Here's How To Be One Of The First To Play The New Game From The Makers Of 'World Of Warcraft' | ||
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The game will come out "sooner than you think," the company says, but a beta version will be available next year. Blizzard describes the game as a team-based multiplayer shooter. It features a bunch of stylized characters who all have a variety of looks and skills. During a panel for the game, director Jeff Kaplan Chris Metzen, Blizzard senior vice president of story and franchise development, said that they're not sure yet whether it will be a free or pay-to-play model, GameSpot reports. And whether the game comes to other consoles is also still up in the air. Right now it's just confirmed for PC. "We would love to see Overwatch played on whatever it could be played on," Kaplan said. So if you're a PC user and you're interested in signing up for the beta, it's really easy. First, go to the official page for "Overwatch." At the top of the page, click on the yellow button that says "Beta."
You then have to enter your Battle.net account, or create one if you don't have one already. Once you're signed in, click on the "sign up for beta" button.
And that's it. It's not a guarantee that you'll be invited to play the beta, but it's worth a shot. SEE ALSO: Watch The Trailer For Blizzard's New Game Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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At its BlizzCon conference on Friday, Blizzard — the developer behind some of the biggest game franchises ever, including "World Of Warcraft," "Diablo," and "StarCraft" — announced "Overwatch," 
CHART: One Year After Its IPO, Twitter's Stock Is Still Ahead Of Other Internet Companies (TWTR) | ||
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It's been exactly one year since Twitter went public, and since that time, the company has more than doubled its revenue to $361 million ... but its losses have also widened to $175.5 million, and the company's stock is currently 9% below its first-day closing price of $44.90. Despite the level of scrutiny Twitter faces from investors (that's also because it's either lost or replaced five product heads in as many years), the company is still pretty far ahead of other prominent internet companies that have gone public in recent years. Based on Yahoo Finance data charted for us by BI Intelligence, Twitter's stock has achieved higher highs — and even higher lows — than Pandora's, Yelp's, and most importantly, Facebook's, the social network with five times as many users. LinkedIn is the standout internet company that managed to achieve much higher closing prices across the board in its first year on the NYSE.
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SAME-DAY DELIVERY: E-Commerce Giants Are Battling To Own The 'Last Mile' | ||
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Companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Uber are operating and expanding services that allow shoppers to order something online and have it that same day, without ever leaving home. If they manage it, despite the expense and complexities involved in delivering over the "last mile," these companies will grow e-commerce's customer base (as well as its share of retail dollars), and siphon off one of offline retail's last real competitive advantages. In a new report, BI Intelligence takes an exhaustive look at the same-day delivery market, sizing the percentage of people who will purchase goods to be delivered the same-day this year. We uncover the demographics of same-day delivery customers, the markets where these services have the best chance of taking off, and assess how each of the many new same-day delivery entrants compares to the others. We also look at the technology that really could make getting a package delivered to your door hours after you order it a common phenomenon. Access The Full Market Forecast By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >> Here are some of the key points from the report:
In full, the report:
To access the Same-Day Delivery Market Forecast Report and BI Intelligence's ongoing coverage on the future of retail, mobile, and e-commerce — including charts, data, and analysis — sign up of a free trial.
Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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These Brutal Quotes Allege Dealing With Apple Is Nasty Business (AAPL) | ||
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We're getting an inside look at the way Apple negotiates with its suppliers, thanks to a bankruptcy filing. GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT) has gone bankrupt, and it's blaming Apple for the bankruptcy. During the bankruptcy filings, GTAT's COO told the story from GTAT's side of what it was like to deal with Apple. It doesn't sound good: GTAT incurred losses — resulting in the current liquidity crisis — due to Apple's inordinate control over GTAT's liquidity, operations (including control over product specifications), and decision making. With a classic bait-and-switch strategy, Apple presented GTAT with an onerous and massively one-sided deal in the fall of 2o13. When GTAT's management expressed obvious concerns to Apple regarding the deal terms during contract negotiations, Apple responded that similar terms are required for other Apple suppliers and GTAT should: "Put on your big boy pants and accept the agreement." In a separate court document filed by Apple, the company said, "The [Squiller declaration] contained numerous statements about Apple that Apple believes to be untrue, irrelevant, and inflammatory." Apple added that, "Much of the Supplemental Squiller Declaration goes far beyond what was reasonably necessary to describe the Debtors' current financial situation and instead includes gratuitous characterizations of Apple's motives, negotiating tactics, and business practices." Now, this is only one side of the story. And, doing business is often nasty. We've reached out to Apple for comment and will update this if we hear back. SEE ALSO: A Man Invested In An Apple Supplier Wrote A Heartbreaking Letter About The Company's Bankruptcy Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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REPORT: Uber Is Trying To Raise At Least $1 Billion With A Valuation Of Over $17 Billion | ||
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Uber is trying to raise at least $1 billion in new capital at a valuation of over $17 billion, The Financial Times reports. The Times' Tim Bradshaw reports that Uber is in early fundraising talks less than six months after raising $1.2 billion at a $17 billion valuation in a Series D in June. Uber is already Silicon Valley's highest-valued private company, and a new round would bring its total amount raised to $2 billion. A source told Bradshaw that Uber saw strong demand from investors this summer and is seeking the additional fundraise to "build a balance sheet 'proportionate' to the scale of its business." Uber currently operates in more than 128 cities in 45 countries around the world and is looking to continue its expansion into Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. After its last fundraise in June, the company hinted at its ambitions by saying that, four years after launch, it is "just at the beginning of the Uber story." While it focuses on expansion, Uber is also involved in an increasingly tense rivalry with another car-hailing startup, Lyft. The two companies have tried to steal each other's drivers and executives, and CEO Travis Kalanick has admitted that he's tried to squash his competitor's funding efforts in the past by telling investors that Uber would be raising money shortly after. Meanwhile, Uber is also experimenting with package delivery by bicycle in New York City and food delivery in LA. SEE ALSO: Lyft Sues Former Exec Who Allegedly Took Company Secrets To Uber Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Check Out The Google Campus Restaurant Where Waiters Serve Employees Gourmet Indian Food | ||
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With more than 30 cafes serving up a huge variety of cuisine, Google's free food is the stuff of legends. Last year, Bon Appetit Management Company, which operates cafes at Google, eBay, Oracle, and many other tech companies, opened a new Indian restaurant at the Googleplex. "It was in an old cafeteria that they had, and we wanted to change it up," Fedele Bauccio, CEO of Bon Appetit, said to Business Insider. "It's healthy, and the flavors are great." It's the first restaurant at Google to offer full service from a wait staff, and Googlers can make reservations for friends, family, or other team members. The decor at Cafe Baadal is cozy and colorful. Diners can sit on cushions at these corner tables.
Cafe Baadal has become a popular destination for team lunches at Google.
SEE ALSO: How Larry Ellison's Vision For An Italian Sandwich Shop Started A New Era For Food In Silicon Valley WE'RE ON INSTAGRAM: Click Here To Follow Us Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Makers Of 'World Of Warcraft' Just Announced Their First New Franchise In 17 Years — And You Need To Watch Its Action-Packed Trailer | ||
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Blizzard, the developer behind some of the biggest game franchises ever, including "World Of Warcraft," "Diablo," and "StarCraft," just announced its first new property in 17 years. It's called "Overwatch." At BlizzCon, the company's annual convention, Blizzard described "Overwatch" as a team-based multiplayer shooter, which features cartoonish but extremely stylized characters with a wide variety of looks, skills, and weapons at their disposal. The best way to get to know what "Overwatch" might be is to check out Blizzard's first trailer for the game. Conflict. As the world teetered on the brink of anarchy, a new hope arose. An elite international task force charged with ending the war and restoring liberty to all nations: Overwatch. Soldiers, scientists, adventurers, oddities, guardians who secured global peace for generation. Under its steadfast protection, the world recovered. And today, though its watch has ended, its soaring ideals of freedom and equality will never be forgotten. The game will be available for PC, but there's no word yet on other consoles and platforms that will support "Overwatch." However, the company says the game is coming "sooner than you'd think," and there will be a beta coming sometime next year.
We can't wait. SEE ALSO: The Darkest 'Zelda' Game Ever Made Is Coming To Nintendo's Portable Console Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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These Stunning Screenshots From 'Grand Theft Auto' Look Like Real-Life Photographs | ||
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"Grand Theft Auto IV" has been out since 2008. Since then, PC enthusiasts have tested the limits of the game, installing their own modifications to increase the game's level of detail. Photographer and game enthusiast Raphael Smith has installed a handful of these mods on a PC that only cost him $950 a few years ago. The resulting screenshots are so realistic and lifelike that they can easily be mistaken for photographs, and that's not an exaggeration. You've never seen game graphics look this good. Note: All screenshots used with permission. Smith used a few different "mods" to make sure every little detail was updated. He used two different mods to increase the textures of the city buildings. Another mod added realistic weather to the game. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Here's Why NFL Fans Are Getting Screwed When It Comes To Watching Football | ||
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Some 16 NFL games are played every Sunday. Unless you have the DirecTV Sunday Ticket premium service, you will be able to watch only five or six of the games on television. DirecTV has about 20 million subscribers in the US, so the majority of NFL fans are left without access to the games on TV. DirecTV recently signed a deal with the NFL that will keep this system in place for the next eight years. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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We Tried The Fitness Band That Shocks You Into Breaking Your Bad Habits — And It Hurts! | ||
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Most fitness bands claim that they want to help you change your habits and get in shape. But none of them actually go so far as to physically punish you for slipping up on your goals. That's where the $149 Pavlok wristband comes in. The Pavlok, created by startup Behavioral Technologies, uses negative reinforcement in the form of a subtle shock to train your brain. Behavioral Technologies CEO Maneesh Sethi told us all about the psychology behind his company's wristband and how it works back in July, but at this year's Engadget Expand, we actually got to try the wristband firsthand. The version we tried was just a prototype, but the real thing should start shipping in April for Indiegogo backers. Those who preorder the device at a discounted price at Engadget Expand will get theirs in January. Here's an idea of what the final version will look like.
A representative at the Pavlok booth strapped a prototype around my arm. Without warning, he tapped the zap button in the wristband's accompanying app and sent a shock to my forearm. The shock feels like a small pinch, and while it's not really painful — it's certainly not pleasant. Don't expect to feel an intense vibration or buzz when wearing the Pavlok; rather, the sensation feels like a quick, sharp pinprick. The unit we tried was only set to 40% in terms of intensity. The Pavlok representative that gave us the demo said he wasn't allowed to let us try the highest setting just yet.
You can wear the Pavlok band on either your forearm or your wrist, but you're likely to feel the shock a bit more on your forearm. If you want, you can also take the sensor out of the band and wear it directly on your skin as shown below. You're likely to feel the shock more prominently if you choose to wear it like this.
