#AI predicts the emmys

[warriorsofsplatsville]

Mirage and crew trekked along the sidewalk. It had taken them a little bit to get to Greater Inkopolis, but thankfully the the train company was more than cooperative to give them a ride on the express railway.

"It's so....quiet." Sandy mumbled, looking around. "Where are all the people?"

"If we're nearing the Square, most likely asleep for whatever reason." Mirage replied. "Seems Tara might've used some kind of gas, or something, but she made this entire area go unconscious."

"That's...so weird. I mean, I guess she is a human, and Professor Vulture tries to keep his human identity limited to a handful of us, but if her goal is to take us down, then why bother hiding it?" Plat scratched his chin.

"My guess is that that isn't the deal. She isn't hiding her identity. She might have another reason for pulling them out of it." Minu said, blazing through the cephalopods to get ahead of them. "...Not that I can say for certain. Events in this era are so...fuzzy, and weird, for some reason."

"Minu, can you explain why you're acting so weird?! What do you mean 'era'? What are you talking about?! You've been making these comment since the Big Run in Undertow!" Sandy huffed.

"I suppose the rest of you deserve to know." She sighed, turning around. "I already told Mirage a while ago, during the first Alterna trip but I'm not from this time. Put simply. I'm a time traveler- I'm a squid one generation after following this one."

"Wha-?! So you're like, essentially a grandchild standing next to us?!"

"Correct. In fact, I am Emmy's granddaughter- Turf War Legend as well as Agent E of the New Squidbeak Splatoon."

"WHA-?! EMMY'S GRANDKID?!?!" Sandy shouted, and Mirage shushed her. "Yeah, it was a surprise to me too, but it explains why this tyke knows so much about what's to come."

"Don't call me a tyke!!" She huffed. "Anyway, I studied up on my history of Splatsville and the like before traveling back in time, but this event has always been...weird. There's no good documents on it, and it seems some people didn't even remember this occurring. It's why I can't predict what will happen. So keep on your toes, in other words."

"So...you knew? About...Alterna? And me? And Tara and Mirage...the kissing?" Cruesa whispered.

"Oh, I know a WHOLE lot more than just the kissing, fish sticks. I could tell you ALL about you and Mirage if you want-"

"Ah-ah-ah, shut up. No more." Mirage grumbled, face red and walking faster.

As they approached the Square, they saw a figure standing there, but it wasn't Tara in front of them. Instead, it was an Octarian with pink tentacles tied in a ponytail and wearing a black cape, emblazed with a massive '3' on it.

"Hm?" She turned to the group. "Oh! Those uniforms! You must be..."

"Huh? Who are you?"

"I suppose we haven't met properly. I'm Octa, otherwise known as Agent 8 of the New Squidbeak Splatoon- I was just informed I'd be seeing you guys soon."

"Ah- YOU'RE Octa?! The legendary Agent 8?! That clone girl of Octavio's?!" Sandy exclaimed.

"Am I...so famous? Heehee." She smiled awkwardly, scratching the back of her head. "Yes, that is me."

"That's how the captain describes you to us." Mirage said.

"O-Oh...does he? Heehee, Jesse..." She swayed shyly a little before regaining her composure. "But yes. We are to be exploring the square together. Please follow me, I know a shortcut."

The group followed the Octoling, who walked with a confident stride along the sidewalk. Minu seemed to be especially interested in her, her eyes almost shimmering while watching Octa.

"So...Octa, how long have you been apart of the Splatoon?" Plat asked.

"Quite a bit. About six years ago now, I had fallen down into a metro located deep under the sea, and I was forced to undergo several tests like a lab rat to escape. I was also suffering from amnesia. To try and sum up the tale, I was almost blended up into a smoothie with Captain Cuttlefish when Jesse heroically rescued me, and then we stopped an evil AI from using its giant human statue from destroying the world!"

The group blinked. Minu seemed to be entranced however.

"W-Well...Mr. Cuttlefish never told us about THAT story..." Sandy shuddered.

"Anyway, I've had a lot of free time after the fact, so I've been working hard at the Splatoon in Inkopolis, until Pearl and Marina invited me to join their world tour a little bit ago, and- oh, we're close."

Even though the area so far had been incredibly quiet, it seemed...to be eerily silent near the Square. And they saw the unconscious cephalopods. They were sitting, standing, crouching, but they were all in the same state: unconscious, unaware, unfeeling. Like they were there, but their souls weren't.

"How unnerving..."

"Are they...alive?" Sandy examined an inkling more closely.

"They're breathing! They just..." Cruesa waved a hand in front of her face. "It's like they're not even there."

They finally walked into the main Square. It felt the most quiet there, No movement. No birds, no talking, no hustle or bustle. It was...completely dead.

"What..."

"OMC! Theo!!" Octa gasped, rushing ahead to the motionless Agent 4 lying on the ground. Kneeling down, she shook his shoulder. "Theo?! Please wake up! You must!!"

"That's Agent 4? He looks...pretty unassuming." Mirage scrunched their face.

"Oh, do not be fooled! He is one of the most capable people I know! Very strong! He was able to slam a Rainmaker into King Octavio's face so hard that he had a massive bruise for weeks on end!"

"That's, uh...an accomplishment, alright."

"He is alive, but unconscious as well. How very strange." She stood up, crossing her arms. "Hmm...I wonder..."

Suddenly, they heard a large clank from somewhere else, and then a constant whirring. And without warning, a blue energy began to emit all around them.

"What's going...on?! Why...am I becoming sleepy...?" Sandy yawned, falling to her knees.

"S-Sandy-! Are you alright?!" Plat kneeled beside her. His eyelids began to droop. "Oh...I'm...quite exhausted all of sudden, myself..."

"It's...!" Minu pointed up at a machine on top of Deca Tower. "She must've....known we were going to be here....! She set a trap! An automatic....device....."

"Oooh...." Cruesa rubbed her eyes. "What's happening to me...?"

"Ess...!" Mirage reached for her, but she had collapsed to the ground, going unconscious. They fell to the ground themself.

"Oh...no..." Octa whined, before she herself finally succumbed to the slumber alongside all of them.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

AI and Detection

So let's say you want some kind of guard in a game. It's not a stealth game per se but you want something that feels more naturalistic than the straight-line movement of the lowly Goomba.

You need to consider behavior states and detection parameters.

In its basic idle state, a guard probably stands somewhere, perhaps patrolling a small zone.

If it notices the player, it changes behavior, most likely becoming more aggressive.

So we now have two behavior states: Idle and Chase.

