#'actually its four companies using all the electricity in the whole wide world'

[torosdottir]

i think its funny when people are like "actually all our environmental issues are completely the fault of these few big companies" like oh damn are they doing that by themselves? thats soooo weird i wonder what they have to gain from that. oh we're buying the shit? oh its us too? damn i guess the personal responsibility thing is problematic and outdated tho huh. hm

[five-rivers]

Home

The building that housed Fentonworks had never been normal, no matter what neighbors and real estate agents might profess.

Things had happened there. Deaths. Wild twists of fate and shocking coincidences. People who lived there heard noises, saw things, felt things. Experienced sicknesses with no cause. Were cured of sicknesses without cause. Survived things that should have killed them.

It was a thin spot between worlds. Reality was a rippling membrane, frayed enough for things to shine through.

The construction of the neighborhood itself had been… strange. It happened much faster than it should have, as if there was a whole extra shift of workers on the project.

The townhouse that would one day become Fentonworks had stood out even in that mystery. Extra rooms, a basement deep enough to cause a nasty fight with regulators, features not approved by the architect.

It was a wonder they hadn’t hit any of the water lines or the sewage systems. A wonder- and an impossibility. So, the matter was ignored and dropped.

Then the next owners expanded that impossible basement, building another, secret basement and putting things in the walls- They were criminals, of course. It was expected for them to do illegal things. (Although exactly what they had done was… oddly uncertain.)

(Drugs, perhaps.)

Then, the lunatics. Then, the tiny cult that collapsed in on itself. Then the empty years, dozens of transient ghosts trying and failing to pass through, and the ghost hunters. So many ghost hunters, none of them particularly successful.

Then, the Fentons.

Then, little Jazz.

Then, little Danny.

Danny with wide eyes that saw too much.

And all the horrors that the Fentons could dream up, from living hotdogs to weapons that burned like stars and doors to places that should not be visited.

And this was Danny Fenton’s home.

.

The Manson estate was an odd case, even for Amity Park. Save for the basement, the entire building they lived in had been transplanted, brick and beam, from Germany.

Rich people were bizarre.

Even the Mansons couldn’t explain it. The man who had done it hadn’t been a Manson. The Mansons, who were relatively new money, all things considered, had purchased it from one of the man’s children. Anything to boost their prestige.

It was fancy, and it was old, a gothic and statuesque mansion worthy of its name. Still, it wasn’t quite fancy or old enough to merit the kind of expenditure moving it had to take.

Hence the rumors, squelched by the Mansons, that the place was haunted.

It wasn’t.

The rumors, however, were enough to get one Samantha Manson interested in the occult. Especially given how hard she saw her parents working to hide the rumors from her.

No. The mansion wasn’t haunted. For all it’s oddities and quirks – which only multiplied as the Mansons added more and more features to it – the building itself was mundane.

(The land it was built on might have been another story.)

And this was Sam Manson’s home.

.

The Foleys didn’t want to know what Tucker got up to in the attic, but liked to think that, with that one exception, their home was a nice one. It was on a nice street, in a nice neighborhood, just far enough away from Fentonworks to keep both sightings of the Ghost Assault Vehicle and resultant property damage and property taxes to a minimum. Within walking distance of the high school, a supermarket, and a park.

They kept the fridge and pantry stocked. Their food might not have always been healthy – red meat was an element of almost every meal – but it was always available and filling. They made an effort for the dietary restrictions of Tucker’s friends of course.

All the rooms were kept clean and neat. Even Tucker’s, by way of bribes. Everything was organized, everything had its place. Except, perhaps, for the stray shoe or piece of schoolwork.

But that attic.

It really hadn’t been anything, before Tucker asked if he could move his computer stuff up there. Just a storage space, one too difficult for either Angela or Maurice to climb up there often. They didn’t consider themselves old, but they couldn’t call themselves young either. Not with a son Tucker’s age.

Once Tucker had realized the attic was there, he had been fascinated. And, well, once he was old enough for them to not worry about him falling off the ladder, they let him go up.

Some days, it seemed, he didn’t come down.

Better than his faintly disturbing Ancient Egypt phase, where he kept bringing pictures of mummified corpses to the table. Or, worse, the werewolf phase.

And this was Tucker Foley’s home.

.

Amity Park had claimed the distinction of ‘most haunted town in America’ long before the Fentons opened their portal. In fact, that was the reason the Fentons had set up shop there, in the first place.

No haunted town was complete without at least one haunted house. Amity Park had several. Not to mention a haunted hospital, a selection of haunted schools, a haunted museum, a haunted pool, a haunted crosswalk, a haunted mall, a haunted football field… The list went on, essentially ad nauseum.

Of course, that list mostly consisted of places that became haunted after the Fentons built their portal. But even before then, some places offered their dubious charms to tourists.

Mostly gullible ones. More than half of the claims of hauntings before the portal opened were fraudulent in their entirety. These places quickly went broke and got abandoned when real ghosts started showing up.

One of these was the ominously named Raven House, which stood in the hills on the west edge of town.

The story the tourists of years gone by had been told was that a widower had lived out here, all by himself and that one day, he stopped coming to town, or paying his bills, or even getting his mail. When the mailbox at the end of the long driveway was full, the mailman decided to go check on the widower. What he found was a flock of ravens and a skeleton, entirely picked clean of flesh.

No such death had occurred there, nor in any part of Amity. No such person had ever lived in the house, either. The last owners, before the company that decided to market the house as haunted, were a couple with two children.

It wasn’t until months after the portal started up that it became haunted in truth.

.

“This place isn’t haunted,” said Danny, panning his flashlight over cobwebbed corners on the ceiling. “I don’t think it ever was.”

“That’s what, strike five?” asked Sam.

Danny shrugged. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Four, actually,” said Tucker. “We counted the hospital as inconclusive, since we don’t know if anyone was there before Spectra.”

Danny nodded. “It’s weird, though, isn’t it? That no one lives here, I mean. It looks like a perfectly nice house.”

“Décor’s a bit… eh. Trying to hard to be haunted,” said Tucker, poking a raven decal on the wallpaper.

“I like it,” said Sam. “Needs cleaning, though.”

“Hey,” said Tucker, “you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you? Because I’m pretty sure that’d be illegal.”

“It isn’t as if anyone else is using the place,” argued Sam. “It could be a great backup hideout, if we ever had to… you know.” She glanced at Danny. “Plus, we’d be doing them a favor, really, keeping things clean and lived in.”

“I think it’s an okay idea,” said Danny.

“Yeah, but you think lots of dumb things are good ideas. Like showing up at a party hosted by people who publicly humiliate you on a regular basis.”

Danny grumbled something about trauma responses that sounded like a direct quote from Jazz and something else about that incident being ages (aka weeks) ago. Then, he brightened.

“We could get one of the little ectoplasm generators to power everything,” he said. “Remember all that stuff we lifted from Skulker and Technus? We could actually use it. Study and test things without worrying about whether our parents will walk in. I mean, your attic is great, but still.”

“Plus, we can have actual lab safety protocols. No offense, Danny.”

“I am the one that half-died in a lab accident, so… None taken.”

Tucker rubbed his chin. “Alright. I suppose I can see the appeal… But if we have stuff that can trace back to us, we could get in serious trouble."

“We’ll be careful, then,” said Sam.

“Anything I take from Mom and Dad has plausible deniability. They’ll assume ghosts stole it.”

“We also need to clean if we’re being serious about this. And get a fridge. And figure out the pluming situation.”

“Fridge is on the list. We have to be careful about the outside, too. If this place is suddenly well maintained, people will notice.”

“Sure, but that isn’t something they’d call the cops over,” said Danny. “They’ll just assume new people are moving in. If anyone sees it at all. We’re pretty far away from anything. But pluming won’t be too hard. We just need to bring our own water. Like, toilets flush using physics. If you dump more water in, they’ll go, no electricity required.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can’t even tell you how many time Mom and Dad blew out all our breakers with stuff in the lab,” said Danny. “You pick up a few things.”

“Well,” said Tucker, swinging his flashlight over to examine a discolored spot on the ceiling. “Then… Home sweet home, I suppose.”

.

There was a house in the hills in the west hills of Amity Park.

And this was the home of two and a half humans and half a ghost.

[witcca]

How to Transform Your Concept Into a Product

Consider the first thing you did this early morning. If you're an early bird, opportunities are it was flipping on a light, and also you thought nothing of it.

But electrical energy was a far cry from the ordinary 140 years earlier, denounced by numerous leading scientists as a fairy tale. But Thomas Edison persevered, and below we are living in a constantly lit-up world.

Technology is not a very easy procedure, however it has the power to thrust you into the business world and open doors. The very first step in turning your concept right into a product is sharing it with the world.

Below's what you require to understand about beginning and also introducing your invention. You can also check InventHelp Commercial

The challenges of inventing

Success worldwide of development is all about getting your timing right. If you wait too long, somebody else will capitalize on a comparable suggestion as well as capture your specific niche. On the other hand, if your invention is the initial of its kind, the marketplace could not prepare-- and you'll have to fight an uphill struggle to carve out a place for your product.

Henry Helgeson, CEO, as well as co-founder of Cayan (now part of TSYS) faced this issue as a mobile payments modern technology firm in 2011-- years prior to mobile payments came to be mainstream. For various other startups on the "too-early" side of advancement, he advised standing firm to be successful of your competitors when the marketplace does catch up.

" Peers in our sector [said mobile payments] would never happen, however we maintained relocating and also got a 3- to four-year get on everyone," claimed Helgeson. "It takes a while ... it's not something you can accumulate over night. But once you have momentum going, it's really effective."

If you're on the later end, Helgeson claimed, you require to have a look at your competition as well as make a decision if it's something you intend to proceed with, or if you're far better off entering another direction with your invention.

" There [ought to constantly be] a sense of urgency to repair what you require to, make the change, and also [get the item] back out to market," he said. "As long as you do it swiftly, it's OKAY."

One more huge challenge for inventors is finding out exactly how to make the public familiar with your product. Your suggestion might be wonderful, yet without an advertising and marketing strategy, no person will certainly ever before understand about it.

" In hindsight, we were also focused on our product and also believed it would market itself," said Helgeson. "You need a strategy to [market it]".

In a previous Organisation Information Daily interview, marketing and also communications expert Nicole Lininger stated that several entrepreneurs that are simply starting do not have a large advertising and marketing budget to promote their inventions. Yet that doesn't need to stand in their method, she said. Lininger recommended beginning with a solid social networks marketing strategy, which is cost-efficient and also wide-reaching. also see InventHelp Linkedin

Tips for success.

Ready to turn your item suggestion into a fact? Professionals provided the complying with guidance for aiming inventors and also business owners.

Do not go it alone.

You might desire to find a producer if you're looking to develop your prototype, or Rocket Legal representative if you're looking for a qualified, on-demand patent attorney. You must additionally consider a service companion, claimed Anayet Chowdhury, co-founder of Argo Preparation.

" Discover a founder that believes in your idea/product and also has a particular set of skills that you do not possess," stated Chowdhury. "Companies that have co-founders are [more likely] to prosper compared to solopreneurs.".

Incubators can also be a wonderful location to discover success, providing trendsetters with devices, sources, as well as an encouraging neighborhood as you relocate via the procedure.

Kate Bell, owner, and also supervisor of zooming Us In, which offers coat expanders for expectant women, utilize IncuHive as a base for her organisation. "Business assistance has been superb as well as enabled me to be positive in my scale-up strategies with such a substantial network of experience behind me," she stated. "IncuHive have actually been instrumental in us pitching to financiers and has provided meeting room and an advisory board.".

Take some time to do your research study.

Inventing an item needs a whole lot of initial examination, perseverance, and resilience, Lininger stated. This is especially true when you're looking at patent protection for your concept.

" Do some research into intellectual property as well as familiarize [yourself] with the process and also the jargon used in the field, consisting of patent, copyright, trademark, etc.," claimed Lininger. "There are numerous reliable websites you can gain from, such as the United States Patent and also Trademark Office, the World Copyright Company, and also the World Trade Organization. If patent protection is something you are interested in, call a patent legal representative.".

Go To the UNITED STATE Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) internet site as well as examine any patents on items like the one you intend to invent. If you have inquiries or want to be sure your invention is lawful for you to create and sell, speak with an attorney focusing on licenses and IP regulation.

You ought to additionally look at what's out there as well as evaluate your competition. Marco Cirillo, founder, and also CTO of Kibii recommended investigating who your competitors are, what your target audience likes as well as dislikes about items already on the marketplace, and if your product is special enough to stand out.

" Several founders and local business owner will certainly leave marketing as a second thought," claimed Cirillo. "To get the highest possible return, you need to perform research study and established targets before you even introduce your product. This will certainly assist the team keep aligned and have a typical vision so you can make certain a successful item launch.".

Establish a model.

Once you've located your market and also made sure that your lawful path is clear, it's time to develop a prototype. At this moment, you'll require to determine if you're going to have your product manufactured or accredited.

The former methods you'll develop and also sell your product yourself (this includes paying a 3rd party to manufacture your item); the last methods you'll market one more firm the legal rights to make, make use of as well as sell your products, providing that right in exchange for a license charge and aristocracy payments.

Service your lift pitch.

Even prior to you have actually a completed product to sell, you'll need to chat it approximately your buddies as well as expert contacts. Lininger stressed the relevance of creating a great lift pitch: a brief, succinct sales pitch that includes a hook, a worth statement, statistics, as well as various other information, your item's individuality, and a phone call to activity. You can also follow https://twitter.com/inventhelp

Consistently evaluate your item.

Helgeson advised entrepreneurs that their items are not going to be perfect in their first models. You'll need to modify the item along the road, as well as the very best way to identify those modifications is by examining your invention with actual customers. Obtain honest responses from test groups to validate your concept, he said.

" The validation process requires to happen regularly," stated Helgeson. "If you're attempting to do something and also the market informs you [they desire] something else, you might be going down the incorrect course. Be out there in the field ... speaking to people, belonging to market conversations. You can not being in a room as well as try to dream something up.".

[dangerdaysdiary]

From Cassie the Venomous... A Danger Days FAQ

You can find the original post on Cassie’s website here.