The idea behind the Pavlok is to create motivation for wearers to achieve certain goals. Within the Pavlok app, you can set a goal for yourself, such as exercising on a regular basis or learning a new language. The app will then assess your goal and break it down into actions you can perform every day. If you miss your goals, however, your friends can punish you through the app by forcing you to pay a fine or by issuing a small shock. It sounds like your friends will be responsible for shocking you through the app, but there's also an alarm app that will work with the bracelet. If you snooze too many times, the band will zap you into waking up. Other than its ability to issue small shocks, the Pavlok can track your steps, activity, and sleeping patterns. "You get used to vibrations," Sethi told Business Insider in a previous interview. "You start to notice less and less when something is vibrating in your pocket and on your wrist. But you don't really get used to the shock." SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley Never Talks About The Real Reason You Don't Own A Smartwatch Or Wearable Tech Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Another Sequel To The Greatest Skateboarding Video Game Of All Time Will Come Out Next Year | ||
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Yay! Pro skater Tony Hawk announced on Twitter Friday that he's working with Activision on a new addition to to his awesome skateboarding video game franchise, "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," for the latest-gen living room consoles. He's also working on a mobile game. Hawk had been working on a mobile game, called "Shred Session," which was announced in January. According to TouchArcade, the game soft launched but was pulled entirely from the App Store last month. Hawk said on Friday that it's been put on hold indefinitely, presumably so he could focus work on a console game. SEE ALSO: The Maker Of The Game 'Destiny' Gave A Man Recovering From Brain Surgery A Rare Gift Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Bankrupt Sapphire Glass Supplier Reveals New Details Of Its Disturbing Relationship With Apple (GTAT, GTATQ, AAPL) | ||
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GT Advanced, the former Apple sapphire supplier that filed for bankruptcy back in October, never had a chance. In a supplemental declaration by GT Advanced COO Daniel Squiller unsealed on Friday outlining GT Advanced's relationship with Apple, it's clear — at least as Squiller tells it — that Apple and GT's relationship was doomed from the start. We first saw the document after it was posted by the folks at StreetInsider. This document follows a declaration from Squiller unsealed late last month that outlined some of the problems in Apple and GT's relationship. Friday's document offers a bit more color. For one, Apple was supposed to be customer of GT Advanced, but the agreement between the companies didn't require that Apple be GT Advanced's customer. Apple simply became a lender. And the agreement struck between the companies in the fall of 2013 was done via what Squiller called a "classic bait-and-switch strategy." This agreement also stated that GT could not do business with any of Apple's competitors, which would be a reasonable requirement, because presumably Apple wouldn't want to be funding the manufacture of materials that found their way into a competitors' device. But again, Apple wasn't required to buy any sapphire at all. Additionally, GT was required to build sapphire to Apple's specifications, which Squiller said, "continually changed and remain in flux to this day." (Squiller's complaint was given October 8; GT has subsequently said it will be exiting the sapphire business.) The complaint also said that as of October 8, GT had incurred costs of $900 million related to the deal. Ahead of its bankruptcy filing, GT's market cap was about $1.5 billion. Here's the ugly year-to-date chart of GT shares.
And the whole arrangement, at least as it's outlined in the declaration, seems foisted upon GT Advanced, and certainly not by the company's choosing. As Squiller says: "[T]he extensive and all-consuming nature of negotiations with Apple would have allowed little time to pursue alternatives. Knowing tht GTAT had no practical choice at that stage other than to concede to Apple's terms, Apple forced a set of agreements on GTAT that, in combination with Apple's economic leverage, put Apple in de facto control of GTAT." Squiller also says Apple advised GT management that they shouldn't "waste their time" trying to negotiate with the company. And when GT management, "expressed obvious concerns to Apple regarding the deal terms during the contract negotiations, Apple responded that similar terms are required for other Apple suppliers and that GTAT should: 'Put on your big boy pants and accept the agreement.'" Some of the terms outlined in the document that GT wasn't too excited about include a $50 million penalty per occurrence that any aspect of GT's agreement with Apple were disclosed, and a $1 billion penalty if GT doesn't honor Apple's 30 day exclusivity window should GT seek to sell its assets, or its sapphire business, or receives interest from a third party. Apple also required GT establish a new wholly-owned subsidiary to implement what Squiller called, "a convoluted and artificial structure that serves no economic purpose—other than protecting Apple—such that GTAT Corp. would be obligated to buy and assemble furnaces for Apple, but the cash and furnaces would then be 'round-tripped' through GT Equipment, a so-called 'bankruptcy remote entity' using an illusory sale and leaseback between GTAT Corp. and GT Equipment." And ahead of inking its agreement with Apple, GT also paid off the remainder of a credit facility with Bank of America, which the complaint says, "was necessary to permit Apple to take a lien on all of the assets of both GTAT Corp. and GT Equipment — yet another deal term that Apple demanded." So Apple basically owned GT Advanced. The document does not paint the picture of a healthy relationship between two business partners, and sounds much more like Apple essentially buying a supplier, but structuring the deal in such a way so as to not assume any of the financial risk. In a separate court document filed by Apple, the company said, "The [Squiller declaration] contained numerous statements about Apple that Apple believes to be untrue, irrelevant, and inflammatory." Apple added that, "Much of the Supplemental Squiller Declaration goes far beyond what was reasonably necessary to describe the Debtors' current financial situation and instead includes gratuitious characterizations of Apple's motives, negotiating tactics, and business practices." We've embedded both documents below. You should read them. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Story Behind The First Thing Design God Jony Ive Made For Apple (AAPL) | ||
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In this excerpt from "Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products," author Leander Kahney describes Apple design genius Jony Ive's first big assignment. Jony’s first big assignment at Apple was to design the second-generation Newton MessagePad. The first Newton hadn’t yet been released, but the design team already hated it. Thanks to a rushed production schedule, the first model had some serious flaws that Apple’s executives, as well as the designers, were eager to fix. Just before the Newton was shipped, Apple discovered that the planned lid to protect its delicate glass screen wouldn’t clear expansion cards, which were to be inserted into the slot at the top. The design group was charged with developing some quickie carrying cases, including a simple leather slipcase, and off it went into the marketplace. In addition, the Newton’s loudspeaker was in the wrong place. It was in the palm rest, so the user tended to cover it up when holding the device. The hardware engineers wanted the second-generation Newton (code-named Lindy) to have a slightly larger screen for better handwriting recognition. Since the pen was attached awkwardly to the side, a kludge that gave the Newton extra width, they wanted the new version to be significantly thinner; the original was so bricklike, only the largest of jacket pockets could accommodate it. Jony worked on the Lindy project between November 1992 and January 1993. To get a grip on the project, he began with its design “story”— that is, by asking himself, What’s the story of this product? The Newton was so new and versatile and unlike other products, that articulating what it was primarily used for wasn’t easy. It morphed into a different device depending on what software it was running, so it could be a notepad or a fax machine. CEO Sculley called it a PDA but, for Jony, that definition was just too slippery. “The problem with the first Newton was that it didn’t relate to people’s everyday lives,” Jony said. “It didn’t offer a metaphor that users could grasp.” He set about fixing that. To most people a lid is just a lid, but Jony gave it special attention. “It’s the first thing you see and the first thing you interact with,” Jony said. “Before you can turn the product on, you must first open the lid. I wanted that moment to be special.” To enhance that moment, Jony designed a clever, spring-loaded latch mechanism; when you pressed the lid, it popped open. The mechanism depended on a tiny copper spring carefully calibrated to give just the right amount of pop. To allow the lid to clear any expansion cards in the slot on top, Jony created a double hinge to allow the lid to clear any obstructions. When the lid was open, it flipped up and over the back to be stored out of the way. That conveyed something to the user too. “Pushing the lid up and around the back was important because the action is not culturally specific,” Jony noted at the time. “Folding the lid to the side, like a book, created problems because people in Europe and the U.S. would want to open it on the left whereas people in Japan would want to open it on the right. To accommodate everyone, I decided the lid would have to open straight up.” Next, Jony turned his attention to the “fiddle factor,” the special nuances that would make the product personal and special. The Newton was pen based, so Jony focused on the pen, which he knew users would love to play with. Jony’s solution to the challenge of reducing width and integrating the pen into the MessagePad itself was a storage slot at the top. “I insisted the lid fold up and over the top, like a stenographer’s notepad, which everyone understands [and] . . . users saw Lindy as a notepad. The stored pen at the top, where a stenographer’s notepad’s spiral binding would be, made the right connection. “That became a key element of the product’s story.” The slot was too short for a full-size stylus, so Jony created a stylus that cleverly telescoped. Like the lid, the pen featured a pop-up mechanism that made it pop out when the user pressed its top. To give it weight and heft, he fashioned the pen from brass. His colleagues all went nuts for it. “Lindy was Jonathan’s shining moment,” said fellow designer Parsey.
On top of all this, Jony was under an extremely tight deadline with enormous pressures to deliver. The first edition of Apple’s pioneering handheld device had been doomed by the Doonesbury cartoon that came to define it. Cartoonist Gary Trudeau depicted the Newton’s handwriting recognition as hopeless, delivering a gut punch to the device from which it never recovered. Thanks to Trudeau, the first Newton MessagePad had to be replaced as quickly as possible. The pressure fell to Jony. “When you’re aware of the lost revenue each day the schedule slips, it tends to focus your attention,” he said with typical British understatement. To the amazement of his colleagues, Jony was able to go from the initial design to the first foam concept models in two weeks, the fastest anyone had seen. Jony was determined to finish the project on time, and he traveled to Taiwan to fix manufacturing problems. He camped out in a hotel near the factory where the Newton would be made. He and a hardware engineer troubleshot the pen’s pop-up mechanism in his hotel room. Parsey remembered Jony pushing himself to create something special. “To do the best design you have to live and breathe the product. At the level that Jonathan was working, it becomes like a love affair. The process is exhilarating . . . and exhausting. But unless you’re willing to give everything to the work, the design will not be great.” When it was done, Jony’s colleagues were stunned and impressed with both the new Newton and Jony, who had joined the team only months earlier. Apple executive Gaston Bastiaens, who was in charge of Newton, told Jony he would win every single design award. He nearly did. After Lindy’s introduction in 1994, Jony won several of the top awards in the industry: the Gold Industrial Design Excellence Award, the Industrie Forum Design Award, Germany’s Design Innovation Award, a Best of Category award from the I.D. Design Review and the honor of being featured in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
One of the things about Jony that struck Rick English was Jony’s dislike of awards. Or, rather, his dislike for receiving awards in public. “Even early on, Jony Ive stated that he was not going to go to those events,” said English. “That was interesting behavior because it was really different. He hated going up on stage and receiving awards.” Jony’s Newton MessagePad 110 was on the market by March 1994, only six months after the original Newton went on sale. Unfortunately, no amount of fiddle factor was enough to save the Newton, as Apple made a series of blunders marketing it, both rushing the first device to market before it was ready and hyping its capabilities. In the face of unrealistic expectations, the Newton never reached critical mass. Both generations of Newtons were also plagued with battery problems and the poor handwriting recognition that Trudeau mocked. Not even Jony’s stellar design work could save it. Phil Gray, Jony’s old boss at RWG, remembers seeing Jony in London just after his MessagePad 110 came out. “The Newton was like a brick in retrospect, but at the time was a handheld device that no one had done before,” Gray said. “Jony was frustrated because although he had worked really hard on it, he had to make a lot of compromises because of the engineering elements. Afterwards, at Apple, he went on to be in a position where he not only could influence engineering but also manage and control those processes.” Excerpted from "Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products," by Leander Kahney, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright © Leander Kahney, 2013. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Meet The 15-Year-Old Who Took The Viral Photo Of 'Alex From Target' | ||
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This weekend, a teen named Alex made headlines as a photo of him bagging groceries at a Target in Texas made its way around the internet at rapid-fire pace. Alex is a good-looking kid, and the photo, somehow mysteriously, went super, super viral. Alex got hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. A marketing team then claimed responsibility for the phenomenon, but that turned out to be fake. So who took this photo? Yahoo found out, and it talked at length with the teenager who snapped the now-famous shot, a 15-year-old named Brooklyn. This is Brooklyn Reiff:
