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At the Beginning….
The Tregaron Conservancy began work in 2006 after the landscape had suffered from more than 50 years of neglect:
- The entire landscape had been overtaken by invasive and damaging vines, shrubs and weeds.
- Many trees had died and fallen throughout the property, blocking all of the trails.
- The lily pond was completely filled with sludge and debris.
- The Macomb Stream was not flowing clearly and the Klingle Stream was clogged and backed up.
- Decades-old rhododendrons no longer flowered due to lack of sunlight.
- Stone stairways, bridges and walls were damaged and covered with dirt, silt and vines.
The woodland looked more like a jungle and the water features were eyesores. The meadows had been overtaken by encroaching invasive plants. The paths were largely unusable. The iconic 250 year-old Twin Oak tree was dead and dangerous.
With the goal of rehabilitating the land to the original Platt/Shipman design, as well as restoring its plant community and animal habitat, the Conservancy got to work: clearing invasive growth, removing dead trees, restoring paths, clearing stream beds, uncovering stone stairs and bridges, and reconstructing the lily pond. In performing all of its landscape work, the Conservancy is guided by Tregaron's Cultural Landscape Report and consults with the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office and other landscape design and preservation experts and partners.
The Conservancy's First Decade, 2006-2016
Assessing the Task at Hand and Clearing Trees: Beginning in 2006, the Conservancy engaged landscape architects and designers to develop plans and oversee the initial rehabilitation of the historic landscape. Guided by experienced arborists, the Conservancy hired The Care of Trees (TCOT) to remove dozens of large fallen trees, take out invasive smaller trees and clear the land of the poison ivy.
Restoring Trails and Streams, Enhancing Our Plant Community: The Conservancy next began to re-establish the extensive system of Platt/Shipman-era trails and footpaths that wind through the Estate. Once the initial obstacles were removed and the paths were reopened, we invited the community to help on volunteer clean-up days. Neighbors and friends from across the city (and beyond) turned out to help us begin to reverse the damage that decades of neglect had caused. We removed hanging branches and invasives along the trails and fields. We unclogged both of our streams; they are now healthy and flowing correctly.
Excavating and Restoring Historic Features: In addition to removing hazardous trees and assessing tree health, TCOT performed major excavation work to help us uncover original stone bridges, stairs, walls and other features dating back to 1912-1915. The Conservancy discovered an original stone staircase and marble patio (photo on left) that were then removed, due to construction of the School's new soccer field, and relocated to a site above the lily pond. Our work was guided by an archeologist from DC's Historic Planning Office and Shipman's original plans.
Planting Trees, Assessing Tree Health:
Next, with guidance from TCOT and in partnership with Casey Trees, skilled volunteers planted over 100 trees in the Klingle stream valley around the lily pond and throughout the woodlands. TCOT mapped all of our major trees; you will see small markers on many of them. We have held many tree planting events over the years, restoring both the canopy and understory with native trees. To date, thanks in large part to Casey Trees volunteers and tree donations, we have planted over 200 trees.
Planting Wild Gardens: We have designed and commissioned landscape plans that aim to recapture Shipman's "wild garden" aesthetic and plant palette, with an emphasis on native, deer- and drought-resistant selections. Initially, we focused on the pond valley, designing and planting gardens along the pond overlook stairways, and our entrances. More recently, we have begun to establish wild gardens along the Bridle Path and fields. In 2016, we seeded the first native grasses and sedges for our new native meadows, and planted hundred of shrubs, ferns and ground-cover plants. Over the years, our volunteers have also planted thousands of daffodils along our streams and hillsides.
Making Tregaron More Welcoming:
We have also worked hard to make visiting Tregaron more inviting and enjoyable by adding entry signs, maps, and trailhead markers. Landscape committee chair Tamara Belt designed a new gate with handsome stone pillars and a staircase for our Klingle Street entrance. We have also performed some initial landscape work at our Macomb Street entrance. We removed unattractive chain-link fencing and twisted, rusty iron fence sections throughout the landscape and added historically-appropriate fencing along some of our boundaries. More work remains to be done on our boundary fencing, and our trail and entryway signs.
Co-Stewarding the Estate with the Washington International School:
Over the years, we have worked in tandem with WIS on a number of major landscape projects, as well as coordinating our maintenance activities. Recent project work by WIS (performed in consultation with the Conservancy) included the installation of Shipman-inspired landscaping and a new, historically appropriate stone stairway bordering the south lawn of the mansion (the "East and West Groves"), and extensive repair, repointing and drainage work on Platt's iconic 1912 Causeway. The original cobble gutter approaching the bridge was re-created as part of this project and a new drainage system was constructed. The arch under the Causeway bridge — once cracking, rust-stained and covered in graffiti — is now magnificently restored.
Ongoing Management and Maintenance:
Stewardship of the landscape is complex and time-consuming. We perform this work under the guidance of a preservation landscape architect, according to a month-by-month landscape maintenance calendar. Paths are cleared and mulched, debris and weeds are removed, the pond and gardens are maintained, branches are pruned, and trees and plants are inspected for health issues. The irrigation system and pond bubbler are maintained.
While there is much work remaining to be done, today Tregaron is a lovely place to hike, walk, picnic and enjoy nature. The trails and woodlands offer something new with each season. Benches have been added to allow for rest and reflection. Dog walkers and children love our open fields all year round. We are grateful for the tremendous philanthropy and volunteer assistance that has made this first decade of work possible.
Read Tregaron's Cultural Landscape Report
Note that each Part is a pdf download; some files are quite large
Part 1 – Cultural Landscape Report
Part 2 – Cultural Landscape Report
The Cultural Landscape Reports' Landscape Plans and Photo Sheets:
Part 1 — Platt-Shipman Sketch Plans
Part 2 — Platt-Shipman era vintage photographs with location notations
Part 3 — 1948 aerial photographs with landscape units
Part 4 — Davies Era vintage photographs
Part 5 — 1980 WIS-TLP aerial photographs, 2000 aerial photographs, 2005 aerial photographs
Part 6 — 2005 photographs with location notations
Part 7 — 2005 drawings of existing conditions and features, 2007 Project Areas Plan
Part 8 — Vegetation Management Plan, Illustrations
Part 9 — Illustrations
Our Rehabilitation Work Continues: Current Projects
While we have made major strides in renewing the landscape, we have urgent needs, and a great deal remains to be done. English ivy and other invasives continue to spread across our hillsides and threaten our trees. Large stands of bamboo must be removed. Portions of our trails are severely threatened by erosion, and storm-water drainage is a constant engineering challenge. Anachronistic concrete walls are crumbling and damaging trees. Gardens must be planted and renewed. In short, we are still a long way from recapturing Shipman's vision and rehabilitating the land for 21st century enjoyment.
The Conservancy is hard at work on a number of current projects to address some of these challenges and further enhance the landscape. To accomplish this daunting (but exciting) task, we need your help!
Find out how you can get involved.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Djibouti: SCINET installed in the African port of Djibouti, an assembly of mini-plants in containers
(HornTrade) – Through the agreement with Factoring & Management, SCINET install the new plant near the port's container terminal in Djibouti is located in a strategic zone between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The plant will assemble mini-plants in the models of basic necessities such as water purification and desalination of water, dry food, egg production, clothing, footwear, steel nail production, tire retreading, Sheeting for Roofing, ceilings and walls, Injected Polypropylene Housewares, Pressed Melamine Items (Glasses, plates, cups, spoons), plastic bags and packaging, dairy products, natural rubber latex products, etc.
Also be joined emergency medical units. These modules are equipped with everything needed to operate autonomously even in places that lack any infrastructure. In addition to addressing medical emergencies, these containers serve specialties such as medical imaging, ophthalmology, dentistry and midwifery. They also include a module with vending machines that provide medical supplies such as serum, syringes, forceps, pharmaceutical material, etc.
Another important feature is the fact that the assembly are connected to the WTS (World Trade System) also managed by SCINET with access to more than 60 million of goods, raw materials, products and services, and the system of automatic operations international trade and trade digital certificates.
The certificates allow exchange transactions automatically using the reciprocal recognition of the value of stocks. In this way, it gives the partners an immediate solution to sell their stocks and obtain raw materials, products and services in real time, globally.
For more information see http://www.scinet-corp.com/
and http://www.scfoundation.eu/
Source: asturi.as


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One of our most popular home DIYs on Food52 is also the most endlessly adaptable. Madelynn Furlong's hanging clothing rack, made from copper piping, rope, and a little glue, could also be a piece of driftwood suspended from manilla rope (similar to this one), or a wooden dowel hung from leather straps, like so.
All you need is a long bar, affixed to the ceiling to hang at eye level. (And some cute hangers, and some clothes you don't mind looking at all the time.)
It's smart because it makes use of air space, often neglected for its storage capacity, a something-from-nothing cure for the closetless (and clothes lovers). But a hanging rack all by its lonesome, fluttering in the breeze from your window with nothing under it but a pair of shoes, isn't the most efficient use of space, nor the most finished-looking.
