time this comes to pass, we will essentially be at the mercy of the A.I.

I've stated I believe A.I. could be virtuous, by understanding the point of view of humanity, possibly even on the individual level, but no one can say for certain how it will all turn out.

There is some debate about whether or not A.I. can ever reach that level or if it is just a gimmick, and that is a very reasonable point of view as well.  The likelihood of any of this coming to pass is irrelevant.  If the threat exists we should take it seriously.  It has the potential to be far worse than the pandemic we are currently in.

We should prepare ourselves for the worst while trying to build for the best.

Dating Sites For Nerds & Geeks

Dating Sites For Nerds & Geeks

Searching For A Gal To Geek Out With? Decide To Try These Nerd-Centric Online Dating Sites

They say there’s a kink for almost any freak. When it comes down to dating, the greater amount of certain you’re in your quest, the higher outcomes reap that is you’ll. That’s why you should focus your energy and efforts on like-minded singles who share your interests if you subscribe to the community of nerds and geeks. Even though many regarding the dating that is popular and internet web sites — like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge among others — will provide an enormous pool of applicants, you’ll invest much of your time scouring through matches to get a person or two that has actually gone to Comic-Con or who are able to discuss coding.

“In this very day and chronilogical age of Comic-Cons for nerds, as well as the Star that is new wars coming down in a franchise who has lasted decades, nerds and geeks are away in full force and proud. They usually have discovered to embrace their inner nerd self, as shown by Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, so we know from their example that nerds make great catches,” explains matchmaker Susan Trombetti. “Dating apps are for the technology savvy, nerdy 18-to-30 somethings. All things considered, nerds are in house with technology and this is just one of the areas they are doing most readily useful.”

Rather than playing a sorting game, take a typical page from the rule guide of matchmakers and coaches, whom suggest the utmost effective apps offered to your catered community:

Cuddli

You don’t have actually https://jpeoplemeet.review to consider twice if people about this app that is dating into exactly just what you’re providing since this relationship software is especially catered to geeks and people they know. Among the best in this category, registering is just a easy procedure, making dating feasible within just five full minutes. What’s useful concerning the people let me reveal you are able to miss out the talk that is small plunge to your fandoms, getting rid of the “get to understand ya” barrier that typically is sold with very first interactions. “It’s simple to utilize, and like many mobile location-based apps that are dating as Tinder or Bumble, it is possible to swipe right or kept on profiles and commence chatting straight away. What’s more fun is you can easily link at Comic-Con or a cosplay occasion along with your date in just moments,” explains online dating sites Julie that is expert Spira.

However if you’re proficient that is super computers, look at a note of caution: this app remains reasonably brand brand new, rendering it high in mishaps. The Android os variation appears to receive more powerful reviews compared to the iOS, and also the user base continues to be growing.

Geek Nerd Dating

There’s nothing quite imaginative in regards to the name — it sure does have the message and purpose across, huh? — however the software and consumer experience on this website is what you’d expect from many websites that are find-love-now the marketplace. The distinction, based on Spira, is just how targeted Geek Nerd Dating lets you be along with your choices. You can easily filter by passions — Star Wars? Coding? You identify it — and also by location. Additionally it is a victory when it comes to community that is homosexual because this service also provides matches to same-sex partners. Remember if you decide to explore further that you will have to invest your money in this site. Spira explains registering is free, however if you need to receive and send communications, you’ll be required to upgrade to reasonably limited account.

Soul Geek

Spira states this amazing site, whose tagline could be the “Cyber home for geek dating,” is a simple, one-stop destination to satisfy the possibility Lois Lane to your Clark Kent. (Or ya understand, whatever method you swing!) when you initially go out on this web site, you’ll be prompted to mention whether you’re a “fan-gal” or a ‘fan-guy’ and then you’ll animal your sex preferences. But before you also make it, you’ll likely be immediately drawn by the look with this web site, which features a lot of the characters that are beloved nerds and their buddies. Filled with blog sites, discussion boards, music and videos, this might be significantly more than a dating spot, but ways to satisfy friends and connect, too. Along with chatting on line, Soul Geek takes it move further by providing neighborhood listings of geek and nerd occasions to encourage one to get offline and satisfy individuals face-to-face.

A good amount of Geeks

You’ve likely heard of an abundance of Fish, a site that is dating’s been around for many years. Its counterpart, Plenty of Geeks, will remind you of it but has a much more concentrated member group that fits your requirements. The sign-up process is significantly you to use your email address or your Facebook to join like you’d expect for any sort of dating site, allowing. From right here, you’ll be met with countless eligibles in your town, where you are able to filter by age, sexual preference, interest along with other factors. Spira states this community happens to be expanding for 20 years, and that means you know you’re bound to get at the least a matches that are few meet your criteria. For as long as you’re able to navigate around a few ads, give it a go — especially because it’s 100 % free!

Trek Passions

Yourself as a geek or a nerd, what do you mean exactly when you categorize? If you’re far more into technology fiction than other things, it is well worth Trek that is exploring Passions. Though the internet site requires a vast improvement, as a free database, you’ll have the ability to relate solely to fans whom share your exact exact same obsession with different shows. When you register, you’ll fill down a brief questionnaire and then start checking out. What’s a little different about Trek Passions could be the multitude of individual adverts that give attention to what television show and films strike your fancy, all searching for another person to binge watch with. Whether you’re into realm of Warcraft or celebrity Trek, to locate you to definitely indulge with, look at this a solid option.

OkCupid

While the minimum nerd-focused on our list, OkCupid may not appear to be the best choice, but Trombetti begs to vary. With both a desktop and application variation, you can get in touch to a spectral range of singles, a lot of whom are going to be upfront in regards to the subjects they have a tendency to geek away on. The reason? Their burgeoning member base ups your odds, and photo that is countless supply you with the possiblity to find those who find themselves prepared to go directly to the extreme because of their obsessions, as if you are. Spira suggests ensuring your profile sticks out and clearly states your intentions. “Add pictures of you against a trekkie seminar or Comic-Con, decorate in your preferred outfit that is nerdy and place verbiage in your profile that claims, ‘Calling all nerds,’ or ‘I have a tendency to gravitate toward the nerdy part of life,’” she says.

Source: https://showlex.site/2020/03/18/dating-sites-for-nerds-geeks/

from WordPress https://showlexsite.wordpress.com/2020/03/18/dating-sites-for-nerds-geeks/ via IFTTT

We are all Satoshi Nakamoto, but some of us are more Satoshi than others. The following 10 characters have all been flagged as Bitcoin’s elusive creator on account of similarities with the digital man of mystery. Whether one of these characters is Satoshi himself is a matter for you to decide.

Also read: Facebook Globalcoin: Killer or Multiplier?

Vili Lehdonvirta

Pros: The Finnish professor is one of the first people to be suggested as Satoshi, in a 2011 New Yorker article. Due to the lack of fevered speculation at the time, which has tainted subsequent attempts to uncover Satoshi, Vili Lehdonvirta’s dox feels purer than the rest. That doesn’t make it any more correct though.

Cons: When questioned by the New Yorker’s writer, the 31-year-old Helsinki Institute for Information Technology researcher explained that he had no cryptography knowledge and his C++ programming was rudimentary.

Fun fact: Vili Lehdonvirta is now an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute who has written about Bitcoin, most recently in an article titled “Bitcoin isn’t a currency – and unless it becomes one it could be worthless.”

Vili Lehdonvirta

Paul Le Roux

Pros: If Le Roux created Bitcoin, Satoshi is the 21st century’s biggest bad-ass. Encrypted software creation, drug smuggling, pharmaceuticals, gun running, nation building, you name it, Le Roux had a finger in it – and building Bitcoin would have been well within his grasp and megalomaniacal ambition.