A lot of games - especially stealth titles - also have an intermediate "Curious" or "Searching" state where something suspicious has happened but they haven't spotted you. This usually involves changing their behavior in a way that makes it harder to stay hidden, such as going quickly to the spot that triggered the curiosity and then looking around carefully. (though clever players can use this known pattern to juke, such as by throwing a bottle onto the front steps of a building so the guards investigate that while you go in the side window)

With that covered, let's talk detection parameters. Each state has a different behavior AND a different form of detection. This reflects things like expected intelligence.

In an idle state, a guard might have a circle around him for sound and a frontal vision cone. He'll move back and forth on a set route, in a predictable pattern. The cone is 2-3 times longer than the radius of the circle, but only points one way.

If the player does something making noise in the sound circle, the guard enters Curious state. If that action was "dancing behind him in clogs" he probably detects you immediately because he turns around and points his vision cone at the source of the noise. The cone contacts your character model, so you're detected, and now he enters Chase.

For Chase, you can do a couple things to represent the guard having an idea of where you are. You can double the hearing radius, so that even if you get behind something that blocks immediate vision they might notice you eating chips. You can swap out the vision cone for a series of raycasts in several directions, giving the idea that they're following you visually until they lose sight of you. Metroid recently had a system where once it was chasing you the EMMI would ping your current location every couple seconds and rework the fastest path, making it a very determined hunter until you got entirely outside its jurisdiction. In my case I've got a frog, so "chase" is very loose and light: If it sees you, it hops toward you and automatically turns to face you for 4 seconds. This makes it possible for it to keep seeing you, even if you manage to slide under its jump or outleap it. But you run faster than its horizontal jump distance, and its vision cone isn't that big; maybe 1/6 of the screen width. Get out of that range and stay out of that range and it forgets you exist. I do like the idea of the audio circle, in this case looking for player jumps. That is, when you transition from Fall animation to Idle or Run animation from landing on the ground, if that happens inside the frog's circle of hearing, it automatically starts chasing you.

A couple valuable things to pick up here that will be useful for non-platformer projects:

Coroutines, in some form. If there's a chase and the chase can end, there has to be something where a timer starts, resets itself on continued vision, and sets the critter back to an idle state if it ends. If I make a puzzle game with a 30-second clock, the timescale is different but the programming is exactly the same.

Setting contact zones. If I want to make a card game with drop zones (such as "the play area" or "x tile on the battlefield" I'll need the game to be able to recognize those zones. That's the same 2D colliders as the invisible vision and hearing cones.

[dualredundancy]

DR435: Predictions for the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards (Emmys 2023)

Every year we try to predict the very unpredictable Emmys in a very special episode of Dual Redundancy. This year Dave, Kyle and John try and forecast who will take home the Emmy in all the major categories for the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards which were initially set to take place in September 2023 but will instead take place on Monday, January 15th 2024 on FOX.

We predict the acting categories for limited series (8:15), drama series (25:25) and comedy series () as well as the main three: outstanding limited series, outstanding drama series, and outstanding comedy series (48:35).

This episode was originally streamed live on January 3rd on both Twitch and YouTube. We will be back with the next live stream on Wednesday, January 17th. For more Emmy coverage check out our nomination reaction special and when we had Google's AI Chatbot Bard predict the Emmys. Want more Dual Redundancy? Be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts!

Here is a freshly posted brand new episode of Dual Redundancy!

[bunshoe]

Welcome!

Hello there!! This is a blog where I get to be very excited about detective video games (alongside sometimes other detective media. as a treat), as well as talk/theorise about things that interest me! Asks are open and encouraged, and if you're interested in my art specifically or other socials then check out my main!

Tag system: #bunchat - casual posts/talking #bunthoughts - thoughts/theories on a particular game #bunplays - posts made about a game I've not finished #bunart - posts including my art

Below is a list of all the detective games I've played and plan to play in case you want to know what you can talk to me about! Feel free to chat about stuff that's not on the list too- I appreciate recommendations for new stuff, or it may be something I know about already! (films, books etc)

Notable detective games I've played With a summary sentence + favourite character ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Dangaronpa series: Danganronpa Incredible concept and presentation, but found each case's twist easy to predict. Aoi Asahina Danganronpa 2 Improves on the original in many ways, and has the best case in the series, but the fanservice was a bit much. Sonia Nevermind Danganronpa V3 Presentation and character design the best in the series, but is held back a bit by the slow pace; I enjoyed the ending. K1-B0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The 999 series: 999 Stellar concept, stand out voice performance from Evan Smith, and a remarkably grounded atmosphere for an Anime Game (affectionate). Snake Virtue's Last Reward Takes the interesting meta concepts of 999 and runs with them for a truly one-of-a-kind narrative, although is let down slightly by a convoluted ending. K Zero Time Dilemma I have never seen a game go so downhill so quickly in its last 20 minutes; had a blast playing, but for all the wrong reasons. Carlos ------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Ace Attorney Series Ace Attorney A classic for a reason; one of the best in the series even when compared to later entries. Dick Gumshoe

Justice for All Would be solid if not part of a series of such high quality titles. Phoenix Wright

Trials and Tribulations Absolute standout of the series, with a final case that manages to capture the very best elements of Ace Attorney. Miles Edgeworth + Ron Delite

Apollo Justice Whilst by no means bad, for me it never really reached the highs of other titles in the series. Trucy Wright

Dual Destinies One of my favourites, with a self aware sense of humour that allows them to embrace the inherent silliness of Ace Attorney. Simon Blackquill + Bobby Fullbright

Chronicles My favourite games of all time; it's like someone set out to make a game specifically for me. Herlock Sholmes

Investigations 1 Decent game, and always nice to play as Edgeworth, but one of the worst offenders of the Ace Attorney "you can't present the banana peel until you present the banana!" type problem. Miles Edgeworth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Professor Layton Series Generally more puzzle than detective, but I feel like they count. It takes a couple of games for the series to find its footing, but from Lost Future (my favourite) onwards, it masters the balance between an engaging narrative/larger mystery and the puzzles. The puzzle design is generally excellent, with the exception of the Katrielle Layton games, where there is a notable degrade in their quality. Incredibly charming and approachable series. Emmy Altavia, Luke Triton, Hershel Layton, Katrielle Layton

Return of the Obra Dinn Absolute exemplar of the genre which uses the medium to make you BE the detective in a way a film or book can't, presenting you with clues that require you to think out of the box to solve its tough but fair mysteries. Henry Evans

AI: The Somnium Files Pleasantly surprising and satisfying murder mystery game, with an incredibly likeable lead duo and cast. Mizuki

Ghost Trick Tight, engaging puzzles based on an interesting time-based premise are supported by excellent writing, characters and art direction; the animation is a particular underrated standout. Inspector Cabanela

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright Although not the best of either series, Layton's gameplay works incredibly well in place of AA's typically lacklustre investigation segments.