Frequently asked 'Danger Days...' Questions Answered!March 18, 2011Now that My Chemical Romance's Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys is out, I'm finding more and more questions about it leading people to this site. I figured it would be beneficial to address some of the ones that are asked most frequently in one place for the benefit of all! I hope this helps! ORIGINAL POST:  November 24, 2010 @ 11:57 P.M. UPDATED: March 18, 2011 @ 9:47 P.M. ____ The Killjoys Fun Ghoul -Corresponding MCR member: Guitarist, Frank Iero -Raygun: Green with horror-style stickers attached to it -Symbol: A smiling face with one eye crossed out and a jagged mouth -Physical Description: Wears a yellow shirt with black-striped accents over which he wears a military vest. In the video for "SING," Fun Ghoul bears a scar on the right side of his face at his mouth. -Mask: Purple and green Frankenstein mask -Additional Information: ... Jet Star -Corresponding MCR member: Guitarist, Ray Toro -Raygun: Blue with red and white details and the text "BECAUSE I SAID SO" -Symbol: Star with a face and a lightening bolt rising from its left side -Physical Description: Wears an eyepatch on his right side. His jacket displays an American flag on its back. -Mask: Black astronaut-style helmet -Additional Information: The original name for Jet Star was "Raygun Jones." Kobra Kid -Corresponding MCR member: Bassist, Mikey Way -Raygun: Red with white details and a decal that says "deluxe" (his raygun was originally named "Demon-shark Deluxe"). -Symbol: the face of a hissing cobra -Physical Description: Wears a red jacket over a yellow-and-black zebra-print shirt -Mask: Yellow helmet with blue and red eye-like details that displays the message “GOOD LUCK” on its visor -Additional Information: In addition to his raygun, Kobra Kid can also be seen using a power glove in the video for “Na Na Na…." Mikey describes Kobra Kid as a "misunderstood" character with a "short temper" who "knows Kung-Fu." Party Poison -Corresponding MCR member: Vocalist, Gerard Way -Raygun: yellow with pink details and "Give Me Money" written in Japanese on its side. -Symbol: pill with an "X" beneath it -Physical Description: Wears a blue jacket with red details, a "dead pegasus" logo on the front and his Killjoy symbol on the back -Mask: yellow domino mask with blue circular details and clown-style eyes or a decorated "mousekat" helmet. -Additional Information: Party Poison was among the Danger Days... characters active on Twitter preceding the album's release. The Killjoys' names, which Mikey Way told NME are "themed after designer drugs," started as the names of their rayguns, but later turned into character names. The band has said that their Killjoy personas are not characters they are playing, but how they picture themselves in the future. Are the Killjoys Dead? Currently, as a result of the “SING” video, the Killjoys are presumed dead. However, a picture from Gerard Way of “Party Poison” in what appears to be an unzipped body bag (left) captioned “Killjoys never die” has many fans questioning how dead they truly are. UPDATE: April 10, 2011 Dr. Death Defying tweeted: that "there are four acceptable levels of dead after posting an ode to Party Poison, whom he called "dearly departed." More information will follow if the four levels of dead are explained further. Dr. Death Defying Played by Steve Righ? of Mindless Self Indulgence, Dr. Death Defying is the smooth-talking narrator who filters in-and-out of Danger Days…. He is a D.J. for 109 F.M., WKIL, a pirate radio station that operates in the Zones. He is recognized by his “Slaughtermatic Sounds” jacket, which also says “Jackals” and “Philly,” his aviator sunglasses and the bandanna he wears tied around his head. Dr. Death Defying uses an electric wheelchair because of an apparent injury to his left leg, to which an electric brace is strapped. In an hour-long video “listening party” hosted by the D.J., the character implied that he is a veteran, possibly of the Helium Wars, which have been alluded to vaguely. Show Pony and the Girl Show Pony, the character who can be recognized by his "NOISE" half-shirt, blue-and-white polka-dot tights & helmet and rollerskates is the companion of Dr. Death Defying, the narrator of Danger Days... (played by Steve from Mindless Self Indulgence). Show Pony is played by performer Ricky "Rebel" (Twitter | Reverbnation). Rebel opened for My Chemical Romance as Show Pony at the band's Hollywood album release show. The actress who plays the Killjoy girl in the videos, whose character name has thus far only been "the Girl," goes by Grace Jeanette. She, too, is an actress and a musical performer. The Girl's role in the Danger Days world appears to be a significant one; as, she was kidnapped by Better Living Industries for a stull-unknown reason. The Zones and Battery City

The Killjoys world centers around Battery City and its surrounding concentric Zones. The map to the left shows how the Zones are laid out in relation to the city. Utopian Battery City is central, corporate, clean and the center of manufacturing. It is where Battery Towers is located. Battery City, California is the setting for My Chemical Romance's "SING" video, to give you a better perception of what it looks like. The setting for the "Na Na Na..." video is in the Zones, which are a more lawless, desert terrain in which the Killjoys live, run and fully embrace their freedom. The Zones are dirty, wild and dangerous-- the opposite of Battery City. Geographic landmarks include: Route Guano, which is the road on which Gerard has said, "the shit happens." It is where Jet Star and Kobra Kid are "ghosted" by an exterminator in the Danger Days... track "Jet-Star and The Kobra Kid/Traffic Report." "The Getaway Mile," which may be a specific location, is mentioned in the song "Bulletproof Heart." There is also a place which Dr. Death Defying on Twitter called "Wolfblood Beach." Better Living Industries Better Living Industries (Also known as BLI, BL/ind, or BL industries) is the corporation that controls Battery City. The corporation strives to bring about structure in a post-apocalyptic world. It is known for producing emotion-eliminating medications as well as every other manufactured product one can acquire in 2019. BLI crosses over from the Killjoys world and into real life. The made-up corporation has its own  web site with products that you can actually purchase, a mission statement and a "Zone Report" in both Japanese and English.  Also, MCR takes it a step further by having changed the name under which their music is published to "Better Living Industries Music," which you can see in the liner notes of Danger Days.... BLI also overtakes the edited version of Danger Days..., whiting out the internal album art, taking away the lyrics and putting its smiling face logo (above right) all over it. The Danger Days: California 2019 Edition box set is packaged in a BLI box and the 3-song The Mad Gear & Missile Kid E.P. that comes with it is printed on a disc made to look like a BLI brand CD-R. Check out some BL/ind commercials and "Fact News" reports. Dead Pegasus Dead Pegasus is a 2019 oil company. Korse, Draculoids and S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W

Korse is an exterminator for BL/ind's SCARECROW Unit. In the videos, he is played by comic writer Grant Morrison. The "SING" video has raised speculation among fans that Korse could possibly a robot of some sort; as, he is seemingly "activated" in his chamber by the push of a button. Some also speculate, based on Gerard Way's character sketches and his indicating that Korse suffers from "Zone sickness," that he may stay in the  chamber shown in the "SING" video for medical reasons. Grant Morrison revealed to MTV that Korse is "intimately connected with the Killjoys and their secret history," which has yet to be revealed. The SCARECROW Unit of BL/ind is a sort of police force. Korse leads it, and The Draculoids are the other exterminators that appear to be of lower ranking than Korse. They're a "clean-up crew" for the Zones, getting rid of the things and people who do not comply with the monochromatic standards of Better Living Industries. The Mad Gear And Missile Kid

The Mad Gear and Missile Kid is My Chemical Romance's alter-ego band for Danger Days... Mad Gear is what MCR imagined the Killjoys would listen to in 2019. Fans who ordered the California 2019 Box Set received a bonus E.P. of the three tracks MCR recorded as The Mad Gear And Missile Kid: 1. F.T.W.W.W. (acronym for "fuck this whole wide world") 2. "Mastas Of Ravenkroft" 3. "Black Dragon Fighting Society" The genesis of TMG&MK came with the writing of "Black Dragon Fighting Society," which was originally recorded for the pre-Danger Days album the band "scrapped." "F.T.W.W.W." and "Mastas of Ravenkroft" followed as songs created specifically for TMG&MK. Gerard Way told Alternative Press that the MCR is interested in creating a full album as The Mad Gear and Missile Kid and that they would like to play shows as the alter-ego band on off-days of tours in the future. EVENTS in the Zones 2012: The Great Fires 2017: The Pig Bomb ?: Helium Wars

-- If there's something about which you are confused that you would like added to this post, let me know! Consider this a perpetual draft that will update as often as you, Reader, need it to. Also, please don't hesitate to submit corrections! I have compiled the information in this post using knowledge I've gained from interviews of the band by several sources. Suggested Reading to Expand your Killjoys Knowledge: The Twitter development of the Zones presented in a linear fashion. A full interview transcript series posted by Coup De Main Magazine. XoXo c.

[ryanbaines]

Book Text

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fILORBS9DwA

We all come to stop signs and stops signs and the rules of stopping its not just the law its not just the rule it’s a way of life. But it fools a lot of drivers, what most drivers do is that they slow down enough so that they won't get a ticket. But in reality that’s not the whole purpose of it, its not just about law, its about observation, its about right of way. If you take a stop sign as a stop sign and then I'm going to check to see if it's clear I can look for cars I have to look for a cyclist I have to look for pedestrians especially the little ones. If we think about looking to see if it's clear first we probably going to stop, and its not about getting a ticket it's about making sure everything is safe, for people who only slow down, its not a slow and go its actually if they are slowing down they are not thinking about stopping. So if there’s a problem they won’t stop for it because they thinking about going to the rule of thumb is be safe. But part of being safe is following the rules and thinking about what-ifs, what if a pedestrian step out, what if a car comes out, you got to be prepared to stop not be prepared to go. It’s not a go sign it’s a stop sign

Scott Marshal

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/magazine/stop-sign.html?_r=0

In the early automobile age, American streets existed in a Hobbesian. “Not only were the streets in those days completely disgusting and filthy, but there were horses and bicycles, and it was just completely chaotic,” says Joshua Schank, C.E.O. of the Eno Transportation Foundation, whose namesake and founder, William Phelps Eno, is widely credited with conceiving the stop sign at the turn of the 20th century.

At a time when there were no driver’s licenses, speed limits or clear lane demarcations, the notion of a stop sign was revolutionary. In fact, aside from the occasional road markers letting riders on horseback know how far they were from the next city, there was no road or street signage at all. Eno, scion of a wealthy New England family who never learned to drive, helped change all that. In a 1900 article titled “Reforming Our Street Traffic Urgently Needed,” for Rider and Driver magazine, he proposed placing stop signs at intersections. It was a civilizing notion.“That was a new concept and really did introduce the idea that you had to watch out for other people,” Schank says.

Eno became a key figure in a traffic-control awakening that would make great strides in the early 20th century. In 1911, a Michigan road got a centerline. In 1915, Cleveland received an electric traffic signal. Detroit, the center of the automobile industry, is credited with installing the first proper stop sign that same year. According to Schank, it took the form of a 2-by-2-feet sheet of metal with black lettering on a white background.

We have the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments to thank for the stop sign’s iconic shape. In 1923, the association developed an influential set of recommendations about street-sign shapes whose impact is still felt today. The recommendations were based on a simple, albeit not exactly intuitive, idea: the more sides a sign has, the higher the danger level it invokes. By the engineers’ reckoning, the circle, which has an infinite number of sides, screamed danger and was recommended for railroad crossings. The octagon, with its eight sides, was used to denote the second-highest level. The diamond shape was for warning signs. And the rectangle and square shapes were used for informational signs.

It took a bit longer to determine the stop sign’s color. It wasn’t until 1935 that traffic engineers created the first uniform standards for the nation’s road signage, known as the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. It was 166 pages long and recommended a yellow stop sign with black letters. The 1954 revision, however, called for the stop sign to be red with white letters, in step with the color-coding system developed for the railroad and traffic signals. “Red has always been associated with stop,” Hawkins explains. “The problem was they could not produce a reflective material in red that would last. It just was not durable until companies came up with a product in the late ’40s, early ’50s.”

Today the stop sign is so ingrained in the collective international driving culture that some experts are, counterintuitively, recommending doing away with it entirely. (Ejby, Denmark; Ipswich, England; and Ostend, Belgium, are already experimenting with a post-stop-sign world.) “The theory is that people will pay more attention to pedestrians and other vehicles and slow down in pedestrian areas if there are no signs because they won’t know what to do,” Schank says. “That wouldn’t be possible if [Eno] hadn’t first introduced the stop sign.”

https://www.drivingtesttips.biz/stop-road-signs.html

WHY ARE THERE STOP SIGNS

Stop signs are often located at hazardous junctions. There are open and closed junctions – open being the type of T-junction that is easily determined whether it is safe to proceed without the need to stop as a clear view of the road that you are entering is available.

A closed junction makes the road you intend on joining obscured by trees, fences hedges, etc. See junctions for a further in-depth explanation.

A stop sign may be located at a closed junction or a junction that is particularly hazardous for any reason. They may also be placed in areas of high accident rates.

Give way signs may also be used at hazardous junctions, but unlike stop signs, it is the driver’s discretion whether they stop or not. 

STOP SIGN LAW

In terms of the Highway Code, the words ‘must‘ and ‘should‘ are often used. The word ‘should’ is advisory and the word ‘must’ is used when giving an instruction of a rule or law (regulative).

Motorists must stop behind the line at a junction where a stop sign is in place with a solid white line. It is the law that a driver must stop at least once before the line and wait for a safe gap before proceeding.

DO CYCLISTS HAVE TO STOP AT STOP SIGNS

The Highway Code states to cyclists ‘You MUST obey all traffic signs and traffic light signals’. Like motorists, cyclists must also stop at stop signs.

STOP SIGN PENALTY AND FINE

The penalty code TS30 – Failing to comply with a stop sign, will gain three penalty points on a driver's license which will remain in place for four years. Running a stop sign will usually see drivers faced with a £100 fixed penalty fine, though in more extreme cases, fines can amount from between £100 to £1000. 

Evaluation of Text

For my first piece of text, I chose a Youtube video as not only was it factual I found it entertaining as I felt it was humorous due to the way he worded it, it sounded overly enthusiastic for example, ‘We all come to stop signs and stops signs and the rules of stopping its not just the law its not just the rule it’s a way of life.’

For my second text, I found an article about the history of stop signs and why they are there color and shape, I found this interesting and think it works well with my subject I have chosen. 

For the final piece of text, I found this text on a website helping people pass there driving test it explains the rules and what to do at a stop sign and who has too and doesn't have to abide by it.

For the text of my book, I found it difficult to find information about stop signs, The vast majority of websites only had a small amount of information about how to use them. I didn't want my book to be all about how to use a stop sign but the history and information about the stop sign itself. Overall I'm pretty happy with the text I have chosen and will make for an interesting and informative book.

[tisfan]

Slack Water, Part Six

Part One: Ripples | Part Two: Gyre | Part Three: Phytotelma | Part Four: Palagic | Part Five: Tsumani

Name of Piece Slack Water, part six: Shoals Square Filled K2: Reunion Also on A03 Rating Mature Warnings: Consentacles, tentacle sex, marine mating habits, oral sex (sort of? I dunno, Tony’s a fish!) Summary: Tony Stark/Bucky Barnes

Bucky’s never actually been free. While Bucky is discovering what freedom is like, Tony is learning everything his mate likes. Fleeing south, Tony eventually brings Bucky home...