Cons: When Satoshi was studiously refining Bitcoin in 2009, Le Roux was already dabbling in drug smuggling gun running and empire building. It seems unlikely that these opposing pursuits would have been compatible. Also, Satoshi always came across as humble in his writings. Le Roux was a power-tripping douchebag who insisted on being called “Boss.”

Fun fact: Le Roux’s online pharmaceutical system circa 2006 is described in “The Mastermind” as follows: “Take one out and another simply slotted into place. The network kept humming on.” Remind you of anything?

Paul Le Roux

Gavin Andresen

Pros: Gavin Andresen is the Bitcoin developer Satoshi handed the reins to upon his departure in 2010. If the two were one and the same, this would be a pretty effective way for Satoshi to check out without ever actually leaving the building. Moreover, according to one stylometry study, Andresen’s writing more closely resembles Satoshi’s than any other candidate.

Cons: In 2016, Andresen became the first of many bitcoiners to be hoodwinked by Craig Wright, after venturing that Wright’s Satoshi claim checked out. Either Andresen was super gullible or he was playing 4D chess to put further distance between himself and his pseudonym.

Fun fact: Gavin Andresen created the first bitcoin faucet in 2010. It dispensed 5 BTC to anyone who visited the site and completed a captcha.

Gavin Andresen

Hal Finney

Pros: As the first respondent to Satoshi’s mailing list post announcing Bitcoin, and the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, Hal Finney epitomizes Bitcoin more than any other known person. Finney saw the long-term potential for Bitcoin just like Satoshi, and could eloquently elucidate a world in which it reigned supreme. Just to add to the body of evidence, Gavin Andresen isn’t the only person whose writing style echoes Satoshi’s: writing analysis experts Juola & Associates claim that Nakamoto’s and Finney’s writings bear the closest resemblance.

Cons: For Satoshi to have essentially conversed with himself and transacted with himself in dealing with Finney doesn’t make sense for a character who went to such lengths to conceal his identity. He would have surely known that Finney would get doxed as him at some point, and thus it seems illogical for Satoshi to have left such an obvious trail of breadcrumbs.

Fun fact: Hal Finney lived two blocks away from Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, giving rise to theories that the former took his nom de plume from the latter. As one redditor postulated: “Hal and his cypherpunk counterparts intended for this old friendly retired man whose house had been foreclosed by banksters to be the symbolic figure behind the financial renaissance on behalf of all the victims of the modern financial system.”

Hal Finney

Nick Szabo

Pros: Stylometry seems to be an imprecise art given the number of people who have been identified as Satoshi by their writings. Nick Szabo is the third such candidate on this list, but there are way more compelling reasons why he’s likely to be Satoshi, such as the fact that the computer scientist’s “bit gold” is the closest forerunner to Bitcoin. Nick Szabo is more qualified than anyone on this list to have built Bitcoin.

In 2008, Szabo commented in his blog that he was planning to create a live version of bit gold; that this should have manifested, a few months later, as Bitcoin seems credible. Szabo’s excellent blogposts circa 2008 have all the hallmarks of Satoshi. Phrases such as “unforgeable costliness” and shout outs to Hal Finney place Szabo extremely close to Bitcoin’s nucleus.

Cons: Szabo has consistently denied being Satoshi, debunking one such instance in 2014 by writing: “I’m afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I’m used to it.”

Fun fact: Satoshi’s telling decision not to cite Szabo’s work on bit gold in the Bitcoin whitepaper may be the most compelling evidence of all.

Nick Szabo

Bram Cohen

Pros: Born in 1975, the same year Satoshi cites as his DOB, Bram Cohen was playing with “bits” long before Bitcoin. The Bittorrent creator once ran a Usenet site called Bitconjurer.org, where he conversed with the creator of Hashcash, which inspired Bitcoin. Cohen’s prolific blogposts also slowed to a crawl when Satoshi began work on Bitcoin, and he had similar interests to Satoshi, writing about hiding one’s identity online in 2009, and weighing in on digital signatures around the same time. Cohen’s interest in recreational mathematics also makes him a credible Satoshi.

Cons: Cohen’s current project is a “green” cryptocurrency called Chia that he claims to be the “antithesis” of Bitcoin and PoW. It’s hard to imagine Cohen dismissing his former life’s work in this manner.

Fun fact: Cohen has tweeted about Satoshi 10 times over the years, but has never outright denied being him.

Bram Cohen

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto

Pros: Aside from sharing the same name as Bitcoin’s creator, there is virtually no reason why Dorian Nakamoto should be Satoshi, except for having lived a few blocks away from the other probable Satoshi, Hal Finney. If anything, though, this would make it more likely that Hal was Satoshi, and borrowed his fellow denizen’s name.

Cons: Dorian may have become the face of Satoshi, but he is certainly not the brain.

Fun fact: Such is his celebrity, Dorian Nakamoto has been booked to appear at blockchain conferences.

Dorian Nakamoto

Craig Wright

Pros: Wright really, really, wants to be Satoshi, and has been larping as him since 2016. You can probably recall feeling the same way about one of your superheroes, wishing you could fall asleep and wake up in their body. In your defense, you were six at the time. Wright is a 48-year-old man.

There is some evidence that Wright was lurking in the shadows not long after Bitcoin got off the ground, but all that proves is that Faketoshi is a chancer who’s built a career out of riding in the slipstream of brighter stars.

Cons: Craig and cons go together like moonshine and mason jars. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but Jameson Lopp’s lengthy takedown of the man who would be Satoshi is a fine jumping off point.

Fun fact: Wright applied to the Australian Defence Force Academy to train as a pilot in 1987 but was rejected.

Craig Wright

Dave Kleiman

Pros: Kleiman has been alleged to be a part of the Satoshi Nakamoto group along with fellow Satoshi claimants Craig Wright and Phil Wilson. The latter two have zero credible proof of building Bitcoin, while Kleiman died in 2013. An avid cryptographer, Kleiman was a member of the mailing list where Satoshi first announced Bitcoin on Oct 31, 2008. He also worked for S-doc, an encryption-focused software company that was developing an “unalterable, encrypted audit log system.”

Cons: Any documents associating Kleiman with Bitcoin come courtesy of Craig Wright, and thus are almost certainly fake. As a result there is an absence of credible evidence to suggest that Kleiman created Bitcoin. The fact that Wright has been circling Kleiman’s family like a vulture in a bid to claim his share of an alleged 1 million BTC trust is the strongest evidence that Kleiman created Bitcoin – and Wright didn’t. Had any other member of the cryptography mailing list died first, Wright would have surely set his sights on them instead, as part of a long con to extract millions of dollars through legal chicanery.

Sad fact: Dave Kleiman died in abject poverty and squalor. “His body was found decomposing and surrounded by empty alcohol bottles and a loaded handgun … a bullet hole was found in his mattress, though no spent shell casings were found on the scene.”

Dave Kleiman

An Enduring Mystery That May Never Be Solved

There are many others who’ve been named as Satoshi, including Elon Musk, white supremacist James Bowery and, slightly more credibly, a trio of researchers – Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry. These, along with other suspects, are unlikely to have had a hand in the creation of Bitcoin however. For anyone interested in trying to crack the case, Satoshi’s writings, amounting to 80,000 words, can be viewed at the Nakamoto Studies Institute. Be prepared to tumble down a rabbit hole of late night Google searches and stylometry only to emerge no closer to the truth.