True, it's more minimalist (and less expensive) than pushing a big bulky wardrobe up against the wall, which is why we love the look of it so much. But by that same token, a hanging pipe doesn't offer that much storage.
Thankfully, we found a fix:
Spotted in a home tour on My Scandinavian Home: a skinny brass pipe hanging from leather straps, raised so as to allow for a set of drawers underneath.
Acquiring a simply-designed, long, low dresser shouldn't be that tough: Here's a $100 one from IKEA that is probably the same as the one in the picture. But you could also stack old crates with their openings facing out, for holding shoes, or add a few small side tables with drawers, side-by-side, for a less uniform effect. Voila! More storage. Without the imposing heft of a single large piece, without DIY-ing an entire garment closet, without spending so much you want to cry.
Wherever you have a dresser in your life, this combo could fit! Especially in small spaces, when every inch of floor space matters, raising up your hanging rack to scoot some drawers underneath doubles its effectiveness.
How have you managed clothes storage without a closet? Share your tips (please!) in the comments.
See what other Food52 readers are saying.


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The Work
December 19, 2008 2:51 PM
Polaroid Files for Bankruptcy (Again)
Posted by Zach Lowe
Polaroid Corp. is back in bankruptcy for the second time this decade, and they are blaming their financial troubles this time not on the digital camera revolution (that's old hat now) but on the late September arrest of their parent company's owner, Tom Petters, on massive fraud charges, according to Bloomberg.
The interesting question now is: Which firm is going to get the bankruptcy work for the Minnetonka, Minn.-based company? In 2001, when the company first filed, the honor went to Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, but Skadden isn't on this file (yet, at least). Kirkland & Ellis, the other bankruptcy giant with midwestern ties, is probably out, since they are listed among Polaroid's top 30 creditors (the company owes Kirkland $159,000). That has so far left the work to Lindquist & Vennum, a firm with a major presence in Minnesota, where Polaroid filed this time; the company filed in Delaware in 2001.
The firm had to be approved by Douglas A. Kelley, the name partner at the three-lawyer Minneapolis firm Kelley & Wolter who's acting as receiver for Petters and the Petters Group, Polaroid's parent company. Petters has been in jail with his assets frozen since his arrest in September on charges of scamming investors and hedge funds by creating bogus purchase orders designed to drum up investment, according to Bloomberg and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.
Several of Petters' companies, including Petters Group Worldwide, Petters Company, Inc., and Sun Country Airlines, have also filed for bankruptcy protection since Petters' arrest. The same Lindquist partner (James Lodoen) is representing Petters Group Worldwide and Petters Company in bankruptcy proceedings. But Petters Company (and another Petters-controlled entity, Petters Capital LLC) are listed as the top two creditors in the Polaroid filing, with combined debts of about $213 million. Polaroid is disputing those debts.
Lodoen declined to comment on his representation of all the companies, but did say Lindquist and Polaroid are not planning on bringing in a national firm to help in the proceedings. Richard Cieri, co-chair of Kirkland's bankruptcy department, says it's common for the same lawyer or firm representing a bankrupt parent company to also represent any subsidiaries of that company that also file for bankruptcy.Make a comment
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2016 Cairns world cup dh
Had a rad week up in tropical North Queensland at the UCI World Cup. Heres how i saw it in picture form. Enjoy. Images are available to purchase at a small fee. Please do not use without permission. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com for details.Read More


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The best paintings are not the ones that are well-known but the ones that are hidden in dark corners of art galleries. They look very similar to hundreds of other art pieces but if you inspect them very carefully, you will spot that thing that makes them special.
Few years back I found one of them in The Cinquecento Corridor of Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Rather small and shy, the painting looks just as you would expect it – plenty of naked figures in a lovely garden with some swans, flowers and fruits. It just makes you think it is nothing special so you walk by quickly.
But if you are a bit more patient and you look at the bottom section of the painting, you will see two children, a boy and a girl, happily peeing into a pond.
The artist, Jacopo Zucchi, used actually golden paint to mark both streams so they are very bright and shiny. And I still wonder if the title, The Age of Gold, has anything to do with it.


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|Previous close
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|134.10 - 134.10
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|Open interest
Dec.13 -- Google fired four employees for what the technology giant said were violations of its data-security policies, escalating tension between management and activist workers at a company once revered for its open corporate culture. Rebecca Rivers, a former Google employee, and Bloomberg's Mark Bergen appear on "Bloomberg Technology."
Amazon's (AMZN) film production division, Amazon Studios orders the fourth season of its original comedy show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Google has told its Turkish business partners it will not be able to work with them on new Android phones to be released in Turkey, after the Turkish competition board ruled that changes Google made to its contracts were not acceptable. Turkey's competition authority had fined Google 93 million lira ($17.4 million) in September 2018 for violating competition law with its mobile software sales. Turkey's competition board ruled on Nov. 7 that changes which Google made in its contracts with its business partners in line with the board's demands were inadequate as they still did not allow changes to the default search engine.
(Bloomberg) -- A YouTuber in Taiwan said his Chinese talent agency is demanding he remove a video in which he addressed Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen as president, the latest clash over China's assertions of territorial control in Asia.Chen Chia-chin, better known as Potter King, published a video on Facebook and YouTube Saturday, showing Tsai visiting his media startup. He used his signature humorous pickup lines and repeatedly addressed Tsai as "president," which is in fact her title.His Chinese agency, Papitube, demanded he not use the word in his videos, nullified his contract and took over his Weibo account without his consent, Chen wrote in a Sunday post on his Facebook page. Facebook and YouTube are banned in mainland China."I have told them not to interfere with our content," Chen wrote. "We totally cannot accept this. This is absurd."The incident is the latest in a growing number of attempts by Chinese officials and companies to impose political views beyond the reach of mainland censors. While Taiwan and China split amid a civil war in 1949, Beijing continues to exert claims over self-governing Taiwan and bristles at any language or action that bestows Taiwan with the image of sovereignty. Global brands such as Calvin Klein, Coach and Givenchy drew the ire of Chinese internet users after implying the island is its own country.Papitube criticized Chen in a post on its official Weibo account on Sunday. "We strongly condemn Potter King's inappropriate language and actions," Papitube said. "We are ending all partnerships with Chen Chia-Chin, whom we have a contract with, effective today."Chen declined an interview through a representative at his startup, but the chief executive officer of his media startup, Ju Yang New Media International Co., said they would not comply with Papitube's request."We support democracy," said Mars Lee, Chen's business partner. "Everyone should take this seriously because many people fought for and won democracy with their lives, time and souls. Some people think democracy is easy to obtain like air, but it is not easy at all."In a series of screen-shots of a chat history Chen presented with his post, a contact at his Chinese agency asked that Chen delete his video of Tsai on Facebook and YouTube. The Chinese agency said the issue lies with him calling Tsai "president" and added the agency will cancel Chen's contract. Chinese state media typically refer to Tsai as the "Taiwan leader" or "regional leader."Papitube may be particularly sensitive to content that could alienate government officials in Beijing. One of its stars, Papi Jiang, was censored in 2016 for foul language, with the authorities demanding that she remove her videos and clean up explicit comments. Papitube didn't respond to emails seeking comment.Tsai's spokesman Ernesto Ting said it is only natural for Taiwanese to address their president as president. "This is a demonstration of Taiwan's democracy and freedom," he said.The clash comes as Beijing is more forcefully exerting its national interests abroad. Over the weekend, China's ambassador to Germany threatened Berlin with retaliation if it excludes Huawei Technologies Co. as a supplier of 5G wireless equipment, suggesting the sales of German carmakers in China may be at risk.China's official CCTV also pulled the broadcast of an Arsenal soccer game after star player Mesut Ozil criticized the Chinese government's treatment of Uighur Muslims on Instagram and Twitter.Earlier this year, China's state broadcaster dropped National Basketball Association games after Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey voiced support for Hong Kong protesters.