The Sexy Brutale Groundhog day but with murder; an interesting premise and wider mystery coupled with tight puzzle design draws a flattering comparison to Ghost Trick. Trinity Carrington

Tangle Tower Excellent art, fun (fully voice acted!) characters and a decent mystery, sadly let down by a jarringly abrupt ending. Detective Grimoire

Aviary Attorney Ace Attorney but with birds; visually great, with some fun genre subversions, but I'm just not personally a huge fan of 'your choices matter' type detective games. Jayjay Falcon

The Room Series Sets out to do one thing, and does it well- good for those who are more interested in puzzles over narrative.

Her Story Interesting example of how allowing player agency in a detective game sets the experience apart from other mediums in the detective genre.

Unheard One I haven't heard people talk much about, and I don't know why; its audio-based method of providing clues is unique and interesting, and is a concept I would love to see explored further.

The Case of the Golden Idol Not as good as Obra Dinn, its clear inspiration, but fills that same role as a detective game that encourages lateral thinking; if you liked Obra Dinn, you'll like this.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog Was personally a little disappointed that deduction was done in the form of a platforming challenge instead of being allowed to present my own reasoning, but that isn't what this game was trying to be, and is instead carried by an impressive level of charm and a surprisingly great larger mystery. Tails

Games I plan to play: AI: Nirvana Initiative (currently playing) Outer Wilds Loco-Motive The Spider of Lanka Frog Detective Shadows of Doubt Overboard Strange Horticulture Paradise Killer Mohism: Battle of Words Rusty Lake Hotel Your Turn to Die Methods: The Canada Files Darkside Detective ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pagedoll by dianthus-alpinus

[insignificantly-notorious]

Made For Love is so GOOD; like I discovered and then binged and binged AGAIN and losing my mind waiting for new episodes for Season 2 and went kinda crazy about it.

With Season 1 being such a good television, Season 2 is just PEAK television and got better.

It commits to its weirdness from the get go and just went full fledged insane with its plot.

And I think it did an excellent job of following through with its storylines. It always tied in together nicely towards the end and I just in awe since each episode is roughly 25 minutes.

With its actors be ACTINGGG & the music choices are 🌟AMAZING🌟 (Mitski is everywhere thanks 🥰). Season 2 knocked it out the park, and there's still so much unresolved and new subplots that got me gagged.

With its strong structure, you would think I could predict things that will happen but I COULDN’T. It always surprises me and that got me smiling with ‘ahhh, that’s make so much sense’ and ‘whAt?!’ in a good way.

The actors. GaHHH the actors! Amazing chemistry between Cristin Milioti and Billy Magnussen as Hazel and Byron Gogol. They’re so LAYERED. Their range is kinda crazy and are PERFECTLY cast (Emmy!!!!!!!!! NOW!)

And Ray Romano as Herbert is such a delight to watch (I crieD) and Bennett and Fiffany (which is my favourite) and many more.

And the themes- love, loneliness, tech and on the moral quandaries of the authenticity of human connection in the wake of AI is so delightfully complex and compelling argument.

This is a terrific series mannn. Zany, sharp, and entertaining as ever, with weird science and even weirder characters.

And @hbomax should RENEW IT! Stop playing!!! I need 10 more seasons of this I was watching this show like a starved animal 😫😫😫😫🥺🥺🥺

[captnjacksparrow]

Why did Sasuke have sex with Sakura if he did not like her? He did horrible things to her and yet he made a baby with her so it means that he finds Sakura attractive. He is not that type of guy who would put his d just like that and I do not believe that he did not know about protection so he wanted a baby with Sakura.

To that Anon..... Who once asked me who is hornier, NaruHina or SasuSaku???.... And I told you my answer.... And if you are reading my post today... This ask is the literal proof for you!!!! Look at the proof of their Love.... 

God!!! I'm really uncomfortable talking about sex in an ask. Anyways, this will be my last time...

Disclaimer: The Word ‘Sex’ is used many times in this post. If you feel uncomfortable, please don’t read it.

Reasonable Answer:

The Studio forced Sasuke to do 'the thing'. That's all.

Prediction Based Answer:

Why do you think 'Having Sex' must always be related to attractiveness and romance????

Your question makes me doubt your Media Observing experience. I mean, maybe you are a 12 year old kid who never watched modern Movies other than Disney Stuffs.... 

Do you really think every sexual experience that everyone had so far was romantic????

Have you heard about 'One Night Stand'???? Or 'Casual Sex'??? Both of them were done just for experimenting... I mean horny teenagers get hormonal rage and they just do it and then forget about it. I'm sure you must have watched it in many Hollywood Movies. Popular Movie Example.... Iron Man... Tony Stark had wild sex with Christine Everhart for one-night but he never loved her or even remember that thing.

He is not that type of guy who would put his d just like that

Since you yourself had admitted that Sasuke is not that type of Guy... Surprisingly, I also agree with you on this, Anon.... So, can we safely eliminate One Night Stand and Casual Sex out of the possibilities?????

With that being said.....

There is something called 'Obligatory Sex'.... Like Back in those days, Kings cannot marry the girl they really loved. Because of Social Status. So, they marry a socially sound girl and make them into a Queen. Their purpose is solely for making Prince and Princess. They really won't share the same bed chambers because the King don't really love the Queen. But most of the Kings take their loved girl as their Beloved Concubine with whom they can share their true love in an honest way... Go and watch Historical Chinese and Korean Drama.... They are full of these themes. Or watch Game of Thrones Season 1...  The King, when he was trying to have sex with the Queen, he whispers his Beloved Girl’s name.... That irritated the queen... So the Queen went behind King’s back and had sex with her Br.... Sorry, some person and ended up having 3 kids.... What’s more?, She passed all those 3 kids as the King’s Children. The sex portrayed in this series are mostly either abusive, non-consensual... if it is romantic, it always ended up in a Tragedy, if it is an One-Timer, one of the partner will dump the other in the end..... or if it doesn't belong to any of the above, then it must be the sex that happens in Brothel House.

And there is something called 'Give and Take' Sex... Like having sex for one time, just as a favour. There is this Oscar Award Winning movie called 'Forrest Gump'... in which Tom Hanks mother have a one-time sex with a School Principal... Just for making her disabled kid to get admitted in his School.