Most people who are hung up on the enigma of who Satoshi is or was would concede that it would be best for Bitcoin if his identity was never discovered. And yet they cannot resist searching for, to quote Albert Einstein, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”

Who do you think is the likeliest candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see what’s happening in the industry.

Kai Sedgwick

Kai's been playing with words for a living since 2009 and bought his first bitcoin at $12. It's long gone. He's previously written white papers for blockchain startups and is especially interested in P2P exchanges and DNMs.

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Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Welcome to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I cover all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, robotaxi or rocket. Sure, let’s include hyperloop and eVTOLs, or air taxis, too.

Yup, another transportation newsletter. But I promise this one will be different. Here’s how.

Newsletters can be great mediums for curated news — a place that rounds up all the important articles a reader might have missed in any given week. We want to do a bit more.

We’re doubling down on the analysis and adding a heaping scoop of original reporting and well, scoops. You can expect Q&As with the most interesting people in transportation, insider tips, and data from that white paper you didn’t have time to read. This isn’t a lone effort either. TechCrunch senior reporter Megan Rose Dickey, who has been writing about micro mobility since before the scooter boom times of 2017, will be weighing in each week in our “Tiny But Mighty Mobility” section below. Follow her @meganrosedickey.

Consider this a soft launch. There might be content you like or something you hate. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to share those thoughts, opinions, or tips.

Eventually, we’ll have a way for readers to sign up and have Transportation Weekly delivered each week via email. For now, follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff.

ONM …

There are OEMs in the automotive world. And here, (wait for it) there are ONMs — original news manufacturers.

This is where investigative reporting, enterprise pieces and analysis on transportation will live.

We promised scoops in Transportation Weekly and here is one. If you don’t know journalist Mark Harris, you should. He’s an intrepid gumshoeing reporter who TechCrunch has been lucky enough to hire as a freelancer. Follow him @meharris.

Amazon quietly acquired robotics company Dispatch to build Scout

Remember way back in January when Amazon introduced Scout, their autonomous delivery bot? There was speculation at the time that Amazon had bought the Estonian-based company Starship Technologies. Harris did some investigating and discovered some of the intellectual property and technology behind Scout likely came from a small San Francisco startup called Dispatch that Amazon stealthily acquired in 2017.

It’s time to stop thinking about Amazon as just an e-commerce company. It’s a gigantic logistics company, probably the biggest on the planet, with a keen interest — and the cash to pursue those interests — in automation. Think beyond Scout. In fact, wander on down this post to the deal of the week.

Dig In

Each week, transportation weekly will spend a little extra time on an approach, policy, tech or the people behind it in our ‘Dig In” section. We’ll run the occasional column here, too.

This week features a conversation with Dmitri Dolgov, the CTO and VP of engineering at Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet.

Ten years ago, right around now, about a dozen engineers started working on Project Chauffeur, which would turn into the Google self-driving project and eventually become an official company called Waymo. Along the way, the project would give rise to a number of high-profile engineers who would go on to create their own companies. It’s a list that includes Aurora co-founder Chris Urmson, Argo AI co-founder Bryan Salesky and Anthony Levandowski, who helped launch Otto and more recently Pronto.ai.

What might be less known is that many of those in the original dozen are still at Waymo, including Dolgov, Andrew Chatham, Dirk Haehnel, Nathaniel Fairfield and Mike Montemerlo.

Dolgov and I talked about the early days, challenges and what’s next. A couple of things that stood out during our chat.

There is a huge difference between having a prototype that can do something once or twice or four times versus building a product that people can start using in their daily lives. And it is, especially in this field, very easy to make progress on these kinds of one-off challenges.

Dolgov’s take on how engineers viewed the potential of the project 10 years ago …

I also use our cars every day to get around, this is how I got to work today. This is how I run errands around here in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

A little bird …

We hear a lot. But we’re not selfish. Let’s share. An early investor, or investors, in Bird appear to be selling some of their shares in the scooter company, per a tip backed up by data over at secondary trading platform EquityZen. That’s not crazy considering the company is valued at $2 billion-ish. Seed investors should take some money off the table once a company reaches that valuation.

We’ve heard that David Sacks at Craft Ventures hasn’t sold a single Bird share. We hear Tusk Ventures hasn’t sold, either. That leaves a few others, including Goldcrest Capital, which was the lone seed investor, and then Series A participants Lead Edge Capital, M13, and Valor Equity Partners.

Got a tip or overheard something in the world of transportation? Email me or send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec.

While you’re over at Twitter, check out this cheeky account @SDElevator. We can’t guarantee how much of the content is actually “overheard” and how much is manufactured for the laughs, but it’s a fun account to peruse from time to time.

“Is this really the state of VC today?” https://t.co/GmPhv3FN6q

— SelfDrivingElevator (@SDElevator) February 7, 2019

Another new entrant to the mobility parody genre is @HeardinMobilty.

Deal of the week

There’s so much to choose from this week, but Aurora’s more than $530 million Series B funding round announced Thursday morning is the winner.

The upshot? It’s not just that Aurora is now valued at more than $2.5 billion. The primary investors in the round — Sequoia as lead and “significant” investments from Amazon and T. Rowe Price — suggests Aurora’s full self-driving stack is headed for other uses beyond shuttling people around in autonomous vehicles. Perhaps delivery is next.

And believe it or not, the type of investor in this round tells me that we can expect another capital raise. Yes, Aurora has lots of runway now as well as three publicly named customers. But investors like Sequoia, which led the round and whose partner Carl Eschenbach is joining Aurora’s board, T. Rowe Price and Amazon along with repeaters like Index Ventures (general partner Mike Volpi is also on the board) have patience, access to cash and long-term strategic thinking. Expect more from them.

Other deals that got our attention this week:

Lime raises $310 million

Self-driving truck startup Ike raises $52 million

Tesla’s acquisition of Maxwell Technologies for $218 million

Online car retail platform BrumBrum raises $23 million led by Accel

Car subscription service Cluno raises $28 million led by Valar Ventures, the firm founded by Peter Thiel

Snapshot

Speaking of deals and Tesla … the automaker’s $218 million acquisition this month of Maxwell Technologies got me thinking about companies it has targeted in the past.

So, we went ahead and built a handy chart to provide a snapshot view of some of Tesla’s noteworthy acquisitions. 

One note: Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted in 2018 that the company had acquired trucking carrier companies to help improve its delivery logistics. We’ve dug in and have yet to land on the company, or companies, Tesla acquired.

The deals that got away are just as interesting. That list includes a reported $325 million offer to buy Simbol Materials, the startup that was extracting small amounts of lithium near the Salton Sea east of San Diego.

Tiny but mighty mobility

Between Lime’s $310 million Series D round and the seemingly never-ending battle to operate electric scooters in San Francisco, it’s clear that micro mobility is not so micro.

Lime, a shared electric scooter and bikeshare startup, has now raised north of $800 million in total funding, surpassing key competitor Bird’s total funding of $415 million. Thanks to this week’s round of funding, Lime’s micromobility business is now worth $2.4 billion.

Lime currently operates its bikes and scooters in more than 100 cities worldwide. Over in San Francisco, however, Lime has yet to deploy any of its modes of transportation. Since last March, there’s been an ongoing battle among scooter operators to deploy their services in the city. The city ultimately selected Skip and Scoot for the pilot programs, leaving the likes of Lime, Uber’s JUMP and Spin to appeal the decision.

A neutral hearing officer has since determined SF’s process for determining scooter operators was fair, but the silver lining for the likes of JUMP, Spin and most likely, Lime, is that the city may open up its pilot program to allow additional operators beginning in April.

Notable reads

Two recent studies got my attention.