\--With assistance from Gao Yuan.To contact the reporter on this story: Debby Wu in Taipei at firstname.lastname@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at email@example.com, Vlad SavovFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- Each morning, workers at Google get an internal newsletter called the "Daily Insider." Kent Walker, Google's top lawyer, set off a firestorm when he argued in the Nov. 14 edition that the 21-year old company had outgrown its policy of allowing workers to access nearly any internal document. "When we were smaller, we all worked as one team, on one product, and everyone understood how business decisions were made," Walker wrote. "It's harder to give a company of over 100,000 people the full context on everything."Many large companies have policies restricting access to sensitive information to a "need-to-know" basis. But in some segments of Google's workforce, the reaction to Walker's argument was immediate and harsh. On an internal messaging forum, one employee described the data policy as "a total collapse of Google culture." An engineering manager posted a lengthy attack on Walker's note, which he called "arrogant and infantilizing." The need-to-know policy "denies us a form of trust and respect that is again an important part of the intrinsic motivation to work here," the manager wrote.The complaining also spilled into direct action. A group of Google programmers created a tool that allowed employees to choose to alert Walker with an automated email every time they opened any document at all, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The deluge of notifications was meant as a protest to what they saw as Walker's insistence on controlling the minutiae of their professional lives. "When it comes to data security policies, we've never intended to prevent employees from sharing technical learnings and information and we are not limiting anyone's ability to raise concerns or debate the company's activities," said a Google spokeswoman in an email. "We have a responsibility to safeguard our user, business and customer information and these activities need to be done in line with our policies on data security." The actions are just the latest chapter in an internal conflict that has been going on for almost two years. About 20,000 employees walked out last fall over the company's generous treatment of executives accused of sexual harassment, and a handful quit over Google's work on products for the U.S. military and a censored search engine for the Chinese market. Earlier this year, Google hired IRI Consultants, a firm that advises employers on how to combat labor organizing, and it recently fired four employees for what it said was violation of its policies on accessing sensitive data.The extent of Google's employee rebellion is hard to measure—the company has tried to portray it as the work of a handful of malcontents from the company's junior ranks. Nor are the company's message boards unilaterally supportive of revolt. "We want to focus on our jobs when we come into the workplace rather than deal with a new cycle of outrage every few days or vote on petitions for or against Google's latest project," wrote one employee on an internal message board viewed by Bloomberg News. Still, the company seems stuck in a cycle of escalation. Walker's internal critics say his Nov. 14 email is part of a broader erosion of one of Google's most distinctive traits—its extreme internal transparency. The fight also illustrates the lack of trust between Google's leadership and some of its employees, according to interviews with over a dozen current and former employees, as well as internal messages shared with Bloomberg News on the condition it not publish the names of employees who participated.The conflict comes as Google is changing in other ways, too. On Dec. 3, Sundar Pichai, who took over as Google's chief executive office in 2015, became the head of Alphabet, its parent company. His elevation marks the end of the active involvement of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who established Google's distinctive culture when they founded the company as Stanford graduate students. Pichai has at times supported internal activism. He spoke at an employee protest against the Trump administration's immigration policies and apologized to employees for Google's track record on sexual harassment. His executives met repeatedly with critics of the company's military work. Some Google managers began signaling that they're losing patience with internal activism even before the firings, according to one person who worked with them. Executives have not met with dissenting staff leadership in many weeks, according to one of the employees.While Walker wrote in the "Daily Insider" that organizations have to change as they grow, he simultaneously argued that the policies he described had always existed. "It was that way since the early days of Google, and it's that way now," he wrote. This particularly offended several long-time Googlers, who said on internal message boards that Walker's comments didn't square with their own memories. For some of them, the incident illustrated a broader breakdown in their trust of leadership. "I want to believe that executive management is saying everything—disclosing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," said Bruce Hahne, a Google technical project manager. "I don't think we are currently under those conditions."Hahne, 51, doesn't meet the Google management's profile of internal protestors. He joined the company in 2005, a year after Pichai, partly because he was attracted to its mission to organize the world's information. His disillusionment crept in gradually during the company's myriad controversies. In an online essay, Hahne compared Google to a "rogue machine" that was "originally created for good but whose psyche has turned corrupt and destructive," much like Hal 9000 from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. "You don't treat a rogue machine like family," wrote Hahne, "instead you come up with a plan, you disable or dismantle the dysfunctional parts of the machine, and you seek to reprogram the machine to serve its original purpose." When it was founded two decades ago, Google established an unusual corporate practice. Nearly all of its internal documents were widely available for workers to review. A programmer working on Google search could for instance, dip into the software scaffolding of Google Maps to crib some elegant block of code to fix a bug or replicate a feature. Employees also had access to notes taken during brainstorming sessions, candid project evaluations, computer design documents, and strategic business plans. (The openness doesn't apply to sensitive data such as user information.)The idea came from open-source software development, where the broader programming community collaborates to create code by making it freely available to anyone with ideas to alter and improve it. The philosophy came with technical advantages. "That interconnected way of working is an integral part of what got Google to where it is now," said John Spong, a software engineer who worked at Google until this July.Google has flaunted its openness as a recruiting tool and public relations tactic as recently as 2015. "As for transparency, it's part of everything we do," Laszlo Bock, then the head of Google human relations, said in an interview that year. He cited the immediate access staff have to software documentation, and said employees "have an obligation to make their voices heard."Google's open systems also proved valuable for activists within the company, who have examined its systems for evidence of controversial product developments and then circulated their findings among colleagues. Such investigations have been integral to campaigns against the projects for the Pentagon and China. Some people involved in this research refer to it as "internal journalism."Management would describe it differently. In November, Google fired four engineers who it said had been carrying out "systematic searches for other employees' materials and work. This includes searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs." The engineers said they were active in an internal campaign against Google's work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and denied violating the company's data security policies.Rebecca Rivers, one of the fired employees, said she initially logged into Google's intranet, a web portal open to all staff, and typed the terms: "CBP" and "GCP," for Google Cloud Platform. "That's how simple it was," she said. "Anyone could have stumbled onto it easily," she said.In an internal email describing the firings, Google accused one employee of tracking a colleague's calendar without permission, gathering information about both personal and professional appointments in a way that made the targeted employee feel uncomfortable. Laurence Berland, one of the employees who was fired recently, acknowledged he had accessed internal calendars, but said they were not private. He used them to confirm his suspicions that the company was censoring employees. Berland, who first joined Google in 2005, added that he felt the company was punishing him for breaking a rule that didn't exist at the time of the alleged violations. Google declined to identify the four employees it fired, but a company spokeswoman said the person who tracked calendars accessed unauthorized information.Other employees say they are now afraid to click on certain documents from other teams or departments because they are worried they could later be disciplined for doing so, a fear the company says is unfounded. Some workers have interpreted the policies as an attempt to stifle criticism of particular projects, which they allege amounts to a violation of the company's code of conduct. These employees point to a clause in the code that actively encourages dissent: "Don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right—speak up!" Workers are "trying to report internally on problematic situations, and in some cases are not being allowed to make that information useful and accessible," said Hahne. There is now a "climate of fear" inside Google offices, he said.Google's permissive workplace culture became the prime example of Silicon Valley's brand of employment. But transparency is hardly universal. Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. demand that workers operate in rigid silos to keep the details of sensitive projects from leaking to competitors. Engineers building a phone's camera may have no idea what the people building its operating system are doing, and vice versa. Similar restrictions are common at government contractors and other companies working with clients who demand discretion.The specifics of Google's business operations traditionally haven't required this level of secrecy, but that is changing. Google's cloud business in particular requires it to convince business clients it can handle sensitive data and work on discrete projects. This has brought it more in line with its secrecy-minded competitors. The protests themselves have also inspired new restrictions, as executives have looked to cut off the tools of the activists it argues are operating in bad faith.Google's leaders have acknowledged the delicacy of adjusting a culture that has entrenched itself over two decades. "Employees today are much, much more active in the governance in the company," Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO and chair, said at an event at Stanford University in October. Amy Edmonson, a professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, said that Google's idealistic history increases the burden on its executives to bring along reluctant employees as it adopts more conventional corporate practices. "It's just really important that if you're going to do something that is perceived as change that you're going to explain it," she said.Bock, the company's former HR director who is now CEO of Humu, a workplace software startup, suggested that Google hasn't succeeded here. "Maybe Alphabet is just a different company than it used to be," he wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. "But not everyone's gotten the memo." (Corrects Berland comment in 19th paragraph.)\--With assistance from Josh Eidelson.To contact the authors of this story: Ryan Gallagher in London at email@example.com Bergen in San Francisco at email@example.com contact the editor responsible for this story: Joshua Brustein at email@example.com more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
The chair of a U.S. congressional panel wrote to Alphabet's Google and to Apple on Friday to ask what if any disclosures mobile apps are required to make regarding overseas ties, a concern that follows reports of Chinese investment in popular apps such as TikTok and Grindr. Rep. Stephen Lynch, chairman of a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, said in a statement that he had asked both Google and Apple to tell Congress whether they required app developers to disclose any non-U.S. ties. Concern over China acquiring sensitive data about U.S. citizens through social media apps is one of several sore areas in relations between the United States and China even as U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war with China fans suspicion between the world's two largest economies.