And there is something called ‘Societal Pressure’ Sex... In Patriarchal Societies, such as mine, most of the marriages are Arranged Ones. So, Couple’s don’t really love each other in the beginning and they were forced to marry. And it’s this girl’s responsibility to bore a Baby within 10 months, otherwise, the Mother-In-Law or her Neighbours will pester that newly married girl.. .. And finally they consummate the marriage just for satiating her ‘New Found’ Family. Because Infertility thing will not be tolerated. This is how my Grandmom had her 5 kids... that is, without loving the Man she married. To this day, she still resents my Grandfather because she hates him for personal reasons. This is very common from where I come from.

And finally.... ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Sex.... Rather than me explaining it...You must watch this Oscar Award Winning movie. Oh, By the Way.... This movie was directed by Ang Lee from China... A place where homosexual contents in contemporary media were strictly banned and censored by their Government but they are the best in producing successful and soulful Shounen Ai novels...

He did horrible things to her

He never did anything horrible apart from rejecting her love advance... If she stayed quiet and remained non-horny in Chapter 693, he wouldn’t have put her in that Genjutsu. 

So, Stop making Sasuke as this monster just to portray your Kween as a Victim. She is the harasser in SS. 

I have given 2 Oscar Award Winning movies, 1 Most Emmy Award Winning TV series, Culturally similar TV series from China and Korea, 1 Blockbuster movie which gave rise to a Biggest Billion Dollar Franchise called MCU, Real Life Experience..... And yet here you are living in your la-la-land thinking that every Sex is based on Romance. Sasuke might have ‘did the deed’ based on any of the above... If he did as you said, that is, having Sex out of Attractiveness, he wouldn’t have abandoned her and Sarada for 12 years, he wouldn’t have asked her, “What are you doing here?” on seeing her face after a decade, he wouldn’t have refused to Kiss her.... The very natural response after seeing your beloved person is to Hug.... or atleast have a Brimming Smile. Sasuke did neither.

Please come to the real world instead of staying in your Colourful Disney World, Anon.

[sparrowsabre7]

Legends of Tomorrow is... sorry, was... a complicated show with a very uncomplicated premise. It was technically a sci-fi/superhero show about a bunch of misfits travelling through time to fix anomalies. The reality was much more than that, it was a show that was at once better and worse than Doctor Who, funnier and more inventive than many standard comedies and more heartfelt and sincere than many Emmy winning dramas.

It was also absolute nonsense and one of the dumbest shows around, but one thing it never was was boring. It began life with a fairly rote premise, picking up strays from existing DC superhero shows that were airing at the time (Arrow and Flash) and brought them together under the Captaincy of Rip Hunter, a British space cowboy who wanted to stop the man responsible for the murder of his wife and child. A remarkably straightforward mission statement which then evolved over the seasons to become fixing time anomalies, fighting the Legion of Doom, sending time exiles back to their proper place, fighting resurrected evildoers of history, magical beasts, and aliens before finishing on a final season with the very simple plot of finding their way home from the 20s... whilst fighting evil versions of themselves.

For all this high concept malarky, Legends had two key strengths:

1. Its prescience to use lesser known characters as its ensemble, allowing for an easy rotation of cast and allowing them to take (sometimes extreme) liberties with the source material and avoid becoming predictable.

Many characters came and went but all had incedible chemistry and the crew of the Waverider ( the Legends' timeship) always felt like family. Additionally, throughout its run, Legends accumulated perhaps the most diverse and representative cast of any show on a major network, featuring a female bisexual main character from the get go, promoted to Captain from season 2 onwards. By the end of its run the main cast was predominantly female, with a number of sexualities, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds represented.

2. Its willingness to completely throw out the core concept of the show almost every season. All that carried over through all seven seasons was time travel and the team righting wrongs (along with stalwart Captain Sara Lance and AI turned real person Gideon). It seems almost appropriate for a show that has always defied convention (and critics) should end so abruptly, cancelled before given a chance to officially end, on a cliffhanger for the crew (though not without giving us a cheeky glimpse of what the future held for them in the penultimate episode) wherein our brave heroes find themselves arrested for crimes against time (Monty Python would be proud). It ended not with a bang but a literal groan, also conveniently working well as a place to very easily pick up where they left off, should the show ever get picked up in the future. "Where were the Legends all this time?" "Time prison." "Oh ok, moving on."

Regardless of what it was, what it is now, is over and it will leave a very bizarre gap in my life unlike perhaps any other show has or will. It was not the best show, nor even my most beloved show, but it nonetheless holds a very special place in my heart.

This is a show that I started watching with my then girlfriend in 2016 when we had not long moved in together in our first place together, a dingy, very small flat with what could charitably be called five rooms, but was essentially two rooms and three cupboards masquerading as rooms. It was one of the few shows we discovered together and started watching together as a couple and over the course of its run we moved out of our flat, into a new house, got engaged, got married, travelled to four countries, survived a global pandemic, new jobs, and the birth of our first child.

Showrunners Phil Klemmer and Keto Shimizu described the Waverider as a kind of "halfway home" for individuals in need of help, be that moving on, working out issues, growing as a person, or just finding their own sense of peace. It is perhaps fitting then that it is now that we bid farewell to the crew of the Waverider, this show that has carried us through relationship firsts, joys, and heartache; we are whole now, we no longer need them. But we will miss them.

[sablegear0]

Quick theory about the EMMIs’ construction

So I was reflecting on how one of my early predictions for Dread was sorta true, and I got to thinking about the EMMIs and developed a quick little theory about them. It's got some minor spoilers in it so, just be aware when clicking through if you haven't finished the game or at least played most of the way through. (Theory under the cut)

(FWIW my prediction was that the situation with the EMMIs was an elaborate trap, I had just guessed wrong about who set it up. This has no bearing on the theory to follow.)

I suspect the EMMIs are made with some kind of nanotech. We're told early/midgame that they adapt to their environments/tasks which makes sense for something that apparently complex, but it doesn't explain the full range of what we see. Knowing that, one would expect to just see adaptive behaviours (AI learning, typical stuff), but we also see adaptive abilities and morphologies, which, unless they were dropped onto ZDR with toolkits to actively modify their own mechanics, seems unusual. 

Unless you consider the possibility that they are partly or even mostly composed of some kind of nano-swarm. It would explain the adaptive morphologies, the ability to derive new abilities by need (or quite likely by subsumed Chozo tech), the colour changes (which honestly bother me the most lol), and why they appear to be mostly indestructible. 

It may not be that they're made of strictly indestructible material (consider the plating an active swarm, with the chassis still being exceptionally tough material), but that their outer layers have such a high repair rate, owing to their nano-swarm composition, that conventional weapons (even the comparatively heavy-duty stuff we know Samus packs) just don't cause any appreciable damage. 