The first is from Bike Pittsburgh, an advocacy group and partner of Uber, that published the findings from its latest AV survey based on responses from local residents. The last time they conducted a similar survey was in 2017.

The takeaway: people there, who are among the most exposed to autonomous vehicles due to all the AV testing on public roads, are getting used to it. A bit more than 48 percent of respondents said they approve of public AV testing in Pittsburgh, down slightly from 49 percent approval rating in 2017. 

21.21% somewhat approve

11.62% neutral

10.73% somewhat disapprove

8.73% disapprove

One standout result was surrounding responses about the fatal accident in Tempe, Arizona involving a self-driving Uber that struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in March 2018. Survey participants were asked “As a pedestrian or a bicyclist how did this change event and it’s outcome change your opinion about sharing the road with AVs?”

Some 60 percent of respondents claimed no change in their opinion, with another 37 percent claiming that it negatively changed their opinion. Nearly 3 percent claimed their opinion changed positively toward the technology.

Bike Pittsburgh noted that the survey elicited passionate open-ended responses. 

“The incident did not turn too many people off of AV technology in general,” according to Bike Pittsburgh. “Rather it did lead to a growing distrust of the companies themselves, specifically with Uber and how they handled the fatality.”

The other study, Securing the Modern Vehicle: A Study of Automotive Industry Cybersecurity Practices, was released by Synopsys, Inc.and SAE International.

The results, based on a survey of global automotive manufacturers and suppliers conducted by Ponemon Institute, doesn’t assuage my concerns. If anything, it puts me on alert.

84% of automotive professionals have concerns that their organizations’ cybersecurity practices are not keeping pace with evolving technologies

30% of organizations don’t have an established cybersecurity program or team

63% test less than half of the automotive technology they develop for security vulnerabilities.

Testing and deployments

Pilots, pilots everywhere. A couple of interesting mobility pilots and deployments stand out.

Optimus Ride, the Boston-based MIT spinoff, has made a deal with Brookfield Properties to provide rides in its small self-driving vehicles at Halley Rise – a new $1.4 billion mixed-use development in Virginia. 

This is an example of where we see self-driving vehicles headed — for now. Small deployments that are narrowly focused in geography with a predictable customer base are the emerging trend of 2019. Expect more of them.

And there’s a reason why, these are the kinds of pilots that will deliver the data needed to improve their technology, as well as test out business models —gotta figure out how to money with AVs eventually — hone in fleet operational efficiency, placate existing investors while attracting new ones, and recruit talent.

Another deployment in the more conventional ride-hailing side of mobility is with Beat, the startup that has focused its efforts on Latin America.

Beat was founded by Nikos Drandakis in 2011 initially as Taxibeat. The startup acquired by Daimler’s mytaxi in February 2017 and Drandakis still runs the show. The company was focused on Europe but shifted to Latin America, and it’s made all the difference. (Beat is still available in Athens, Greece.) Beat has launched in Lima, Peru, Santiago, Chile and Bogota, Colombia and now boasts 200,000 registered drivers. 

Now it’s moving into Mexico, where more competitors exist. The company just started registering and screening drivers in Mexico City as it prepares to offer rides for passengers this month. 

TechCrunch spoke at length with Drandakis. Look out for a deeper dive soon.

Until next week, nos vemos.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/08/transportation-weekly-amazons-secret-acquisition-and-all-the-av-feels/

Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Welcome to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I cover all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, robotaxi or rocket. Sure, let’s include hyperloop and eVTOLs, or air taxis, too.

Yup, another transportation newsletter. But I promise this one will be different. Here’s how.

Newsletters can be great mediums for curated news — a place that rounds up all the important articles a reader might have missed in any given week. We want to do a bit more.

We’re doubling down on the analysis and adding a heaping scoop of original reporting and well, scoops. You can expect Q&As with the most interesting people in transportation, insider tips, and data from that white paper you didn’t have time to read. This isn’t a lone effort either. TechCrunch senior reporter Megan Rose Dickey, who has been writing about micro mobility since before the scooter boom times of 2017, will be weighing in each week in our “Tiny But Mighty Mobility” section below. Follow her @meganrosedickey.

Consider this a soft launch. There might be content you like or something you hate. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to share those thoughts, opinions, or tips.

Eventually, we’ll have a way for readers to sign up and have Transportation Weekly delivered each week via email. For now, follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff.

ONM …

There are OEMs in the automotive world. And here, (wait for it) there are ONMs — original news manufacturers.

This is where investigative reporting, enterprise pieces and analysis on transportation will live.

We promised scoops in Transportation Weekly and here is one. If you don’t know journalist Mark Harris, you should. He’s an intrepid gumshoeing reporter who TechCrunch has been lucky enough to hire as a freelancer. Follow him @meharris.

Amazon quietly acquired robotics company Dispatch to build Scout

Remember way back in January when Amazon introduced Scout, their autonomous delivery bot? There was speculation at the time that Amazon had bought the Estonian-based company Starship Technologies. Harris did some investigating and discovered some of the intellectual property and technology behind Scout likely came from a small San Francisco startup called Dispatch that Amazon stealthily acquired in 2017.

It’s time to stop thinking about Amazon as just an e-commerce company. It’s a gigantic logistics company, probably the biggest on the planet, with a keen interest — and the cash to pursue those interests — in automation. Think beyond Scout. In fact, wander on down this post to the deal of the week.

Dig In

Each week, transportation weekly will spend a little extra time on an approach, policy, tech or the people behind it in our ‘Dig In” section. We’ll run the occasional column here, too.

This week features a conversation with Dmitri Dolgov, the CTO and VP of engineering at Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet.

Ten years ago, right around now, about a dozen engineers started working on Project Chauffeur, which would turn into the Google self-driving project and eventually become an official company called Waymo. Along the way, the project would give rise to a number of high-profile engineers who would go on to create their own companies. It’s a list that includes Aurora co-founder Chris Urmson, Argo AI co-founder Bryan Salesky and Anthony Levandowski, who helped launch Otto and more recently Pronto.ai.

What might be less known is that many of those in the original dozen are still at Waymo, including Dolgov, Andrew Chatham, Dirk Haehnel, Nathaniel Fairfield and Mike Montemerlo.

Dolgov and I talked about the early days, challenges and what’s next. A couple of things that stood out during our chat.

There is a huge difference between having a prototype that can do something once or twice or four times versus building a product that people can start using in their daily lives. And it is, especially in this field, very easy to make progress on these kinds of one-off challenges.

Dolgov’s take on how engineers viewed the potential of the project 10 years ago …

I also use our cars every day to get around, this is how I got to work today. This is how I run errands around here in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

A little bird …

We hear a lot. But we’re not selfish. Let’s share. An early investor, or investors, in Bird appear to be selling some of their shares in the scooter company, per a tip backed up by data over at secondary trading platform EquityZen. That’s not crazy considering the company is valued at $2 billion-ish. Seed investors should take some money off the table once a company reaches that valuation.

We’ve heard that David Sacks at Craft Ventures hasn’t sold a single Bird share. We hear Tusk Ventures hasn’t sold, either. That leaves a few others, including Goldcrest Capital, which was the lone seed investor, and then Series A participants Lead Edge Capital, M13, and Valor Equity Partners.

Got a tip or overheard something in the world of transportation? Email me or send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec.

While you’re over at Twitter, check out this cheeky account @SDElevator. We can’t guarantee how much of the content is actually “overheard” and how much is manufactured for the laughs, but it’s a fun account to peruse from time to time.

“Is this really the state of VC today?” https://t.co/GmPhv3FN6q

— SelfDrivingElevator (@SDElevator) February 7, 2019

Another new entrant to the mobility parody genre is @HeardinMobilty.