Created For : @tonystarkbingo

There was the sea.

Bucky had dragged the tiny tank down a bumpy path, much less smooth than the interior of Hydra’s cavern. He had to stop more frequently to rest; pushing the tank, or pulling it, both were equally exhausting. And the little rocks that made up the path were painful against his skin. It wasn’t far, he hoped. He scouted ahead a few times, although he tried not to get out of sight; Tony got anxious if he couldn’t see where Bucky was.

But he could hear the tide crashing against the beach, somewhere.

He only hoped he was going in the right direction.

The sun was hot, and the water in Tony’s tank was getting warmer. Uncomfortable. And Tony was starting to have trouble breathing. There just wasn’t that much oxygen left. Damn Hydra. But if they died now, so close to their goal, at least they would die free.

Further, and the rocky path gave way to thick plant material. It was smoother, and the tank rolled easier. Below them, low water rushed under it, not deep enough for Tony, and too far away to get to.

Finally, Bucky reached the end of the long wooden thing, a projected, manthings built path over the sea. The water was below them, several manlengths down.

Tony. I’m going to push you in. Try to dive shallow. I don’t know how deep the water is.

Tony managed a weak nod.

Bucky worked the tank all the way to the edge of the wooden path and shoved as hard as he could, rocking the tank back and forth. Water spilled out of both sides as Tony sloshed back and forth inside.

The whole thing tipped and Tony hit the wooden path. He flopped a few times, back bowing as he struggled to move in the strange, waterless world, and then, splash, over the side.

Bucky peered cautiously over the side, looking down into the water. He didn’t see Tony. The white froth crashed against the pillars holding up the wooden path.

Bucky skittered to the edge, then down the side to the water.

He paused at the very surface.

He’d never actually been in the ocean, not that he remembered. He knew he came from there, but Bucky was tank-raised. He’d always been in Hydra’s waters. He hesitated, then… Tony.

(more below the cut)

Tony was waiting for him, near the bottom, tucked against one of the wooden pillars, just breathing.

The water was cool. Fresh and full of oxygen. There were other, living things. Clusters of mollusks on the wooden pillars. A bed of clams.

Bucky wrapped one arm around his mate. He told himself he wasn’t frightened. They were free. They were free of Hydra, and they could go anywhere they wanted. Well, Tony could. Bucky still had the arm, attached to him. Marked by Hydra. He would always be one of them. Not a free mer. Not… worthy.

Tony broke open a few of the mollusks, teasing the morsel out of its casing. Food. Eat?

We shouldn’t stay here long. They might come looking for us.

Tony shoved several pieces of mollusk and clam into his mouth, chewing hastily. Yeah. I don’t… I need to get my bearings.

Bucky wasn’t even sure he knew what that meant.

Come on. This way.

Bucky followed.

The water grew deeper. Colder. Blacker. Bucky kept close to his mate.

There were more living things in the waters than Bucky had ever seen before. Fish and crustaceans. A pod of squeaky dolphins swam by them, playing in the water. Tony kept them low in the water and they moved slowly, with Tony darting from clusters of plants to sunken manthings, always looking around.

What are you doing?

There are sharks, sometimes.

Bucky didn’t know what a shark was.

Whenever Bucky asked where they were going, Tony just answered south. Or something home. At least Tony had a home, Bucky guessed. Even if Bucky had no idea what or where that was. They passed a school of mers at one point, and Tony stopped to chat with them, Bucky hanging back shyly.

The water got warmer again, cleaner.

Tony was moving faster now, well fed and with fresh water surrounding them all the time, he was stronger.

They found a small cavern, enough room for them both, and a wide rock that Bucky could pull across the entrance. It was nice. Safe. They stayed a few days. Tony hunted, using his electrical pulses to stun almost an entire school of fish. Some of them swam away, but the rest of them, Bucky scurried around to grab hold of, before they floated, dead, to the surface.

It was nice.

In the dark safety of their cavern, Bucky discovered other nice things.

He discovered that Tony was honing his skill at kisses. And that there were other things they could do to each other that were pleasurable.

Tony slid his mouth along Bucky’s body, testing his reactions, seeing what felt best. There were places that Bucky liked Tony’s mouth. On his ears, especially when Tony would nip along the shell. Down the length of Bucky’s neck, which made Bucky lean his head back as far as he could, to expose his throat. Tony would lick and taste Bucky’s chest. Along the divisial line, between his upper body and that of his lower half, where pale flesh gave way to red skin.

And then there were places on Bucky’s body where Bucky loved Tony’s mouth.

Tony found Bucky’s mating arm, the third right, with its sensitive packets, and touched them with his mouth. It was unbearable and wonderful at the same time. Bucky’s other arms pulled ‘round his mate, drew him closer. Each sucker mouth clamped on to Tony’s skin, a little kiss, a hundred little kisses.

I have you, darling.

Bucky writhed in Tony’s embrace as Tony licked and fondled the length of Bucky’s mating arm, stimulating and teasing and tormenting it all at once. Sensation zinged along all his nerves.

What do I… how do-- Bucky and Tony were different species, Tony didn’t have a mating arm, not that Bucky had been able to see or discover. Bucky didn’t know how to please his mate.  

You are pleasing me. Tony gently pulled Bucky’s mating arm out of his mouth, nipped at the very tip. He swam up, rubbing himself against Bucky’s body. Took Bucky’s upper arm, one finger. Press, here. He opened his mouth, indicated the specialized glands inside his mouth. Here. And here. Every time you give me kisses, it pleases me.

Bucky poked gingerly inside Tony’s mouth. Tony arched into it, his spine curving beautifully.

Yes like, oh. Oh, Neptune, sweet--

And then it was push and pull, Bucky holding onto Tony with as many arms as he could wrap around the daggerfish. Tony, open mouthed and making sweet sounds in the water, licking and biting and stroking at Bucky’s mating arm.

Tension shot between them, grew, and grew, until Bucky didn’t know what was happening. Everything was light and soft and warm, and he felt so, so good.

Tony! Tony!

There was a rhythm in it, an intimacy like Bucky had never known. Losing himself in the body of another. Touching, and stroking and-- Oh, Tony!

He tightened his grip until there was no room at all between Tony and himself, until every inch of his flesh was pressed against Tony, fingers and mating arm in Tony’s mouth, and he swelled and ached and…

Bucky!

The ocean boiled around him. Everything, everything was light and pleasure and sweetness. Bucky felt like his very essence was pulling away from his body, that he was glowing like the sun, that… oh, Neptune, that was good. It was go, so good.

Tony was shivering all over, clinging and tense and then he cried out.

I’ve got you.

Yes, yes you do. Tony gazed at him fondly through lowered eyelids. You have me, and you will always have me.

The days passed, hunting and securing their home. The nights passed, locking in each other’s embrace.

Bucky was happy, satisfied. Octomers were solitary creatures. Even a mate was more than Bucky usually had. He was happy. Content. But Tony was missing the company of others. Bucky was good, Tony insisted, but sometimes, Bucky still found his mate staring south, like there was somewhere else he wanted to be.

They were hunting one day, the waters warm and calm, and then a creature approached.

Bucky had never seen anything like it. Both dark and shiny at the same time, hundreds of tendrils descending from its body, with a full, purple mantle and beautiful, rippling skin. A jellyfish of some sort, Bucky thought. He knew the creature; Hydra had tested him against other marine life, sometimes, drove them to combat and killing. Dumb, witless animals, or sometimes other men. Bucky was a survivor. He pulled Tony behind him, getting ready to defend his mate.

Tony was squirming around, trying to see past Bucky.

Tones!

Oh! Tony was staring at the jellyfish, a thick, poisonous, dangerous creature, and Tony dodged Bucky’s protective embrace and swam at it, fast as anything.

Tony! Tony, wait, no. Bucky tried to catch his mate, but he wasn’t fast enough, and the jellyfish swarmed over him. The tendrils that could catch and sting, poison and kill, wrapped around Tony.

Next time, next time, you stay with me. The man-o-war was petting Tony, as if reassuring himself that Tony was okay, that he was alive, that he was safe.

Bucky hovered, worried.

Bucky. Tony reached out through the sea of tendrils for Bucky’s hand. This is Rhodey, my best friend. How did… how did you find me? Us?

I ain’t ever going to stop looking for you, not ever. Rhodey’s hands were tight on Tony’s shoulders, his whole face relieved, and Tony was hugging the man-o’-war with all his might.

Tony smiled, his whole face crinkling up with joy. Rhodey, this is Bucky. My mate.

Rhodey looked over Tony’s shoulder at Bucky, brown eyes assessing, everything about the man-o’-war shrieking danger, hostility. Defending Tony from Bucky? Bucky wouldn’t harm his mate. Bucky scowled, crossing his arms over his chest.

Rhodey shook his head. Tones, why don’t you ever do things th’ easy way?

Where would the fun in that be? Tony protested. Stop being such a grump, sourpatch. It’s all good. Everything’s good here. I’m home.

Bucky squeezed in, evading the spiny, stinging tendrils, until he could reach Tony’s hand. Twined their fingers together. He wasn’t sure what a best friend was, or why Tony had one, but this was part of his mate’s life, and he was staying with his mate. No matter what.

Tony leaned over and kissed him, in front of his friend, like their mating was already accepted, acknowledged. Bucky humming into it, taking comfort. And if he was cautiously checking every inch of Tony’s skin, making sure Rhodey hadn’t hurt him or stung him, well, that was just concern. Tony didn’t seem to mind.

Welcome home, Tones. 

A/N -- Electric Eels mate by the boy eel spitting up a nest for the female to lay eggs in. I took some liberties (and more than a few, since electric eels are actually fresh water fish) and basically, Tony orgasms through oral stimulation. So, all those kisses? Yeah, Bucky was getting Very Fresh, as far as Tony was concerned! 

And look! Rhodey!

[jansenavila0-blog]

Top 30 Fishing Blogs On the internet.

While swimming is actually http://egeszseges-gondolkodas.info -body exercise, that's no substitute for weight training, which certainly not simply boosts healthy muscular tissue mass, yet likewise helps boost bone quality. All providers offer their personnel an 'allotment' - some very charitable - some less thus (one extremely widely known MU product line reduced the entire allowance for their UK workers in 2014 due to the economic crisis in the US - B.A.D. step - B.A.D. - upsetting individuals which need to OFFER your product - brilliant). I intend to push one button, enter into the hunt term, and possess the browser available at its personal rate after the simple fact. Earnings in the business country would certainly be actually reduced while still drawing in best skill, such a long time as the expense of living islow, tax obligations are non-existent, and also the way of life is remarkable. I utilize this because this looks truly organic on my face and concurrently, I definitely thought that it sufficients to deliver the defense that I required versus the dangerous rays from the sunshine. This is the best extensive listing from best Approach blog posts on the internet and I am actually honoured to possess you as aspect of this!. Possess only ₤ 15 each product to spend as devote a lot of skin care budget on facial cleansers that don't p my skin layer off! I utilize Loreal night lotion as well as clean my face yet that's about it and that no more is working with my skin layer. That sends out clients four or even five appeal examples plus a way of life extra" like a hair connection or electricity bar for $10 each month. And 2nd, when used inning accordance with the directions in the package deal, it endures on the surface for perhaps an hour, or 2. SBC is interweaved in to the fabric of skateboarding, snowboarding, activity, winter sports and wakeboarding sporting activities throughout Canada. Or even maybe that's just this. Perhaps if I would certainly had the provision to obtain him associated with other activities at an earlier grow older, we 'd possess fewer add-on issues I know sports and various other tasks can construct peace of mind, confidence, as well as a lot of other beneficial capabilities and trainings, however at what age that occurs I don't know. With the help of some incredible contributors, our company try to carry clean content regular by posting brand new sewing DIYs, journal escalates, write-ups, interviews, round ups, styles, as well as a lot more for our DO-IT-YOURSELF centered women viewers. This difficulty is about our degree of dedication to the job from keeping Christ facility stage as well as from fortunately continuing to be as our primary account. Always remember various other clever lifestyle choices that may help in your overall wellness: It is actually regularly vital to wear sun protection on a daily basis, acquire a good night's rest, exercise ... and unwind along with a wonderful glass from cabernet. My tip is this: An internet site that accumulates very detailed way of life behaviors off volunteers across the world, including the sort of food they eat, how they exercise, exposure to sunlight, as well as bunches of other traits. Regarding Blog post - On The Relaxeded Housewife blogging site, get excellent ideas for recipes, company & cleaning pointers, way of living hacks, crafts & renovation concepts, do it on the economical suggestions, and also a lot more! After being launched to the Korean natural skin care schedule and also developing my personal, I have actually expanded to adore and also enjoy my night treatment program. The target is to spend a long time along with your kid and to show all of them that also when you're a fully developed, you may keep participating in and engaging in sports. Bioelements Custom Blended Facial Procedure and Custom-made Blended retail skin treatment products - booking my following face session today. Our team resided in our grandparents' house in Blackpool, and also me + my Grandad were actually inseparable Our experts would certainly happen day trips, participate in volleyball at the playground, see Saturday sporting activity all together, hang out at coffee shops, and generally simply dirt approximately. And also talking having wonderful treatment, if you possess fully grown skin layer as well as are actually beginning to observe drastic improvements in your skin, NOW is actually the moment in order to get major about making sure in all other areas. About Blog post - As a Registered Dietitian Consultant in Chicago, Amari delivers nutrition and health coaching to everybody as well as anyone wanting to lead a much healthier way of life. Concerning Blog post - The New york city Medical Medical malpractice Legislation Blog provides a summary from New york city health care negligence, items liability as well as injury legislation, as well as the information that affects this. http://egeszseges-gondolkodas.info/reaction-velemenyek-ar-hol-lehet-vasarolni/ from popular medical doctors and experienced assistance team is committed to excellence in clinical skin treatment as well as cosmetic operations along with a patient-centered focus for ladies and also males in the greater Boston location and beyond. To ensure you acquire the greatest care feasible, make sure to provide your esthetician as a lot details as you may about your skin layer, way of living, as well as desires. The blog site assesses the most recent information as well as research related to neuroscience/neurology, psychology/psychiatry, and health/healthcare. I presume All Things Pure is mosting likely to achieve a bunch of people that really want the sort of end results that we all have concerned anticipate from Bioelements, but will definitely appeal to the. way of life choice that they've helped make- all natural items. You should see to it you're placing top quality components on your face - that's the primary thing individuals see when they meet you! Concerning Blog site - YBC is actually a yoga exercise lifestyle provider with a well-liked weblog due to the very same name. Regarding Blog site - Obtain up-to the minute updates as well as information about The Championships, Wimbledon Grand Slam Ping pong. Anne Karen's Norwegian well-balanced way of life was actually traditional, and also its long-term health and wellness results are striking. I have been actually really thinking of palm care recently browsing around for something with strongly anti-oxidants to secure my hand from harm. Tintin is my go-to fella - I'm working on gathering the whole series from detailed accounts. Youngsters in Sweden back skin up until grow older 5 (though in other, fantastic, safety seat), so that is actually reasonable to say that leg area sensible, many little ones in the United States ought to manage to make that to at the very least grow older 2. Discover choice high-end lodgings that are going to absolutely satisfy every way of life and also budget, private tours, remarkable experiences and far more. There is actually been actually conversation over whether the video is phony or not, and also of course, over whether it's alright to drill a creature in the face in self support. Each males and females mentioned they go online for sporting activities web content a handful of opportunities weekly, although much more than one in 10 males accomplish this several times per day.