Yahoo! reporter Alyssa Bereznak talked to Brooklyn. Reiff is a junior at Prosper High School in Prosper, Texas. She's on the softball team there, where she plays left field, sometimes center. When asked if she's interested in any particular subject at school, she replied "not really." In other words, she’s a typical teen who just happens to be Patient Zero in a massive Internet meme that millions of people have read or heard about. You can read the full interview here, but here's what we thought was the most important part: Brooklyn doesn't even think Alex from Target is that cute. "Were you like, "OMG, he's cute" when you saw him?" Bereznak asks. No, Alanna had tweeted a few times about the cashier being attractive at Target, and she’d been subtweeting him. And she put his name on there, and she was like, “Somebody get his @ name!” So I took a picture of him and tweeted back to Alanna as a comment from her original tweet, and then that was the end of the conversation. A couple days later the photo had gone viral. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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On The 35th Anniversary Of The Iran Hostage Crisis, The CIA Breaks Down Facts Vs. Fiction In The Film 'Argo' | ||
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Well, this is cool. On what is the 35th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis, the CIA is taking to its Twitter account to break down what's "real" vs. "reel" in the movie "Argo," which is about the events. On Nov. 4, 1979, militants invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. Six of them managed to escape and found refuge in the home of a Canadian ambassador. Fifty-two of them stayed in captivity for 444 days. The CIA has also written about the Iran hostage crisis on its blog. The 2012 film, which stars Ben Affleck, John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, and Alan Arkin, is a retelling of the historical events, highlighting one agent's work to get the hostages out of the country. As with some historical films, "Argo" took a few liberties in the retelling of the story. So the CIA is straightening things out. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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THE E-COMMERCE REPORT: Mobile Is Giving Traditional Retailers A Chance To Bounce Back These Holidays | ||
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Using smartphones and tablets as shopping devices is a relatively new trend, and legacy retailers are using it to catch up to the original e-commerce giants. For example, Target's audience is more mobile-centric now than even Amazon's. In a new report, BI Intelligence takes an exhaustive look at the e-commerce market, looks at mobile's surge, estimates holiday sales and shipments, tracks consumer behavior, and outlines the mobile and online strategies that retailers are using to catch up in e-commerce. Access The Full Market Forecast By Signing Up for A Risk-Free Trial Today >> Here are some of the key points in the report:
The final holiday quarter of the year is retailers' do-or-die moment, a trial membership to BI Intelligence allows access to all our downloadable charts and data on the upcoming e-commerce holidays. In full, the report:
To access the E-Commerce Market Update Report and BI Intelligence's ongoing coverage on the future of retail, mobile, and e-commerce — including charts, data, and analysis — sign up for a trial membership today. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Mobile allows traditional retailers a chance to catch up in e-commerce. Google's Eric Schmidt Shows Off His Acting Skills In An Ad For The Economist | ||
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Eric Schmidt has managed to take some time off from his day job to take up acting on the side. Kind of. Google's executive chairman is the star of The Economist's latest advertising campaign, Marketing Week reports. The ad will broadcast on CNBC in Europe and Asia and will also appear across The Economist's social media channels. Take a look at the ad: The 2014 version shows a businessman waiting patiently for an elevator to move, before Eric Schmidt stops the doors from closing and steps in. The rest of the ad shows the businessman trying — and failing — to build up the confidence to start a conversation with Schmidt. The "Broaden Your Horizons" ad aims to explain that if people read the Economist, they'd have lots to talk to Schmidt about. OK, so Schmidt doesn't really do much by way of acting in this ad, but it is quite remarkable that The Economist has persuaded one of the world's most powerful businessmen to do some work on camera to plug its brand. SEE ALSO: Google Just Confirmed It's Coming After TV's Money Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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19 Crazy Facts About Bill Gates' $123 Million Washington Mansion | ||
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With a net worth of $81.5 billion, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates is the richest man in America. It shouldn't be too surprising that one of the wealthiest people in the world also has an insanely extravagant home. It took Gates seven years and $63 million to build his Medina, Washington estate, named Xanadu 2.0 after the fictional home of "Citizen Kane"'s Charles Foster Kane. At 66,000 square feet, the home is absolutely massive, and it's filled with high-tech details. We've rounded up some of Xanadu 2.0's most over-the-top features here. 1. It's worth at least $123 million.According to the King County public assessor's office, the property is worth $123.54 million as of this year. Gates purchased the lot for $2 million in 1988. He reportedly pays around $1 million in property taxes each year. 2. Half a million board-feet of lumber was needed to complete the project.The house was built with 500-year-old Douglas fir trees. 300 construction workers labored on the home — 100 of whom were electricians. 3. A high-tech sensor system helps guests monitor a room's climate and lighting.When guests arrive, they're given a pin that interacts with sensors located all over the house. Guests enter their temperature and lighting preferences so that the settings change as they move throughout the home. Speakers hidden behind wallpaper allows music to follow you from room to room. 4. The house uses its natural surroundings to reduce heat loss.Xanadu 2.0 is an "earth-sheltered" house, meaning that it's built into its surroundings to regulate temperature more efficiently.
5. You can change the artwork on the walls with just the touch of a button.$80,000 worth of computer screens are situated around the house. Anyone can make the screens display their favorite paintings or photographs, which are stored on storage devices worth $150,000. 6. The pool also has its own underwater music system.The 60-foot pool is located in its own separate, 3,900-square-foot building. People in the pool could swim underneath a glass wall to come up to a terrace area on the outside. There's also a locker room with four showers and two baths. 7. There's a trampoline room with a 20-foot ceiling.No word on how big the trampoline itself is, but we can imagine it would be a fun alternative to your standard exercise routine. The exercise facilities total 2,500 square feet and also include a sauna, steam room, and separate men's and women's locker rooms. 8. An enormous reception hall could accommodate up to 200 guests.The 2,300-square-foot hall could seat up to 150 people for a dinner party, or 200 people standing up at a cocktail event. A six-foot-wide limestone fireplace dominates one wall, while another wall has a 22-foot-wide video screen. 9. The house has 24 bathrooms, 10 of which are full baths.Those bathrooms would definitely be useful if Gates were throwing such a big party. Otherwise, it seems a little over-the-top.
10. There's a total of six kitchens.They're situated at different parts of the house so staff can be ready for any event. 11. An enormous library houses a manuscript Gates paid more than $30 million for.The 2,100-square-foot library has a domed roof and two secret bookcases, including one that reveals a hidden bar. On the ceiling you'll find a quote from "The Great Gatsby" that reads: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." The library is home to the Codex Leicester, a 16-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Gates bought at auction for $30.8 million in 1994. 12. The home theatre can accommodate 20 guests in plush seats.It's designed in an Art Deco style, with comfortable arm chairs, couches, and even a popcorn machine for snacking. 13. An existing home was removed by barge to make room for a separate activities building.The 900-square-foot building sits next to Gates' sport court, putting green, and boat docks. 14. The guest house is just as high-tech as the main house.According to US News, the 1,900-square-foot guest house was the first building to be completed on the property. The house — which has its own bedroom and bathroom — was meant to be a test of the technology that would eventually be used in the main house. Gates wrote much of "The Road Ahead" here.
15. All together, Gates' garages can accommodate up to 23 cars.There are several different garages located at different points around the property. The most interesting one, however, is an underground cave made out of concrete and stainless steel. That garage alone can park 10 cars. Some of the concrete was purposely broken to give it a rough, "deconstructivist" look. 16. Gates has a favorite tree, and it's monitored electronically 24 hours a day.He reportedly became fond of a 40-year-old maple tree that grew close to the home's driveway. It's monitored by computer, and if at any point it becomes too dry, water is automatically pumped into it. 17. An artificial stream is kept stocked with fish.The stream and wetland estuary were created to solve any problems with runoff that the property's large walls might have created. The water is kept stocked with salmon and sea-run cutthroat trout. 18. The sand on Gates' beach is imported from the Caribbean.The lakefront shore contains sand that's delivered in large quantities by a barge from St. Lucia each year. 19. Someone once paid $35,000 just to tour it.Microsoft holds an auction each year, where employees donate products and services to be bid on. Proceeds go to the company's charitable fund. Gates has donated private tours of Xanadu 2.0 in the past. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, a Microsoft employee once won the tour with a bid of $35,000. SEE ALSO: Take A Tour Of Bill Gates' New 228-Acre Ranch, Complete With A Horse-Racing Track Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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What 29 Rockettes Doing Kicks In Perfect Sync Looks Like In iPhone 6 Slo-Mo | ||
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I was lucky enough to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular last night for the first time. The show, of course, stars the Rockettes. It's alot of fun. I shot a video from my seat using the iPhone 6 new slo-mo feature. Take a look. Produced by Justin Maiman. Edited by Sam Rega. Follow BI Video: On Facebook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Home Automation Gadgets Are Leading Explosive Growth In The Consumer 'Internet Of Things' Market | ||
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Homes around the world are going to become smarter and more connected over the next five years. Overall, a fair number of mainstream consumers still don't fully understand what connected-home devices are and how they work. However, adoption and awareness is still high for such a new category. We expect the devices to become more prevalent in the next two years, when growth will peak. In a recent report on the connected home, BI Intelligence takes a closer look at this market, and forecasts shipments and revenue growth for connected-home devices over the next five years. We also examine current consumer sentiment about these new devices, the potential opportunities and barriers the Internet of Things will face on its way to mainstream adoption, and the leading companies currently in the market. Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Trial Today >> Here are some key points from the report:
The report is full of charts and data that can be downloaded and put to use. In full, the report:
For full access to all BI Intelligence's charts, data, and analysis on the mobile and Internet of Things industry, sign up for a trial. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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One Venrock Partner's Three Keys To Being A Killer Investor | ||
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| David Pakman co-created Apple's Music Group and worked for three digital music start-ups before finding his real calling as a venture capitalist. Now he's a partner at Venrock and has invested in companies like Klout, Dstillery and Dollar Shave Club. But his early entrepreneur experiences shaped those ventures and help him stand out as a star investor in a competitive field. Pakman sat down with OneWire CEO Skiddy von Stade and gave these three tips on how to best to source deals as a VC based on all he's seen in his career (so quite a bit): (1) Develop an area of expertiseThese days investors are chomping at the bit to fund start-up digital media companies — "and everyone’s money’s just as green," Pakman said. So Venrock capitalists strive to add more than just capital to their ventures. "Venrock’s been around for more than 40 years and has invested in many of the world’s most incredible companies," Pakman said. "The belief is that we’ve seen this show before and we can offer some guidance to an entrepreneur." (2) Get some experience as an entrepreneurNot only does Venrock have that kind of expertise, but Pakman does too. "I’ve started and ran companies, so I’ve seen that grind," he said. Pakman said new entrepreneurs tend to be short-sighted and focused on the next few weeks or months ahead. So he aims to provide longer-term wisdom to his partners. "I try to help entrepreneurs see around corners," he said. (3) Understand and share your partners' vision — because you're going in for the long haulPakman said entrepreneurs must feel that you see eye to eye with them, sense the same macro trends taking place, and share a long-term vision. It can take years to get a start-up company where you want it to go. "So you have to be aligned with the same super long-term vision as an entrepreneur, and I think that’s another way to differentiate," he said. Watch the full OneWire interview above and subscribe to the series to get new interviews as soon as they are posted. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Why You Were Forced To Download Facebook's Separate Messenger App (FB) | ||
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In August, Facebook finally pulled the plug on messages within the main Facebook app, forcing users instead to download its separate Messenger app. People weren't happy, and while Messenger rocketed to the top of the App Store charts, it was flooded by negative reviews from disgruntled users. We never really got a good answer why Facebook decided to make Messenger its own app, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally explained the move Thursday during a Q&A, according to The Verge's Ellis Hamburger. "Asking everyone in our community to install a new app is a big ask," Zuckerberg said. "I appreciate that that was work and required friction. We wanted to do this because we believe that this is a better experience. Messaging is becoming increasingly important. On mobile, each app can only focus on doing one thing well, we think."