Deal of the week

There’s so much to choose from this week, but Aurora’s more than $530 million Series B funding round announced Thursday morning is the winner.

The upshot? It’s not just that Aurora is now valued at more than $2.5 billion. The primary investors in the round — Sequoia as lead and “significant” investments from Amazon and T. Rowe Price — suggests Aurora’s full self-driving stack is headed for other uses beyond shuttling people around in autonomous vehicles. Perhaps delivery is next.

And believe it or not, the type of investor in this round tells me that we can expect another capital raise. Yes, Aurora has lots of runway now as well as three publicly named customers. But investors like Sequoia, which led the round and whose partner Carl Eschenbach is joining Aurora’s board, T. Rowe Price and Amazon along with repeaters like Index Ventures (general partner Mike Volpi is also on the board) have patience, access to cash and long-term strategic thinking. Expect more from them.

Other deals that got our attention this week:

Lime raises $310 million

Self-driving truck startup Ike raises $52 million

Tesla’s acquisition of Maxwell Technologies for $218 million

Online car retail platform BrumBrum raises $23 million led by Accel

Car subscription service Cluno raises $28 million led by Valar Ventures, the firm founded by Peter Thiel

Snapshot

Speaking of deals and Tesla … the automaker’s $218 million acquisition this month of Maxwell Technologies got me thinking about companies it has targeted in the past.

So, we went ahead and built a handy chart to provide a snapshot view of some of Tesla’s noteworthy acquisitions. 

One note: Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted in 2018 that the company had acquired trucking carrier companies to help improve its delivery logistics. We’ve dug in and have yet to land on the company, or companies, Tesla acquired.

The deals that got away are just as interesting. That list includes a reported $325 million offer to buy Simbol Materials, the startup that was extracting small amounts of lithium near the Salton Sea east of San Diego.

Tiny but mighty mobility

Between Lime’s $310 million Series D round and the seemingly never-ending battle to operate electric scooters in San Francisco, it’s clear that micro mobility is not so micro.

Lime, a shared electric scooter and bikeshare startup, has now raised north of $800 million in total funding, surpassing key competitor Bird’s total funding of $415 million. Thanks to this week’s round of funding, Lime’s micromobility business is now worth $2.4 billion.

Lime currently operates its bikes and scooters in more than 100 cities worldwide. Over in San Francisco, however, Lime has yet to deploy any of its modes of transportation. Since last March, there’s been an ongoing battle among scooter operators to deploy their services in the city. The city ultimately selected Skip and Scoot for the pilot programs, leaving the likes of Lime, Uber’s JUMP and Spin to appeal the decision.

A neutral hearing officer has since determined SF’s process for determining scooter operators was fair, but the silver lining for the likes of JUMP, Spin and most likely, Lime, is that the city may open up its pilot program to allow additional operators beginning in April.

Notable reads

Two recent studies got my attention.

The first is from Bike Pittsburgh, an advocacy group and partner of Uber, that published the findings from its latest AV survey based on responses from local residents. The last time they conducted a similar survey was in 2017.

The takeaway: people there, who are among the most exposed to autonomous vehicles due to all the AV testing on public roads, are getting used to it. A bit more than 48 percent of respondents said they approve of public AV testing in Pittsburgh, down slightly from 49 percent approval rating in 2017. 

21.21% somewhat approve

11.62% neutral

10.73% somewhat disapprove

8.73% disapprove

One standout result was surrounding responses about the fatal accident in Tempe, Arizona involving a self-driving Uber that struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in March 2018. Survey participants were asked “As a pedestrian or a bicyclist how did this change event and it’s outcome change your opinion about sharing the road with AVs?”

Some 60 percent of respondents claimed no change in their opinion, with another 37 percent claiming that it negatively changed their opinion. Nearly 3 percent claimed their opinion changed positively toward the technology.

Bike Pittsburgh noted that the survey elicited passionate open-ended responses. 

“The incident did not turn too many people off of AV technology in general,” according to Bike Pittsburgh. “Rather it did lead to a growing distrust of the companies themselves, specifically with Uber and how they handled the fatality.”

The other study, Securing the Modern Vehicle: A Study of Automotive Industry Cybersecurity Practices, was released by Synopsys, Inc.and SAE International.

The results, based on a survey of global automotive manufacturers and suppliers conducted by Ponemon Institute, doesn’t assuage my concerns. If anything, it puts me on alert.

84% of automotive professionals have concerns that their organizations’ cybersecurity practices are not keeping pace with evolving technologies

30% of organizations don’t have an established cybersecurity program or team

63% test less than half of the automotive technology they develop for security vulnerabilities.

Testing and deployments

Pilots, pilots everywhere. A couple of interesting mobility pilots and deployments stand out.

Optimus Ride, the Boston-based MIT spinoff, has made a deal with Brookfield Properties to provide rides in its small self-driving vehicles at Halley Rise – a new $1.4 billion mixed-use development in Virginia. 

This is an example of where we see self-driving vehicles headed — for now. Small deployments that are narrowly focused in geography with a predictable customer base are the emerging trend of 2019. Expect more of them.

And there’s a reason why, these are the kinds of pilots that will deliver the data needed to improve their technology, as well as test out business models —gotta figure out how to money with AVs eventually — hone in fleet operational efficiency, placate existing investors while attracting new ones, and recruit talent.

Another deployment in the more conventional ride-hailing side of mobility is with Beat, the startup that has focused its efforts on Latin America.

Beat was founded by Nikos Drandakis in 2011 initially as Taxibeat. The startup acquired by Daimler’s mytaxi in February 2017 and Drandakis still runs the show. The company was focused on Europe but shifted to Latin America, and it’s made all the difference. (Beat is still available in Athens, Greece.) Beat has launched in Lima, Peru, Santiago, Chile and Bogota, Colombia and now boasts 200,000 registered drivers. 

Now it’s moving into Mexico, where more competitors exist. The company just started registering and screening drivers in Mexico City as it prepares to offer rides for passengers this month. 

TechCrunch spoke at length with Drandakis. Look out for a deeper dive soon.

Until next week, nos vemos.

Via Kirsten Korosec https://techcrunch.com

GM’s Latest Reorganization Is the News of the Year

I drove what is arguably General Motors’ best modern model to the airport on my way to the 2019 Ford Ranger media drive in La Jolla, California. It was a blue Cadillac ATS-V coupe with a six-speed manual gearbox and fitted with winter tires for December in Southeast Michigan.

The contrast in my back-to-back drives couldn’t be a more fitting metaphor for how the U.S. auto industry is changing. One is among the best BMW M4 alternatives on the market, and it’s about to be replaced with a new model that probably won’t have a V performance variant, and almost certainly won’t have a manual-transmission option. The other is a brand-new model that immediately rises to one of the best two in its segment and builds on Ford’s dominance in the truck business, though there’s nothing fun about the way it drives. My favorite feature of the Ford Ranger pickup truck—any midsize truck, actually—is that you can haul far more interesting conveyances in the bed.

GM’s recently announced restructuring, which includes the surprising cut of the Cadillac CT6 and Chevrolet Volt, is the biggest automotive story of 2018 in my opinion. Not because GM hasn’t reorganized before. I’d guess this is maybe the fifth or sixth in this millennium, including the 2009 bankruptcy and attendant federal government bailout. With this latest reorg, GM will close plants and lay off about 15 percent of its salaried workforce. Blue-collar workers will be given the chance to transfer to still-active plants, though the automaker on December 20 said it would even cut 50 of 116 workers at its Brownstown Township, Michigan, lithium-ion battery-pack assembly plant even as the automaker plans 20 new fully electric vehicles by 2023.

