Tesla passes GM as Musk’s car maker becomes America’s top-valued

Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. briefly surpassed General Motors Co. to become America’s most valuable carmaker, eclipsing a company whose well-being was once viewed as interdependent with the nation’s.

A week after topping Ford Motor Co., Tesla climbed as much as 3.7 per cent in early Monday trading, boosting its market capitalization to $51-billion. Tesla and GM have jostled back and forth for the top spot in later trading, with the electric-car maker edging GM by about $3-million as of 2:15 p.m. in New York.

The turnabout shows the extent to which investors have bought into Mr. Musk’s vision that electric vehicles will eventually rule the road. While GM has beat Tesla to market with a plug-in Chevrolet Bolt with a price and range similar to what Mr. Musk has promised for his Model 3 sedan coming later this year, the more than century-old company has failed to match the enthusiasm drummed up by its much smaller and rarely profitable U.S. peer.

“Tesla engenders optimism, freedom, defiance, and a host of other emotions that, in our view, other companies cannot replicate,” said Alexander Potter, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos., who upgraded the stock Monday after owning a Tesla for seven months and meeting with management. “As they scramble to catch up, we think Tesla’s competitors only make themselves appear more desperate.”

Tesla’s usurping of GM and Ford will undoubtedly spur debate over the relative value of Musk’s company compared with some of the world’s top-selling automakers. GM expects to earn more than $9 billion this year and analysts predict Ford will generate adjusted profit of about $6.3 billion. On that basis, Tesla is expected to lose more than $950-million.

“Cash flow should determine what the value of a company is and our cash flow has been pretty good lately,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, told reporters Monday in New York. “At the end of the day, we run the business to serve our customers.”

If Tesla closes at a higher valuation than GM, it will rank the sixth-biggest carmaker by market cap, behind Toyota Motor Corp., Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG, BMW AG and Honda Motor Co. While Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer Musk, 45, has a long way to go to match Toyota’s $172 billion market cap, Honda is barely ahead at about $52 billion.

“The market cares more about the potential new market value of the other businesses Tesla is in than about real profits and cash flow,” said David Whiston, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. “Right now there is nothing to slow Tesla’s momentum. They could pass Honda, too.”

Tesla has long been treated like a technology stock with investors betting on its ability to dominate a market for electric cars and energy storage. To those same investors, GM and Ford are headed for a slowdown in car sales that will erode profits.

‘Isn’t Fair’

“Is it fair? No, it isn’t fair,” Maryann Keller, an auto-industry consultant in Stamford, Conn., said of GM ceding the market-cap crown. “Even if Tesla turns a profit, they will eventually have to make enough to justify this valuation.”

GM has fallen from grace before, of course. The Detroit-based company filed for a government-backed bankruptcy in 2009 and returned to the markets late the following year.

At the height of GM’s power in the U.S., former CEO Charles Wilson famously said when nominated to be then-President Dwight Eisenhower’s defense secretary: “For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”

Tesla delivered fewer than 80,000 vehicles globally last year to GM’s more than 10 million. Mr. Musk’s more-affordable Model 3 sedan, scheduled to roll out later this year, will be critical to his ambitions for Tesla to transform from niche carmaker into a mass-market manufacturer.

The Model 3 is expected to sell for about $35,000 and boast at least 215 miles (350 kilometres) of battery range per charge, marks GM achieved with the Bolt that began selling in California earlier this year.

“Tesla’s products have a captivating impact on consumers and shareholders alike; this advantage will be difficult to replicate,” Mr. Potter, the Piper Jaffray analyst, wrote in a report Monday. “Even if the Model 3 production launch goes badly, we think customers (and more importantly shareholders) will withhold judgment.”

Jelly Cam is the new Bear Cam

Spring is now fully under way, and as the weather gets warmer, the internet turns to nature cams. At any given time, there are thousands of live nature feeds available on YouTube and other services, but somehow they become more appealing as the snow thaws and the background starts to come alive.