"Ten billion messages are sent per day, but in order to get to it you had to wait for the app to load and go to a separate tab," Zuckerberg said. "We saw that the top messaging apps people were using were their own app. These apps that are fast and just focused on messaging. You're probably messaging people 15 times per day. Having to go into an app and take a bunch of steps to get to messaging is a lot of friction." Zuckerberg acknowledged that forcing users to download a separate app is "painful" for them, but only in the short term, and the result is a more focused experience. "Why wouldn't we let people choose to install the app on their own at their own pace? The reason is that what we're trying to do is build a service that's good for everyone. Because Messenger is faster and more focused, if you're using it, you respond to messages faster, we've found. If your friends are slower to respond, we might not have been able to meet up. "This is some of the hardest stuff we do, is making these choices. We realize that we have a lot to earn in terms of trust and proving that this standalone messenger experience will be really good. We have some of our most talented people working on this." You can read Zuckerberg's full comments on Messenger over at The Verge.
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Zuckerberg explained that the main Facebook app's primary purpose is its News Feed, and even though more and more people are messaging, the messaging feature was tough to get to, which created a lot of friction.
Samsung's Next Major Galaxy Phone Could Come With A Crazy, Flexible Screen That Curves Around Its Edges | ||
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Samsung has been showing off its flexible displays for years, but soon we may be seeing that technology appear in more mainstream smartphones. One analyst thinks the Korean tech giant will outfit its upcoming Galaxy S6 with a display that curves on both sides, unlike the company's recently released Galaxy Note Edge which only curves on one side. Jerry Kang, a senior analyst at IHD Technology, said the following at the IHS Display Analyst conference on Thursday (via Phone Arena): "The Galaxy S6 to be released next year will feature a 'dual-edged' screen which is curved on the right and the left sides." Kang also noted that this was the original concept for the Galaxy Note Edge, but Samsung scrapped that idea in favor of a design that curves only on the right. Although Samsung has been experimenting with flexible displays for the past few years, it doesn't seem likely that the company will bring its tech to a mainstream device such as the Galaxy S6. There's a chance we'll see a spin-off sort of the like Note Edge, which is essentially a clone of the Galaxy Note 4 other than its curved screen. Here's what the Note Edge looks like — the curved part of the screen is actually a separate display that can act independently of the main screen.
The Galaxy S6, however, is rumored to come with either a 16 or 20-megapixel camera and an all new design that's made from scratch. Samsung is said to be calling the phone "Project Zero" internally, but we won't know more about the phone until next year. SEE ALSO: This Mind-Blowing Prototype Shows How Crazy Smartphones Could Look In The Future Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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How To Take The Perfect LinkedIn Profile Photo | ||
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Having a LinkedIn profile picture makes you 7 times more likely to be clicked on by an employer. Don’t have a profile picture? Or need to take a new one? Here’s a step-by-step guide to taking the perfect LinkedIn profile picture. Produced by Devan Joseph. Narrated by Matt Johnston. Follow BI Video: On Facebook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Ebola fight starting to pay off but too early to claim success | ||
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Freetown (AFP) - The deadliest Ebola outbreak ever is finally slowing in Liberia, the worst-hit country, but still wreaking havoc in two neighbouring west African states amid warnings of thousands of unreported deaths. As the initially lacklustre global response to the crisis centred in Liberia and adjoining Sierra Leone and Guinea gathered some pace following repeated and impassioned appeals from top UN officials and world leaders, the good news from Liberia was tempered by warnings that the global toll is likely vastly underestimated. The outbreak is officially thought to have claimed 4,960 lives and infected 13,042 people, according to the latest data issued by the World Health Organization. But that could be the tip of the iceberg, an official at the UN health agency said. "There are lots of missing deaths in this epidemic," Christopher Dye, WHO's strategy chief, told AFP, estimating that around 5,000 fatalities could be missing from the count. This assessment, he said, was based on the knowledge that the fatality rate in the epidemic stands at about 70 percent. Dye said the likely explanation was that many people were burying the dead in secret, possibly to avoid having authorities interfere with burial customs like washing and touching the deceased widely blamed for much of the transmission. Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma pressed the point in a meeting this week with lawmakers well as tribal and religious chiefs. "You must enforce the law and take out the sick," he said, referring to a ban on traditional mourning rites with involve contact with corpses. "This is time for action and you must stop the hypocrisy in the fight against Ebola," added Koroma, whose country has recorded 1,070 deaths from the disease and 4,759 cases. - 'Progress sporadic' - Even though the spread of the virus has slowed in Liberia, where 2,697 people had died out of a total of 6,525 cases, officials warned that this is no time for complacency. "We cannot wait. This is a situation where we're seeing progress but progress can be sporadic with this disease if we are not vigilant," said Ertharin Cousin, the head of the UN's World Food Programme this week while on a tour of west Africa. "And one message is that now is the time for everyone to come together to ensure that we are meeting the needs of people who are affected by this disease, because we are seeing progress," Cousin said. Among these are more than 2,000 children left orphans by the disease in Liberia alone, West Africa's regional bloc ECOWAS said, urging international help to go beyond immediate medical care. Anthony Banbury, the UN's pointman on the fight against Ebola, told the BBC that the international body had neither received sufficient funds nor the means to fight the disease. "It's not here yet. There are still people, villages, towns [and] areas that [are] not getting any type of help right now and we definitely don't have the response capability on the ground now from the international community," he said. The United Nations said it has received just over half -- $572 million of the $988 million -- the funds it is seeking to finance the fight against the worst outbreak of Ebola since the discovery of the viral disease in 1976. US President Barack Obama is asking Congress for more than $6.0 billion in emergency funding while Japan became the latest country this week to pledge extra aid, taking Tokyo's contribution to a total of $140 million. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Gerrard in Premier League spotlight as Reds face Chelsea showdown | ||
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London (AFP) - Brendan Rodgers insists there is no chance Steven Gerrard will crack under pressure when the Liverpool captain bids for redemption against Chelsea on Saturday. Gerrard endured one of the worst moments of his career when the Reds midfielder last faced Chelsea in April as his disastrous slip allowed Demba Ba to score the goal that shattered Liverpool's challenge to win the title for the first time since 1990. The 34-year-old has been well below his best since that agonising mistake and his spluttering campaign, which mirrors his team's own struggles, suffered another blow on Tuesday when he was restricted to a 20-minute substitute appearance in the 1-0 Champions League loss at Real Madrid. Reds boss Rodgers also rested several other key players and said he was trying to keep Gerrard, who has been bothered by a hamstring injury, fresh ahead of the Chelsea showdown. But with Liverpool languishing 12 points behind leaders Chelsea, Gerrard desperately wants to erase the bitter memory of last season's mistake and this week's demotion by delivering a dominant display against Jose Mourinho's team, who will swagger into Anfield unbeaten in 16 games in all competitions this season. Gerrard has risen to the occasion many times before and Rodgers is banking on another inspirational display from his talisman. "He has had hard moments in his career and he always responds magnificently. There was no blame. It was just an unfortunate thing," Rodgers said of the slip that is now immortalised by Chelsea fans in a taunting chant Gerrard is sure to hear many times on Saturday. "He was instrumental in our run last year and how well we played. "He is a big character and bounces back from that. It shows you the character of Steven." As if Gerrard's attempt to make amends for his costly mistake isn't a juicy enough sub-plot to Saturday's clash, there is also the lingering bad blood following Rodgers's criticism of Mourinho's cautious tactics in their 2-0 win at Anfield last season. Chelsea midfielder Nemanja Matic reignited the feud this week when he said Liverpool had only themselves to blame for failing to prise open the Blues defence. "Many teams this season have tried to park the bus in front of the goal against us, but we win," Matic said. "If you defend, you have to know how to defend. In that game (in April) we showed we have quality. "We play in a different way now. We are first in the table and we want to stay there." - Welcome tonic - If Liverpool do avenge last season's loss, it would be a welcome tonic for champions Manchester City, who trail Chelsea by six points and are in severe danger of crashing out of the Champions League following their shock midweek defeat against CSKA Moscow. Manuel Pellegrini's side travel to second bottom QPR on Saturday with captain Vincent Kompany conceding his team-mates will have to improve quickly if they want to overhaul the leaders and also progress in Europe. "The result says enough. There is no way we can afford to lose points against a team we should beat every day," he said. "It won't take a lot for everyone at the club to realise we need to do better." Second-placed Southampton have provided the most uplifting story of the season by defying predictions of a relegation battle following the departure of manager Mauricio Pochettino and five star players. But boss Ronald Koeman, whose team host Leicester on Saturday, has little hope Saints will keep pace with Chelsea and City in the title race. "In one game we can beat them but it is a two-team race because I still believe City and Chelsea are normally much stronger over the whole season," he said. "The next step for us is playing in Europe. I have confidence we can reach that." On Sunday, fourth placed Arsenal will look to put their midweek meltdown against Anderlecht, when they conceded three goals in the final 29 minutes of a 3-3 Champions League draw, behind them with a victory at Swansea. "That was a good warning that everyone should raise their game," Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker said. "It is a small setback and we will bounce back quickly." Fixtures (1500GMT unless stated) Saturday Burnley v Hull, Liverpool v Chelsea (1245GMT), Manchester United v Crystal Palace, QPR v Manchester City (1730GMT), Southampton v Leicester, West Ham v Aston Villa Sunday Sunderland v Everton (1330GMT), Swansea v Arsenal (1600GMT), Tottenham v Stoke (1330GMT), West Brom v Newcastle (1330GMT) Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Dead fish in Rio Olympic bay baffle scientists | ||
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Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Thousands of dead fish have begun mysteriously washing up in the polluted Rio bay that will host sailing events at the 2016 Olympics -- and experts are at a loss to explain why. Guanabara Bay has already been the subject of concern amongst sailors who are to compete in Rio because of the human sewage that gets pumped into its waters. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has expressed confidence that Guanabara will be fit for purpose by the time of the games. But the recent appearance of thousands of dead fish, and the foul stench of their rotting carcasses, has attracted further scrutiny with the Olympics less than two years away. Scientists are baffled by the phenomenon but say there is no evidence so far to suggest pollution is the cause. The foul odor first took over the usually peaceful Paqueta Island, where cars are banned and the population of 4,500 people travels on horseback or bicycle among the only baobab trees in Brazil. With the help of a bulldozer, a municipal company has removed 20 tonnes of dead sabalo fish -- from the Clupeidae family of herrings and sardines -- as well as four dead sea turtles. "Tests showed that this is not a matter of chemical or toxic water pollution," Rio do Janeiro State University oceanographer David Zee told AFP. Leandro Daemon of the National Institute for the Environment, or INEA, agreed that water testing had not identified any toxic chemicals or any unusual change in the water's pH (potential of hydrogen), salinity or oxygen. "We have no answer yet about what happened, but we can certainly exclude the hypothesis of a chemical pollution killing the fish," he said. - 'Don't go in' - But not everyone is so sure. Worried fishermen and islanders are pointing the finger at the petrochemical activities of state giant Petrobras. "We want to know why so many fish have died. The rotten smell is horrible and there are many flies on the island. The authorities tell us nothing," said Vilma Leocadio of the Paqueta citizens' association. "We are afraid, we do not bathe in the sea any more and do not buy fish here." Rosimere Figueiredo, 52, said Paqueta was in distress. "I do not encourage you to step in the water with all those dead bodies of fish. We see them dying," she said. Five of the fish were sent Tuesday to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's biology department for analysis, and the results will be announced in a week. Experts want to know if there are any signs of pollution or disease in the entrails or gills. - High temperatures to blame? - One hypothesis is that the culprit is predatory fishing. At this time of year, fishing is prohibited, but it is common for fishermen to still work, catching fish like sabalo that have a lower market value, Zee said. But the expert said the likeliest scenario was that the deaths are caused by "thermal pollution" of the water. "Sabalo are very sensitive to any lack of oxygen. Warm water temperatures such as those recorded several days ago -- ranging from 27 to 30 degrees Celsius (81 to 86 Fahrenheit) -- in shallow water decrease the solubility of oxygen," Zee said. He noted that Paqueta is located at the bottom of the Rio bay, where water circulation and exchange is more difficult, a phenomenon exacerbated by the low tide. "What is striking is the duration of this mortality and also the high temperature of the water," said biologist Mario Moscatelli, who has studied the bay's waters for 20 years. "I flew over the area in early October, and fish were floating. At first, we thought they were thrown into the sea by fishermen. But before too long, I saw them dying in a way that seemed they were missing oxygen." He said the sabalo, being more sensitive, are the first fish to die in the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, which contains sea water carried through a canal in Rio's southern zone. "But in case of chemical contamination, other species will die," he said. "We have more questions than answers. We must wait for the results of the analysis." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Europe set to make space history with comet landing | ||