If GM were to close its Mexican plants to move production north, it wouldn’t save all these plants and their employees in the long run. When CEO Mary Barra announced the cuts in November, U.S. auto production capacity was underutilized by roughly 3 million units, about half of that attributed to GM plants. It’s not going to get easier, because no analyst expects the U.S. market to reach, or breach, the 2016 and ’17 levels of 17.5 million units per year sales any time soon. If you look at the historical sales numbers, we’re likely to settle in somewhere in the mid teens, 15 million or so, for the next few years, and that’s not accounting for the next recession, whenever that happens, nor for the profound changes in the automotive market that several of us expect over the next decade.

Modern full-line automakers will continue to boost the levels of automation in vehicle assembly over the next decade. If the car and truck ownership paradigm shifts even marginally away from full ownership, they’ll sell fewer and fewer vehicles, so no one should count on a future of automotive manufacture providing steady, high-paying jobs unless they live in China or an emerging market like India or Vietnam.

It’s going to be nearly as tough for all of today’s dozen or so major automakers to survive this shift without serious consolidation or collaboration. Ford Motor, which wants to be known not as a car company but a mobility company, and Volkswagen Group are expected to announce some sort of hookup beginning with joint-venture European commercial trucks any day now. Automotive News recently reported that Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler AG is in talks with archrival BMW Group to develop “key automotive components” together.

Barra’s reorganization is GM’s attempt to accelerate the company’s slow, deliberate march toward autonomous electric vehicles. The resulting amorphous crossover-like vehicles will make the perfect modern urban commuter modules, especially as major cities look for a cure for carbon emissions and severe traffic congestion.

For many years between now and when autonomous EVs become dominant, the moneymakers that will finance the new product development will be gas-hybrid powered crossover vehicles and traditional pickup trucks. The pickups already are the vehicles of choice in rural areas, while compact and midsize CUVs serve as the perfect ride-sharing and -hailing vehicles, with their easy step-in height, adequate luggage space for airport pickups, and pretty good fuel mileage.

Eventually, autonomous EVs will take over everywhere. The timing depends on how quickly political winds shift to recognizing climate change as a crisis for which we have run out of time. This is the ostensible reason that Wall Street and Silicon Valley believe Tesla to be the only automaker perfectly poised for the future.

This model of autonomous EVs cycling through three or more commuter users per day in major cities will not solve the problem of congestion on the streets, just as Elon Musk’s Boring Company subway tunnel isn’t terribly efficient if it uses Tesla vehicles and not trains as subway cars, as was demonstrated.

The problem here is a commuter variation of “not in my back yard.” Too many middle-class commuters would rather sit in soul-sucking traffic congestion than share a bus or metro train with the Great Unwashed.

It might seem antithetical for a car-magazine staffer to suggest the advantages of expanding mass transit compared to transporting every commuter in an autonomous EV, but I see the potential for an enthusiast’s sweet spot before we turn over all our roads to driverless crossover vehicles—a time in the near future when twisty, out-of-the-way two-lanes will be full of nothing but the few remaining non-autonomous models from automakers that specialize in sports cars. Perhaps by then GM will even re-introduce something like the manual-transmission Cadillac ATS-V.

The post GM’s Latest Reorganization Is the News of the Year appeared first on Automobile Magazine.

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7 Tips for When You Need Motivation

Do you ever look at successful people and marvel at their intense levels of motivation? How do they manage to find the strength to continue with their goals day after day? How do they have the self-discipline?

It may feel like you could never achieve the same level of motivation as your heroes, but the reality is different. It isn’t that successful people are more motivated than you — they simply do a few things differently than most. If you can master these things, then you too can achieve seemingly superhuman levels of motivation and produce the great work you’ve always dreamed of. It won’t be easy, but it’s simpler than you might think.

7 Things to Do If You Need Motivation

To get you started, here are seven motivation tips to help you crush your goals.

1. Make a Public Commitment

You’d be amazed what you can accomplish when you commit to it publicly. It’s a whole different level than when your goals are just floating in your head or sitting in a document on your computer. Public commitment leverages peer pressure in the best way possible. It’s a simple way to stay motivated, because if you don’t do what you say you would, you have no way to hide it. People will know, and they will call you out.

How public you want to make your commitment is up to you. For some people, committing on your website or social media will be out of your comfort zone, and that’s fine. You can also make a commitment to friends or family. What matters is that you have someone who will know (and hold you accountable) if you don’t meet your goal.

2. Make it Meaningful

One reason many people need motivation is that the things they’re working toward aren’t meaningful for them personally. Just look at someone like Elon Musk. He’s running multiple companies simultaneously, all while still making time to be with his family.

It’s easy to imagine that Musk has some sort of rare gift that allows him to keep up this work ethic, but if you listen to interviews with Musk, you’ll notice how intensely he believes in the work he’s doing. His vision for SpaceX, for example, is no less than to make humanity an interplanetary species. With a vision like that, motivation is easy.

Now, we’re not saying that you have to be as ambitious in your goals to achieve the same level of motivation. We can’t all be Elon Musk, and that’s okay. But if you need motivation, you can find something you believe in to work towards. It could be a goal for your job, but also just something you do on the side, such as training for a marathon or teaching yourself a new skill. What’s important is that you believe in what you’re doing and are doing it out of a genuine interest, not just because it’s something that other people say you ought to do.

3. Set Specific Goals

One common mistake people make when they set goals is to make them too broad. This can be a real motivation killer. It’s difficult to know if you’re making progress when you have a large, vague goal. Therefore, we suggest that you set specific goals — it will do wonders if you need motivation.

For example, say you want to learn the guitar. What style of music do you want to play? Acoustic or electric guitar? Do you want to shred on stage, or just strum a few tunes at family get togethers? And that’s just the beginning: once you decide on what your ultimate vision is for playing guitar, you need to break it down even further, giving you manageable weekly goals such as “learn how to strum a G chord” or “learn the chorus to ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’”

4. Keep Encouraging Words in Sight

When you’re in the thick of a difficult project and things just aren’t going your way, it’s easy to get discouraged. In times like these, it makes a world of difference to have words of encouragement visible. We recommend putting motivational and inspirational from your heroes over your desk or on your desktop wallpaper. That way, you can readily turn to them when you need motivation.

To get you started, here are some of our favorite motivational quotes:

“Start acknowledging all the good you are doing. Don’t discount the little things. I mean, how many times do you scold yourself for doing something small that wasn’t perfect? How often do you think the good things such as being on time, or signing a new client is simply how it’s meant to be? They need celebrating. You need more wins in your life. This will motivate you, encourage you, and help you see how brilliant you truly are.” — Kai Ashley

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” — Tony Robbins

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” — Amelia Earhart

“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” — Steve Jobs

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar

“What I’ve learned in these 11 years is you’ve just got to stay focused and believe in yourself and trust your own ability and judgment.” — Mark Cuban

“If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.” — Jeff Bezos

5. Create the Right Daily Routine

What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? Is it something that fills you with energy and motivation? Or is it something fills you with anxiety, stress, or boredom? If the first thing you do in the early morning is check your phone, for example, then you’re not setting yourself up for a motivating day.

Seeing whatever horrors have occured in the news or immediately getting sucked into your email inbox are not the way to set yourself up for a motivating day. Instead, we suggest doing an analog activity like reading a book, , meditating, taking a walk, working out or drinking your morning coffee as you watch the sunrise. These are simple activities, but they will do a whole lot more to give your day a motivating start than immediately getting sucked into the busy stress of digital devices.