Every year, a specific cam rises above the fray. 2015 was the year of Bear Cam, of course, while 2016 belonged to Eagle Cam — both of which arguably lived in the shadow of the original 2008 Puppy Cam. Each was iconic and era-defining in its own way, but they belong to the past now.

I can’t predict what will take off this year, but my read is that the internet is ready for something boldly new — something both shockingly different and possessing an ethereal calm, a necessary counterbalance to the ambient psychic distress of 2017.

In that spirit, I present to you the following: Jelly Cam.

It’s a live feed of the Open Sea exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is populated by a type of jellyfish known as a sea nettle. Native to the coastal regions of the Pacific, the nettles can deliver paralyzing stings through their tentacles, and are believed to play a crucial role in the plankton ecosystem. The aquarium site informs us they may travel as much as 3,600 vertical feet over the course of a day. One nettle is slightly larger than the others; I have chosen to call him Timothy.

Like Eagle Cam and Bear Cam before it, Jelly Cam connects us to an aestheticized version of the natural world. The sea nettles are framed in close-up, their trailing tentacles and mouth-arms casting otherworldly yellows and browns against the deep blue of the tank. More abstract than its predecessors, Jelly Cam presents us with the danger of Bear Cam without its brutality, the raw pleasures of Puppy Cam without the attendant naïveté.

Try it out next time you’re bored at work. And if that doesn’t work, you can always watch the llama escape again.

Feeding a HUGE Galapagos Tortoise named Buckshot!

On this episode of Dragon Tails, Coyote feeds a HUGE Galapagos Tortoise named Buckshot!

Buckshot tips the scales at around 140lbs and is nearly 25 years old. The crazy thing is she’s not even half grown so she is eating constantly…seriously, don’t let this tortoise near your salad bar!

Speaking of tortoises… are they actually turtles? Or are they something else altogether?

Get ready to find out and to see the feeding of a BFT! (Big Friendly Tortoise)

Dragon Tails explores the incredible world of snapping turtles and all of the folklore and myth that surrounds one of the planet’s most ancient and misunderstood creatures. Get ready to take a journey deep into the remote swamplands of the Eastern United States with adventurer and animal expert Coyote Peterson as you join him on his quest to find a world record sized mud dragon!

This article originally appeared at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=helhqdNlWhg.

Packing Your Suitcase Just Became a Breeze

One of the most frustrating things about traveling is the packing! The task of packing a suitcase so it can hold everything you want to take on vacation can be daunting.

We want to pack smart but we still want to take a variety of clothes so we have a choice of what to wear during our vacation. We never know ahead of time exactly what we will feel like wearing on a particular day or evening and what the weather will actually be like.  We often find ourselves realizing that we are missing just the item we feel like wearing or is appropriate for the occasion.

“At FoldiMate we listen to our customers.  They want to use FoldiMate to pack their suitcases before a trip, so we decided to take that idea one step further to simplify their lives” Debbie Cohen-Abravanel, FoldiMate’s CMO explained. 

“We already know how to fold laundry, so why not create a robotic suitcase that can fold and compress our clothes as well as reduce the size of the suitcase. If we can reduce the size of the suitcase to that of a carry-on it would mean spending less time waiting at the baggage pick-up and more vacation time.”

The new FoldiBaggage will enable travelers to literally throw their items into an extra-large sized suitcase (30″). When the suitcase is closed everything inside will fold beautifully in a few seconds. A light will indicate when the process is complete and the traveler will then click another button to compress the clothes and reduce the size of the suitcase to that of an official carry-on size for all the airlines including low cost carriers. You and your partner will now travel comfortably with one small carry-on instead of two regular sized suitcases.  One small carry-on fits all!

Yeah, yeah, we’ll work on the nasty stuff about bombs -but we ain’t doing no backdoors

Big Tech has told the UK government it will do more to remove extremist content from their networks, but has refused to offer concessions on encryption.