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Paris (AFP) - One of the biggest gambles in space history comes to a climax on Wednesday when Europe attempts to make the first-ever landing on a comet. Speeding towards the Sun at 65,000 kilometres (40,600 miles) per hour, a lab called Philae will detach from its mothership Rosetta, heading for a deep-space rendezvous laden with risk. The 100-kilogram (220-pound) probe will seek out a minuscule landing site on the treacherous surface of an object darker than coal, half a billion kilometres (300 million miles) from home. "It's not going to be an easy business," was the understated prediction of Philippe Gaudon of France's National Centre for Space (CNES) as the mission prepared to enter countdown mode. The stakes facing Rosetta managers in Darmstadt, Germany are daunting as the 1.3-billion-euro ($1.61-billion) project reaches a peak. Two decades of work have been poured into what could be a crowning moment in space exploration. The goal: the first laboratory research into the primeval matter of the Solar System -- ancient ice and dust that, some experts believe, may have helped to sow life on Earth itself. According to this theory, comets pounded the fledgling Earth 4.6 billion years ago, providing it with complex organic carbon molecules and precious water. Rosetta has already sent home fascinating data on the comet, but Philae will provide the first boots-on-the-ground assessment, using 10 instruments to study the comet's physical and chemical composition. Like Rosetta, it will wield a mass spectrometer, a high-tech tool to analyse a sample's chemical signature, aimed at drawing up a complete carbon inventory. The showstopper find would be molecules known as left-handed amino acids, the European Space Agency (ESA) says. "These are the 'bricks' with which all proteins on Earth are built," it says. - Nail-biting - But getting Philae into position will be a white-knuckle ride. After its launch in 2004, Rosetta spent 10 years zig-zagging around Earth and Mars, using the planets' gravitational pull as a slingshot to build up speed to reach its prey, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But when Rosetta finally caught up with it in August, it witnessed a sight that caused despondency back on Earth. Far from being a simple potato shape, "67P" turned out be two gnarled lobes about four km across joined by a narrow neck. It looked like an super-dark rubber duck, ravaged by aeons in orbit, turning slowly in space. Its surface was a nightmare of crests and gullies, studded with hundreds of rocks as high as 50 metres (165 feet) and wicked slopes with an incline greater than 30 degrees. This was a huge, unexpected problem, said Francis Rocard, a French astrophysicist. "It took a billion calculations to find a decent landing site" -- one offering a fair chance that Philae could survive and meet scientific goals, he said. If final "go/no-go" assessments give the green light, Philae will separate from Rosetta about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the comet at 0835 GMT on Wednesday. "Then it's a very gentle freefall for the next seven hours," said Sylvain Lodiot, in charge of flight operations. After that comes the hard bit. No one knows what a comet's surface is like. Is it hard and crusty, like a shell? Crumbly? Slippery? Is it brittle -- will it crack, causing Philae to sink into some fudgy or spongey substance below? Seeking to cover all the possibilities, Philae's designers have equipped the lander with three outstretched legs designed to dampen the impact. When the lab touches down, it will fire two harpoons to secure it to what -- hopefully -- will be a robust surface, while a thruster on top of the lander will fire to cancel out bounce. Ice screws in the lander feet will deploy for extra grip. The chances of success? "Seventy percent," said Gaudon, admitting to days of doubt that the chances were much better than one in two. "We need to be lucky," added Andrea Accomazzo, flight director. And only then can Philae start its real mission of analysing the makeup of the comet. Batteries will be enough to keep the probe going for 60 hours, but recharging from sunlight "could keep us going until March," said Rocard. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Robin Williams paranoid before suicide: coroner | ||
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Los Angeles (AFP) - Robin Williams had recently become increasingly paranoid when he committed suicide by hanging himself, coroners said, adding that he had no alcohol or illicit drugs in his system. There were also signs that the comic actor -- who had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease -- had tried to cut his left wrist, according to an autopsy report. No suicide note or other indication that he planned to take his own life was found at the scene, it said. The 63-year-old, known for high-energy, rapid-fire improvisation and clowning, was found dead on August 11 at his home in Marin County, north of San Francisco. The coroner for Marin County, Robert Doyle, said the investigation into his death had concluded, giving the cause as "asphyxia due to hanging" and the manner of death as "suicide." "Toxicological evaluation revealed the absence of alcohol or illicit drugs. Prescription medications were detected in therapeutic concentrations," it added in a brief statement. "His prior medical history reportedly included depression, Parkinson's Disease and a recent increase in paranoia," said a longer coroners' report, which was obtained by AFP. The report included other details about Williams' medical history, including that he had shown symptoms of Parkinson's since 2011, including a left arm tremor and slowing of left hand movements. He was diagnosed with the disease in November 2013. "The clinical history is notable for depression, with components of paranoia, compulsiveness and anxiety," it said. The report gave a detailed description of how Williams' body was found hanging by a belt from a closet door in his stepson's bedroom. It noted that a pocket knife with a 3-inch (7.5-centimeter) blade was found near the body. "Several superficial vertical and horizontal cuts were seen over the inner aspect of the left wrist; these wounds had a scant amount of blood present," the report said. Williams had been sleeping separately from his wife partly because he talked in his sleep, sometimes very loudly, it said. - Comedy galaxy's 'brightest star' - Williams, an Oscar-winner and veteran of movies, stand-up shows and hit television series, was one of Hollywood's most popular entertainers and his death triggered an outpouring of emotion the world over. A few days after his death, Williams' wife said her husband was suffering from depression and the early stages of Parkinson's disease. Father-of-three Williams had spoken openly in the past about his battles with alcoholism and drug abuse -- and often drew on them in his stand-up comedy routines. Star of hit films such as "Good Morning, Vietnam" and "Mrs Doubtfire," Williams had last been seen alive the day before his death by his wife Susan Schneider before she went to bed. She left the house the next day assuming he was still asleep in a separate room in the home in Tiburon. Williams' ashes were scattered in San Francisco Bay, according to media reports. President Barack Obama and the US first family joined the outpouring of grief, calling him "an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between." "But he was one of a kind," Obama said. Later in August the 66th Emmy Awards paid a heartfelt and somber tribute to Williams, with fellow actor-comic Billy Crystal calling him "the brightest star in the comedy galaxy." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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All Blacks boss Hansen wary of new-look England | ||
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London (AFP) - New Zealand coach Steve Hansen is adamant the world champions remain wary of an injury-hit England ahead of their clash at Twickenham on Saturday. After seeing off the United States 74-6 in Chicago last week, the All Blacks begin the crunch part of their end of season tour against the 2015 World Cup hosts. While Hansen has no qualms about leaving out all-time record points scorer Dan Carter, still in his view not fully fit after a succession of injuries and starting with Aaron Cruden at fly-half, that is the kind of selection luxury England counterpart Stuart Lancaster can only dream of this weekend. Injuries have deprived him of first-choice centres Manu Tuilagi -- a try-scorer and maker in England's stunning 38-21 win over the All Blacks at Twickenham in 2012 -- and Luther Burrell, as well as locks Geoff Parling and Joe Launchbury and British and Irish Lions star prop Alex Corbisiero. England's back division includes a debutant wing in Fiji-born British Army soldier Semesa Rokoduguni, whose likely direct opponent, Julian Savea, has an outstanding record of 29 tries in 30 Tests, including eight in four matches against England. "I don't think it's that inexperienced," said Hansen of an England back division that includes a previously untried centre pairing of Kyle Eastmond and Brad Barritt. "Most of them have played Test rugby apart from the Fijian lad (Rokoduguni) who has just come into the side." Since their 2012 success, England have lost four successive Tests against the All Blacks, including a 3-0 series defeat in New Zealand in June. They have received praise for their positive approach but, less than a year out from the World Cup, a victory on Saturday would be timely for England. This weekend's match marks England's first international since June whereas Four Nations kings New Zealand are well into an international programme.
- 'Second-guess' -
"The big advantage we've got is that we've played a lot of Tests since June and the disadvantage is England have played none," said Hansen. "I guess there is an advantage for them in that too. They've seen what we are doing -- we can only second-guess. "Do they stick with the adventurous game they want to play or do they think to themselves 'we'll take them on up front' or do they do a bit of both, which is probably more likely?" Although a New Zealand visit to Twickenham is now almost an annual event, Hansen said playing at the venue for next year's World Cup final was always a memorable experience for the All Blacks. "Twickenham is one of the great rugby grounds, isn't it?", said Hansen. "It holds 83,000, that's what you want when you play rugby, you want to play in the big stadiums and be challenged. Twickenham is always one of those places that does that." The head-to-head contest between England's Danny Care and New Zealand's Aaron Smith, two of the sharper scrum-halves in world rugby, will be intriguing as will the display of leadership skills of the two flanker-captains in Chris Robshaw and All Blacks great Richie McCaw. "New Zealand are strong across the board, very experienced and with world-class players in a lot of positions," said Lancaster. "But it's not dissimilar to the side we played in the summer, the side we played this time last year or two years ago and, on each occasion, we either won or pushed them close." Lancaster's side might do well to demonstrate similar obstinacy to a capacity crowd who are likely to react to New Zealand's haka with a rousing chorus of Twickenham anthem 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' -- a response that's almost becoming as traditional at 'headquarters' as the Maori war dance is to any All Blacks' international. Inevitably, the match will be viewed through the prism of the upcoming World Cup and Hansen said: "It's not far away. is it? You can just about reach out and touch it. "But we've got a job to do on Saturday that's got nothing to do with the World Cup." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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S. African football declares war on illegal firearms | ||
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Johannesburg (AFP) - It's a call normally heard in countries emerging from civil war: hand over your illegal weapons in exchange for amnesty. Instead it comes from South Africa's football association after the captain of the national team was shot dead in a botched robbery. The plan? To use the guns to build a monument in honour of 27-year-old Bafana Bafana goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa, whose death sparked an outpouring of grief in a crime-ridden nation. The monument would be placed in front of the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, where the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was played four years ago. “The more guns we receive, the bigger the statue,” said South African Football Association (SAFA) spokesman Dominic Chimhavi. The details still need to be worked out with the police and justice ministries to determine just where, when and how the guns will be collected –- and to secure a guarantee of no arrests, no questions asked. "If you ask questions, people will be afraid," explained Chimhavi. But, he continued, "we lost one of our heroes, our captain, our goalkeeper, you understand? This death has really affected the country. Don't forget... the Orlando Pirates (Meyiwa's club) are the Liverpool and the Manchester United of South Africa." Thousands attended Meyiwa's funeral last week, while the Pirates announced the number one jersey would be retired in honour of their star player. "We have received massive feedback from the public to say, 'we need to remove these illegal guns from the streets... we want to surrender these guns... but we want an amnesty." “The mood is right, the public pressure is right, and with SAFA pushing this forward, there is a high probability this could happen,” said Claire Taylor of Gun Free SA, a local NGO lobbying for stricter gun control.