[kathleenseiber]

The road ahead for driverless cars in Australia

Seemingly only just over the horizon, autonomous vehicle trials in Australia seem stuck in first gear. What needs to happen to get them back on track?

The phrase “driverless cars” likely conjures up images of sleek vehicles cruising city streets, ferrying passengers around as part of a futuristic ride-share system. But adjust your mental picture, because Australian researchers are currently trying to make sure these cars can also be driven on the dusty backroads of regional areas.

For over a decade, driverless cars have shimmered on the horizon of possibility, promising to revolutionise the transport system. But although they’ve been invented and manufactured, they still have a bumpy road ahead.

If an expert had been asked about the future of autonomous cars five years ago, Milford notes that “most of them would say we’re going to have 10 million cars in 2017”. But it’s more complicated than anyone imagined – the timeline is now almost impossible to define.

“The whole race to try and create autonomous vehicles has taken much longer than most people thought,” says robotics researcher Michael Milford, from the Queensland University of Technology’s Australian Centre for Robotic Vision.

Milford specialises in navigation and perceptions systems in artificial intelligence – and is fascinated by testing this technology in less-than-ideal conditions.

The companies developing driverless cars are profit-driven, and there’s a financial incentive to first roll out the tech as ride-shares in cities, where there are plenty of passengers 24 hours a day.

It may also be easier to deploy in cities. According to Milford, most companies are trying to make the vehicles good enough so that cities will not have to make any modifications; instead, the vehicles will interact with existing infrastructure like signs, traffic lights, and lane markings on the road to make in-the-moment decisions, as well as combine GPS and mapping technology to navigate.

But what about if you want to head off the beaten track, to a place with rudimentary roads or lack of reception?

In 2019, Milford and team took multiple road trips to Queensland’s regional areas in an electric car fitted with autonomous sensors and computer systems. But CHAD (the Cooperative and Highly Automated Driving pilot program) wasn’t allowed to drive – not yet.

“We had an expert human driver to act as a guide,” Milford says. “We were developing and running the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithms that autonomous vehicles have, using the data the car was gathering.”

The trips, which added up to a total of 1200 kilometres of driving, were a result of a partnership between the Queensland Department of Transport and QUT.

In 2016, South Australia became the first state to put laws in place allowing on-road trials of driverless cars. Today, every Australian state is participating in at least one autonomous vehicle trial.

“The whole aim was to experience as representative and wide range of conditions as possible,” Milford explains. “So we drove during the day, at night, in different types of weather, on all different types of roads ranging from freeways or highways, down to sort of small rural roads, and we tried to make sure we had significant coverage of rural areas.”

Their takeaway? Using AI for driverless cars isn’t feasible on regional Australian roads – not without detailed maps.

“The bar in autonomous driving is really high,” Milford says. “There’s zero margin of error of the safety – and so we found that the state-of-the-art AI systems were by no means perfect.”

Since these systems are primarily developed and tested overseas, they weren’t adapted to Australian conditions – from simple things like driving on the ‘other side’ of the road to different signage and environmental conditions. Even after the system was retrained in these conditions, its performance wasn’t good enough.

Companies such as BHP, Fortescue and Rio Tinto are currently implementing hundreds of autonomous mining vehicles. Rio Tinto also has a fully autonomous train fleet, transporting iron ore from mines to ports in the Pilbara – with a price tag of $940 million. Credit: Rio Tinto

Milford says that these cars will likely need to rely in high-resolution maps, giving them “prior knowledge of what the environment is like and what to expect down the road”.

The team did, however, find that the AI system dealt well with issues like lack of lane markings.

“To some extent, the car was able to infer or guess where the lines would be, had they been added to the road, which is basically what a human does,” Milford says. This suggests that in the long-term, the lines may not be critical, potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure changes.

This kind of research important to figure out how to implement autonomous cars both equally – so it’s not just wealthy people in cities who have access, while others miss out – and efficiently, so the technology doesn’t end up slowing down traffic instead of speeding it up.

“All new technologies have issues of equity,” Milford says. “If a new technology comes along and it’s only available in the city, it just makes inequity between rural and urban areas even worse.”

He thinks that if the technology is available – and it works – there would be just as much demand in rural environments. Since regional and remote areas account for 65% of road deaths in Australia, driverless cars even have potential health benefits.

The Queensland city of Ipswich is equipping 500 resident vehicles with sensors and communication devices allowing them to “talk” to other cars, as part of a four-year “intelligent vehicle” pilot program – the biggest of its kind in the country.

But while city-dwellers may opt to book a ride-share in a driverless car, people living in rural areas would be more likely to privately own a vehicle.

The trillion-dollar question, Milford says, is whether we can produce a driverless vehicle that can actually operate in any environment.

“The only honest answer is it could go either way,” he admits. “I’m not certain that it will happen, and I’m definitely not certain that it won’t happen.

“That’s this grey zone that we’re in now. Five years ago, everyone was really optimistic and thought we’d have them three years ago. Now everyone has a much better idea of how hard the problem is, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

German multinational Bosch has trialled self-driving cars in rural Victoria; in 2019 they received AUD$2.3m in funding from the Victorian government to test its technology. Credit: Bosch

Right now, the race towards driverless cars has narrowed significantly, with about half a dozen major, cashed-up companies – all overseas – as the serious players.

“Australia is a very good nation in terms of basic fundamental research,” Milford says. “We’re not so good at translating that fundamental research into applications where end users get the benefit.

“In autonomous vehicles and AI, the US is still the centre of the universe.”

Many talented Australian researchers are working in the US. To help translate our research into homegrown technology, a more harmonious relationship needs to be developed between industries and universities – particularly mining, agriculture and defense industries.

Currently Milford is working on fundamental research in computer vision and artificial intelligence, to help robots and autonomous vehicles sense their environments.

But this is a tricky challenge.

According to a 2020 index of “autonomous vehicle readiness” across 30 countries, Australia ranks 15th. Singapore and the Netherlands hold the top positions due to their supportive policy and legislations, along with the eagerness of government and private companies.

“You can’t just solve it through good engineering,” he says. “It’s likely that the cars, to be as good or better than humans, will actually have to genuinely have some level of intelligence, some level of understanding of a very complex world around them.”

This research is largely biologically inspired. It involves learning from natural systems and applying this knowledge to technological problems, by working with biologists and neuroscientists to model how animals – from rats to insects to primates – navigate and understand the world.

Murray, the driverless bus being trialled in Renmark, South Australia. Credit: SA Department for Infrastructure and Transport.

“There’s so much to be learned from the natural world, which is pretty amazing at what it does,” Milford says. “There’s a reason we have human drivers still and not autonomous drivers everywhere.”

But of course, we still don’t have a perfect grasp of how these fabulously complex neurological processes work, and so some creativity is required to apply it to a task such as robotic navigation.

Milford says that when they test the resultant technology on a robot, for example, “it fails catastrophically almost all the time – and then there’s this wonderful iterative process where you go back and forth, talking to the neuroscientist, trying something different. And then if everything works well, you eventually get to a high performing robot navigation system.”

Along with this foundational grounding, Milford’s team is also focused on other the development of types of driverless vehicles, beyond cars for individual transportation. While in the US much research is going into autonomous trucks – which by necessity will need to operate on highways and rural roads – Milford’s group is exploring off-road vehicles. These must operate in places where there’s no road as a guide, such as on mine sites.

FLEX — Flinders Express — is a French-designed Navya Arma electric shuttle that can carry up to 15 passengers at speeds of up to 30 km per hour. Credit: Flinders University.

Milford reckons that we’ll know in the next year or so how close we are to a commercial reality for autonomous cars.

“It’s an overwhelming time but also extremely exciting,” he says.

“If the field progresses, the biggest benefits of autonomous vehicle technology will not be in autonomous vehicles – it will be all the flow-on effects,” he adds.

“You can think of it as the 2020s equivalent of the [1960s] space race in some respects. The technologies will have potentially far more benefits outside of the core area that they’re applied in.”

The road ahead for driverless cars in Australia published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[frediedem-blog]

Modem No Further a Mystery

netgear ac1750 wifi cable modem router best buy

The TP-Url Archer C7 is a smart option in the event you don’t want to spend an excessive amount of but want To optimize your internet connection high quality and residential networking capabilities.

https://www.quickviewshop.com/blog/best-netgear-ac1750-wifi-cable-modem-router-to-buy/

InMesa 6 months in the past Why Really don't they make modems with an indicator so somebody is aware when it really should be replaced.

Here

If you need to enable Connection to the internet to your Laptop or computer, you can go with one among our high overall performance modems. Having said that, a modem does more than just empower World wide web connectivity.

Initial, you link the cable modem to your cable line. Subsequent, connect your Windows or Mac Laptop or computer to either one of the C3000's Ethernet ports or its pre-configured wi-fi LAN.

Suddenly my Online velocity has slowed down a lot that it requires a couple of minutes to D/L a web site. How can I explain to if it’s the modem, Pc, or Online company creating the problem? Many thanks

The very first advancement initiatives on electronic modems surface to possess stemmed from the need to transmit facts for North American air protection during the 1950s. By the end of that decade, info was becoming transmitted at 750 bits for each second more than regular telephone circuits. The first modem being manufactured commercially readily available in America was the Bell 103 modem, launched in 1962 from the American Telephone & Telegraph Business (AT&T). The Bell 103 permitted entire-duplex data transmission over standard telephone circuits at information charges as much as three hundred bits for each next. In order to mail and get binary information around the telephone circuit, two pairs of frequencies (just one pair for each way) were utilized.

Would a router function better? Due to the fact this problem I've produced my Laptop or computer wireless so even that's not connected into the modem with four ports? I am at a loss. Any enable will likely be enormously appreciated.

Here

Perhaps you don’t hold the time or Electricity to perform a great deal of analysis. Or perhaps you don’t treatment enough to discover the nuances.

DSL modems seldom involve manual configuration or notice, but once they do they may be accessed utilizing the online market place browser. Routers typically Use a webpage, accessed by typing an IP tackle specified inside the router's manual in to the browser's handle bar, with which many complex variations might be manufactured, including shifting the wireless community's password, and adjusting the router's firewall.

https://www.quickviewshop.com/blog/best-netgear-ac1750-wifi-cable-modem-router-to-buy/

If you could not discover the precise driver for your personal hardware product or else you aren't guaranteed which driver is correct a person, We've a method that can detect your components specifications and recognize the proper driver for your preferences. Please Just click here to obtain.

Shop from renowned modem models for example TP-Hyperlink, D-Connection, Netgear and even more on Amazon.in and decide on a design based upon the scale of the area along with other specifications. From solitary-antenna modems that are perfect for small-sized rooms to impressive Gigabit routers for connecting a number of devices in excess of a sizable spot, you will find an excellent number of networking modems on Amazon India.

If you prefer the velocity and efficiency of the dual-band router but nonetheless don’t choose to spend a complete great deal, look into the NETGEAR N600 Wi-Fi DOCSIS three.0 Cable Modem Router (C3700). It offers a great deal of the exact same tech but with twin-band capabilities from the router. The modem functions DOCSIS three.0 tech with eight downstream channels and four upstream channels (8x4), allowing for cable Online speeds up to 340 Mbps.

Your cable modem will probably be used day by day, ideally lasting you many years. In terms of such a very long-expression financial commitment, it makes sense to purchase it from one of the most trustworthy and trustworthy brands in networking.

https://quickviewshop.com/blog/best-netgear-ac1750-wifi-cable-modem-router-to-buy

The coaxial-cable connector is a little too close to the ability connector for my style, however , you're prone to have to handle that only when establishing the modem.

One among the most up-to-date improvements in Online technological innovation nowadays would be the pocket Wi-Fi. Identical to your regular modem in the home, it connects to the online world wirelessly, but the one variance is the fact It truly is a small, portable machine that you can slip inside your pocket anytime. It also demands a SIM card that connects you to definitely any tower of your telecommunications service company in an effort to Provide you with usage of the net. And just like your frequent router, it means that you can accessibility the web using your smartphone, notebook, desktop Laptop, or pill.

https://quickviewshop.com/blog/best-netgear-ac1750-wifi-cable-modem-router-to-buy/

Benefits of Pocket Wi-Fi

A Pocket Wi-Fi system has several pros to other kinds of internet connection. No, it cannot offer you Online speed as rapidly the 1 your cable or DSL can offer, but you will discover selected cases that this option is the best to suit your needs. One of several major advantages of this gadget is usually that it enables internet access to a number of Wi-Fi enabled gadgets you've got at your house. Contrary to the frequent broadband stick that is certainly restricted to no matter what gadget It is plugged in, this unit can offer internet access to as much as five units at once. 

Another benefit of this technological know-how is usually that it gives you use of the world wide web 24 several hours daily, seven days each week, wherever you may well be and whatever you could be undertaking. This option is made available from your cellphone's 3G internet, but in place of consuming your cellphone's information through the use of 3G, you may merely hook up your telephone towards your pocket Wi-Fi and revel in unrestricted Access to the internet with out worrying about your mobile phone credit rating.

Who's an excellent Prospect for a Pocket Wi-Fi?

People who Are unable to Install World wide web in your own home - This technological know-how is the most suitable choice in your case in the event you are unable to set up an ADSL connection or another variety of Connection to the internet in your home.