Following a meeting between Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd and communication service providers, called in the aftermath of the murders in Westminster, senior executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter put out a joint statement.

“Our companies are committed to making our platforms a hostile space for those who seek to do harm and we have been working on this issue for several years,” the statement reads, adding: “We share the Government’s commitment to ensuring terrorists do not have a voice online.”

In order to do that, the companies said they would “look at all options for structuring a forum to accelerate and strengthen this work.”

The letter outlines three ways to do that:

  • Improve automatic tools to remove extremist content.
  • Help other companies to do the same.
  • Support efforts from “civil society organizations” to “promote alternative and counter-narratives.”

The statement is more notable for its omissions than its promises, however. There is no mention of timelines either on taking down such content, or on taking action. There is no promise to remove such content. There is no offer of firm resources. And the only actual project referred to is the “innovative video hash sharing database that is currently operational in a small number of companies.”

Crucially, there is no mention at all of the other pressing issue -encryption.

Two days after the attack, Amber Rudd made headlines by arguing that the authorities must have access to the communications of the attacker -Khalid Masood/Adrian Ajao -and specifically highlighted Facebook-owned chat app WhatsApp that she said Masood had used on the day of the attacks.

The Home Office put out its own short statement following the meeting in which it also glossed over the encryption issue, noting that the meeting “focused on the issue of access to terrorist propaganda online.”

Rudd said she “welcomes the commitment from the key players to set up a cross-industry forum,” but pointedly notes that she would “like to see the industry go further and faster in not only removing online terrorist content but stopping it going up in the first place.”

Another recent critic of tech companies on this topic, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Yvette Cooper, called the outcome “a bit lame.”

“All the Government and social media companies appear to have agreed is to discuss options for a possible forum in order to have more discussions,” Cooper complained. “Having meetings about meetings just isn’t good enough.”

Social media companies in particular are under fire in Europe over the ready availability of extremist material and the apparent ease with which extremists communicate among themselves and with others on systems run by large Western corporations.

The issue is complicated by the fact that most of those corporations are based in the United States and so have a strong belief that removing or even blocking content is tantamount to censorship and breaks the First Amendment.

Europe takes a different approach to what constitutes fair or free speech and has threatened to introduce legislation obliging social media companies to remove extremist content or face large fines and lawsuits.ta gap.

This article originally appeared at: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/31/tech_giants_uk_home_sec_encryption/.

Paris Hilton Shines in SodaStream’s April Fools’ Prank

Among the many branded April Fools’ Day pranks that have already rolled out this year, SodaStream’s campaign with Paris Hilton deserves a special shoutout.

Hilton stars in the fake video below for something called the NanoDrop, a fictitious sparkling-water product that claims to be 5,000 times more hydrating than regular water. Paris, who is very entertaining and self-deprecating in the video, presents it as the latest invention from her very own “Paris Hilton Institute of Plastic Pollution Solutions,” or PHIPPS.

She goes on to explain more about the product, which—with its tiny packaging—has the added benefit of helping the world cut down on plastic waste. Each drop is equal to one glass of water, so regular use of the product should save up to 1,500 plastic bottles per person every year,” the says.

The reveal is quite funny, especially the random appearance by the “taxi driver/scapegoat.” The point, of course, is that using a SodaStream sparkling water maker is the best way to cut down on plastic.

The campaign was done by creative agency Allenby Concept House and director Ohav Flantz, and should get a good amount of attention in the crowded April Fools’ space. A NanoDrop website and Facebook page were launched in the days leading up to the prank. And they even got professor Ron Naaman from the Weizmann Institute of Science to give a bogus endorsement—he said it “may represent an important advanced leap in the field of Nano technology.”