- 'Criminals issued legal guns' -
South Africa has already had three collections of illegal weapons, the first a few months after its first democratic elections in 1994 and then again in 2005 and 2010. Despite this – and the strict laws already in place – the problem of gun violence remains. The high number of legally-held weapons in a population afraid of crime ironically means that many are stolen and fall into the hands of criminals. Taylor pleads for fewer licences: “We need to make sure that only responsible people are granted licences and that they don't leave their guns lying around.” She also pointed to corruption and fraud in the firearm licensing process. “Criminals are being issued with legal guns,” she said. Gun numbers are hard to come by in South Africa, with police refusing to supply official figures, but Gun Free SA points to a 2011 affidavit that listed 3.2 million guns for 1.8 million licensed gun owners. But for illegal weapons, the numbers are much more vague, ranging between 400 000 and four million. The sheer prevalence of weapons contributes to a high homicide rate in a country already riddled with endemic violence. In 2013/2014, South Africa averaged 47 murders per day in a population of 53 million. SAFA's call could be the catalyst for the government to take action. In the wake of Meyiwa's murder, Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe welcomed a debate over the availability of weapons. It was time for South Africans to decide, he said, “whether we are hell-bent on self destruction or peaceful co-existence”. Even the elite are not immune. A week before Meyiwa was killed, ruling African National Congress secretary-general Jackson Mthembu was shot in the face while withdrawing money from an ATM. He spent ten days in hospital. Plans for a new weapons amnesty were welcomed by Natalie Jaynes of Open Society, an NGO. “With each amnesty weapons did come in and it's a good thing. Of course they could be more successful but it's a low cost and relatively easy way to get guns out of the wrong hands,” she said.. “During the last amnesty, the minister of police actually convened a group of civilian monitors who would then undertake all spot checks and monitor that weapons surrendered to the police were properly recorded and submitted for destruction. “Especially in South Africa, where we have a problem with implementing the fire arms control legislation, amnesty is very helpful.”
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China trade surplus expands to $45.41 bn in October | ||
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Beijing (AFP) - China recorded a better-than-expected trade surplus of $45.41 billion in October, customs said Saturday, but weaker export and import growth could be a worrisome sign for the world's second largest economy. October's trade surplus expanded 46.3 percent from the same month last year, exceeding market expectations for a $42.3 billion surplus, according to a survey of 11 economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. The surplus also widened from the $31.0 billion recorded in September, though it was off the record $49.8 billion for August, previous figures showed. Exports jumped 11.6 percent year-on-year to $206.87 billion in October, while imports rose 4.6 percent to $161.46 billion, customs said. "The trade surplus was driven by the contraction in growth of imports... and export growth was not very strong. So the quality of the surplus was not very high," Liu Xuezhi, a Shanghai-based analyst at Bank of Communications, told AFP. Growth in exports -- a key engine of China's economy -- slowed in October from a 15.3 percent year-on-year rise in September. Import growth remained weak in October, slowing from a 7.0 gain in September. "Domestic demand is weak," Liu said. "De-stocking this year has led to consumption of cement, coal, iron ore and other raw materials to decline, making demand for imports weak." China's economy has faltered this year, hit by a deflating property bubble as well as a government crackdown on corruption and weak external demand from Europe. The Chinese economy grew an annual 7.3 percent in the third quarter, the slowest in more than five years since the depths of the global financial crisis, dipping below the government's target of around 7.5 percent for all of this year. Beijing has so far clung to "targeted" measures to spur growth, cutting reserve requirements -- the amount of funds banks must put aside -- for some banks and loosening monetary policy by injecting cash into the banking system. The central bank confirmed on Thursday that it had injected 769.5 billion yuan ($124 billion) into the banking system over the past two months. Analysts expect the government to cling to targeted easing, though some say policymakers could still resort to an across-the-board cut in reserve requirements or even interest rates. "Overall, the easing bias in China's monetary policy will be maintained," ANZ bank said in a research note on Friday. "China's central bank will intensify the effort to lower the cost of funds facing the real economy." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The dragon and the bear: Xi, Putin form power duo at APEC | ||
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Beijing (AFP) - China's authoritarian President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin share similar views on issues from human rights to Mikhail Gorbachev, in an increasingly close personal relationship that mirrors their countries' converging interests. Putin arrives in Beijing Sunday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit and his 10th meeting with Xi since the Chinese president took office in March last year, according to the Communist mouthpiece People's Daily. Their growing rapport comes as their nations' trade, investment and geopolitical interests align. Moscow faces harsh Western criticism and sanctions over its seizure of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as opprobrium for its approach to dissent and homosexuality. Beijing also has tense relationships over territorial disputes with neighbours such as Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, and has recently been the target of criticism over demands for free elections in Hong Kong. "The situation is pushing the two countries towards closer ties, both are facing very heavy pressures, Russia in Ukraine and China in Hong Kong," said Vladimir Yevseyev, director of the Moscow-based independent Public Political Studies Center. "Xi comes from a background close to the military-industrial complex, he is a man who is much closer to the structures of power enforcement than his predecessor (Hu Jintao)," Yevseyev said. "Putin understands him better, their outlooks are identical," he added. "Xi is inclined to confrontation if necessary, which pleases Putin." - Security Council - Relations between Moscow and Beijing have a chequered history. Territorial disputes between Tsarist Russia and Imperial China gave way to cooperation between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic in the latter's early years. That, however, subsequently collapsed in a huge split over ideological issues such as how to promote revolution, who should lead the international communist movement, whether to engage with the capitalist world, and China's development of nuclear weapons. Eventually a tectonic shift in global geopolitics resulted when Beijing and Washington ended their mutual hostility and President Richard Nixon visited China. The USSR broke up 23 years ago and Russia and China have since been brought together by mutual concerns, notably wariness of Washington. The two countries often vote as a pair on the UN Security Council, where both hold a veto, sometimes in opposition to Western powers on issues such as Syria. They have carried out joint military exercises on land and sea and are members of the BRICS emerging nations group, which also includes Brazil, India and South Africa. Their economic links are burgeoning, with resource-rich Russia a natural supplier to China's growing economy. After a decade of negotiations, the countries signed a huge 30-year gas deal said to be worth $400 billion during a visit to China by Putin in May. "As Europe is going to cut its consumption of Russian gas, China offers an alternative market," said Yevseyev. - Pining for Soviet days - APEC, which began with ministerial meetings on Friday before the main summit on Monday and Tuesday, accounts for more than 50 percent of global gross domestic product, 44 percent of world trade and 40 percent of the Earth's population. Russia, with its vast territory stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, is the organisation's only European member. The consensus-based grouping, which focuses on trade and economic cooperation, generally tries to paper over major differences at its summits. But Xi, the scion of a Communist Party stalwart and war hero, and Putin, a former KGB agent who was stationed in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago this month, are likely to take a common stand in the face of critics of Russian and Chinese policies, such as the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan. They are also united by a common lament for the collapse of the Soviet Union and contempt for the man they hold responsible: Gorbachev, the leader who implemented "perestroika" and "glasnost" reforms in what was ultimately a failed bid to revitalise the one-party system. Putin in 2005 called the breakup of the Soviet Union "the biggest geopolitical disaster" of the 20th century. "Putin and Xi Jinping seem to be able to work together pretty well in part because I think both of them in different ways say, 'you know who really did the wrong thing 25 years ago? Gorbachev,'" said Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, at a talk in Beijing. "The Chinese Communist Party says that Gorbachev made a mistake, he let things fall apart," he added. "Putin says Gorbachev made a mistake. That's a weird kind of convergence." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Celebrations mark 25 years since Berlin Wall's fall | ||
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Berlin (AFP) - Germany has kicked off celebrations marking 25 years since the epochal fall of the Berlin Wall, set to culminate in rock stars and freedom icons joining millions at an open-air party. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, is leading three days of commemorations for those killed trying to flee the repressive state, ahead of a giant festival Sunday marking the joyous breach of Europe's Cold War division on November 9, 1989. "I think you never forget how you felt that day -- at least I will never forget it," Merkel, 60, said in her latest podcast. "I had to wait 35 years for that feeling of liberty. It changed my life." The festivities under the banner "Courage for Freedom" recall the peaceful revolution that led communist authorities to finally open the border after 28 years in which Easterners were prisoners of their own government. Germany would reunite within the year, on October 3, 1990. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose "perestroika" and "glasnost" reforms helped pave the way for the Wall's fall, on Friday greeted crowds at Berlin's iconic former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing. US President Barack Obama told the world to remember lessons from the emotional fall of the Berlin Wall. "I will never forget the scenes of East Berliners courageously taking to the streets, pushing past the guards and tearing down the wall that for so long had separated them from family and friends and the free world," Obama said in a statement. "As Russia’s actions against Ukraine remind us, we have more work to do to fully realize our shared vision of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace," he added. Relations between Russia and the United States are at their iciest since the end of the Cold War after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in March. - 'Proud I could contribute' - Gorbachev, 83, who is revered in Berlin for having refrained from a bloody crackdown on protesters in 1989, understated his own role in history, saying: "I am proud I could contribute a little bit to the fact that we live like this today". But the Nobel Prize winner also warned of new East-West tensions sparked by the Ukraine crisis, saying both sides must "get a grip on the tensions that have emerged recently". On Saturday, Gorbachev will join former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher for a debate about the legacy of 1989, and the resurgence of tensions between Russia and the West. Berlin has set up an ambitious installation featuring nearly 7,000 white balloons pegged to the ground along a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of the Wall's former 155-kilometre path. The glowing orbs, which from above look like a string of pearls, are to be released Sunday and set to float into the night sky, to the stirring strains of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". Despite the party mood, old tensions resurfaced earlier Friday when dissident singer Wolf Biermann, who was kicked out of East Germany in 1976, performed his protest song "Ermutigung" (Encouragement) in parliament, in a tribute to those who resisted the regime. He used the opportunity to take a swipe at the far-left Linke, which has roots in East Germany's ruling party and had criticised Biermann's invitation to appear at the session. "Your punishment is to have to listen to me here -- enjoy," he told heckling Linke deputies, calling them "the wretched remains of what has fortunately been surmounted". - Freedom icons - Merkel will on Saturday attend a memorial concert at Bertolt Brecht's historic Berliner Ensemble theatre opposite the former "Palace of Tears", where Easterners said goodbye to visitors returning to West Germany. And on Sunday she will open a major exhibition on Bernauer Strasse, a street divided by the Wall that saw harrowing scenes of families ripped apart overnight when the Wall went up in 1961. Following a ceremony at the elegant Gendarmenmarkt square, at least two million people are expected to gather at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German unity. There, Gorbachev and former Polish president and freedom icon Lech Walesa, 71, will join German head of state Joachim Gauck, 74, a former pastor and rights activist in the East, and Hungarian ex-premier Miklos Nemeth, 66. Entertainment will range from the Berlin State Orchestra to a fireworks display. British singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel will perform the Wall anthem "Heroes", which David Bowie recorded when he lived in what was then West Berlin. East Germany built the Wall, which it called an "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart", in August 1961 to halt a mass exodus to the West. On November 9, 1989, East German border guards, overwhelmed by large crowds, threw open the gates to West Berlin, allowing free passage for the first time since it was built. At least 389 people lost their lives trying to escape East Germany, according to an official toll, although victims groups put the figure much higher. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Toms, Rollins share PGA lead in Mississippi | ||
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Jackson (United States) (AFP) - David Toms fired six birdies in a six-under-par 66 on Friday to seize a share of the lead alongside John Rollins in the US PGA Tour event at Country Club of Jackson. Toms, whose 13 US PGA Tour wins include the 2001 PGA Championship, had a 36-hole total of 10-under-par 134. Rollins also posted a 66, his coming with eight birdies and two bogeys. They were two strokes in front of Canadian Nick Taylor, who carded a second-round 69. It was a further stroke back to Tom Gillis (68) and Robert Streb (70) on 137. Toms posted his low score on a chilly morning playing alongside fellow former major champions Lucas Glover and Padraig Harrington of Ireland. Glover, the 2009 US Open winner, carded a 67 that put him six-under for the tournament while Harrington, whose three major titles include back-to-back British Opens in 2007 and 2008, carded a 69 that left him five shots off the lead. "We probably had more conversation than I've had in a long time, just mostly small talk," the 47-year-old Toms said of the group. "But we have a lot in common, have played a lot of golf together, all three of us. We had a good time." Toms is seeking his first win since 2011, the same year Glover captured his last title. Toms said keeping the ball in play was the key to his two rounds without a bogey. "I've been real patient with my iron shots," he said. For the second straight day play was halted by darkness, with 15 players still on the course. They were to return Saturday morning to complete the round, with the third round to follow. Overnight leader Sebastian Cappelen of Denmark had two holes remaining in what had been a difficult round. He was three-over for the day through 16 holes to fall into a share of 21st place in the four-million-dollar tournament. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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These 8 Images Of The Cosmos Will Stop You In Your Tracks | ||
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On Saturday, Nov. 8 the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania will launch an art exhibition that is out of this world. "Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography" features 100 images by 35 artists from around the world. The photographs capture the beauty of some of the most stunning scenes from and beyond our home planet. Each images was carefully selected by a distinguished panel of judges: Weston Naef, the curator emeritus of photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum; Dennis di Cicco, the senior editor of Sky & Telescope magazine; and Jerry T. Bonnell, the co-editor and author of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Here's a sneak peak at some of the stunning works of art in this exhibit, which was organized by the Bates College Museum of Art in Maine. It will be on display at the Michener in Doylestown from Nov. 8 through Feb. 8, 2015. The aurora borealis in the image below, taken by Yuichi Takasaka in 2011, are a cosmic phenomenon produced when energetic particles in space interact with gas particles in Earth's atmosphere that emit light as a result. Star trails, which cameras capture using long exposure times, are also visible.