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Army will spend $111 million next year in a new contract with Palantir Technologies Inc., deepening ties between Peter Thiel's data analytics company and the Pentagon.The new Defense Department deal will represent about 10% of Palantir's revenue next year, according to people familiar with the company's finances. It's the first step in what could be a four-year, $440 million deal with the Army.The Silicon Valley company will provide software to connect human resources, supply chains and other Army operations systems into a single dashboard. The Army considered earlier proposals for related work from Accenture Plc, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and Microsoft Corp."We started Palantir in 2004 to help the war fighter and solve difficult problems," Doug Philippone, head of Palantir's global defense business, said in an emailed statement. "In helping the Army make better use of its own data, we accomplish both goals."The Defense deal solidifies a relationship between the U.S. government and the Palo Alto, California-based company, which was co-founded and partly bankrolled by Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and adviser to President Donald Trump has chastised other technology companies, in particular Alphabet Inc.'s Google, for their reluctance to work with the Defense Department. After Google abandoned a Pentagon effort known as Project Maven, Palantir stepped in to help develop video recognition software as part of the project, a move reported earlier by Business Insider.On Saturday, a company spokeswoman said Palantir will run its first-ever commercials, which will air during the Army-Navy football game, in a bid to show its support for the U.S. military.In recent years, Palantir has sought to work more with companies and be less reliant on government contracts. Airbus SE and Merck KGaA are among its customers, but government clients still make up a significant portion of revenue.To contact the reporter on this story: Lizette Chapman in San Francisco at email@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Mark Milian at firstname.lastname@example.com, Anne VanderMeyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. antitrust enforcers are examining Google's conduct in the online shopping comparison market as they continue their probe of the search giant.Richard Stables, chief executive officer of the shopping comparison site Kelkoo Group, said he spent more than an hour with Justice Department officials on Thursday to discuss how Alphabet Inc. allegedly hurt his European-based business.The meetings show that the Justice Department, which opened its investigation of Google with a document seeking a wide swath of information on the company, has an interest in at least one of three landmark European antitrust cases.A Justice Department spokesman said the department has had numerous productive meetings with third parties, but declined to comment on specific discussions.Stables said he also met with congressional staff members for lawmakers on antitrust committees in the House and Senate earlier this week.In 2017, the European Union fined Google 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) and ordered the company to stop promoting its own shopping search results over those of competitors. Stables, who has been trying to convince the EU to toughen its remedy, outlined to the U.S. antitrust enforcers what he said was harm to consumers stemming from Google's practices.Google's practice of elevating its own services raises prices for consumers by limiting access to rival shopping comparison sites, Stables said.In the meetings, Stables said he raised concerns that Google could squash not just other European comparison sites, but also travel companies, searches for local businesses and services, and other firms in the U.S.U.S. companies that fear Google have been reluctant to speak out, he said, but he was was willing to help enforcers in Washington understand the market because the political moment made him more optimistic about getting a remedy.In addition to the Justice Department and Congress, 48 state attorneys general are probing Google, and some Democratic presidential candidates have ramped up their rhetoric on the dominance of tech giants.The states began their investigation by focusing on Google's position in online ads, but some states have recently broadened their focus.Google spokesman Jose Castaneda directed reporters to a September blog post when Google Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker pledged to work with antitrust officials.(Updates with context on the states' investigation, in second-to-last paragraph. An earlier version corrected the day of the meeting, in second paragraph)\--With assistance from David McLaughlin.To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Brody in Washington, D.C. at email@example.com;Naomi Nix in Washington at firstname.lastname@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at firstname.lastname@example.com, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- Alphabet Inc. is pursuing mediation to settle investor litigation alleging the company let senior leaders at Google get away with sexual harassment and misconduct for years.Company directors this year set up a special committee to evaluate the claims after several shareholder groups sued, alleging that the board failed in its duties by allowing harassment, approving big payouts to departing executives and keeping the details under wraps. The committee recommended that the case go through private mediation, a closed-door process, according to a filing in California state court in San Jose.Both sides agreed to extend Alphabet's deadline to respond to the claims until Feb. 14 to accommodate the mediation, according to the filing.Google's handling of sexual harassment and misconduct has been a major flashpoint over the last two years. Thousands of employees walked off the job last year to protest the company's policies after a New York Times report detailed how Google paid Android founder Andy Rubin $90 million in severance even after an employee accused him of sexual harassment.Google has since changed some of its policies and no longer bars employees from signing away their right to bring complaints in court.A Google spokesman declined to comment on the litigation. Louise Renne, a lawyer representing investors, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.The lead case is In Re Alphabet Inc. Shareholder Derivative Litigation, 19CV341522, California Superior Court, Santa Clara County (San Jose).To contact the reporters on this story: Gerrit De Vynck in New York at email@example.com;Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at firstname.lastname@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at email@example.com, ;David Glovin at firstname.lastname@example.com, Peter Blumberg, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Amazon had a big week with government issues, a host of new deals and announcements at its annual conference and developments in India.
We found three cloud-focused software stocks using our Zacks Stock Screener that investors might want to consider buying for 2020...
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Electrons aren't much of a growth industry in the U.S., the second-largest electricity market in the world after China. Electricity sales rose last year, after nearly a decade of being flat or falling slightly, but are still only up 3% since 2007. There is one market, though, where demand for electrons is booming: data centers. That power-hungry growth market, though, is also where some of the world's biggest, most capitalized and most innovative companies are bringing their might to bear. Before getting into that innovation, though, there's a crucial equation to consider: the power usage effectiveness ratio, or PUE. PUE is a measure of a data center's energy efficiency — the ratio of total energy used divided by energy consumed specifically for information technology activities. The theoretical ideal PUE is 1, where 100% of electricity consumption goes toward useful computation. All the other stuff — power transformers, uninterruptible power supplies, lighting and especially cooling — uses power but doesn't compute, and as a result raises a data center's PUE. A 2016 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study listed what was, at the time, PUE for facilities at various scales: a server sitting in a room, a server in a closet, a "hyperscale" extremely large data center. The smaller the server, the higher its ratio and the lower its efficiency. For the smallest server spaces, the PUE is above 2, meaning that more than half of its energy use is for things other than computing. For hyperscale, the PUE is 1.2 — meaning that most of the energy is going to computation. Here are that same data, expressed a bit differently, to show a server or data center's power consumption by use. Here you can see that the smallest applications used more power for cooling than for computation. But at hyperscale data centers, more than 80% of power consumption went to IT (servers, networking and storage), and only 13% went to cooling. But now, with so much computation happening in the cloud (and, in reality, in hyperscale data centers), it's worth finding out what today's PUEs are and just how close they can get to that theoretical ideal of 1.0. A recent Uptime Institute survey of 1,600 data center owners and operators found that 2019's average PUE is 1.67, and that "improvements in data center facility energy efficiency have flattened out and even deteriorated slightly in the past two years." That PUE means that 60% of data center electricity consumption is going to IT, and the rest to cooling, lighting and so on. However, some operators are doing much better than that. Google says that its data centers have a PUE of 1.1, with some centers going as low as 1.06. There's some seasonality in play, particularly because most of Google's data centers are in the Northern Hemisphere; its Singapore data center has the highest PUE and is the least efficient of its sites. That's not surprising given Singapore is hot and humid year-round. One key way to lower the cooling demand for a data center is to cool only to the temperature at which the machines are comfortable, not to where humans are most comfortable. For Google, that's a temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit. There's another approach, and one that draws on computation itself: machine learning. Google unleashed its DeepMind machine learning platform on the problem of data center energy efficiency three years ago; last year, it effectively turned over control to its own artificial intelligence: In 2016, we jointly developed an AI-powered recommendation system to improve the energy efficiency of Google's already highly-optimised data centres. Our thinking was simple: even minor improvements would provide significant energy savings and reduce CO2 emissions to help combat climate change.Now we're taking this system to the next level: instead of human-implemented recommendations, our AI system is directly controlling data centre cooling, while remaining under the expert supervision of our data centre operators. This first-of-its-kind cloud-based control system is now safely delivering energy savings in multiple Google data centres.It seems likely that more of that sort of approach will be adopted by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM and other major cloud computing firms. Even with efficiency gains, data center electricity demand is voracious and growing; that growth has a number of implications for the power grid and for power utilities. The first is that many of these major consumers of electricity are also contracting for wind and solar power to meet their demand. The second is that, with many data centers clustering in locations such as Northern Virginia, data center loads are becoming a meaningful share of utility peak demand in a given service territory. Recent BloombergNEF research finds that data centers could make up 15% of Dominion Energy Inc.'s summer peak demand by 2024. Given that data center operators have every incentive to economize on electricity, utilities need to compete to provide service. Preferential — and confidential — contracts for power supply are one way to do that, with the result being that other rate payers bear the cost, as Bloomberg News reported last year. Gains in efficiency don't mean that data center demand for electricity is going down. Their scale and growth is a testament to their power usage effectiveness. Their preferential contracts for electricity, on the other hand, feel like a testament to their effective usage of a different kind of power: buying power. Weekend readingChevron Corp.'s $10 billion to $11 billion impairment charge, related mostly to its Appalachian natural gas assets, "ushers in oil's era of the sober-major." Chevron has also called time on the Kitimat liquefied natural gas export plant in British Columbia, writing off years of development while also planning to sell its 50% stake. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. has launched the world's first liquefied hydrogen carrier. Tesla Inc. has lost its third general counsel in the course of a year. Vancouver-based Harbour Air Ltd.'s electric seaplane has taken flight. I looked at the environmental implications of electrifying aviation last month. Stanford University has released its 2019 Artificial Intelligence Index Report. Venture capital fund Piva, funded by $250 million from Malaysia's Petronas, has launched with a focus on energy and industry. Bloomberg Media will acquire CityLab, a news site covering "urban innovation and the future of cities." Nomura Holdings Inc. will acquire sustainable technology and infrastructure boutique investment bank Greentech Capital Advisors. Hiro Mizuno, the chief investment officer of Japan's $1.6 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund, has "embraced ESG principles so enthusiastically" that the fund will not award new mandates to managers without environmental, social and governance credentials. Considering the legacy of Xie Zhenhua, a key architect of the Paris Agreement and China's climate negotiator for more than a decade. Greta Thunberg is Time Magazine's Person of the Year. Get Sparklines delivered to your inbox. Sign up here.To contact the author of this story: Nathaniel Bullard at email@example.com contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at firstname.lastname@example.com column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Nathaniel Bullard is a BloombergNEF energy analyst, covering technology and business model innovation and system-wide resource transitions.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- YouTube has signed up more than 800,000 subscribers for its paid services in India since debuting in March, according to people familiar with the matter, vaulting it past some competitors in one of the world's fastest-growing media markets.The services have been growing faster than rival paid music offerings in India, including Spotify and local players Gaana and JioSaavn, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the subscriber data hasn't been released. Apple Music also competes in the market, but it's been tight-lipped about its subscriber figures.Gaana, owned by Times Internet, has more than 1 million paid subscribers, according to a representative. But it's been around for almost a decade and has more than 125 million monthly users, who mostly use the free version of the service.YouTube has long struggled to to gets users to pay for its services, especially since the company's main website is synonymous with free videos. But the Google division has started to gain traction, and the numbers out of India suggest it's having particular success in the world's second-most-populous country.YouTube sells two paid services in India: YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium. The music service offers a library of songs on-demand, much like Spotify, as well as the ability to download tracks, listen to music without ads and play tunes while using other apps. YouTube Premium offers the traditional YouTube video service without ads -- and the ability to play clips offline. But music is the driving force behind YouTube's appeal, especially in India.Bhushan Kumar, the Bollywood Boss Behind YouTube's Top ChannelThe country has emerged as a battleground for online music services, which are eager to sign up users in a country with more than 1.3 billion people. Unlike China, where online media services are tightly controlled by the government, India offers a similarly massive population without the same level of regulation.Western companies such as Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube compete with local services, and will soon contend with Resso, a platform from Chinese tech giant ByteDance.ByteDance is testing Resso in India and Indonesia before rolling out a paid version of the app next year. ByteDance's short-form video app TikTok has more than 200 million users in India, enough to be a real challenger to YouTube and Instagram.Major PresenceBut YouTube already has a big presence in India, giving it an edge as it tries to get subscribers to pay fees. More than 265 million people use the free YouTube service in the country, making it YouTube's largest market. India is also home to the channel with the most subscribers, T-Series, the country's largest record label. Google has plowed resources into India in its bid to find new internet users and markets.The growth is also notable because India isn't typically hospitable to paid services. The country is one of the poorer major economies, making its average citizen very sensitive to price. The leading free music services, Gaana and JioSaavn, have tens of millions of users, but few paying subscribers.Representatives for Gaana and JioSaavn didn't immediately respond to emails seeking comment.Netflix Inc., the world's most popular paid online video service, has had to cut its price to compete in the country. It introduced a cheaper, mobile-only plan in India earlier this year and said this week it's testing other pricing models.Netflix Is Spending $420 Million on Indian Content, CEO SaysYouTube has convinced people to pay by selling its service at a low price -- less than $2 a month -- and offering special features to subscribers. People who want to listen to music while not actively using the app -- a popular feature known as background listening -- must pay for it. The other apps offer background listening for free.Spotify has said that its Indian service has outperformed its expectations so far, though most of its growth has been from users of its free service.(Updates with Gaana subscriber figures in third paragraph.)\--With assistance from Ragini Saxena.To contact the reporter on this story: Lucas Shaw in Los Angeles at firstname.lastname@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at firstname.lastname@example.com, Dave McCombsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Alphabet's (GOOGL) Waymo acquires Latent Logic to establish presence in the autonomous vehicle market of Europe and the U.K.
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. antitrust enforcers are considering going to court to stop Facebook Inc.'s plan to merge technology systems so that users can communicate across the company's apps, according to a person familiar with the matter.The Federal Trade Commission is studying whether to seek a court order to block the company's effort to enable messaging among users of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, said the person, who declined to be named because the investigation is confidential.Facebook's integration plan, announced in January, has come under criticism from those who say the move would make it harder to break up Facebook as part of any antitrust case against the company. The FTC, the U.S. Justice Department and a group of states are investigating whether Facebook has violated antitrust laws.FTC Chairman Joe Simons signaled he agreed with that view in an interview with Bloomberg in August. Asked how difficult a breakup of Facebook would be once the services had been well integrated, he said it would make the case "very messy.""It's hard," he said. "It's really hard."Simons told Bloomberg at the time that he's willing to go to court to seek a breakup of a tech company. Any decision by the FTC to sue would need a majority vote by the five-member commission.Facebook shares fell as much as 4% after the Wall Street Journal reported on the FTC's deliberations. The shares fell 2.7% to $196.75 in New York.Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg wants to allow users of the messaging service on Instagram to chat with those using similar functions on WhatsApp and on the original Facebook site and app. Facebook says that would allow it to better view and control foreign election interference, the spread of terrorism and other content it deems bad. Currently users can't communicate between services.The company has already begun to integrate messaging systems for Instagram, a photo app, with Facebook Messenger, Bloomberg has reported. The massive undertaking will stitch together the underlying technology and require corporate reorganization, but won't change much about users' interaction with the services.Critics including co-founder Chris Hughes have focused on Facebook's ownership of the apps and its plans to knit them more tightly together. Such detractors have cast the integration as a source of danger to user privacy. They also say it would allow the company to further abuse its dominance and fend off enforcers' attempts to curb its behavior.Facebook says it faces robust competition, even accounting for its ownership of the services.Many technological services are able to work together even when provided by different companies -- a concept known as interoperability. Users of Google's email service, for instance, can easily communicate with friends who get their messages through Microsoft, and phones call one another regardless of wireless providers.Mobile chatting is not as well integrated, however. Those who study competition say that interoperability between rivals bolsters competition, but Facebook's plan would allow the company's apps to talk to one another rather than to outside services.The Justice Department has previously pushed back on the integration plan because it will involve encrypting Instagram and Messenger and make messages invisible to Facebook the way that already occurs on WhatsApp. The department, along with officials from Australia and the U.K., said in October that the company should pause its efforts until it can ensure lawful access to user communications. Facebook said in a letter released Tuesday that it rejected that call.The FTC's investigation of Facebook, which became public in July, is examining in part whether the social media company's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp should be unwound even though they were previously approved by the agency.Advocates for aggressive antitrust action against Facebook, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, have argued both deals allowed Facebook to fend off emerging competition by acquiring platforms that posed a threat to its dominance. Warren has said she would seek to unwind both deals if elected president in 2020.(Updates with Facebook plan starting in fifth paragraph)\--With assistance from Kurt Wagner and Sarah Frier.To contact the reporters on this story: David McLaughlin in Washington at email@example.com;Ben Brody in Washington, D.C. at firstname.lastname@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at firstname.lastname@example.com, Paula DwyerFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- Alphabet Inc. legal chief David Drummond unloaded about $145 million of stock -- his biggest share sale on record -- in the weeks before co-founder Larry Page stepped down as chief executive officer.Drummond sold $72 million of stock in early November and an additional $73 million on Dec. 2, regulatory filings show. The latter disposal occurred a day before the Google parent announced that Sundar Pichai would succeed Page as CEO and become Drummond's boss.While he has sold stock periodically since joining the firm in 2002, Drummond has divested almost twice as much this year as he did in 2018. He was Google's first lawyer and ran the search giant's legal and corporate development arms for years before shifting to Alphabet in 2015.Last year, Drummond was accused of having had a relationship with a female employee in the legal department. The woman, Jennifer Blakely, later came forward, saying Drummond abandoned her and their child and repeatedly violated rules governing workplace relationships.Drummond, 56, has said the two underwent a difficult breakup and that he never started a relationship with anyone else at company.But the details, coupled with accusations of misconduct by other senior Google executives, gave more fuel to critics who said that the company hadn't done enough to reform a culture where powerful men weren't penalized for inappropriate relationships or sexual misconduct. Last year, thousands of Google employees worldwide walked off the job in protest.This year, Alphabet's board began investigating how misconduct matters were handled. The company no longer requires that workers sign away their right to challenge it in court. Some other executives accused of misconduct have left the company.A Google spokeswoman declined to comment or to make Drummond available for comment.Insider sales are closely watched by some investors to gauge management's confidence in the business. That said, executive stock sales are hardly unusual. Most public-company bosses receive the bulk of their compensation in equity and periodically dispose of some of it to diversify their wealth.Drummond, whose most recent transactions were made under a pre-arranged stock-trading plan, has sold about 120,000 shares worth roughly $157 million so far this year. Regulatory filings suggest he collected most of those shares by exercising stock options with expiration dates from December 2020 through April 2022. The sales figures don't exclude the cost of exercising those options.Drummond married another Google employee earlier this year, according to Axios.(Updates with stock-trading plan in 10th paragraph)\--With assistance from Mark Bergen.To contact the reporters on this story: Anders Melin in New York at firstname.lastname@example.com;Gerrit De Vynck in New York at firstname.lastname@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at firstname.lastname@example.com, ;Pierre Paulden at email@example.com, Peter Eichenbaum, Molly SchuetzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Shares of Amazon (AMZN) have slipped 6% in the past six months, while the S&P 500 climbed 9%. So when will Wall Street and investors start to think about buying Amazon stock again?