Those Who are Normally on the move - In case you are a hectic individual and are always out on business enterprise journeys, this technological innovation is perfect for you since it gives you usage of the Internet at any time, everywhere. This suggests you may deliver e-mail, connect to Skype, and communicate with your customers and colleagues anywhere you may well be.

The Bottom Line

A pocket Wi-Fi has its possess share of drawbacks and it may well not constantly be the very best internet connection choice for you. Compared with Cable or DSL World wide web, it might be a little bit slower and the caliber of the link will not be pretty much as good. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no dilemma this helpful solution is the ideal choice for anyone who wishes to get use of Net despite time and site.

https://www.quickviewshop.com/blog/best-netgear-ac1750-wifi-cable-modem-router-to-buy

Are you looking for that excellent modem that could match your house and Business desires? Do you believe in the strength of wireless networking? Would you even Assume much too that wireless networking is actually a trend in these situations? Then you certainly far better have confidence in Motorola Surfboard sbg 6580 to provide you with what ever networking desires you've got!

This Motorola Surfboard sbg 6580 is surely an all-in-a single system – it provides large speed sharing attribute in addition to a bandwidth networking safety that you just are searhing for. The good news relating to this Motorola Surfboard sbg 6580 is The reality that it really works eight x quicker than almost every other cable modems that you ever had or one other cable modems that you always see in Digital outlets. This Motorola Surfboard sbg 6580 comes along with three hundred mbps pace in order to Use a a lot quicker connectivity to get a more quickly plus much more productive on the net online games, movie uploads, movie calls as well as online shopping! It is extremely much Geared up – You will find there's dual band access issue. So that you can say Certainly to a whole media encounter in a more rapidly Online pace. This modem is integrated which has a cable router that features a element of DOCSIS/EuroDOCSIS three.0 cable modem, Wifi obtain position of 802.11n and four gigabit Ethernet ports of 4 gigabit.

Should you be talking about mobility, this modem is precisely designed for it. This modem is very ideal for smaller company’ networking requires and for residences too. It supports a multitude of providers to help make your gaming and streaming knowledge an exceedingly quickly one particular. The Motorola Surfboard sbg 6580 is suitable with Macintosh, Home windows and UNIX Program applications.

Now With all the Motorola Surfboard SBG 6580, you can easily share your electronic shots, files, films together with other multimedia services to the online market place. This is an extremely inexpensive kind of modem as you can employ its whole opportunity. It even includes a firewall that may be designed-in so you can guard and secure your details from malware attacks as well as other Web threats.

The Motorola Surfboard SBG 6580 is available in a slender structure. To help you decrease the muddle of wires, usage of Electrical power and Business or desk House. You may seldom reboot and Certainly, you may protected your information from hackers with the assistance with the WPA-PSK stability. This modem is an effective combo as it presents very little else but quick and responsible company. Now you may have much more exciting within your games, Voip calls, downloads as well as other file sharing actions.

This modem will pay off For several years and many far more years to come back – it is a great router and modem combo in a single. This is the modem that you need to get if you are trying to find a quick and powerful Connection to the internet. In the event you are searhing for the whole offer then this is the modem for you. You can certainly locate this solution on the internet and it is often marketed on sale. So irrespective of whether you end up picking the Motorola Surfboard sbg6580 or perhaps the Motorola Surfboard sbg900, with Motorola, You can not go Incorrect!

https://www.quickviewshop.com/blog/best-netgear-ac1750-wifi-cable-modem-router-to-buy/

Routers are exterior devices that happen to be used to connect distinctive Personal computer networks in a single full network. Or they may be utilised to split one internet connection in between a quantities of buyers.

Routers are external equipment that are used to attach various Laptop networks in a single total community. Or they can be made use of to separate a person internet connection involving a figures of people. The company routers used by Internet Service Vendors have hundreds of ports so which they can distribute their internet amongst the end users of a certain space and because of that they're not appropriate for property use, but naturally In addition there are simple routers for household usage which have 2 to five ports and can certainly break up a person Connection to the internet into two ? this way you save cash, as you don?t must pay back two internet bills for two pcs whenever you can just split 1 Connection to the internet to two personal computers through the use of a router. The software that comes along with the router is put in over a most important Laptop which happens to be referred as the learn Pc in the community created from the router. From that learn Computer system you can control the incoming and outgoing site visitors for every of the desktops making use of the online world, that way you may prohibit another person with your community to employ the online market place you share with him utilizing the router. The enterprise routers utilized by World wide web Services Suppliers have a huge selection of ports so that they can distribute their World-wide-web amongst the users of a particular area and because of that they are not suitable for property utilization, but obviously there are also straightforward routers for dwelling usage which have 2 to 5 ports and can easily split 1 internet connection into two ? using this method you lower your expenses, since you don?t really need to pay back two internet expenses for 2 pcs after you can just break up just one internet connection to 2 desktops by making use of a router.

Many of the fashionable routers may not just transfer Online to other desktops and also produce a "hotspot" which implies you may have wireless Web in your house. Just how routers transmit wi-fi sign is by acquiring the cable Connection to the internet after which recreating it in wi-fi broadcast and spreading in a particular radius about it. Unique routers have diverse wi-fi assortment so you can purchase the a single that matches your condominium, Office environment or other locations which will need to have wi-fi World wide web. Wi-fi routers even have an adjustable antenna which lets you target the wi-fi broadcast into the spot you would like it.

Routers are being used in all places, if it wasn?t for them we wouldn?t have any Connection to the internet all. The typical router comes in a very suitable measurement and isn?t cumbersome in the slightest degree so you're able to quickly slot in a secure area where it won?t be harmed by chance. As well as the wireless routers are available even smaller dimensions with the choice to hang them over a wall. a median person who wants to save money by not having to pay two Net charges or you simply basically intend to make a wi-fi network in your house, Business or caf? ? then routers tend to be the critical to this. We could offer you the most beneficial routers based upon your requirements ? from the bottom priced types on the more expensive which have more extras. No matter which just one you can decide on we guarantee you that you will be glad with the quality router you obtain.Buy here best netgear ac1750 wifi cable modem router best buy .

netgear ac1750 wifi cable modem router

netgear n300 wifi cable modem router

netgear n600 wifi cable modem router

ac1750 wifi cable modem router

time warner cable modem activation

best cable modem for time warner

how does a cable modem work

motorola sb5101 surfboard cable modem

motorola surfboard extreme cable modem

netgear n450 wifi cable modem router

sb5101 surfboard cable modem

[lauramalchowblog]

The Medical AI Floodgates Open, at a Cost of $1000 per Patient

By LUKE OAKDEN-RAYNER

In surprising news this week, CMS (the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services) in the USA approved the first reimbursement for AI augmented medical care. Viz.ai have a deep learning model which identifies signs of stroke on brain CT and automatically contacts the neurointerventionalist, bypassing the first read normally performed by a general radiologist.

From their press material:

Viz.ai demonstrated to CMS a significant reduction in time to treatment and improved clinical outcomes in patients suffering a stroke. Viz LVO has been granted a New Technology Add on Payment of up to $1,040 per use in patients with suspected strokes.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vizai-granted-medicare-new-technology-add-on-payment-301123603.html

This is enormous news, and marks the start of a totally new era in medical AI.

Especially that pricetag!

Doing it tough

It is widely known in the medical AI community that it has been a troubled marketplace for AI developers. The majority of companies have developed putatively useful AI models, but have been unable to sell them to anyone. This has lead to many predictions that we are going to see a crash amongst medical AI startups, as capital runs out and revenue can’t take over. There have even been suggestions that a medical “AI winter” might be coming.

Hearing about layoffs at some prominent radiology AI companies. Suggests the AI bubble may be deflating… pic.twitter.com/FMHfdt6lNT

— Curt Langlotz (@curtlanglotz) November 1, 2019

To be clear, this was never a problem with the technology. Deep learning works, and there are lots of ways it can be applied usefully in medicine. It was an alignment problem: the people who procure medical technology (typically CIOs) are motivated by business needs, not how useful a model is.

The strongest business incentive is money, earning more or spending less, and proving that AI models can help here has been really difficult.

Most researchers and developers have focused on medical outcomes, like diagnostic performance or lives saved. But even if a model saves lives, it might not impress a CIO because healthcare providers have no inbuilt incentive to help people. Gross, I know, but medicine is full of perverse incentives. Nations and employers care about health and wellbeing (because it improves productivity and is generally popular among constituents), but hospitals (both public and private) care about something else.

They care about reimbursement.

Money, that’s what I want

Reimbursement is how medicine incentivises actually helping people. A central payer, whether a government or an insurance company, decides what medical management is cost-effective to improve health.

When a test or treatment is reimbursed, then healthcare providers get paid to use it. All of a sudden, CIOs are really excited. Pay some money to a company, get as much or more money back for using the product.

Does it work?

Well, I’ve spoken about mammography CAD before, an old form of AI intended to assist in detecting breast cancer. This became popular in the 00s, when CMS decided to reimburse CAD-aided mammography tests. A provider would get about $10 more if they used CAD than if they did “standard” reading.

Within a decade almost every screening mammogram in America is read with CAD assistance.

No, it isn’t viral infection rates, yes it was a decade of exponential growth. Unrelated fact: mammography CAD was first reimbursed in 2001.

But, you say, maybe they just used it because it was amazing?

Nope. It didn’t work.

How well CAD worked in practice (~500,000 patients), from Lehman et al.

In fact, nobody else uses it. I’ve never found the exact numbers, but CAD use outside the USA is practically non-existent. Why? Cos it doesn’t work, and you don’t get paid for it.

Just think about that. Medicare has spent hundreds of millions (billions?) on a technology which didn’t work, driving widespread use. Financial incentives are powerful and dangerous things*.

Time is brain

Things happen in the brain. Over time. Electric.

So, financial incentives are the big deal. Life or death for new technologies. So far, modern medical AI (by which I mostly mean deep learning) has received dozens of FDA clearances, but there has been almost no financial incentive to use these products.

So what is ContaCT, and how did Viz.ai get CMS to reimburse its use?

Viz.ai received FDA clearance in early 2018 for a deep learning system that can detect blockages in the large blood vessels that supply the brain, on CT scans. This system was an interesting break from the dozens of pure diagnostic systems that startups were producing at the time, in that it was intended purely for triage and fast response. If it saw a blockage, it directly contacted the specialist who could fix the problem, skipping the radiologist who would normally read the image first.

Viz.ai claim that by reducing the time for a specialist to review the CT scan of possible blockages, they prevent long delays during which time more and more brain cells are dying from a lack of blood. They have published a few papers on the topic (here and here) and had to provide a fair bit more to CMS to justify this claim.

The CMS document that describes the decision to reimburse ContaCT is 40 pages long, but is well worth a read if this whole topic is of interest. There is a lot in there, with a lot of back and forth between CMS and Viz.ai, covering a lot of topics (including many that I have seen raised on Twitter). I’ve uploaded the document here (extracted from a longer 2000+ page document on other CMS decisions).

CMS requires that applicants prove the technology produces “substantial clinical improvement”. So what did Viz.ai provide?

They show several things:

faster time to notification of the clot-busting specialist

faster time to transfer from peripheral hospital to a central hospital where the relevant procedure can be performed

faster time to clot-busting procedure

These things alone are interesting, but rely purely on our existing knowledge that delays lead to worse brain injuries (as the saying goes, “in strokes, time is brain”). But Viz.ai didn’t stop there. They actually did the thing I always harp on about. They showed outcomes.

Improved modified Rankin score (mRS) at discharge

Improved NIH Stroke Score (NIHSS) at day 5

Improved mRS at day 90

These outcomes show that these patients did better than patients without ContaCT. These scores are widely used in stroke trials and summarise degree of damage/disability following a stroke**. So that is awesome, finally we have evidence of a clinical improvement for a radiology AI system!

Limitations

Not everyone was impressed with the evidence provided to CMS when this story hit the webs.

I don’t care if the results were “significant” but n=43 patients doesn’t say much, even if prospective.

— Ahmed Hosny (@ahmedhosny) September 4, 2020

Hugh and Ahmed raise two main points.

that the time-saving comes from cutting out the radiologist and getting the neuro-interventionalist to review the CT scan directly

that the sample size is pretty small

I’m going to take off my skeptical hat and disagree with both of them!

Several people argued that this isn’t actually an AI intervention at all (or even a technological one), and that all they are doing is changing the care pathway. I find this claim dubious – it relies on the idea that stroke management would be better if a neuro-interventionalist (abbreviated to INR from here on) read every CT angiogram performed for a possible stroke.

There is a problem with this. INRs are rare. These are subspecialists. In my state in Australia, population 1.7 million, we have four of them. Across the whole of the US, there were previously estimated to be 200-400 INRs, although those figures are quite old.

In the US there are over 1,000,000 stroke admissions per year (~850,000 from Medicare alone in 2010). There is no way these busy INRs can review all those scans.

This is where the AI comes in. If the AI picks up a possible blockage, the INR is contacted. According to Viz.ai, their ContaCT system detects ~90% of blockages, and will exclude around 90% of the patients who don’t have a blockage. So instead of reviewing a million scans a year, the INRs only need to review 100,000. Much more achievable with the limited workforce.

So, yes, the innovation here is that the INR sees the scan before the radiologist, but it only works because the AI system cuts out the majority of the scans.

Then we come to the complaint about sample size. I’m normally all about criticising studies for small sample sizes, and it is true their clinical outcomes results (the mRS and NIHSS results) were in 43 patients. But they did provide a lot more data on the other outcomes. Across 3 additional sites, they show that another 80 or so patients had a statistically shorter time to puncture than controls. They also show that their entire database of real-world cases where ContaCT was used, almost 5,000 patients, achieved the same time-to-notification as they had in the original study.

In combination, these results are all reassuring. It is also worth noting that they are currently carrying out a large multi-centre study and we will see a larger sample size for the outcomes results in the near future. Sure, I would prefer to see that before reimbursement, but I’m not shocked that the decision was made this way.

Seriously though. $1000?

The announcement that Medicare would reimburse providers up to $1000 per use of the AI model was by far the most controversial part, and for good reason. AI models cost pretty much nothing to run. The CT scan itself, which determines if a patient can be treated, is about $1000. Does CMS think that this AI is as useful as CT scanning in stroke?

Well, no. Of course not.

This whole thing is a bit weird, but essentially CMS have tried to work with the business model of Viz.ai, which is unlike any other medical technology business model. Viz.ai charge a yearly subscription to deploy and maintain their AI system.

I don’t know the actual pricing for ContaCT, but the document repeatedly refers to a cost of $25,000 per annum. In this example, they say that the reimbursement cost is designed to cover the subscription. If there are 25 patients in the year, then they reimburse $1000 per patient. If there are 500 patients (much more likely), they reimburse $50 per patient.