In this image, US-based Warren Keller turned his sights toward the constellation Orion. Both the Horsehead and Flame nebulae, pictured here, are located about 1,500 light years from Earth.
Northern Canada and Greenland take center stage in this captivating image created by Michael Benson.
In the image below, captured by Babak Tafreshi of Iran, the band of the Milky Way Galaxy is visible in the clear night sky, with a towering mountaintop in the foreground.
The nebula pictured below, called Thor's Helmet, is located 15,000 light years from Earth, in the constellation Canis Major. Steven Mazlin and Jack Harvey produced this work.
In 2010, Jean-Paul Roux of France took this breathtaking nighttime shot of a blue moon during a lunar eclipse. Blue moon is commonly referred to as the second full moon in a single, solar calendar month and only happens once every two to three years.
Otter Cliff is located in Acadia National Park in Maine and offers a wonderful spot for photographers. In this image, taken by Jim Nickelson in 2011, Otter Cliff is pictured against a beautiful display of star trails.
SEE ALSO: These Stunning Hubble Images Show Us The Secrets Of The Universe READ MORE: These Images Of Maine's Nightime Lightshows Will Take Your Breath Away Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Alaska Reporter Who Quit On Live TV Is Trying To Start Her Own Pot Business | ||
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How could we forget. Charlo Greene quit her job in the most histrionic of ways. A TV reporter in Alaska, Greene used her airtime in September to pull off a crazy stunt. She stated that she's the owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, and wants to legalize marijuana in the state. To top it off, she said, "F--- it, I quit." Her new aim is to make the Alaska Cannabis Club a physical reality. She's trying to open a bricks-and-mortar club in Anchorage before turning it into a seed-to-sale business, according to Reuters. Voters in Alaska voted to legalize recreational marijuana this week. That, of course will lead to regulated pot retail stores such as the ones already in Colorado and Washington State. Greene is already the owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, a network of users that share medical pot they grow at home under existing law. She plans a December re-launch that will create a physical location at a downtown Anchorage building where members can attend grow-it-yourself classes, events, and get high, according to Reuters. If you missed her legendary self-send-off, check it out right here:
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Stephen Colbert Has The Best Translation Of Republicans' New Favorite Catchphrase | ||
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When asked questions about climate change, many Republicans are in a tough spot. If they say they know the scientific consensus is that human-caused climate change is real, they run the risk of alienating members of their base who don't believe that. But seeing as most Americans actually do recognize that climate change is occurring and is an issue, not all Republicans are willing to claim, like Oklahoma Sen. James Inhoffe, that facts generally accepted as true are a hoax. So many default to what they must think of as a middle ground. They point out that they aren't scientists. Of course, some have noted that this is absurd. As David Shiffman writes, lawmakers are willing to weigh in on all kinds of issues that aren't their personal area of expertise:
Yet, when it comes to climate change, the "I'm not a scientist" line somehow persists. Stephen Colbert provided a whole montage of prominent Republicans making the claim during the Nov. 6 episode of the Colbert Report. Take newly elected Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, nephew of George W. Bush. He admits that the Texas coastline is affected by rising sea levels, but when asked about whether or not human activity contributes to climate change, he responds "I'll leave that to the scientists..." He thinks human influence on climate ranges "everywhere from no impact at all to 100%." Colbert also includes news clips of John Boehner, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, and others uttering the same line. So what does this really mean? Colbert's translation is that "everyone who denies man-made climate change has the same stirring message. 'We don't know what the f*ck we're talking about.'" And with the actual global warming denier James Inhofe very likely taking over the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Colbert has one more message for the young members of the audience. "Remember kids, if you get unhooked on science early, maybe someday you could completely lack any understanding of science, and then grow up to be the Chairman of the Senate Environmental Committee." Watch the full video below for a great demonstration of Florida sinking under rising water levels for a completely inexplicable reason.
READ MORE: John Oliver Hosts A 'Statistically Representative' Climate Debate Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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There Are 6 Different Ways You Can See 'Interstellar' — Here's How To See It | ||
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"Interstellar" is in theaters and if you head out to see it, you'll have a total of six different ways to view the film. None of them will be in 3D, since director Christopher Nolan isn't a huge fan of the format. Rather, Nolan's a big advocate of IMAX and traditional film, making the movie on both 35mm film and 65mm IMAX. You'll be able to view the film in 70mm IMAX, traditional 70mm, traditional IMAX, 35mm, 4K digital, and standard digital. If none of that means anything to you, here's a graphic Paramount recently released breaking down slight differences between each format.
How should you see it?A lot of that is going to depend on where you live and what format is actually available to you. 70mm FilmIf you want to see it on 70mm film, it's only playing in that format in five states in addition to Toronto, Canada. There are 11 theaters in total showing "Interstellar" in 70mm.
Here are the California and New York locations. California New York City Average ticket price in NY: $15 Here's the full list of theaters showing "Interstellar" in 70mm. 70mm IMAX42 theaters in 20 states and Canada are showing the film in full-blown 70mm IMAX. This is how we saw the movie. We were definitely blown away by the IMAX scenes. Nolan shot a large portion of the film in IMAX so while tickets may be a bit pricier, you're getting your money's worth. If you're in California and New York, here's where you can catch it. California New York Average ticket price in NY: $20.99 Here's the full list of theaters showing the film in 70mm IMAX. 35mmIf you want to go old school, just under 200 theaters are showing the film in 35mm. Paramount's website clocks the number in at 198 screens. Since the movie is heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick's 1968 "2001: A Space Odyssey," and Nolan filmed much of the movie in this format, there's something nostalgic about seeing the movie on original film. If you're in NYC, and are a Nolan fan, you may want to head to Chelsea's Bow Tie Cinema where the director himself tested the film out. Average ticket price in NY: $15 Here's the full list of theaters showing the film in 35mm. IMAX313 theaters are showing the film in regular IMAX. These showings are more easily available to the public, but honestly, you're better off seeing it in the 70mm IMAX. Most "IMAX" theaters across the country aren't real IMAX sizes so if you want to see "Interstellar" in all of its IMAX glory, it's probably best to watch it on the largest screens possible. In NYC, that's the AMC Lincoln Square theater. In California, the TLC Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and AMC Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles offer large IMAX screens. Average ticket price in NY: $19.99 Here's the full list of IMAX theaters. 4K Digital and DigitalThis is how the movie is widely being distributed where it's not avaialable on film and/or IMAX. Again, since Nolan put the effort into making the movie both in film and in IMAX to be viewed in those formats, it feels like you're losing something by seeing "Interstellar" in digital. The average ticket price in New York for digital is $14.99 which is essentially the same price as a 35mm ticket ($15.00). SEE ALSO: Our "Interstellar" review AND: A huge actor has a surprise cameo in "Interstellar" More Interstellar: Why you can't see the movie in 3D Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here's What Women Fantasize About The Most | ||
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Women's sexual fantasies do not always reflect what they want in real life, according to a recently published study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. For example, while a large proportion of women in the study said they fantasized about being dominated in some way, half of those women specifically indicated that they would not want to live out their fantasy of sexual submission. The team of researchers who conducted the study asked a pool of 1,516 men and women, living in the province of Quebec and most between the age of 20 to 40, what they fantasize about when it comes to sex. The answers don't come from a comprehensive or culturally diverse group, but they offer an interesting sample. Of the 717 women studied, 6% said they were homosexual, 12.6% said they were bisexual, and the rest identified as heterosexual. (We covered the full details of the study's findings here.) In an online survey, the study group responded to 55 statements about their sexual fantasies using a one-to-seven scale that measured the intensity of each fantasy. Seven is the most intense, three is the least intense, and a rating of one or two meant the person did not fantasize about that act. Here are the ten statements the highest percentage of women in the study said they fantasized about (a rating of three or higher):
Overall, sex in "unusual" or "romantic" places was the most common fantasy, and fantasies of sexual submission were also among the most popular. Interestingly, past studies have found that women who reported having sexual fantasies involving submission were more sexually satisfied than women without such fantasies. Some fantasies were not among the ten most common, but were especially intense for the subset of women who reported having them. Those included:
Some of the less common sexual fantasies women reported in the study were:
Below is the complete survey of questions with the percentage of women who reported fantasizing about each act.