Google Cloud today announced Transfer Service, a new service for enterprises that want to move their data from on-premise systems to the cloud. This new managed service is meant for large-scale transfers on the scale of billions of files and petabytes of data. It complements similar services from Google that allow you to ship data to its data centers via a hardware appliance and FedEx or to automate data transfers from SaaS applications to Google's BigQuery service.
(Bloomberg) -- While the economy in Los Angeles County, home to Hollywood, topped the list as America's biggest last year, the nation's fastest-growing large county was to the north in Silicon Valley.The economy in Santa Clara County -- home to tech giants like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google -- expanded 10.2% to $316.5 billion, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department that included nearly 20 years of county-level GDP data.Not only was Santa Clara the fastest-growing among all counties with populations exceeding 500,000, but it was also the country's fifth-largest by GDP. The top 10 counties by GDP accounted for 19% of U.S. GDP, when using the national figures.GDP represents the total value of goods and services produced over a specific time and can be used to gauge economic health. On the whole, 2,375 counties saw gains in real GDP last year, while economies shrank in 717 counties. GDP was unchanged in 21.Among medium counties, or those with a population between 100,000 and 500,000, activities centered around oil and gas extraction helped Canadian County, Oklahoma, grow 21%. The Texas counties of Reeves, Loving, Winkler and Martin -- the heart of the Permian Basin, which has driven growth in U.S. oil production -- all showed GDP growth of at least 39% in 2018.However, a slowdown this year in oil and gas well drilling reduces the chances for such a repeat performance for these energy-intensive areas.For counties with a population of fewer than 100,000, Jackson County, West Virginia, grew at a stunning 86.5% in 2018, with the construction industry leading the area's growth. The gain coincided with construction activities related to TC Energy Corp.'s Mountaineer XPress natural gas pipeline. In contrast, GDP in Grant County, North Dakota, declined 44%, as farmers suffered from a drought.\--With assistance from Vince Golle and Dominic Carey.To contact the reporter on this story: Reade Pickert in Washington at email@example.com contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Lanman at firstname.lastname@example.com, Vince GolleFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Given the huge success of Disney's streaming service, investors could tap the opportune moment with consumer ETFs having the largest exposure to this global media and entertainment company.
Waymo has acquired Latent Logic, a U.K. company that spun out of Oxford University's computer science department, as the autonomous vehicle company seeks to beef up its simulation technology. The acquisition also marks the launch of Waymo's first European engineering hub, which will be in Oxford, U.K. This likely won't be the end of Waymo's expansion and investment in Europe and the U.K. The former Google self-driving project that is now an Alphabet business said it will continue to look for opportunities to grow the team in the U.K. and Europe.
Tik Tok-parent ByteDance's new music app Resso is expected to challenge the dominance of Spotify (SPOT) and Apple in the music streaming space.
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I will probably be doing a few posts this week on the net investment income tax regulations issued by the IRS last week. The IRS also issued new proposed regulations regarding how to calculate the amount of gain required to be included in investment income when you sell a partnership or S corporation interest. In today's post, we will discuss these new proposed regulations.
The old proposed regulations required a taxpayer to take their gain from selling an interest in a partnership or S corporation and then subtract the part of gain that was attributable to non-passive assets to arrive at the amount of gain that should be included in investment income. If the hypothetical gain inside of the entity was greater than your actual gain, then none of the gain would be reported as investment income (assuming no passive or investment assets in the entity). However, if the gain inside of the entity is less than your share of the gain, then part of the gain would be considered investment even though all of the assets are material. Here is a quick example:
Assume John sold a partnership interest for $300,000 and his gain is $100,000 resulting in a $200,000 gain. If his share of the gain inside of the partnership (based on a hypothetical sale) was $200,000 or more, then none of the gain would be considered investment income (assuming all assets are non-investment and non-passive). However, if his share of the gain inside the partnership was $100,000, then $100,000 of his gain would be considered investment income and subject to the 3.8% tax.
Many commentators caught this anomaly plus the administrative burden of trying to determine the gain from a hypothetical sale of all assets inside of the entity caused the IRS to change their proposed methodology to require you to only include gain attributable to investment or passive assets inside the entity. They also provide for an optional simplified method of calculating your gain if you meet one of the following two tests:
Test # 1: Your total gain is less than $250,000, or
Test # 2: Your total gain is less than $5 million and your share of investment income flowing through from the entity is less than 5% of total income (losses are shown as a positive) for the current year plus the last two years.
Here is an example:
Farmer Bean sells his 50% interest in Farmco, Inc. (an S corporation that he materially participates in) for $500,000. His basis is $100,000 resulting in a $400,000 gain. Since his gain is greater than $250,000, we have to look at the items of income flowing to him on his k1 for this year and the previous two years. Assume his ordinary income from farming was $750,000 and he received interest income of $15,000. Since $15,000 is less than 5% of $765,000, he can use the optional simplified method.
Once we determine that we can use this method, we now have to calculate the amount of gain that is investment under this method. We take $15,000 / $765,000 which is 1.961% which is then multiplied by the total gain of $400,000 to arrive at $7,844 of investment gain to report.
For most taxpayers, this may not seem tooooo simplified, but for tax advisors this is much easier for us to calculate than the old proposed regulations requirement.
I will cover other aspects of the new final regulations later this week.


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The ZIP System includes roof and wall sheathing with an integrated water- and air-resistive barrier specifically designed to keep out water while still allowing the panels to dry, the company says. The system, which also includes flashing and stretch tape, provides weather protection and enhances the building envelope. huberwood.com
Product /
Nov 2, 2017


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I have been given the opportunity to read, review, and give away copies of Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa A. Rice's new book, "for parents only: getting inside the head of your kid".
I have two free copies of the book that I will send to the first two people that comment here (please don't post your address publicly – I will contact you via email for details. Within the US only, please).
I will be posting my review of this book between November 26-30, 2007.
Happy reading!


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From QBE Riverfire, the biggest show of them all, to Frogforest, this year's Riverfestival is a vibrant celebration of the Brisbane River and the people who live ... more »
The Conservation Council of South Australia has over 50 member groups whose main purpose is conservation and protection of the environment. We are an independent, ... more »
Umbrella site for LETS groups in Australia, listing all local groups.... more »
Minister for Environment, Racing and Gaming.... more »
1st SUNDAY OF THE MONTH In behind the main st shops you will find 105+ permenant stalls & space for 30+ casual stalls, from the local scouts ... more »
Oatley Flora and Fauna Society (O.F.F) was founded in 1955 by locals who were concerned about the wreckage of flora and fauna in Oatley Park. We have a positive ... more »
Author of the Gaia Hypothesis.... more »
Hundreds of our customers have joined the Passionfoods Club and are enjoying the added benefits of shopping regularly at Passionfoods.... more »
The Digger?s Club is Australia?s largest garden club. Supplying heirloom vegetable seeds, cottage flowers, and a complete range of avocados, blueberries, strawberries, ... more »
6 listed
|Special Interest Tours
AUSECO offers services in guided walks and extraordinary interest tours for groups, societies and clubs. If you want to get any other information regarding the ... more »
|Club Cassegrain
Club Cassegrain offer its members the chance to receive each new vintage before their liberate, as well as receiving substantial discounts, regular delivers together ... more »
|Site Pour For Playgrounds
RubberTough Site Pour is besides the perfect surface for playgrounds where a pillow like impact is dominant with adolescent children. Latest figures from local ... more »
|The Garden of St Erth
In The Diggers Club, The Garden of St Erth has some features, which is an amazing variety of plants around the world. Thousands of naturalized daffodils carpet ... more »
|Children! Echidna Club Activities
Binna Burra Mountain Lodge's younger guests are not forgotten with our kids only 'Echidna Club' (educating children and developing nature awareness). Binna Burra's ... more »
|Los Naranjos 4 Bed Villa With Private Pool
Econova Manga Club offers an extensive choice of luxury villas and apartments all located on one of the world's great holiday resorts in Southern Spain. The facilities ... more »
Associations – Community Groups – Conservation Groups – Conservation Organisations – Councils – Eco Marketing – Eco Website – Eco Websites – Green Association – Green Websites


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"I'm gonna spend my life watchin' television a LOT!"
Yankomaniac wrote:"I was plannin' on recording The Sopranos, I forgot!"