Do note that the actual payment seems to be fixed for a year at a time. So it is absolutely true that in 2021 each user of ContaCT will be reimbursed $1000. At the end of the 2021 financial year CMS will look at how many claims there were and revise the payment (down, presumably). So it is possible that some high volume hospital will make out like bandits this year and be reimbursed a million dollars for a 25k subscription (ie if they use the AI system 1000 times). Not sure if there are safeguards against that.

The reason the press release is talking about $1000 dollars is that this is the cap on reimbursement per patient. So if a hospital scans less than 25 patients per year, they cannot recoup all their costs and will be out of pocket.

If anything, this approach is conservative. No matter how much the system is used, no matter how much value it generates, it only costs $25,000 per year. This is not the runaway profit that many imagined for medical AI (although broad coverage of hospitals would still be incredibly lucrative).

What this model does do, however is produce guaranteed revenue, which is a huge step forward in this challenging space. Winter is averted, maybe.

Closing thoughts

This is a massive deal.

I hadn’t mentioned this yet, but honestly I didn’t see this coming and neither did many others I have spoken to. I thought we were probably years away from reimbursement for AI, and that it would probably start in mammography.

Wow! I must admit I did not think this would ever happen: CMS approves payments for https://t.co/aJIvpjHWjD software https://t.co/7pyrOksAwC

— Curt Langlotz (@curtlanglotz) September 4, 2020

While the exact funding mechanism is a bit strange, startups now have a clear path to follow to generate revenue. If this doesn’t stabilise the market, I don’t know what could.

That isn’t to say it will be easy to follow Viz.ai’s footsteps here. It still remains to be seen if this decision by CMS will translate into widespread adoption (and this may hinge to some extent on the results of their large trial). It is also true that Viz hit on a formula here which is unusual. This new pathway works because there is no obvious risk – if the model misses a stroke they still receive the current standard of care, which is review by a radiologist. Thus far I haven’t been able to come up with another use case that this would work in. Maybe if you can think of one, let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

But even if it is not a simple path to follow, at least it is a path. I am certainly re-evaluating my expectations as well. More reimbursements, for less restrictive tasks, may be just around the corner.

This is where it started, folks.

* For an interesting little discussion on how this happened, Joshua Fenton summarised the extensive lobbying effort led by silicon valley Congresswoman Anna Eshoo in an editorial (unfortunately paywalled) for JAMA, where he asked if we should stop spending 1 in every 10,000 dollars in US healthcare on a failed technology. Spoiler: we still do.

** The mRS and NIHSS scores aren’t perfect by any means, but are pretty broadly accepted as endpoints for this sort of study.

Luke Oakden-Rayner is a radiologist in South Australia, undertaking a Ph.D in Medicine with the School of Public Health at the University of Adelaide. This post originally appeared on his blog here.

The Medical AI Floodgates Open, at a Cost of $1000 per Patient published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[kristinsimmons]

The Medical AI Floodgates Open, at a Cost of $1000 per Patient

By LUKE OAKDEN-RAYNER

In surprising news this week, CMS (the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services) in the USA approved the first reimbursement for AI augmented medical care. Viz.ai have a deep learning model which identifies signs of stroke on brain CT and automatically contacts the neurointerventionalist, bypassing the first read normally performed by a general radiologist.

From their press material:

Viz.ai demonstrated to CMS a significant reduction in time to treatment and improved clinical outcomes in patients suffering a stroke. Viz LVO has been granted a New Technology Add on Payment of up to $1,040 per use in patients with suspected strokes.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vizai-granted-medicare-new-technology-add-on-payment-301123603.html

This is enormous news, and marks the start of a totally new era in medical AI.

Especially that pricetag!

Doing it tough

It is widely known in the medical AI community that it has been a troubled marketplace for AI developers. The majority of companies have developed putatively useful AI models, but have been unable to sell them to anyone. This has lead to many predictions that we are going to see a crash amongst medical AI startups, as capital runs out and revenue can’t take over. There have even been suggestions that a medical “AI winter” might be coming.

Hearing about layoffs at some prominent radiology AI companies. Suggests the AI bubble may be deflating… pic.twitter.com/FMHfdt6lNT

— Curt Langlotz (@curtlanglotz) November 1, 2019

To be clear, this was never a problem with the technology. Deep learning works, and there are lots of ways it can be applied usefully in medicine. It was an alignment problem: the people who procure medical technology (typically CIOs) are motivated by business needs, not how useful a model is.

The strongest business incentive is money, earning more or spending less, and proving that AI models can help here has been really difficult.

Most researchers and developers have focused on medical outcomes, like diagnostic performance or lives saved. But even if a model saves lives, it might not impress a CIO because healthcare providers have no inbuilt incentive to help people. Gross, I know, but medicine is full of perverse incentives. Nations and employers care about health and wellbeing (because it improves productivity and is generally popular among constituents), but hospitals (both public and private) care about something else.

They care about reimbursement.

Money, that’s what I want

Reimbursement is how medicine incentivises actually helping people. A central payer, whether a government or an insurance company, decides what medical management is cost-effective to improve health.

When a test or treatment is reimbursed, then healthcare providers get paid to use it. All of a sudden, CIOs are really excited. Pay some money to a company, get as much or more money back for using the product.

Does it work?

Well, I’ve spoken about mammography CAD before, an old form of AI intended to assist in detecting breast cancer. This became popular in the 00s, when CMS decided to reimburse CAD-aided mammography tests. A provider would get about $10 more if they used CAD than if they did “standard” reading.

Within a decade almost every screening mammogram in America is read with CAD assistance.

No, it isn’t viral infection rates, yes it was a decade of exponential growth. Unrelated fact: mammography CAD was first reimbursed in 2001.

But, you say, maybe they just used it because it was amazing?

Nope. It didn’t work.

How well CAD worked in practice (~500,000 patients), from Lehman et al.

In fact, nobody else uses it. I’ve never found the exact numbers, but CAD use outside the USA is practically non-existent. Why? Cos it doesn’t work, and you don’t get paid for it.

Just think about that. Medicare has spent hundreds of millions (billions?) on a technology which didn’t work, driving widespread use. Financial incentives are powerful and dangerous things*.

Time is brain

Things happen in the brain. Over time. Electric.

So, financial incentives are the big deal. Life or death for new technologies. So far, modern medical AI (by which I mostly mean deep learning) has received dozens of FDA clearances, but there has been almost no financial incentive to use these products.

So what is ContaCT, and how did Viz.ai get CMS to reimburse its use?

Viz.ai received FDA clearance in early 2018 for a deep learning system that can detect blockages in the large blood vessels that supply the brain, on CT scans. This system was an interesting break from the dozens of pure diagnostic systems that startups were producing at the time, in that it was intended purely for triage and fast response. If it saw a blockage, it directly contacted the specialist who could fix the problem, skipping the radiologist who would normally read the image first.

Viz.ai claim that by reducing the time for a specialist to review the CT scan of possible blockages, they prevent long delays during which time more and more brain cells are dying from a lack of blood. They have published a few papers on the topic (here and here) and had to provide a fair bit more to CMS to justify this claim.

The CMS document that describes the decision to reimburse ContaCT is 40 pages long, but is well worth a read if this whole topic is of interest. There is a lot in there, with a lot of back and forth between CMS and Viz.ai, covering a lot of topics (including many that I have seen raised on Twitter). I’ve uploaded the document here (extracted from a longer 2000+ page document on other CMS decisions).

CMS requires that applicants prove the technology produces “substantial clinical improvement”. So what did Viz.ai provide?

They show several things:

faster time to notification of the clot-busting specialist

faster time to transfer from peripheral hospital to a central hospital where the relevant procedure can be performed

faster time to clot-busting procedure

These things alone are interesting, but rely purely on our existing knowledge that delays lead to worse brain injuries (as the saying goes, “in strokes, time is brain”). But Viz.ai didn’t stop there. They actually did the thing I always harp on about. They showed outcomes.

Improved modified Rankin score (mRS) at discharge

Improved NIH Stroke Score (NIHSS) at day 5

Improved mRS at day 90

These outcomes show that these patients did better than patients without ContaCT. These scores are widely used in stroke trials and summarise degree of damage/disability following a stroke**. So that is awesome, finally we have evidence of a clinical improvement for a radiology AI system!

Limitations

Not everyone was impressed with the evidence provided to CMS when this story hit the webs.

I don’t care if the results were “significant” but n=43 patients doesn’t say much, even if prospective.

— Ahmed Hosny (@ahmedhosny) September 4, 2020

Hugh and Ahmed raise two main points.

that the time-saving comes from cutting out the radiologist and getting the neuro-interventionalist to review the CT scan directly

that the sample size is pretty small

I’m going to take off my skeptical hat and disagree with both of them!

Several people argued that this isn’t actually an AI intervention at all (or even a technological one), and that all they are doing is changing the care pathway. I find this claim dubious – it relies on the idea that stroke management would be better if a neuro-interventionalist (abbreviated to INR from here on) read every CT angiogram performed for a possible stroke.

There is a problem with this. INRs are rare. These are subspecialists. In my state in Australia, population 1.7 million, we have four of them. Across the whole of the US, there were previously estimated to be 200-400 INRs, although those figures are quite old.

In the US there are over 1,000,000 stroke admissions per year (~850,000 from Medicare alone in 2010). There is no way these busy INRs can review all those scans.

This is where the AI comes in. If the AI picks up a possible blockage, the INR is contacted. According to Viz.ai, their ContaCT system detects ~90% of blockages, and will exclude around 90% of the patients who don’t have a blockage. So instead of reviewing a million scans a year, the INRs only need to review 100,000. Much more achievable with the limited workforce.

So, yes, the innovation here is that the INR sees the scan before the radiologist, but it only works because the AI system cuts out the majority of the scans.

Then we come to the complaint about sample size. I’m normally all about criticising studies for small sample sizes, and it is true their clinical outcomes results (the mRS and NIHSS results) were in 43 patients. But they did provide a lot more data on the other outcomes. Across 3 additional sites, they show that another 80 or so patients had a statistically shorter time to puncture than controls. They also show that their entire database of real-world cases where ContaCT was used, almost 5,000 patients, achieved the same time-to-notification as they had in the original study.

In combination, these results are all reassuring. It is also worth noting that they are currently carrying out a large multi-centre study and we will see a larger sample size for the outcomes results in the near future. Sure, I would prefer to see that before reimbursement, but I’m not shocked that the decision was made this way.

Seriously though. $1000?

The announcement that Medicare would reimburse providers up to $1000 per use of the AI model was by far the most controversial part, and for good reason. AI models cost pretty much nothing to run. The CT scan itself, which determines if a patient can be treated, is about $1000. Does CMS think that this AI is as useful as CT scanning in stroke?

Well, no. Of course not.

This whole thing is a bit weird, but essentially CMS have tried to work with the business model of Viz.ai, which is unlike any other medical technology business model. Viz.ai charge a yearly subscription to deploy and maintain their AI system.

I don’t know the actual pricing for ContaCT, but the document repeatedly refers to a cost of $25,000 per annum. In this example, they say that the reimbursement cost is designed to cover the subscription. If there are 25 patients in the year, then they reimburse $1000 per patient. If there are 500 patients (much more likely), they reimburse $50 per patient.

Do note that the actual payment seems to be fixed for a year at a time. So it is absolutely true that in 2021 each user of ContaCT will be reimbursed $1000. At the end of the 2021 financial year CMS will look at how many claims there were and revise the payment (down, presumably). So it is possible that some high volume hospital will make out like bandits this year and be reimbursed a million dollars for a 25k subscription (ie if they use the AI system 1000 times). Not sure if there are safeguards against that.

The reason the press release is talking about $1000 dollars is that this is the cap on reimbursement per patient. So if a hospital scans less than 25 patients per year, they cannot recoup all their costs and will be out of pocket.

If anything, this approach is conservative. No matter how much the system is used, no matter how much value it generates, it only costs $25,000 per year. This is not the runaway profit that many imagined for medical AI (although broad coverage of hospitals would still be incredibly lucrative).

What this model does do, however is produce guaranteed revenue, which is a huge step forward in this challenging space. Winter is averted, maybe.

Closing thoughts

This is a massive deal.

I hadn’t mentioned this yet, but honestly I didn’t see this coming and neither did many others I have spoken to. I thought we were probably years away from reimbursement for AI, and that it would probably start in mammography.

Wow! I must admit I did not think this would ever happen: CMS approves payments for https://t.co/aJIvpjHWjD software https://t.co/7pyrOksAwC

— Curt Langlotz (@curtlanglotz) September 4, 2020

While the exact funding mechanism is a bit strange, startups now have a clear path to follow to generate revenue. If this doesn’t stabilise the market, I don’t know what could.

That isn’t to say it will be easy to follow Viz.ai’s footsteps here. It still remains to be seen if this decision by CMS will translate into widespread adoption (and this may hinge to some extent on the results of their large trial). It is also true that Viz hit on a formula here which is unusual. This new pathway works because there is no obvious risk – if the model misses a stroke they still receive the current standard of care, which is review by a radiologist. Thus far I haven’t been able to come up with another use case that this would work in. Maybe if you can think of one, let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

But even if it is not a simple path to follow, at least it is a path. I am certainly re-evaluating my expectations as well. More reimbursements, for less restrictive tasks, may be just around the corner.

This is where it started, folks.

* For an interesting little discussion on how this happened, Joshua Fenton summarised the extensive lobbying effort led by silicon valley Congresswoman Anna Eshoo in an editorial (unfortunately paywalled) for JAMA, where he asked if we should stop spending 1 in every 10,000 dollars in US healthcare on a failed technology. Spoiler: we still do.

** The mRS and NIHSS scores aren’t perfect by any means, but are pretty broadly accepted as endpoints for this sort of study.

Luke Oakden-Rayner is a radiologist in South Australia, undertaking a Ph.D in Medicine with the School of Public Health at the University of Adelaide. This post originally appeared on his blog here.

The Medical AI Floodgates Open, at a Cost of $1000 per Patient published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[urrichmom]

Tesla Gigafactory Starts Battery Development | Very Exciting Information for the Automotive Business

Tesla’s production facilities have always recently been some of the almost all successful car manufacturing plant life in the industry. These people plan everything from the brand regarding free standing foundationless jib crane they're going to use in order to which parts of the method are going to end up being fully automated. However , freestanding foundationless jib crane system need to ensure these people have plenty of parts to be able to actually keep up along with the speed they manufacture their cars and trucks. This is why Tesla said that plus partner Panasonic own commenced mass production of commercial quality lithium-ion battery power tissue in the Tesla Gigafactory, pressing the electric car in addition to energy storage area company nearer to the production of its Model 3 or more electric motor vehicle.