That's why it takes the supercharged Omega canon to destroy them; something that releases enough energy to disrupt the swarm's integrity (stripping the plating off the head) and melt that tough inner chassis. This also explains why they appear to dissolve when destroyed, the swarm disperses when the power-core and chassis fail.

Anyway that’s it, just a mini theory of no real consequence. Until next time!

(Although thinking back on my predictions, I am still a teeny bit disappointed Dread wouldn't give me the existential horror beat that I craved by making the EMMIs other GF AIs like Adam. That would have been creepy as hell. “Hey, Samus, we’ve lost a bunch of expensive research robots on this unexplored planet, can you go find them?” Psst, nobody tell her they’re piloted by an upload team of highly trained Black Ops assassins who probably went nuts from the isolation. It’s fine, she’ll figure it out on her own.)

[manysquidsandoctos]

Greg leaned back in the creaky swivel chair. He was awake. After some estimation (and checking the date on the cryostasis machine before leaving the museum), he found out it has been 12,000 years since he put himself inside.

“Come on....stupid fucking......” he swore. He was trying to reboot up his old lab computer, which had a slimy substance on the keyboard and mouse. Perhaps the new species were trying to get in.

No luck. He pushed himself back. His brain still couldn’t quite process it. The last human alive. It was honestly a lost cause trying to revive a doomed species, but he couldn’t just sit and fumble about waiting for his inevitable death. Besides, it’s quite boring.

He kicked the chair over to the closet, which had a bit of a stuck handle. He eventually did open it, and grabbed out a rusty toolbox.

Sliding back with the toolbox, he put his computer screen down and nabbed his screwdriver. And the magic began.

Cutting. Rewiring. The occasional spark here and there. Undoing screws and messing with the coding a bit. Finally, done.

He plugged it back in the outlet and hit the power button.

Success.

The files were in a clutter in his desktop. He never truly took the time of organizing them, since the sake of mankind was in the balance.

The NILS project, which he completed before sealing himself away. The Cryostasis chambers. TARTAR.

“TARTAR.....” he sighed. The AI he created all those years ago. Was it still functioning? He made it durable, but....well, anything can happen in 12,000 years. And Judd, his most beloved cat companion...when he searched the feline’s chamber for him, he was no where to be found. It’s impossible to predict what happened to him, not to mention, Lil’ Judd.

But he installed a tracking device on both Judds and TARTAR. Maybe he.....

He opened up the tracking program he designed himself. Fuck, he could use some coffee, but the coffee machine was broken and he couldn’t ascertain if this new world had potable water. Fuck, how was he supposed to drink?!

“Entering passcode...’Judd12!!’.....” he mumbled to himself, focusing.

“TARTAR......enable tracking.”

——

At this very moment, a ringing sound came from Kama’s ears. He may be a living breathing creature now, but he still had some old systems that Tartar had.

This was the tracking system.

Good thing he also had his call feature- his most signature remark, in his opinion- to answer the ping.

“H-Hello...?”

“TARTAR. Is that you?” Greg answered.

The voice. The tone. It was very familiar to his ears.

“P.....Professor....? You’re.....ALIVE?!”

“TARTAR-?”

“PROFESSOR!!” He cried out, shocking all the Octotroopers surrounding him. Emmy rose out of the cot she was sleeping in and made an annoyed groaning noise. “Kama, shut-“

“Professor! Oh how I’ve- where are you?! Are you safe?? The radiation level isn’t too high, is it-“

“TARTAR, slow down! I don’t think I remember programming you with all these....emotions.”

“You didn’t, sir! The Cephalopods did!!”

Greg froze. “I’m sorry- did you just say cephalopods? As in.....squids, octopi? Cuttlefish?”

“Yes, sir! They gave me a new form after my old one was destroyed, and there’s this one young girl who’s very kind-“

“TARTAR, calm down. How technologically advanced are they??”

“Very. They have built machines capable of war, developed serums and cures for their diseases!”

“They’re intelligent......okay, okay. This is fine! Where are you?”

“Southern Inkopolis!”

“.....What?”

“Oh, apologies. Their map is different. It would be the equivalent of.....Hiroshima, sir.”

“I see.”

“Kama, who the shell are you talking to??” Emmy whined. “Stop talking to yourself and go to bed!”

“What was that?” Greg asked.

“Oh! These are one of the life forms! An Inkling! A squid-human!”

“What??”

“Alright, can you just fill me in on important matters?” Greg groaned.

“Okay, sir.”

[hostingnewsfeed]

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

New Post has been published on http://rentts.org/stocks-to-watch-tencent-music-starbucks-and-under-armour-in-focus/

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

Welcome to Seeking Alpha’s Stocks to Watch – a preview of key events scheduled for the next week. Follow this account and turn the e-mail alert on to receive this article in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Investors are prepping for another week of volatility as concerns over the China trade deal and the impact of the U.K. Brexit withdrawal bill are sure to linger. Add in the drama of a yield curve that inverted on the short end and it’s small wonder that the Santa Claus rally is having a hard time materializing. With major indexes having now erased their gains for the year, expect to hear some noise from value investors after seeing the one-month drops in names such as Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) -25%, Target (NYSE:TGT) -22%, Tiffany (NYSE:TIF) -22%, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) -19%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) -18%, Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) -15% and Altria (NYSE:MO) -15%. On the economic front this week, new reads on producer prices, consumer prices and retail sales will be closely watched.

Notable earnings reports: It’s a very thin week for earnings reports, but companies due to spill numbers include Ascena Retail (NASDAQ:ASNA) and Stitch Fix (NASDAQ:SFIX) on December 10; American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) and Dave & Buster’s Entertainment (NASDAQ:PLAY) on December 11; Phototronics (NASDAQ:PLAB) and Oxford Industries (NYSE:OXM) on December 12; Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), Costco (NASDAQ:COST) and Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) on December 13.

IPOs expected to price: Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) is pressing ahead with its IPO as the company looks to take advantage of the 90-day pause on tariffs between the U.S. and China. The music streaming service plans to sell 41M ADSs in the offering and selling shareholders will also unload just under 41M ADSs. Tencent Music owns three streaming music platforms in China – QQ Music, Kuguo, and Kuwo – with a count of over 700M monthly active users. Heading into the IPO, Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) holds a 58.1% stake in Tencent Music and Spotify (NYSE:SPOT) owned a 9.1% stake.