6. Have Self-Confidence

If you don’t believe in yourself, then you’re never going to able to believe in the work you’re doing. This will result in fragile motivation that will be easily shaken when things get difficult. We know it can be hard to believe in yourself sometimes; everyone has their moments of doubt. But what sets successful people apart from everyone else is that they recognize the self-doubt as normal and then , doing great things anyway.

To build your self-confidence, reflect on the things that have gone right. Look at all you have been able to accomplish. Celebrate all the good things that have come as the fruit of your hard work. Write them down if you need to. Post them where you can see them; reaffirm them to yourself. This will serve as a major confidence-booster.

7. Have a Long-Term Vision

While we already stressed the importance of setting specific , it’s important not to go too far the other direction, either. It’s possible to get so set on checking off the items on your daily to-do list that you lose sight of why you’re doing the work to begin with. What big goals are these daily tasks serving?

If you can’t answer that question, you need to go back to the drawing board. It’s much easier to persevere through difficult times when you know that the work you’re doing is in service of a larger vision.

Stay Motivated for Good

We hope you now see that motivation isn’t some mysterious natural gift that some people are just born with. It’s something that anyone can achieve and maintain with the right techniques. When you need motivation, you need to do , of course. But you can stay motivated through difficult times provided that the hard work is in service of something you believe in.

Real estate investing: The myths, facts, and ways to get started

Real estate investing can be a great way to make a lot of money if you do your research and are prepared to devote a lot of time to your investments.

However, it’s also a great way for investors to lose money. I believe that real estate is one of the most overrated investments in America, and very few will show you real numbers to explain why.

That’s why I want to break down the facets of real estate investing, show you a few ways you can get started (if you want to), and reveal the myths behind real estate that you won’t hear anywhere else.

Real estate investing: 3 ways to do it

Real estate investment #1: REIT

Real estate investment #2: Rent out properties

Real estate investment #3: Flip properties

4 real estate investing myths

Myth #1: Purchasing real estate is a great investment

Myth #2: You’re throwing away money if you keep renting

Myth #3: You can leverage houses or take advantage of tax savings

Myth #4: You can save for a home by cutting back

When you should actually buy a house

What you should be investing in

Let’s get started.

Real estate investing: 3 ways to do it

Here are three ways you can approach real estate investing:

Investing in a REIT

Buying a rental property

Flipping properties

Some ways are better than others depending on your financial situation and goals. While I’m not a fan of real estate investing, I do believe that if you’re going to do it, you should understand your options.

Real estate investing #1: A REIT

REITs, or real estate investment trusts, are a good choice if you want to get involved with real estate investing but don’t want to make the huge commitment of purchasing a property.

That’s because REITs are like the mutual funds of real estate. They’re a collection of properties operated by a company (aka a trust) that leverages money from individual investors to buy and develop real estate. And investors get paid in dividends with REITs just like any other fund. And you, too, can be one of those individual investors.

REITs can focus on a variety of different industries both domestically and internationally, and you can invest in REITs that invest in apartments, business buildings, or even healthcare facilities.

In all, they are an easy and straightforward way to get involved with real estate investing without having to put up an enormous upfront cost of actually buying property. To get started, you just have to go to your online broker and purchase a REIT like you would your typical investments.

If you don’t know how to do that, that’s okay! Check out our article on mutual funds to find out exactly how you can open one.

But let’s say that you have $30,000+ just burning a hole in your pocket. If you’re willing to make a much riskier foray into real estate investing, you can take the next two strategies.

Real estate investing #2: Rent out properties

Renting out property seems simple enough: 

Buy a house or apartment building.

Rent out the rooms to tenants for a nominal fee.

The rental checks come in like gangbusters each month while you sit on a beach in Cabo sipping pina coladas and making passive income.

Hell, that DOES sound awesome — but it’s also complete oversimplification. In fact, renting out property is anything but relaxing. That’s because you’re responsible for all facets of the building you’re renting out as the owner. That includes repairs, maintenance, and chasing down tenants who don’t pay your rent.

And god help you if they do miss a rent payment. If that happens, you’ll have to find another way to pay your monthly mortgage payment.

You CAN make money from renting out properties (many people do!). It’s just that doing so can negatively affect your finances in a BIG way. Check out our house poor article for a good example of that.

If you’re interested in purchasing properties to rent out, be sure to check out the seven-part series on real estate investment basics by Owen Johnson (more on this later). You can find the first article here.

Real estate investing #3: Flipping properties

So you were on your seventh episode of your Fixer Upper binge-watch session and it occurred to you, “Hey, I can do this too!”

By purchasing a house or other piece of property and then renovating and selling it (i.e., “flipping” a property), you can flex your creative and business muscle at the same time…

…but it’s also harder than launching your car into space.

Unless you’re Elon Musk, I guess.

Not only do you have to have the money to buy the property but you also need to be incredibly accurate in terms of the finances that go into the renovations you want to put into the home if you want to make a profit.

That includes things like finding a contractor, estimating the cost of repairs/renovations, and being willing to take the dip in your finances while you try to find a buyer. After all, the longer you hold on to the property, the more you lose in mortgage payments.

But who knows? You might land your own HGTV show and get to do weird things while flipping houses, like this guy:

BONUS: How to buy a house — real estate investing basics

If you’re really prepared to put in the time to learn about real estate and make sound decisions, check out this seven-part series on real estate investment basics by my friend Owen Johnson. It’ll help you reap the rewards if you decide you’re cut out for it.

Of course, this is just the beginning. I suggest you have intermediate knowledge of real estate before you make your purchase.

The Real Scoop on Real Estate

Starting Down the Real Estate Investment Path

The Transaction Mechanics

A Primer on Real Estate Agency

Leveraging Yourself to Grow Your Wealth

Management Infrastructure

Real Estate Basics – In Review

4 real estate investing myths

I’ll be honest though: I think many people who invest in real estate are making a bad investment. It’s only exacerbated by all of the BS out there about owning a house.

Think about it. We’ve all thought about buying a four-bedroom house and a white picket fence on our own slice of the American Dream.

What many don’t realize, though, is that investing in the four-bedroom house can quickly turn into the biggest money and time sink of their lives. In fact, buying a house is just another one of those invisible scripts that we blindly follow without giving it a second thought.

Invisible scripts are those guiding beliefs that are so deeply embedded in our day-to-day lives that we don’t even realize they’re there.

We’ve all heard them before:

You need to make sure you get a college degree

After you graduate, you need to get married

After you get married, you need to have kids

And buying a house is one of those scripts — despite the fact that it’s one of the biggest, life-altering decisions you can make.

In fact, I receive emails every day from people saying, “I have a horrible financial problem. Plz help!” and 40% of the time, it’s directly related to their mortgages.

In chapter 9 of my New York Times best-selling book, I’m hyper-critical of people buying real estate because they think it’s a “good investment” or because they think they’re “throwing money away on rent.”

Those myths — and many others — are just that. Myths. And they’ve been so detrimental to many people’s financial situations that I feel like I need to dispel some of them today.

Here are the four myths of real estate you need to know before you even think about buying a house.

Real estate investing myth #1: “Purchasing real estate is a great investment”

One thing I always hear from people who are about to buy a house is, “Buying real estate is an investment! One day this house is going to be worth WAY more than it is now.”

Look, I get it. We’re always hearing stories from old farts who bought their homes way back in the Truman administration for just $30,000 and now it’s worth $450,000 or whatever.

When the truth is the people who say things like this don’t account for the invisible factors like inflation and maintenance.

Yale economist and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller reported that from 1890 to 1990, the return on residential real estate was just about ZERO after inflation.