The cells now inside of development at the Nevada stock are intended for use in Tesla’s Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 3 immobile energy storage area devices, the company said. Creation of cells intended regarding typically the Tesla Model three or more should be to begin in the particular second quarter. Tesla’s Gigafactory in December 2016 The $5 billion Gigafactory is really a massive battery manufacturing service close to Reno. With four. 9-million square foot regarding space operational now, the particular multi-story factory complex will be only about 30 percent completed. Tesla has said the idea intends to hire “several thousand” personnel for often the factory this year and even has chosen whole occupation there on much more than a few, 500 jobs. We all ponder what new technology typically the Tesla factory will become applying in order in order to work? Will each uses computers from cksglobal. world wide web? California-based Tesla has said which it intends to be making thirty five gigawatt-hours per 12 months of lithium ion power packs on the Gigafactory simply by 2018 when Model three or more creation is in full swing. That’s almost as a great deal as this annual production of all different lithium ion battery companies on the globe. Tesla has set a first-year production goal of fifty, 1000 Model 3 sedans to get is Fremont, Calif., set up plant. The Tesla Style 3 sedan is more compact and less expensive compared to carmaker’s present products : the Model S car and Model X crossover EVs. freestanding foundationless jib crane has fixed a target selling value of $35, 000 prior to offers for the base Model a few, about the third of wht is the ordinary Tesla consumer shells out there for one of often the company’s EVs now. To help get the price that will low, Tesla needs in order to substantially reduce the cost of the car’s battery pack pack. This expects motorisation and high-volume production in the Gigafactory to be a huge factor in accomplishing that will goal.

[localocksmithnearme]

Dodge Fob Keys And Remote Program Irvington NJ

Have you purchased a used Dodge and want to rekey your ignition switch, locked out of your car with the key inside, damaged your door lock or broke your fob key? awesome news! You found the right website. Irvington Key Replacement fits 24hr instantaneous, trained motor vehicle lockman services in Irvington NJ. Our experienced locksmiths are equipped with today's particular laser cut key cutters, lock pick tools and key programmers to guardedly able to open up your vehicle or generate a transponder key, key fob, switch-blade key and remote clicker and furthermore replacing vehicle ignition cylinder on-site.

Models: Aspen, Journey, Dynasty, Dart, Caravan, Challenger, Magnum, Charger, Stratus, Diplomat, Intrepid, Mini Ram, Colt, Caliber and Nitro

Dodge key replacement in Irvington NJ

If you cleave an extraneous remote fobik key computed or forgot where you put your car key in Irvington NJ, scanning for the best swiftest at your location Dodge key replacement quick fix, you enter the right page, call us and our keys replacement task-force will arrive to your place of choice rapidly.

At Irvington Key Replacement, we are aware of the aspect that each and every extensive town in America has leastwise some lockman groups, nevertheless what drivers dont actually know is that every lock-smith in Irvington NJ in general well-informed in only one individual professional trade. Most key smith congregations will cater a whole in one automotive, commercial, residential or safe lock-man services and even vehicle hauling and other service and many times hire uneducated laborers that could present a risk to your asset or charge more for a a straightforward task as he is usually on higher salary status duty like alarm formatting or high security camera inauguration.

About Dodge keys and locks infrastructure

Dodge is an American vehicle producer making range of prevailing cars, trucks, minivans, SUVs and vans. From 1998  Dodge locks and key infrastructure runs on a transponder chip platform and in 2007 accept the Keyless Go as the smartkey and push-button start ignition platform for most of its cars.

The digital chips transponder key emits an extremely low-level digital message to the vehicle that will only be identified when the correct programmed key is being used, otherwise the fuel pump and the car will not run and could be halted for several mins.

This anti theft platforms is helping the vehicle owners, insurance companies and auto manufacturers in hampering crime and save millions world-wide, still compensating lost, stolen and broken keys or even duplicating a supplementary key is far more pricey.

Ignition lock repair

By cause of unlocking and locking the ignition countless of times, it is very natural to suffer some kind of ignition burden and the manifestation is probably key caught in the ignition, dashboard security lights are on, ignition key can't turn in the ignition and key have problems turning in the ignition and you can't turn on your vehicle.  

The reason for those troubles can be a battered key or an ignition lock trouble and for one and the other cases, ignition replacement or repair is a job for a skillful technician, so our recommendation to drivers not to try to repair the ignition lock by unskilled hands that might going to lead to a larger hardship.

Battered Dodge ignition key

Suffering from trouble caused by a bad key, basic duplication of the key going to potentially copy the malfunction to the  cut and programmed key. As opposed to duplicating the bad key data, a competent car lockman has to employ dedicated Dodge diagnostic tools, programmers and cutters to create a newish key in consonance with the VIN number.

Overused Dodge ignition cylinder

Suffering from trouble caused by the ignition lock, it is probably due to dirt or foreign object caught in the ignition crater hole or may be a detach or broken spring or pin inside the ignition cylinder barring the lock from turning on. Using dedicated ignition diagnostic, replacing and programming equipage a lock smith should extract any dirt or foreign object from within the keyhole strengthen or rekey ignition switch or even displace the ignition overall.

Transponder chip key create

Present-day car provided with car computer module and car keys are equipped to the brim with electrical chip found stowed inside the banner of the key or on the blade (in vehicle anti theft) keys. When the  key is slides into the ignition key-breach, the transponder send an exclusive signal for the immobiliser to be approved. Without this precise indication code, the motor vehicle will not start.

When a car owner lose or want to duplicate his key, the transponder need to be reset with a new key-code in order to be accepted by the ECU.

Some manufacturers of cars years and models hand dash-board foundation for addition of keys, still if all keys are missing, the vehicle computer unit need to be reprogrammed by compatible programmer owned by a locksmith or the dealership.

Dodge key-less entry

Push-button start ignition technology supplied with a remote fob that a driver can hide in the purse, pocket or briefcase, or everywhere within the range of 5 ft to the immobilizer inside the car.

The smartkey chip transmits a specific low level combination of audio and infrared signal to the engine control module, which in turn confirms that the match signal has been delivered and enable the driver to remotely close and open the car door locks likewise click a button on the dashboard to deactivate or start the engine avoiding utilizing a key or hitting a button on the fob.

Though smart-keys and push button start ignition evolved into being populously applicable, even on affordable cars, these structures are still not an  prerequisite as electrical windows and door locks, yet, the convenience aspect is a a key consideration for varied smartkeys consumer.

Copy vs lost car keys

Current Dodge key-lock system accommodate car  and chipped key and while transponder keys arrive in an array of smartkey, flip key, fob key and laser cut keys, the primary concept around this instrument is that the transponder send a signal to the immobiliser in the car. If the immobiliser does not recognize an appropriate message, the fuel injection will demilitarize and the vehicle will not flare up.

Some decrepit designs keys can be easily duplicated using dashboard process, yet in most cases to duplicate a surplus key, the transponder in the key need to be programmed by an appropriate key programming machine owned by the dealer-ship or a locksmith.

If the last key is stolen or lost, the car computer module need to be programmed to employ the new key and reject the old one. This routine extends a security factor ensuring the car will forget the misplaced or stolen key. This key recovery, platform available only to the Dodge dealership or a licensed locksmith, which actually means that you will have call a car lock-man or haul your car to the dealer-ship.

Twenty four hour car lock-out

If you locked your keys inside your vehicle or trunk, you enter the right page. Our  car lockout ervice can help you out in opening each sort of semi-trailer, van, car or pickup comfortably averting hardship to the power locks, door frame, electric wiring or windows. Many times, in incidents that you need a key extraction or a replacement keys service using programmers, cutters and diagnostic equipment. Alternately to hiring a towing-truck to the car dealer-ship or lock smith store, call us now at our operator office and one of our courteous local lock smith staff will arrive to your place of choice swiftly to solve your complications on premises and put you back on the driver seat.

Vehicle locks alterating

Irvington Key Replacement is honoured to serve all kind of Dodge refit services onsite to swap a sacked, smashed or lost keys. Most newer car are fitted with electronic key and lock infrastructure and the course needed to get your lock conversed need to have the legitimate coder for the certain car. Instead of towing your car to the dealer, just upraise the tele-phone and call our call centre in Irvington NJ and one of our vehicle adapting worker force will be with you in the short run with a ambulatory truck involving modern ignition parts, programmers, key cutters and blank keys ready to overcome any style of emergency cases.

Bottom line

We here at Irvington Key Replacement, are zealous to conform our customers urgencies by a swift mobile quick fixes to their motor vehicle locks and key challenges ensuring quick reply. Alternately to hiring a tow-truck to the vehicle dealership or locksmith store, pick up the phone and dial at our central office and one of our amicable emergency lock smith worker will drive to you speedily to resolve your burdens on-site and put you back in your car or home.. If you’re scouting for Dodge key replacement service 24HR in Irvington New Jersey, call (973)200-4870 for a reliable local mobile locksmith, lost car keys made, ignition repair, transponder, keyless entry remote fob cut and program.

[jonathanalumbaugh]

Weekly Digest

January 7th, 2018, 6th issue.

A roundup of stuff I consumed this week. Published weekly. All reading is excerpted from the main article unless otherwise noted.

Read

Teen birth rates hit a new low in 2016, Boston has joined other cities in banning single-use plastic bags, Tesla restored electricity to a children's hospital in Puerto Rico after it was hit by hurricanes in September, the FDA cleared an earpiece that may help block symptoms of opioid withdrawal, 13 states saw record-lows of unemployment this year, Support for allowing same-sex marriage is at its highest point in 20 years, Vice President Mike Pence said in October that the U.S. "will return...to the moon not only to leave behind footprints and flags but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond," a man in North Carolina has started the non-profit ChemoCars, a service that provides cancer patients with free rides to and from their chemo treatments, Uber partnered with the charity Whizz-Kidz to give those who use wheelchairs in the UK free rides to polling places this summer.

— 9 things America is getting right

This is not some “lite” version of Civ stripped down for touchscreen, mobile implementation. It’s the whole game.

— Civilization 6 on iPad is a marvel

First comment in thread: I keep seeing this referred to over and over, even TV Guide is calling the bad Cooper by the name BOB! In my opinion, this is something that people have been confusing for 25 years.

— Clarification: Cooper is not possessed by BOB

I got married two weeks ago. And like most people, I asked some of the older and wiser folks around me for a couple quick words of advice from their own marriage... Almost 1,500 people replied, many of whom sent in responses measured in pages, not paragraphs. It took almost two weeks to comb through them all, but I did. And what I found stunned me…

They were incredibly repetitive.

— Every successful relationship is successful for the same exact reasons

Explaining #Meltdown to non-technical spouse. “You know how we finish each other’s...” “Sandwiches?” “No, sentences. But you guessed ‘sandwiches’ and it was in your mind for an instant. And it was a password. And someone stole it while it was there, fleeting.” “Oh, that IS bad.”

— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman)

January 5, 2018

— Explaining Meltdown with parallel worlds, libraries, and a bank heist

TED Video: How to make stress your friend

— How to make stress your friend

A user visits a website, registers an account, and saves the data in the password manager. The tracking script runs on third-party sites. When a user visits the site, login forms are injected in the site invisibly. The browser’s password manager will fill out the data if a matching site is found in the password manager. The script detects the username, hashes it, and sends it to third-party servers to track the user.

— How web trackers exploit password managers

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP was negligent in connection with one of the biggest bank failures of the financial crisis, a federal judge has ruled, opening up the Big Four accounting firm to the potential of hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

— Judge Says PricewaterhouseCoopers Was Negligent In Colonial Bank Failure

Whether we see an LTE version of the Nokia 3310 in the US is still a major question, as is the release date of this phone — not the mention the battery life, which took a major hit when it added 3G support.

— An LTE version of Nokia’s 3310 may be coming

The Big Five... has produced results that can be shown to remain largely consistent across a person’s lifespan and that can be used to predict at least some part of a person’s likely academic achievement, dating choices and even future parenting behavior. It has also been validated cross-culturally to some extent, Soto told me.

— Most Personality Quizzes Are Junk Science. I Found One That Isn’t.

"Neither [Iraq] nor while I was in the military did I actually hear anyone ask whether we should be doing some of the research we were doing. You know, some of it was a little scary -- I don't know that it was necessarily unethical -- but nobody ever asked the question." -General Robert H. Latiff

— Nobody's Ready for the Killer Robot

If you are a low-wage worker who cuts your expenses to the bone in order to sock away $500 a year, on which you earn 8%, you will still not go more than a year in retirement without starving to death.

— Oh Damn, 401(k)s Aren't Magic

Ever stood at an intersection and prodded at, leaned on, elbowed and otherwise palm-slapped the ever-living hell out of a crosswalk button and wondered to yourself if the thing actually does anything at all, really? Well – chances are, it doesn't.

— Placebo buttons do absolutely nothing, and they are everywhere

Meanwhile, Pete is convinced the Log Lady stole his truck. But wait! It wasn’t the Log Lady. It was Windom Earle, says Cooper. How does he know? Well, look at the map up there. Duh. Try and keep up, people.

— Revisiting ‘Twin Peaks’ Season 2 Finale: An Appointment at the End of the World

In an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis in New York, Cohen said that it was clear that President Trump — like former President Obama — did not want to approve a plan to provide the new arms to Ukraine, but decided to do so in an attempt to shirk allegations that he has acted as a "Putin puppet."

— Russia expert: US decision to supply arms to Ukraine a 'mistake'

Scopophilia or scoptophilia (from Greek σκοπέω skopeō, "look to, examine" and φιλία philia, "tendency toward"), is deriving pleasure from looking.

— Scopophilia

The fatal swatting case started Thursday when a man called the 911 center in Wichita, Kansas, and said he'd shot his father and was holding his mother, sister and brother hostage inside a house, authorities said.

— Swatting case poses legal challenges for police, prosecutors

The IRS lets you claim investment-related losses on your tax return as long as you sell the money-losing investment at some point during the year. You can then use the resulting capital losses to offset any capital gains on other investments that you might have.

— Tax Loss Harvesting: Don't Wait Until Year-End to Save Thousands

Tesla was on the cover of Time magazine in 1931 but died a poor man in 1943 after years devoted to projects that did not receive adequate financing. Yet his most significant inventions resonate today.

— Tesla the Car Is a Household Name. Long Ago, So Was Nikola Tesla.