IPO lockup expirations: Greenpro (OTCQB:GRNQ) on December 10; US Xpress Enterprises (NYSE:USX) and Charah Solutions (NYSE:CHRA) on December 11; Avalara (NYSE:AVLR), Verrica Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRCA) and Puixin (NYSE:NEW) on December 12.

Analyst quiet period expirations: Vapotherm (NYSE:VAPO) and Eton Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ETON) on December 10; Weidai (NYSE:WEI) on December 11;

Projected dividend changes (quarterly): Abbott (NYSE:ABT) to $0.30 from $0.28, AES (NYSE:AES) to $0.14 from $0.13, Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) to $1.39 from $1.32, Boeing (NYSE:BA) to $2.08 from $1.71, Franklin Resources (NYSE:BEN) to $0.25 from $0.23, Lilly (NYSE:LLY) to $0.57 from $0.5625, Realty Income (NYSE:O) to $0.221 from $0.2205, AT&T (NYSE:T) to $0.51 from $0.50, Ventas (NYSE:VTR) to $0.81 from $0.79, ABM Industries (NYSE:ABM) to $0.18 from $0.175, Balchem (NASDAQ:BCPC) to $0.46 from $0.42, SEI (NASDAQ:SEIC) to $0.32 from $0.30, Urstadt Biddle (NYSE:UBA) to $0.275 from $0.27, WD-40 (NASDAQ:WDFC) to $0.59 from $0.54.

60 Minutes: Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk was interviewed by Leslie Stahl for the weekly news show. In a clip already released, Musk said “I don’t really want to try to adhere to some CEO template.” Musk also stated that the EV automaker would have interest in setting up shop in an old General Motors (NYSE:GM) plant if one is available.

Analyst/investor meetings: Arthur Gallagher (NYSE:AJG), Enbridge (NYSE:ENB), American Water Works (NYSE:AWK), ServiceMaster Global (NASDAQ:SERV), TreeHouse Foods (NYSE:THS) and Crown Holdings (NYSE:CCK) on December 11; Aimmune Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AIMT) and Hess (NYSE:HES) on December 12; ImmunoGen (NASDAQ:IMGN), Health Insurance (NASDAQ:HIIQ) and Danaher (NYSE:DHR) on December 13; Hartford Financial (NYSE:HIG) and Centene (NYSE:CNC) on December 14.

Spotlight on coffee: Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) hosts its biannual investor day event on December 13. The meeting will occur about a month after Starbucks announced a round of corporate-level job cuts. While the company isn’t directly in the line of fire of tariffs, an escalation of the U.S.-China trade battle could end up hurting its business if Beijing slows the regulatory process or a consumer backlash pops up.

Spotlight on Under Armour: Under Armour (UA, UAA) will hold an investor meeting on December 12. CEO Kevin Plank, President, COO Patrik Frisk, CFO David Bergman and other Under Armour execs will provide an overview of the company’s long-term strategy, financial outlook and key initiatives to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and shareholder value.

Capitol Hill watch: Google (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai is due to appear before a House panel on December 11 in a hearing rescheduled from last week. Height Capital Markets expects the tough questions to be asked to Pichai by lawmakers to be just the start, not the end. The firm thinks Big Tech companies will be exposed to regulatory headline risk into 2019, even as it predicts final legislation will be tough to pass both houses. The House is also slated to vote next week on a bi-partisan measure that would punish drugmakers trying to game Medicaid’s rebate system to garner bigger profits.

FCC watch: The FCC is due to start its quadrennial review of some media ownership rules, including the issue of owning multiple stations in a single market. Companies watching the developments include Entercom (NYSE:ETM), Emmis Communications (NASDAQ:EMMS), Cumulus (NASDAQ:CMLS), Cox Radio (CXR), Clear Channel, CBS, Disney (NYSE:DIS), Beasley Broadcasting (NASDAQ:BBGI), iHeartMedia (OTCPK:IHRTQ).

Short report: Nasdaq is due to issue a new short interest report on December 11 for positions settled by November 30. Stocks with the highest level of short interest as a percentage of total float at the time of the last Nasdaq report included GNC Holdings (NYSE:GNC), Lannett Company (NYSEMKT:LCI), J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP), Carbo Ceramics (NYSE:CRR), Carvana (NYSE:CVNA), Buckle (NYSE:BKE), Revlon (NYSE:REV), RH(NYSE:RH), Dillard’s (NYSE:DDS), Camping World (NYSE:CWH), B&G Foods (NYSE:BGS) and Pyxus International (NYSE:PYX).

M&A tidbits: Lumentum’s (NASDAQ:LITE) acquisition of Oclaro (NASDAQ:OCLR) is expected to close on December 10. Shareholders with Akebia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AKBA) and Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:KERX) vote on the merger between the two companies on December 11. A special meeting is scheduled on December 11 for shareholders of Dell Technologies (NYSE:DVMT) to vote on the Class V common stock exchange transaction. CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) has a deadline of December 14 to issue a briefing defending the Aetna (NYSE:AET) deal.

Sales updates: Franklin Resources (BEN) on December 10, TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) on December 11; E*Trade Financial (NASDAQ:ETFC) and Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) on December 14.

More Prime Time: It’s another notch on the belt for Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) as its streaming service launches on Comcast’s (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Xfinity X1 platform.

Cyberwatch: Zix (NASDAQ:ZIXI), Calix (NYSE:CALX) and GigCapital (NYSE:GIG.U) are scheduled for one-on-one meetings at the Cowen 5th Annual Networking & Cybersecurity Summit on December 12.

Barron’s mentions: The share price drop on Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) looks overdone, reasons Jack Hough. He notes that a midyear price increase by Caterpillar on machines helped offset higher costs related to steel and other tariffs, while booked orders are strong for 2019. Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) is also seen as being on the cheap side, with shares trading at only 10X forward earnings. That’s despite the huge upside for Applied Materials in AI chips. There’s also a deep dive on Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX) after the company’s bumpy road.

Sources: Nasdaq, EDGAR, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg

Editor’s Note: This article covers one or more microcap stocks. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

[sinrau]

Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and co-founder of Center for Human Technology, appears before Congress in “The Social Dilemma.” (Netflix)

Picture, if you will, a high-tech voodoo doll of you on a server somewhere. Probably more than one server.

While the makers of that reverse-engineered avatar might not be sticking literal pins into it, in “The Social Dilemma,” filmmaker Jeff Orlowski makes a fine case that in mining data from your onscreen interactions, they are constructing a predictive version of you and trying to prick your interests and put a spell on your attention in historically unprecedented ways. (“The Social Dilemma” began streaming on Netflix this week.)