SEE ALSO: POLL: Here's How Men And Women Think Differently On Matters Of Dating And Sex READ MORE: Scientists Have Discovered How Common Different Sexual Fantasies Are Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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We're Not Ready To Handle 4 Upcoming Economic Changes That Could Tank The Economy | ||
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FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisers. There Are Four Big Changes Coming That Might Tank The Global Economy (Wealth Management) The global economy is going to change drastically over the next several years, and no one is prepared for the changes. First, technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and, as a result, robots will be replacing 100 million young people's jobs. Second, demographics are changing. Americans are getting older (meaning there will be fewer quality workers in the population), while emerging markets are overwhelmingly young — 60% to 70% of EM populations are under age 25. Third, income inequality is getting worse. And, finally, natural resources (including water, minerals, oil, and energy) are shrinking, as is arable land. "There's been talk of a global depression before, but this time is different ... [these are] four headwinds that the world hasn't dealt with previously. And many policymakers don't have the fiscal or monetary tools to deal with these," writes Diana Britton. Japan's Suddenly Looking Good (Advisor Perspectives) Recently, the Bank of Japan announced that it would increase its monetary target by 80 trillion yen and will purchase stock assets. That's up from what the bank had said in the past — before its target was 60 to 70 trillion yen per year. Additionally, the BOJ is thinking about buying ETFs that track the Nikkei Index 400. On top of that, Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has a new target asset mix. As a result, "the allocation to Japanese stocks has risen to 25% from 12%" and the allocation to non-Japanese equities has also doubled which might provide a "boost to the global equity markets," writes Nick Niziolek. Right now, export-oriented Japanese companies "positioned to benefit from asset reflation" are looking good. However, given the weaker yen and increasing taxes, it may be wise to stay cautious on companies that are "tied to the Japanese consumer," writes Niziolek. The President Of A $1.3 Billion Advisory Firm Credits His Success To His Days As A Reporter (Financial Planning) Larry Elkin spent eight years as a reporter for the Associated Press — today he's the president of a $1.3 billion advisory firm. Interestingly, he credits "communication skills he honed as a reporter" for his success in the financial-advisory business. "Look at the job description. You need to figure out what somebody wants or needs to know; gather the information and communicate it accurately and clearly so they can use it. It's exactly the same for both professions." He adds that there is one difference between being a reporter and a financial adviser: the audience. Reporters have to know how to communicate information to a mass audience of strangers, while advisers have a small audience with whom one is well acquainted, says Elkin. The Consumer Discretionary Sector Is Starting To Wobble As People Are Getting Nervous About The Economy (Charles Schwab) The consumer discretionary sector — which includes the nonessentials like hotels, restaurants, cars, luxury goods — tends to outperform the market when the economy begins to recover, and starts to wobble as people begin to get nervous about the economy. Basically, when people start worrying about finances, they are less inclined to splurge on the nonessentials. On top of that, people are worried about the upcoming Fed rate hikes, ongoing geopolitical tensions, and the sluggishness of the housing recovery. All these factors may contribute to a continued decrease of the consumer discretionary sector. Although it's more "muted," all hope is not lost. "Consumers have reduced their debt loads, the job market still appears to be picking up and we are starting to finally see some signs of wage growth, particularly among professionals," so people will still be buying from the sector, writes Brad Sorenson. Schorsch Brokerage Doesn't Want Its Advisers To Recommend Its Stock (The Wall Street Journal) "Real-estate investor Nicholas Schorsch's broker-dealer, Cetera Financial Group, has told its 9,200 financial advisers to restrict their sales to clients of stock in parent company RCS Capital Corp. and in American Realty Capital Properties, both of which are chaired by Mr. Schorsch," reports Michael Wursthorn. Recently, both companies revealed "accounting irregularities," which has led to shares of both companies to nosedive. Originally, the two companies had a deal in place, but last week it fell through. Two executives were forced to resign from one company, and federal prosecutors are now investigating the matter. There is a feud between the two companies resulting from the failed deal.
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Here's How To Be One Of The First To Play The New Game From The Makers Of 'World Of Warcraft' | ||
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The game will come out "sooner than you think," the company says, but a beta version will be available next year. Blizzard describes the game as a team-based multiplayer shooter. It features a bunch of stylized characters who all have a variety of looks and skills. During a panel for the game, director Jeff Kaplan Chris Metzen, Blizzard senior vice president of story and franchise development, said that they're not sure yet whether it will be a free or pay-to-play model, GameSpot reports. And whether the game comes to other consoles is also still up in the air. Right now it's just confirmed for PC. "We would love to see Overwatch played on whatever it could be played on," Kaplan said. So if you're a PC user and you're interested in signing up for the beta, it's really easy. First, go to the official page for "Overwatch." At the top of the page, click on the yellow button that says "Beta."
You then have to enter your Battle.net account, or create one if you don't have one already. Once you're signed in, click on the "sign up for beta" button.
And that's it. It's not a guarantee that you'll be invited to play the beta, but it's worth a shot. SEE ALSO: Watch The Trailer For Blizzard's New Game Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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This Super-Sized Cargo Plane Carries NASA's Largest And Most Precious Equipment | ||
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NASA's Super Guppy is big enough to fit entire planes in its teardrop-shaped cargo hold. It's as close to a flying babushka doll as an aircraft can get. Its main function is to transport spaceship parts around the world, including components of a the world's biggest effort in manned space exploration: The International Space Station. And earlier today Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques tweeted a photo of NASA's Super Guppy on the tarmac in Houston, Texas, one of NASA's major bases of operation. NASA got the Super Guppy as part of a barter agreement with its European counterpart, the European Space Agency. The transport plane's cargo hold measures 25 feet in width and height and 111 feet in length. According to NASA, the maximum payload the Super Guppy can carry is 26 tons.
But it's also what gives it such awesome scale: The entire nose is hinged and sits atop wheels that can open the cargo hold to up to 200 degrees. This is what the Supper Guppy looks like when a crew opens the mouth of the plane: "The Pregnant Guppy had humble beginning on the proverbial cocktail napkin," writes a website dedicated to the history of the Guppy family of aircraft.
The Pregnant Guppy was built from Boeing parts and first flew in 1962. It carried components used in the Apollo space program which eventually put twelve men on the moon. But it was cannibalized for spare parts in 1979. SEE ALSO: This incredible 1950s plane led to some of the military's most important modern aircraft Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Those metrics easily beat that of many military-grade transport planes like the venerable C-130 Hercules (even the bigger variant of the Hercules has a cargo hold just half as long as the Super Guppy's, and the plane can carry up to about 22.5 tons).
The Super Guppy's loading mechanism isn't exactly the kind of thing you could quickly use on a battlefield — loading two planes takes nearly three hours, for example.
A few entrepreneurs "were discussing the problems NASA was having transporting the rocket booster stages aboard ships through the Gulf of Mexico" and hit on the idea of addressing that problem using a giant, oddly shaped plane. Watch This Sea Lion Chase Down A Boat Going 25 MPH | ||
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A group of tourists on a fishing boat in Cabo San Lucas were surprised by a sea lion that started chasing their boat and then jumped on deck. Video courtesy of ViralHog.com/Tony Pescho Produced by Devan Joseph and Sam Rega
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The World's Biggest Car Market Is Finally Slowing Down | ||
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Several major auto manufacturers, including Honda and Nissan, are downgrading their Chinese sales growth forecasts for this year, while General Motors (GM) recently posted its slowest monthly pace of sales growth in China for over a year and a half. BMW's chief executive, Norbert Reithofer, believes the slowdown marks the beginning of China's transformation into a mature auto market, effectively spelling an end to high double-digit growth rates. Car ownership in China has doubled over the past decade, increasing from 34 vehicles per 1,000 people in 2009 to 69 per 1,000 last year. Investment in road infrastructure, an easing of purchasing restrictions and rising incomes-the latter of which has led to a swelling of the country's middle class-have all fuelled a significant rise in demand for passenger cars in recent years. Passenger-car sales growth reached 15.7% year on year in 2013, more than double the 6.9% growth rate from the previous year.
The news is not all bad. The Chinese government has published plans in May of this year to introduce stricter emissions targets over the next two years. Company sales figures for the month of October suggest this slowdown has continued. GM recently reported sales growth of 3.2% year on year in October, to 291,371 units, its slowest growth rate in 20 months. Sales of the company's Wuling-brand vehicles, which make up around one-half of GM's total vehicle sales in the country, were the main drag on overall sales growth, falling by 10% year on year to 121,540 units. At Honda, meanwhile, car sales fell for the fourth consecutive month in October, by 5.8% year on year, to 70,802 units. September was an even more painful month for the Japanese carmaker, with sales falling by 23% year on year. Nissan is also suffering: its China sales fell by 12% year on year in the third quarter of this year, to 259,000 units, while October sales fell by 9% year on year, to 104,400 units.
Not all car manufacturers are suffering. In late October, Volkswagen announced that its China sales to September this year were up 15% year on year, extending its lead at the top of the market. Nevertheless, several carmakers have taken the queue to Honda has now cut its full-year sales forecast by 10%, to around 800,000 units, while the full-year sales forecast for Nissan has also been downgraded, by 11% to 1.27m units. If that happens, it means that Nissan's sales for 2014 will not have grown at all compared with 2013. The Economist Intelligence Unit's forecast for the total market this year is less gloomy. We expect China to end the year with sales growth of 8.9%, which would bring total car sales to another record of 19.5m. Even so, that is not much more than half the growth rate of last year. Long- and short-term factorsThat the Chinese car market is struggling is unsurprising. An economic slowdown in China has been coupled with the effect of weakening currencies in markets such as South America and Russia. Along with escalating real-estate prices, eating into consumers' income, this is dampening consumer demand. There are longer term factors at play, too. Less bullish GDP growth prospects over the coming years are partly driven by a fall in the country's working-age population and a shift in manufacturing to lower-wage countries such as Mexico. They also reflect the government's drive to rebalance an economy, whose growth has been fuelled by a high rate of credit growth.
The Chinese government is being pressed into action over the resulting health, lifestyle and business problems. Licence plate quotas and other restrictions are already in place in six Chinese cities. The news is not all bad. The Chinese government has published plans in May of this year to introduce stricter emissions targets over the next two years. That could result in up to 6m vehicles that do not meet these targets being taken off Chinese roads by the end of this year, which could support demand into next year. Yet carmakers will have to adjust to tighter pollution controls, more intense competition, and ultimately much slower market growth. The Economist Intelligence Unit does not expect annual growth rates to go much above 6% for the next five years.
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The world's biggest car market, and the major driver of global growth in recent years, is showing signs of slowdown. 
CHART: Stock Milestones Of Internet Companies In Their First Years On The Market (TWTR) | ||
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It's been exactly one year since Twitter went public. Since that time, the company has more than doubled its revenue to $361 million ... but its losses have also widened to $175.5 million, and the company's stock is currently 9% below its first-day closing price of $44.90. We thought it'd be interesting to look at how internet companies like Twitter have fared on the stock market on the first anniversary of their IPOs. Here, you can see the respective stock price milestones of Pandora, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in their first years on the stock market.
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A Man's Guide To Stylish Winter Coats | ||
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When it comes to finding the right outerwear, you need some options. 1. The Refined ParkaThe parka you throw on to walk the dog this is not. What's great about technical pieces of late is that designers are taking them seriously as a substitute for traditional overcoats. Consider the slate-gray canvas version by Hermès. It's slick enough to wear over a suit or with a pair of jeans, but it doesn't look like a slicker. | ||
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SAME-DAY DELIVERY: E-Commerce Giants Are Battling To Own The 'Last Mile' | ||
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Companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Uber are operating and expanding services that allow shoppers to order something online and have it that same day, without ever leaving home. If they manage it, despite the expense and complexities involved in delivering over the "last mile," these companies will grow e-commerce's customer base (as well as its share of retail dollars), and siphon off one of offline retail's last real competitive advantages. In a new report, BI Intelligence takes an exhaustive look at the same-day delivery market, sizing the percentage of people who will purchase goods to be delivered the same-day this year. We uncover the demographics of same-day delivery customers, the markets where these services have the best chance of taking off, and assess how each of the many new same-day delivery entrants compares to the others. We also look at the technology that really could make getting a package delivered to your door hours after you order it a common phenomenon. Access The Full Market Forecast By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >> Here are some of the key points from the report:
In full, the report:
To access the Same-Day Delivery Market Forecast Report and BI Intelligence's ongoing coverage on the future of retail, mobile, and e-commerce — including charts, data, and analysis — sign up of a free trial.
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Berkshire Earnings Beat Expectations By $283 Per Share (BRKA, BRKB) | ||
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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway just reported third quarter operating earnings per share of $2,876, crushing estimates by $283 per share. Expectations were for earnings to come in at $2,593 per share. Net earnings per Berkshire shares totaled $2,811. Revenue in Berkshire's third quarter came in at $51.2 billion, up from $46.5 billion a year ago. Earnings for holders of Berkshire 'B' shares are equivalent 1/1,500 of the Class A amount. On Friday, Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway closed at $214,970, a new all-time high. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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