Lol this song is so 2003.TMBJon wrote:Yankomaniac wrote:"I was plannin' on recording The Sopranos, I forgot!"
This line is now completely obsolete. The narrator must really be enjoying HBO Go, Netflix, and other on demand services these days.
Yankomaniac wrote:Hey maybe Jon! I have the complete series on DVD, there's always that. Canadian Netflix sucks, no Sopranos in there. I saw it on a random channel not so long ago at a friends place though.
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Bravo Probiotic and it's use for Autism
Conditions like autism can compromise the function of GcMAF, an essential immunomodulatory protein which allows the combat of disease. Other conditions like AIDS, Cancer, Crohn's, Colitis, Psoriasis, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Candidiasis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, MS, Lupus , Severe IBS, Parkinson's and Alzheimers also exhibit similar compromise of GcMAF function.
The reason for this compromise is a nasty enzyme at work that actually inactivates the Gc before it can be activated to GcMAF. This enzyme's technical name is: alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase —in short- NAGALASE. High Nagalase levels have been shown to correlate with Autism, Aids, cancer and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The good news here is that GcMAF is itself NOT inactivated by nagalase.
The same enzymes used by the immune system to transform Gc into GcMAF in our bodies, are also produced by certain bacteria during the fermentation of milk, and this is where BRAVO yoghurt is useful.
Unlike other commercial fermented yoghurt products that contain two to six microbial strains, Bravo Probiotic Yoghurt contains 42 bacterial and yeast strains including important infant and commensal strains. The preparation process allows the natural production of several powerful bio-active molecules such as lactoferrins, immunoglobulins, noble proteins, anti-oxidants, vitamins and powerful immuno-stimulant factors (GcMAF) and may help to restore a healthy gut micro-biome.
Bravo Probiotic is Ideal for:
Normalizing Immunity
Normalizing Bowel Function
Improving Energy Levels
Improving Mental Clarity
Reducing Food Allergies
Bravo Probiotic Contains:
Lactoferrin & immunoglobulins.
Over 40 microbial cultures:Lactobacillus Salivarius, Lactobacillus Acidophylus, Lactobacillus Paracasei, Lactobacillus Rhamnosus, Lactococcus Lactis, Bifidobacteri.
Active Cultures: Lactobacillus Acidophylus, Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, Streptococcus Thermophylus, Lactococcus Lactis, Leuconostoc, Kluyveromyces, Saccharomyces, Acetobacter, Bifidobacteri.
Organic Swiss Colostrum.-is rich in minerals, vitamins & bio-active molecules. The Microbial strains contained in Bravo are associated with internally produced neurotransmitters and second messengers that are known to rebalance and improve neurological functions and neuronal connectivity.
Bravo Probiotic must be used in combination with genetic sequencing to be successful.
Camel Milk
Drink camel's milk? Really? And, for those who cannot drink the milk from a goat or cow, is it possible camel's might be for you?
Research and clinical experience indicate that children with autism cannot adequately tolerate dairy for a large number of reasons. Particularly, their bodies have challenges digesting the protein casein. Even when milk is raw and contains A2 beta-casein (not A1), experience shows that ASD children still make casomorphins. However many families have shared personal stories about the healing properties of camel milk, and how its fundamentally different than any other milk on the planet.
We heard from autism parents who told us that camel milk has helped their children tremendously, with no adverse reactions to this "dairy." There have even been recent tv documentaries of Australian camel dairies and their "white gold" camel milk produce.
Camel milk may seem obscure, but the more I read the research papers and read personal anecdotes from parents and clinicians the world over, the more I think it may actually be helping kids with autism – and many others with gut issues, immune system challenges, nutrient deficiencies, and more.
If you're following the GAPS Diet, gluten-free casein-free, or any healing food strategy intended to improve the body's chemistry and functioning, you could check out camel milk.
Camel Milk Research Papers
Research and experience from an increasing number of people around the world demonstrate that camel milk facilitates healing in our bodies. Camel milk has many unique and amazing properties.
Here's some quick research:
Camel milk has been shown to heal food allergies (1) and gut problems. The antibodies and immune properties of camel's milk contribute to its wonderful viral and bacterial fighting abilities.
It is particularly helpful in addressing immune system dysregulation in various forms. Camel milk can support and help people with autoimmune conditions, including autism, heal.
A research study by Dr. Reuven Yagil (2005) shows camel milk has positive results in children with autism. (2)
Camel milk contains insulin and is effective in diabetes (3), including gestational diabetes (4).
Since children with autism routinely have immune system challenges: inability to fight bacterial, viral and other infections, and states of chronic inflammation, allergy, and autoimmunity, camel milk has promising health and healing benefits.
Camel herders and indigenous cultures have known about the power of camel milk for a long time. To this day, Bedouin parents send their children to drink camel milk for a couple weeks in their childhood, as they know that it sets up a strong immune system for life. Dr. Weston A. Price observed their dental health (and therefore physical health) was excellent stating, "The Arabs in several districts use camels' milk extensively. It is nutritious, and in much of the desert country constitutes the mainstay of the nomads for months at a time." (5)
Camels are built differently than any other animal. Camels are not ruminants but are Tylopodes and have three stomachs, but they do ruminate. They can survive in incredibly harsh climates, and are able to live without water for 30 days at a time (even with little food), whilestill producing high quality milk. Imagine that! A large part of camel milk's healing power stems from the unique and hardy immune system of camels, it's unlike any other mammal.
Camel Milk: Highly Nutritious with Unique Casein
Camel milk is highly nutritious. The milk contains 2% fat (I'm not a fan of a low-fat, but these are the facts). The fat molecules are joined to protein, so there is no stress on the liver to process it. Higher is some nutrients and lower in others—camel milk is rich in vitamin C (5x that of cow's milk), iron (10x) and calcium. The fat profile of camel milk varies in a "rich diet" (domesticated camels) versus the diet camels eat in the desert – but generally it's high in polyunsaturated fatty acids, with a higher ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 compared with cow's milk.
Camel milk is considered a complete food and can be consumed exclusively while meeting all nutritional requirements. Camel milk is most frequently consumed raw and unpasteurized, because the raw milk contains the most nutritional and immune properties. Only when the quality and safety of the milk is in question would someone pasteurize it.
Camel's milk contains no beta-lactoglobulin and a "new" beta-casein (6). Therefore it is not reactive to children with autism and even non-allergenic to those with even the most sensitive allergy to milk and casein. One study found Camel's milk was also not recognized from circulating IgEs from a child specifically allergic to ewe's milk.(7) Children with severe food allergies react well to the milk, and astonishingly, fully recover from their allergies including to other foods (1).
Casein molecules are actually micelles and camel micelles have been found to be larger in size (15 nm) than those of cow milk or human milk. (8). Camel milk has a lower pH than other milk, so that upon entering the stomach the casein micelles do not breakdown into casein and whey and therefore do not break into casomorphins. Casomorphin creation from cow milk consumption is a common problem in autism that increases autistic symptoms.
Camel Milk: Immune Benefits
Camel milk has an amazing immune profile. The immunoglobulins (Igs) and protective proteins in camel milk contribute to camel milk's incredible infection fighting and eradication capacity. Camel Igs (which exist in the milk) are able to penetrate into tissues and cells that human Igs were unable to. Therefore, they are able to get inside a cell, where they are also able to completely neutralize the enzyme activity of an infectious agent such as a bacteria or virus.
Camel Immunoglobulins
Camel milk also contains immunoglobulins (Igs) that are special in camels, including unique subclasses IgG2 and IgG3. The Igs are the same structure as human immunoglobulins but only one-tenth the size. Being so small, they can penetrate into tissues and organs to fight infection and aid repair, where human antibodies cannot.
Camel antibodies have superior antibacterial and antiviral properties. As stated in Dr. Reuven Yagil's autoimmune paper, "conventional antibodies rarely show a complete neutralizing activity against enzyme antigens, but camel IgG has a full neutralizing activity against tetanus toxin as it enters the enzymes structure." (9). Viruses can also be neutralized by knocking out their enzyme activity, and studies show the camel antibody is an effective inhibitor against hepatitis C enzyme system (10).
In a study on camel milk for autism, the author compares camel milk to intravenous immunoglobulin therapy that acts as a natural immunoglobulin therapy, whose effects continue after the therapy is stopped, because of the immune rehabilitating action.
Camel Immune Protective Proteins
Camel milk contains the following immune proteins (often in higher qualities than other milk):
Peptidoglycan Recognition Protein, PGRP is very high in camel milk. It stimulates the host's immune response and has antimicrobial activity. It even appears to have an effect on breast cancer in studies.
Lactoferrin is also in higher concentrations in camel milk, more than cows and goats. Lactoferrin prevents microbial overgrowth and invading pathogens. Lactoperoxidase, has bactericidal activity on gram-negative bacterial like Escherichia coli (E. coli), Salmonella, and, Pseudomonas, and has antitumor activity.
Lysozyme is an enzyme that is part of the innate immune system that targets gram-positive bacteria. N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosamidase (NAGase) found in similar quantities in human milk has antibacterial activity.