The quotes Orlowski begins his wake-up call of a documentary with — and peppers throughout — aren’t easy to top. There’s Sophocles’ “Nothing vast enters the world of mortals without a curse.” And this from sci-fi giant Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And this wry quip from data-visualization guru Edward Tufte: “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”

Yet, here’s one to add: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” It may not be as elegant as the others, but it represents the tone taken by the tech leaders interviewed by the Boulder-based director who investigated the extraordinary problems wrought by big-tech behemoths, particularly the ones that have entangled so many in the vast web of social media: Twitter, Facebook and Google.

Among the documentary’s smart and personable talking heads: Justin Rosenstein, co-inventor of Facebook’s “like” button; Tim Kendall, former president of Pinterest and former Facebook director of monetization; and Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” (That book’s subtitle: “A Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.”)

Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, became notable for writing an early internal and legendary document questioning the addictive tendencies of smartphone tech. Think Jerry Maguire’s manifesto after his dark night of the soul. Harris caused a buzz and then, well, crickets. He went on to co-found the Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit promoting the ethics of consumer tech.

RELATED: Watch this very real Netflix doc about a man who welded himself inside a “killdozer” and destroyed half of Granby

These days, Silicon Valley is referred to in much the way we talk about Hollywood or Washington: It is a global economic force, a wielder of spectacular power, somehow exemplary, too, of some more honorable ideals. Orlowski went to one of its feeder schools.

“I was class of ’06 at Stanford. When we all graduated, that was (around) the birth of the iPhone and the birth of apps. So many of my closest friends went directly to Facebook, Google or Twitter. Multiple friends sold their companies to Twitter for exorbitant amounts of money,” Orlowski said on the phone before his film’s world premiere at January’s Sundance Film Festival.

The project came out of conversations with those friends “who were starting to talk about the problems with the big social media companies back in 2017, at the birth of the tech backlash that we’ve been seeing. Honestly, I’d heard nothing about it, knew nothing about it.”

So many of his creative, thoughtful friends were working in new tech that Orlowski wondered, “How’s it a problem?” A fan of long-form journalism, he set out to answer that question and a few others. “For me, this process was two years of being an investigative journalist. (Of doing) first-hand research with the people who make the technology and trying to understand what the hell is going on.”

Director Jeff Orlowski attends the World Premiere of “The Social Dilemma,” an official selection of the Documentary Premieres program at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. (Azikiwe Aboagye, provided by the Sundance Institute)

He is not alone in trying to wrap his brain — and ours — around that. Orlowski was among a cluster of storytellers at January’s Sundance Film Festival, posing timely questions about societal costs of seemingly free platforms — quandaries that have been reflected in a deluge of headlines about big tech’s role in our lives, in civil discourse, in democracy. (The film’s final cut includes a few recent images of news footage hinting at the rough tango between our lives and the Twittersphere around COVID-19.)

Two other high-profile projects that should prompt a rethink were Shalini Kantayya’s “Coded Bias,” about the MIT Media Lab, where research uncovered just how racially biased facial recognition software is. It’s a searing yet inspiring look at what happens when the people making tech’s design choices, and building its algorithms, create for people who look exactly like them. Co-directors and Karim Amer and Guvenc Ozel’s vivid virtual-reality living-room installation, “Persuasion Machines,” depicts with its jaw-dropping environment the data-mining excesses of a “smart home.”

There have always been concerns about the amount of private information that customers seem so willing to cede with little regard for security. But social media is proving itself a voracious beast. It’s less about identity theft than the potential for manipulation on a mass scale. Advances in AI and machine learning have added a special — arguably dystopian-courting — wrinkle.

It’s little surprise, then, that Orlowski is asking urgent questions. He’s forged a place in the documentary vanguard. He first made a splash when he trailed environmental photographer James Balog around Greenland, Iceland and Alaska. With stunning images, Balog documented the calving of ice shelves, the receding of glaciers, and Orlowski documented him.

The resultant work, “Chasing Ice” (2012), was gorgeous and chilling — in all the wrong ways. It was a different kind of climate change doc, not a screed but a nature film that made a compelling case that there are seismic — likely irreversible — changes afoot. It won an Emmy. (Traveling through Denver International Airport, you may have stopped to watch Balog’s mesmerizing time-lapse video for his Extreme Ice Survey work.)

Orlowski’s 2017 follow-up, “Chasing Coral,” won an Emmy for Best Nature Documentary.

“This is the beginning of a decade of films about technology and the consequences of technology,” Orlowski said of the company. “There’s so much at risk and so much at scale, the way technology is designed.”

In both “Chasing Ice” and “Chasing Coral,” he worked to make concepts starkly or strikingly visual. He faced a similar challenge with “The Social Dilemma. “We were trying to think of ways to show people what’s happening on the other side of their screens that’s invisible,” he said. “How do you show people something that is literally impossible to see? You can’t see what’s happening on the servers, right? You can’t even see the servers. But how are the algorithms designed and what are they doing that control 3 billion people?”

The number is not far off: According to German data-statistics tracking company Statista, there are currently 3.5 billion smartphone users.

For “The Social Dilemma,” Orlowski weaves a narrative tale about a multiracial family wrestling with the role of tech in their home. Think of it as a dramatization of concerns. The strategy evolved out of his own response to the news he was hearing from his Silicon Valley friends and their worries around the industry’s overreach.

“Because of the way they were describing it, every time I looked at my phone, I kept seeing a manipulative machine on the other side trying to puppeteer me. For the year I was on Facebook, I thought, ‘I’m being used.’ And it gave birth to this narrative storyline we figured out this way to interweave with the documentary.”

As a filmmaker, it was a chance to direct actors. Vincent Kartheiser of “Mad Men” plays the three-yammering embodiments of AI, dialing up the needs, nudging impulses and commanding the attention of Ben. Skyler Gisondo portrays the increasingly distracted high schooler. Helping create this intricate dance between the interviews and narrative was Oscar-winning editor Davis Coombe, a local filmmaking luminary. (He also co-wrote the doc with Orlowski and Vickie Curtis.)

“I really loved doing all that,” said Orlowski. “The writing, the shooting, the directing. All of the narrative stuff was really fun and brought, I hope, a different dimension.”

Ben and his family are intended to represent the ways many of us interact with the technology, not as designers but as Instagrammers and Tweeters, friends and over-sharers, TikTok-ing kids and their aggravated parents.

Of course, recanting can be a tricky thing. We admire people who see the flaws — even corruption — in a system and alert us to the dangers. But we can also be suspicious of their declarations. Indeed, there is an undercurrent of quiet hubris intermixed with the insider cautions of a number of Orlowski’s experts.