“I loved working on this campaign as it delivers a really important message in a funny way that empowers everyone to make better choices and promotes a healthier and sustainable way of life,” Hilton said in a statement. “I’m always open to new ways to stay healthy and hydrated, but while it’s clear that getting our daily water intake is important, carrying home plastic bottles in the process is unnecessary when we have a great alternative in SodaStream.”

“Using fresh tap water and a SodaStream sparkling water maker to stay hydrated is an easy and economical solution for consumers—one that doesn’t involve lugging bottles home or polluting the planet,” added Matti Yahav, vp of global marketing at SodaStream International. “We brought Paris Hilton and an edgy campaign to help us draw attention to the issue in a way that is fun and entertaining. Millions of consumers are using SodaStream worldwide and we hope millions more will join us in saving our planet from plastic bottles.”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/paris-hilton-shines-in-sodastreams-april-fools-prank-about-a-super-hydrating-drop-of-water/.

Move over drones, now there are jets! – E-Flite Convergence VTOL

Looking for versatility with your next RC flight? Then the E-Flite Convergence VTOL for you!

The E-Flite Convergence VTOL (vertical take off and landing) was fun and exciting to fly. We were impressed by several of the features it includes such as the auto level capability, the ease of transitioning from stability mode to acro mode, and of course, the fact that it takes off and lands vertically.

This article originally appeared at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wnxCMWYZvE.

NBCUniversal Makes Snap an Official Home for 2018 Winter Games Content

Oh, Snap! Advertisers will dole out Olympic-worthy geofilters and lenses with the official blessing of NBCUniversal and Snap, Inc. in the upcoming Winter 2018 Olympic games, hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The deal will allow Snapchat to share clips of NBC’s Olympics content in a live story that will also feature user content. Also, Snapchat will feature coverage of the Games, co-produced by BuzzFeed and NBC for the Snapchat Discover media hub.

Advertising commitments related to this deal could come in between $50 million and $75 million in the first quarter of 2018, people familiar with the matter said. NBCUniversal executives unveiled the Snap partnership to advertisers Wednesday as part of the annual ad sales presentations known as the “upfronts.”

As in the prior deal, NBC will be able to sell ad slots on its Snapchat video content. Now, it will also be able to sell geofilters and lenses, which have become signature ad formats for Snapchat. They let marketers overlay their brand imagery on users’ faces, photos or videos.

For more information, visit the Wall Street Journal

Returning the Sense of Touch to Amputees Via Plastic Skin

Modern prosthetics enable millions of amputees to pick up an apple, but the sensation of holding that apple is still missing. Stanford chemical engineer Zhenan Bao has set out with a team of researchers to develop a new “skin” that could imitate skin’s nerve sensors. Bao’s skin would allow amputees to feel and move at the same time with bendable prosthetics.

To get a sense of just how incredible Bao’s feat is, consider how your regular sense of touch works: Inside your skin are millions of nerve receptors. These receptors gather information about force, pain, and temperature. The receptors then send electrical impulses to your neurons (nerve cells). The impulses pass rapidly from neuron to neuron, to the spinal cord, and finally to your brain. The brain then has the job of translating the incoming signals. To work properly, Bao’s skin had to replicate that entire sequence, all with an adaptable, flexible material that still would be durable enough to avoid interruption of the process.

It may still be in concept, but the logistics that Bao and his team have hurdled through already are significant. Their theory and process can be read in more detail at Inc. and at Bao Research Group

Bao stresses that the skin is still only in the proof of concept phase, and that much more work is required to get the full touch capability most people naturally have. She still has to develop and incorporate systems that will mimic the remaining five types of biological sensing mechanisms regular skin holds. But already, the basic, two-layer foundation Bao has makes such additions theoretically feasible, and her team is partnering with PARC (of Xerox) to adapt inkjet printing technology that would make the skin practical over a large area. Not only that, but Bao’s plastic fabric also should be able to “heal” and power itself. It might take time, but molecule by molecule, it’s coming.