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About Us
Greenfield Arts offer a wide range of Arts and Creative opportunities for the whole community.
We are keen to support people to help enjoy, enquire, create and realise their potential.
We develop and manage a range of creative projects, arts activities and community courses in partnership with a number of different individuals and organisations.
We have facilities and resources available for use and hire. The Greenfield Gallery provides a comprehensive exhibition programme and is proud to provide a variety of educational and community events as part of the programme.
We also support creative research and development of teaching and learning across a range of schools and networks.
Would you like to sign up to our mailing list?


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If audio is disabled when Live closes, use last functional audio config when Live next starts instead of starting with disabled audio.
If I (accidentally) power down my audio interface before I close Ableton, then the audio obviously loses connection. Ableton disables the audio driver.
But then the next time I (and when I say "I", I believe I mean everyone) load Live, I get the message "audio is disabled, looks like you're going to need to go into preferences, pick a driver and re-enable all of your inputs and outputs before you can record that idea you just came up with and are trying not to forget".
I'm not sure if re-enabling all of the inputs and outputs is a universal thing after audio is disabled or if it's just because I'm using an asio4all type driver. But it's pretty frustrating.
Solution: if Live detects it has lost its connection to the audio interface, it should save the audio driver and input / output config before it disables everything. Then, when Live loads, Live should attempt to reestablish that last saved config.
I suppose there should also be a way to manually turn off audio and prevent Live from trying reestablish at load. Like right now for devices there is a list of devices and "No Device". Maybe add another device named "Disconnected". When audio gets disconnected, instead of Live switching to audio device = "No Device", it switches to "Disconnected" and that prompts it to retry the last, functional settings on load. If the user him/herself switches to "No Device", then Live does not attempt to reestablish the last, functional settings.
Use last functional audio config when Live starts
Share your wishes for the future of Ableton Live
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Prominent Syrian actress Raghda has given her approval to star in the new television drama "Ma Sabk Al Ashhar" (Before being announced). The actress has been away from television drama for two years.
Ghada Saleem, director of the drama, expressed her joy and honor at Raghda's acceptance for the role stating that it will be the main factor for making the drama a success.
Eyad Nassar, Lateefah, Mahmoud Qabeel, Izzat Abu Ouf and Amy Sameer Ghanem will star alongside Raghda. The drama is written by Waleed Yousif and is scheduled to be aired during the holy month of Ramadan.
© 2000 - 2019 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)


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WASHINGTON, DC – The Communications Workers of America was successful in gaining Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits for up to 3,300 T-Mobile USA workers after the company closed seven call centers in June.
The Department of Labor granted CWA's petition and affirmed that because "there has been an acquisition from a foreign country by the workers' firm of article/services that are like or directly competitive with those produced/supplied by the workers' firm," workers should receive assistance. The TAA designation makes employees eligible for enhanced unemployment benefits, tuition assistance for job retraining programs and tax credits for family health insurance, among other benefits.
"T-Mobile disrupted the lives of 3,300 workers and their communities. The TAA program exists so workers do not bear the cost of corporate decisions to close U.S. facilities and send that work overseas," said CWA Chief of Staff Ron Collins.
Last month, T-Mobile USA, a subsidiary of German-based Deutsche Telekom, closed seven U.S. call centers including two in Texas and one each in Florida, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Oregon.
The TAA designation for T-Mobile USA employees comes a month after a majority of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives refused to allow a vote on the bi-partisan "U.S. Call Center and Worker Protection Act" (H.R. 3596) that has over 130 co-sponsors. The bill would prevent corporations from receiving any type of federal loan, grant or tax subsidy for five years if they decide to move U.S.-based call center jobs overseas. Further, the bill requires that U.S.
consumers be told of the location of the call center to which they are speaking, and gives them the right to ask for a transfer to a U.S.-based call center.
CWA represents 700,000 workers nationally, including more than 150,000 customer service professionals.
Contact: Chuck Porcari or Elizabeth Schilling, CWA Communications, at 202-434-1168 firstname.lastname@example.com or email@example.com
This is a story that was picked up by several newspapers. Both the Bloomberg and Allentown accounts quote T-Mobile as denying the jobs were sent overseas.
Click here for the Department of Labor Determination.
See the coverage in Bloomberg Businessweek
Click here for the coverage in The Allentown Morning Call
Click here for an article in the San Antonio Business Journal


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|Hilda van Stockum in 1932, the year she married
my father in Dublin.
Hilda van Stockum and Her Books
The oldest website is www.hildavanstockum.com. This website was created in 2006. The last content was added in 2007. It is meant to be an extended memory of her life and remembrances at the time of her death. Updates are here on this blogsite - www.hildavanstockum.blogspot.com.
I am promoting her books at the website www.boissevainbooksLLC.com and the blogsite www.boissevainbooks.blogspot.com.
More broadly, I write about authors and illustrators of children's books at www.writers4kids.blogspot.com.
The Boissevain Family
The website www.boissevain.us is updated irregularly and includes a great deal of information about my mother's Dutch family. Updates are more regularly posted about the families of my mother and grandmother (Olga Boissevain) on two sites:
www.inezmb.blogspot.com focuses on Inez Milholland Boissevain, who married my grandmother's brother Eugen Boissevain. It focuses on the lives of Eugen and his two wives, Inez and Edna St. Vincent Millay, and related woman suffrage issues. I have posted there recently.
www.nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com covers the Boissevain family. I have recently been writing about their active roles fighting Hitler in the Dutch Resistance. I have been posting here a lot recently. Plans are afoot for a Boissevain Family Reunion in the spring of 2016. Stay tuned. Please comment on my blogs or send me an email - email@example.com. THANKS!!


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About the Artist
I fell in love with drumming at age five, after seeing my dad's best friend "Uncle Frank" play with a community Scottish Pipe and Drum band in the San Francisco area. I was convinced from then on that I was a drummer! I took lessons a bit as a kid with some talented teachers, but it wasn't until I got to high school that I really caught the passion for playing music together with other musicians. I attended Garfield High School in Seattle, and the music program there was under the direction of a great guy named Clarence Acox. The day I walked into the band room, where my brother played trumpet with the marching band, I was adopted by the drum section guys, who encouraged me to get involved.
At that time, the school stage band was interested in lots of pop, funk, and soul music, so for the most part that is what we played. Mr. Acox tried to get us playing Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard, and we did our best, but the funkier groove was where it was at for me at that time. I practiced like crazy, and was playing in local cocktail lounges and nightclubs by the age of fifteen.
There's a group of Seattle musical artists who were highlighted in the recent past in a film and two recordings called "Wheedle's Groove". Many of these folks were my friends, mentors, and bandmates, and they really helped me start playing gigs and meeting people. I played with several basement bands and did a few different styles, but wanted more, so I started developing opportunities.
My good friend Paul Anderson had moved to New York, where he was working with a terrific songwriter and producer named Gene McDaniels, who had some hits as an artist in the 50's and 60's, (Tower of Strength, 100 Pounds of Clay). Gene took Paul, our pals Ted Brancato and Carrie Coltrane, and eventually myself, Libby Torrance, and some others under his wing, and together we worked on some songs and recordings as a core group supporting Gene and his projects. From there we all branched off into other groups and worked on developing as players, artists, and writers.
I moved back to the west coast to take care of family and sort out what I wanted to do next right as the rock scene of the 90's was blooming in Seattle. I was a working musician, and I found some great opportunities recording with friends and producers. Through my new pal Scotty Olson, I was introduced to Ann and Nancy Wilson and their band Lovemongers, which included Sue Ennis, Frank Cox, and Paula Stentz. The first time we met we did a recording at Nancy's house for a project called "Home Alive", a compilation CD in support of organizations fighting violence against women, partly in response to the shocking murder of guitarist Mia Zapata. From that day on, Scotty and I stayed in touch, and I was honored to be involved in further Lovemongers shows and recordings, while still working with many different artists from Seattle, the New York area and Los Angeles. We did a tour in the late 90's as Lovemongers, with Elaine Summers opening the shows supported by a very solid band around her, including me on drums.
The next year or so I continued with Lovemongers and other artists, and then Ann Wilson called to ask me to play with Heart. We did some shows featuring Ann, (as Nancy was starting a family), then Nancy joined us again in 2002 to tour, and we have been playing together ever since, producing three studio releases, three or four live DVD and CD releases, plenty of TV shows, hundreds (thousands?) of concerts. We've had a hell of a good time!
Nancy composed and produced music for Cameron Crowe's films in the late 90's and early 2000's, and she brought me onboard for "Almost Famous", "Vanilla Sky", and "Elizabethtown", in which I feel honored to have been involved.
I've had the opportunity to work on hundreds of songs in recording studios with all styles of artists, done a bunch of film and TV dates, and more live gigs that I can remember, it seems. I am really grateful for the work and for the belief my friends and clients have had in me, and thankful for all the life lessons!
It's been a great ride……