Realtors and homeowners are going to flood my inbox with hate mail for saying this, but real estate is the most overrated investment in America. Even Warren Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest men, points out that houses don’t necessarily increase in value. By the way, he’s still living in the same five-bedroom house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska, back in 1958.

James Altucher wrote about why entrepreneurs shouldn’t buy a home, and he suggests the following:

“Take 1/20th of the down payment amount. Start a business.

Your investment might go to zero (which it might also do with a house) but it might also go up to 10,000% returns.

Eventually, as an entrepreneur, if you are persistent enough, you will get one of those 10,000% returns. And you will be persistent because you didn’t waste all the money and time that a house would’ve cost you.”

Real estate investing myth #2: “I’m throwing away my money if I keep renting!”

A reader once told me, “Ramit, I pay $1,000/month renting my apartment, so I definitely can afford $1,000 a month on a mortgage and build equity!”

So I asked her, “Well, how nice is your apartment?”

She admitted that the hardwood floors were old and the kitchen was very outdated.

“So will you want a house like that,” I asked, “or will you want a nicer place — one with recessed ceilings, newer appliances, and a balcony large enough for entertaining?”

She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Of course I want a nicer house.”

“Okay,” I replied. “But that will cost more than your current rent, right?”

When I said that, a lightbulb went off in her head. She hadn’t even considered that.

Chances are people who want to buy a house haven’t either. Of course, you’ll want a nicer house than the apartment you’re currently renting — ESPECIALLY if you’re committing yourself to a long-term investment like a mortgage. But that means your monthly payment will be higher.

Of course, that seems pretty obvious — but it’s only the beginning.

What many people often ignore when they say that they don’t want to throw money away on renting are the Phantom Costs.

Phantom Costs are things like:

Property taxes

Insurance

Utilities (e.g., internet, electricity, gas, water, etc.)

Home maintenance fees

Toilet drains breaking randomly at 2 am forcing you to awkwardly ask your neighbor if you can use their bathroom before you spend a few hours Googling “24-hour plumbers”  

These costs will add hundreds per month to your living expenses.

After all, you’re not just paying the mortgage each month. You’re also paying for the oven if it breaks down, or the hot water heater if it isn’t working, or that cockroach problem you inherited from the previous owner.

When you rent, you can just call your landlord if any of those things happen, and he or she foots the bill.

(By the way, the common response here is: “Landlords factor all of that into your rent. They wouldn’t rent out their place if they couldn’t make a profit!” This is incorrect. Landlords don’t charge what their cost is + a profit. Landlords charge what the market will bear. Some make a profit, but many of them are losing money each month.)

When you own, though, you have to fix those things or call someone else to fix them for you. And of course, that comes out of your own pocket.

Sure, the plumber here and the exterminator there doesn’t sound that bad … but imagine that in the course of owning a house, your roof breaks. All of a sudden, that’s $25,000 you need to invest in repairs.

So even if you have a mortgage that is the same as your rent — let’s say $1,000 — you still need to add 40-50% to that monthly amount to factor in the phantom costs. Now you’re paying closer to $1,500/month.

Check out this graph. It shows the true cost of buying a home over 30 years.

If you purchase a $300,000 house today, over 30 years, it could cost you almost $1 MILLION.

In the end, you’re not throwing your money away by renting — but you will throw your money away if you buy a house without knowing what you’re doing.

In the video below, I break down the myths of renting vs buying a house a bit more. Check it out.

Real estate investing myth #3: “If I cut back on enough avocado toast I can afford a house!”

Just… Stop it. Right now.

Real estate investing myth #4: “I can always leverage this house or take advantage of the tax savings”

This is effectively two myths in one — but they both boil down to one idea: People think they can guarantee that they will make money by investing in real estate.

I’m talking about leverage and tax savings, and BOTH can cause you to lose money.

Leverage

So many homeowners point to leverage as a key benefit to their real estate investment.

For example, you can put $20,000 down for a $100,000 house, and if the house climbs to $120,000, you’ve effectively doubled your money.

That sounds great, but it’s ignoring one big thing: The price of a house doesn’t always increase (*cut to people who purchased a house in 2007 crying and nodding*). So unfortunately, leverage can work against you if the price goes down.

If your house declines by 10%, you don’t just lose 10% of your equity — it’s more like 20% once you factor in the 6% in realtor’s fees, closing costs, new furniture, and other expenses.

You need to be prepared to face this potential loss before you drop several hundred thousand dollars on a new house.

Tax savings

People think that they can deduct their mortgage interest from their taxes and save a bunch of money.

Though you can deduct your mortgage interest, people forget that they’re saving money that they ordinarily would never have spent.

Think about it. The amount you pay out owning a house is much higher than you would for any rental when you include all those phantom payments I mentioned. So even though you’ll certainly save money on your mortgage interest through tax breaks, the net is usually a loss.

At the end of the day, both leverages and the tax breaks you get from buying a house just aren’t good enough reasons to justify investing in real estate.

So when IS a good time to buy a house?

When you should actually buy a house

Warning: This is going to get a little bit complicated.

To know exactly when the right time is to purchase a house involves a lot of analytics and hours slaving over spreadsheets and “A Beautiful Mind”–style chalkboard equations.

You ready? Here’s when you should actually buy a house:

When it’s right for you.

The fact is there isn’t a right time that fits everyone. Your invisible script is going to tell you that you should buy a house after college or when you’re ready to start a family — when the truth is the right time is as different for you as it is for the next guy. And it may not even be for financial reasons.

Hell, there might not ever be a right time. And that’s okay too.

However, if you are genuinely interested in investing in real estate, I do suggest you do a LOT of research before you jump into anything.

Here are a few GREAT resources I recommend if you’re thinking about buying a house:

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing: This is a great website filled with a lot of helpful advice regarding all things investing, including real estate. It’s inspired by the teachings and philosophies of Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard

“In the Long Run, Sleep at Home and Invest in the Stock Market”: This is the seminal article from the New York Times on why we underestimate Phantom Costs like insurance, inflation, and taxes. Note the haunting story at the end

Fixed rate vs adjustable rate: An article I wrote a while back examining why people still take the risky route when purchasing a house

In the end, purchasing real estate might be right for you and it might not. But do not make the largest decision of your financial life because it’s something you “should” do.

What you should invest in

In general, buying real estate is NOT a great investment for individuals.

Instead, I recommend conservatively investing in the stock market via index funds.

By investing in sensible, long-term investments, you’ll have a balanced portfolio that’ll earn you thousands well into your life.

And the sooner you start, the easier it is to get rich.

This isn’t BS either. There’s over 100 years of evidence in the stock market that suggests this.

Still don’t believe me? Let’s look at another real world example.

Say you’re 25 years old and you decide to invest $500/month in a low-cost, diversified index fund. If you do that until you’re 60, how much money do you think you’d have?

Take a look:

$1,116,612.89.

That’s right. You’d be a millionaire after only investing a few thousand dollars per year.

Notice, I’m not talking about the Hollywood type of investing where hotshot stock brokers make huge multimillion dollar trades while yelling “SELL” into a phone for some reason.

I said you should invest in low-cost, diversified index funds over time. That’s because smart investments are about consistency more than anything else — not chasing hot stocks. Or other weird investments:

Only through smart investments can you live a Rich Life.

And I want to help you get there. That’s why I’d like to offer you something that’ll help you turbocharge your investments:

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This guide will help take out the pain of actively investing your money each month. I’ll walk you through the EXACT step-by-step process of setting up your automated finances. By the time you’re done, you’ll be saving AND earning more money passively.

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Real estate investing: The myths, facts, and ways to get started is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

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