More than a century ago, in New York City, Paul Strand began creating some of the earliest candid street photography. His goal was to capture people as they act in public, unaware of the observing eye.

— Theater of the Streets, Shot On Google Glass

In 2016, psychologist Danielle Gunraj tested how people perceived one-sentence text messages that used a period at the end of the sentence. Participants thought these text messages were more insincere than those that didn’t have a period. But when the researchers then tested the same messages in handwritten notes, they found that the use of a period didn’t influence how the messages were perceived.

— There’s a reason using a period in a text message makes you sound angry

My beach wedding in Diani, Kenya, was supposed to begin at 4 p.m. It started two hours later. The reason: The photographer was late. He shrugged it off, blaming traffic. "I am here now and that is what matters," he said. Grrr, "Kenyan time."

That is what they call it in my homeland.

— Under 'Kenyan Time,' You're Expected To Arrive ... Oh, Whenever

The year 2017 was really successful for Vue.js. Even though the goals are partly fulfilled, I think that most of the goals are somehow achieved or getting more traction. Vue.js is spreading and a lot more companies are using it now, including: Behance, Adobe, Chess.com, GitLab, HERE Technologies, Car2Go, IBM, and many chinese companies like alibaba, ele.me

— Vue.js review of 2017

In 2007, Warren Buffett entered a million-dollar bet with the fund manager Protégé Partners that the S&P 500 would beat a basket of hedge funds over the next decade.

— Warren Buffett has won his $1 million bet against the hedge fund industry

Earlier today, Twitter published a five paragraph answer to the loudly, repeatedly-shouted question: “Why won’t you ban Donald Trump, a man who has actively used your platform to threaten nuclear annihilation against an entire country?”

— What Twitter's New Statement About Not Banning Trump Really Means

In South Carolina, for example, people hoping to buy a Siberian tiger to celebrate the new year are likely to be disappointed: As of Jan. 1, it is illegal in the state for typical residents — that is, if you're not a zoo — to buy or own exotic animals for pets.

— What's New In 2018? Here's A Brief Tour Of State Laws Now In Effect

Why people believe what they believe is a wide topic that many psychology professors investigate. And while Peterson’s lectures certainly do tend to focus on the idea of “pushing back,” the contents of them raise questions about whether the bad ideologies are the ones he’s rejecting or the ones he espouses.

— Why Is Monsanto Inviting This Alt-Right Hero to a Fireside Chat on Farming?

The danger is that such detailed, sensationalized coverage of suicide can prompt copycat behavior — a phenomenon called suicide contagion. “Suicide contagion is real, which is why I’m concerned about it.”

— YouTuber Logan Paul's video of a dead body put his own audience at risk

Then there’s the matter of how Uber treats its drivers. You know it’s not great, but it’s not as though competing services are much better. Before Uber, taxi companies were notoriously terrible employers. Lyft, like Uber, hires its drivers as independent contractors—they don’t get benefits or minimum-wage protection—and has cut their pay to make fares cheaper for riders.

— Are you a bad person if you still take Uber?

Forecasters are warning people to be wary of hypothermia and frostbite from the arctic blast that’s gripping a large swath from the Midwest to the Northeast.

— http://metro.co.uk/2017/12/30/niagara-falls-freezes-sharks-freezing-death-atlantic-7192401/?ito=cbshare

[tipco613]

New Post has been published on http://cryptonewsuniverse.com/coinmama-review-2020-is-it-100-reliable-and-safe/

Coinmama Review 2020 Is it 100 Reliable and Safe?

Coinmama Review 2020 – Is it 100% Reliable and Safe?

      Coinmama is a bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange where you can buy Bitcoins via credit card,

debit card or bank wire, with availability to nearly anyone in the world. In this Coinmama review, we will go through all major questions and dilemmas around Coinmama: reviewing how Coinmama works, how to register and buy bitcoins on Coinmama, what coins and countries Coinmama supports plus many other topics around this crypto exchange. Coinmama is one of the oldest Bitcoin exchanges in business, and it has been selling Bitcoins via credit/debit cards for longer than any other company. We will take a deeper dive into workings of this exchange in our Coinmama review – so let’s go.

How Coinmama works?

Coinmama is different to many other exchanges in one major way: it doesn’t keep your coins in its own wallets after you buy them via their service. Rather, Coinmama sends them right away to your own wallet. This is a great deterrent for hackers as they have no incentive to attack Coinmama servers since they hold no cryptocurrencies.

Is Coinmama instant?

Buying process on Coinmama is very simple. There are couple of payment methods that are accepted and if you wondered if Coinmama is instant – the answer is yes – as soon as you make the payment, coins are on their way to your wallet.

Accepted payment methods on Coinmama

Various payment methods are supported as well, so Coinmama customers can invest in Bitcoin via Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards and cash. One of the most important changes in the Bitcoin industry is how simple it has become to purchase Bitcoins with a credit card. This is mainly because of the fact that companies like Simplex have allowed brokers and exchanges to verify users with less risk. Coinmama integrates Simplex in its system and allows you to pay with any MasterCard or Visa you might have, which is a much welcomed change because, without this, you’d be bound to the old methods of actually going to your local Western Union counter and depositing money.

Bank account – SWIFT and SEPA

Aside of buying bitcoin with credit card on Coinmama, you can buy bitcoin or other crypto with the following methods as well:

Buy Bitcoin with Bank Account – You can buy Bitcoin with bank transfer using SEPA (Europe), SWIFT (worldwide), or Faster Payments (UK). Benefits of this payment method include higher spending limits plus low or no payment processing fees.

Buy Bitcoin with SEPA – Customers in Europe will use SEPA bank transfer to place orders of up to 30,000 USD at a time, depending on verification level. Unlike credit card orders, SEPA transfers carry no additional processing fee.

Buy Bitcoin with SWIFT – SWIFT transfers are aimed at global customers of Coinmama to buy Bitcoin directly from their bank account with daily limits of up to 30,000 USD depending on verification level, no processing fees on orders over 1,000 USD, and a low flat fee of 20 GBP on orders below 1,000 USD.

How to register and use Coinmama?

In order to use this exchange, you need to sign up first. Unlike some of its competitors, Coinmama has no mobile app yet and is only currently available as a website. On the other hand, it is on par with its competition in terms of KYC procedures – you need to be fully verified in order to buy crypto on Coinmama. Sign up process is easy – you go to Coinmama.com and click on register. Once you fill out the form, click next and finish the process. Don’t forget to confirm your email address by clicking the link Coinmama send to your email!

How to verify on Coinmama?

Another question we come across often is: how to get documents verified on Coinmama? You will have to upload official government issued ID and wait for Coinmama approval.

Coinmama requires the following steps in order to verify you:

all photos you upload need to visible in their entirety;

high quality images;

valid documents, with details like expiry date clearly visible;

maximum file size of 8MB.

Verification process usually takes couple of hours during the working time and a bit longer if you start your verification in the evenings or weekends. Coinmama has three tiers for its users, and each tier requires additional KYC requirements. Earn passive income with Quadency trading bot. Connect Binance account and use Quadency bot for 6 months completely free. Hurry up, this deal is not around for long!

Limit level 1: buying limit up to $ 15,000

Required documents for this category: -A selfie with valid government-issued ID-card-A note with “Coinmama” and date mentioned on it 

Limit level 2: buying limit up to $50,000

On top of the tier 1 verification, you need to upload two government-issued ID card and scanned image of a utility bill that can be anything like electricity bills, gas bills, property tax receipts, bank statements, or credit card statement.

Limit level 3: Up to $100,000

How to Buy Bitcoin on Coinmama

Coinmama is a bit different than other exchanges when it comes to buying crypto. They do not store anything on their servers – not your credit card details nor your coins. So how do Coinmama purchases work? You create an order, choose how many bitcoin or other coins you want to buy and then proceed to the checkout page, where you enter your credit card details.

After finishing the payment, the cryptocurrency is sent immediately to the user’s private wallet address, not a wallet that is kept on Coinmama servers. The minimum purchase amount on Coinmama is 60 USD (or its equivalent in EUR) at present, although this is based on the price of Bitcoin. When you use other exchanges like Binance or Coinbase, your cryptocurrencies are stored inside the exchange’s wallet address, on their servers (which is highly inadvisable.). However, when you enter your payment details and buy crypto on Coinmama, your coins are instantly sent to your own wallet as soon as the payment goes through! Needless to say this is much safer for both you and the exchange (avoids the risk of being hacked).

Supported currencies on Coinmama

Coinmama accepts all major world currencies:

USD

EUR

British Pound

Canadian Dollars

Australian Dollars

You can buy these cryptocurrencies:

BTC

ETH

LTC

BCH

ETC

XRP

QTUM

ADA

What are Coinmama Fees?

Burning question for every crypto buyer are fees that platforms charge. As you might have already noticed in this Coinmama review, this exchange is setting itself apart from the rest in many respects, this one included. The fees are now lower because the process has become much more advanced. Just so you’ll get a perspective – before the change to credit cards was made, one Bitcoin would cost you $310 when the corresponding Bitstamp rate was only $257, which is a whooping 22% fee. Ouch! After changes were implemented fees are about 6.5%, which may still sound like a lot. However, if you look around at companies selling you Bitcoin with credit card as a payment method, you’ll see that it’s basically the same fee everywhere. The reason why fees are so high is because of expensive measures these companies have to deploy in order to avoid fraud and chargebacks.

Can you sell on Coinmama?

Yes, you can sell cryptocurrencies on Coinmama. You only need two things to do so: your cryptocurrency wallet and a bank account and Coinmama will take care of the whole process.

How to sell on Coinmama

You can sell bitcoin on Coinmama in four easy steps:

Log into your Coinmama account and click on “Sell” – Input your Coinmama login information, then choose the Sell option from your main account screen. If you don’t already have an account, you can register here.

Enter the Bitcoin amount you’d like to sell – Put in the Bitcoin quantity you’d like to sell to see the BTC conversion rate in your preferred currency. You can also enter a currency amount (such as USD or EUR) to see the Bitcoin quantity.

Make your order – Follow the prompts to create your order. Enter your bank country, account information, and personal details.

Transfer your coins – Send the exact amount of Bitcoin selected to the wallet address provided in a single transaction, or scan the QR code from your wallet app. Once we receive your coins, we will transfer the payout amount to the bank account you provided.

Coinmama customer support

A huge plus for this positive Coinmama review is their customer support that works mostly via live chat in the following working hours. If you need to contact Coinmama customer support outside these hours, you can either send an email, open a support ticket or even contact them on Facebook! There is also an extensive knowledgebase with FAQs which is very useful for the most common issues users have with the exchange.

You Get Your Bitcoins Instantly

The speed at which you get your coins is the last thing that gets dramatically improved. In the past, when you could buy Bitcoins with Western Union, you’d have to wait for a wire confirmation to arrive from Western Union. Today, you can withdraw your coins as soon as your payment has cleared, which is completely awesome. This is crucial, because sometimes a day or two can mean wide price fluctuations in Bitcoin. This means that you could end up purchasing coins for more or less than you intended.  Keep in mind that there is a limit for first time users on how much you can buy (at the time or writing this limit is $5,000 per day, and up to $20,000 worth per month).

Can Coinmama be trusted – Security and Privacy

Coinmama stores your personal data on secured servers. Also, the site uses high-level encryption and authentication measures to ensure your details and money are safe. Coinmama allows its users buying less than $150 worth of Bitcoins without uploading pictures of an ID, but any amount over $150 worth of Bitcoins will require full identity verification.

Availability – What countries does Coinmama support?

Coinmama offers the service worldwide. You might have limited functions in some countries (for example, if a country shows up on a sanctions list maintained by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), UK Treasury, European Union, or United Nations, CoinMama will not operate there). However, overall, the service is available in the widest range of countries.

Is Coinmama Easy to Use?

It’s incredibly easy to buy Bitcoins at Coinmama, which is one of the reasons they’re so popular. That is why this Coinmama review will end on a good note for the exchange – there is simply nothing to complain about. When you visit Coinmama, you’ll notice that the UI is intuitive and simple, and that not one element is ambiguous or confusing. The site is simple, fast, and there are no obstacles aside from the verification requirements at various purchase volumes. All these things make for an ultra-easy buying process.

Conclusion – Should I use Coinmama and is it legit and safe?

In conclusion of this Coinmama review we can say that this is a reputable company, so the short answer is yes, Coinmama is legit and safe to buy crypto on it. The only downfall is its high fees, which unfortunately can’t be avoided when using a credit card at the moment. On the other hand, the long answer to the question is “it depends”. If you have the option to use a different payment method other than a credit card then I’d go elsewhere to avoid paying the high fees. All in all, the service is solid and hopefully in the near future, it will become more affordable.

FAQs

Is Coinmama safe and legit?

Yes, Coinmama is a safe and legit place to buy bitcoins and other offered coins like ETH, ADA, XRP, LTC, QTUM.

Where is Coinmama located and can it be trusted?

Coinmama was started in 2013 as a startup in Israel and has since expanded and served over 2m customers in over 180 countries with over 30 employees. Today, the company is registered in EU, more precisely in Slovakia while still owned and headquartered by New Bit Ventures in Israel.

How long does it take Coinmama to verify?

Initial level 1 verification on Coinmama usually takes 10 minutes. After this verification, you will have your bought bitcoins delivered instantly. However, level 2 and 3 verification may take up to six hours.

What states does Coinmama work?

Coinmama is available in the following US states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Does Coinmama require ID?

Yes. Coinmama requires 1 valid government issued ID and a selfie of yourself holding that ID and a note with “Coinmama” and today’s date written on it.

Can you sell on Coinmama?

Yes, you can sell bitcoins on Coinmama. Selling cryptocurrency with Coinmama is currently available to customers in Europe that are part of SEPA.

Is Coinmama an exchange or a wallet?

Coinmama is a crypto exchange where you can buy bitcoin and other coins instantly.        

Does Coinmama have a mobile app (Android or iOS)?

No, currently you can access Coinmama only through a web-browser via their website. They also do not have a publicly available API integration which is the most common way apps and services interact with each other in online world.

Article Produced By Felix Kuester

Felix Kuester works as an analyst and content manager for Captainaltcoin and specializes in chart analysis and blockchain technology. He is also actively involved in the crypto community – both online as a central contact in the Facebook and Telegram channel of Captainaltcoin and offline as an interviewer he always maintains an ongoing interaction with startups, developers and visionaries. The physicist has couple of years of professional experience as project manager and technological consultant. Felix has for many years been enthusiastic not only about the technological dimension of crypto currencies, but also about the socio-economic vision behind them.

https://captainaltcoin.com/coinmama-exchange-review/