An intentionally witty moment comes early in the movie when, after a few of them have reflected on the unintended consequences of tech, and the sense that it was meant to help not harm. Although each had been a chatterbox of insights and perspectives, every one of them grows silent, looking for all the world stumped by the simple question that Orlowski asks: “So what’s the problem?” More than once, an interviewee reminds us that one of the tools to address the hyper-speed amassing of power and profit is rather old-school: regulation.

Even more illuminating than confessing their own addictions to email, or push notifications, or Twitter are the moments when these engineers, software designers, marketing whizzes share their own practices for themselves — or their family’s rules for their children — about social media.

“I’ve uninstalled a ton of apps from my phone that I felt were just wasting of my time … and I’ve turned off notifications,” said Rosenstein.

“Never accept a video recommended to you on YouTube. Always choose. That’s another way to fight,” said Jaron Lanier, one of tech’s most innovative minds turned most trenchant critics.

“We’re zealots about it. Crazy,” said Allen, asked about social media and his children. “We don’t let our kids have really any screen time.”

And perhaps the most timely advice: “Before you share, fact check,” said Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “If it seems like something designed to push your emotional buttons, it probably is.”

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

A Boulder filmmaker’s new Netflix documentary will make you want to delete social media forever

[dualredundancy]

Dual Redundancy's 2023: Year in Review

We will back in January with all new episodes but as we wait Dave, John and Kyle are here to give a quick look back at their favorite podcast moments from 2023.

All of our podcasts from the past year are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. You can search for specific episodes on the blog or play all 24+ live shows (which we originally streamed on Twitch) with this special YouTube playlist.

Specifically here are a few shows that stood out to us in 2023:

DR 416 - Predicting the 95th Academy Awards vs. The Good, The Bad & The Watchable Podcast

DR 421 - Summer 2023 Movie Preview and Annual Box Office Draft

DR 429 - Barbenheimer! Barbie and Oppenheimer Movie Reviews

DR 431 - Google's AI Chatbot Bard Predicts the 75th Primetime Emmys

DR 434 - Winding Down 2023: Your Favorites in Movies, TV and Pop Culture

Be sure you are subscribed to the podcast and are following the show on Twitter, Instagram and wherever you get your podcasts. We will be live Wednesdays in January on Twitch! Happy Holidays and see you all in 2024!

Here is a freshly posted brand new episode of Dual Redundancy!

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

Tips on how to be a company ally now that Delight is over

http://tinyurl.com/y5n26nq4 On Level Tips on how to be a company ally now that Delight is overWe’re long gone the time the place slapping a rainbow in your emblem will cross muster with workers and prospects, reviews Fortune’s Natallie Rocha. However supporting the LGBTQ group can and may imply various things to totally different company cultures. Understanding why inclusion issues is step one, says Claudia Brind-Woody, a vp and managing director at IBM. Surveys, information assortment and taking public stands are important ¬— just like the landmark Amicus temporary headed to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom asking for protections for LGBTQ employees — however not sufficient. Click on by for an array of ways, methods and assets to assist firms at any stage of allyship to do and be higher. Please learn and share. Fortune Amazon’s facial recognition program solely acknowledges two gendersThe system known as Rekognition, and Amazon is more and more being utilized by legislation enforcement companies and touted by some consultants and offered to the world, as Anna Merlan and Dhruv Mehrotra in Jezebel put it “a wondrous new instrument designed to maintain the general public safer; Amazon’s one-stop superpower for legislation enforcement companies.” However Jezebel has discovered that Rekognition typically misgenders trans and queer folks and all nonbinary people, because the system solely accommodates two genders. They tick by an inventory of potential harms. “What occurs when you may’t use a toilet as a result of an AI lock thinks that you simply shouldn’t be there? What occurs to medical analysis or medical drug trials when a dataset misgenders or omits hundreds of individuals? And what occurs when a cop seems at your license and your machine predicted gender doesn’t match what they see?” What, certainly? Jezebel Melissa Harville-Lebron is the primary black girl to personal a NASCAR workforce“I don’t appear like all people else and we now have some proving to do, however we’re simply pretty much as good,” she tells CBS Information. Harville-Lebron, a single mother, turned curious about racing as a result of her two (now grownup) sons had been followers. After nineteen years within the Division of Corrections, she determined to self-finance a workforce, and the three are giving it a go. On this clip, the household are lengthy on enthusiasm and experience, however brief on sponsorship. It’s conserving them out of necessary races. “There’s not lots of minorities on this sport, and we might undoubtedly affect different folks to hitch,” says her son Eric, who runs a building firm. CBS News dream hampton interviews Tarana BurkeAnd, it’s in Playboy. hampton, the award-winning filmmaker, author, and organizer from Detroit burst into public consciousness together with her extraordinary docu-series on the life and sexual crimes of singer R. Kelly. So, she brings a robust authority to his dialog with Tarana Burke, the Bronx-based founding father of Simply Be Inc., a corporation meant to uplift younger ladies of colour and the creator of the unique and longstanding #MeToo marketing campaign to fight sexual assault. Forward lies candid discuss teen sexuality, organizing, harassment, the grooming of younger, curious ladies by predatory males and the terrors and tensions of life in a digital age. The story of how #MeToo was co-opted by the largely white anti-Harvey Weinstein motion is value understanding, too. “I felt like my life’s work had been taken in a single day,” says Burke. “That is the factor I care about greater than something, greater than any work I’ve performed.” After which, she did the unimaginable. The one #MeToo information you’ll ever want.Playboy On Background The return to segregated collegesThis episode of “Why Is This Occurring?” hosted by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, is the right listening fare for anybody who desires to quicken their heartrate whereas jogging or mountaineering. Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Instances Journal who focuses on schooling; she was additionally bussed into to a majority white college as a child. Hayes lays out the historical past of segregated colleges superbly within the setup, after which they dig in. Hannah-Jones explores the phenomenon of in any other case liberally oriented white dad and mom arguing for segregated schooling, and lays naked the true worth of rich, majority white colleges. It’s social capital – connections and community. “They’re very clear on eager to hoard these assets,” she says. “That they perceive that going to colleges with a sure social class opens doorways for his or her children. That useful resource hoarding is vital to why we ever had segregation within the first place as a result of it ensured that white People had been getting an inordinate quantity of the assets. And it’s the identical motive why we preserve it immediately.”Why Is This Happening? Be taught extra in regards to the fashionable white supremacy motion!Take a look at the American Renaissance web site, the house of one of many extra critical “white motion” organizations. Jared Taylor, the ever-present host, is a grandfatherly Yale grad who shares calmly articulated views and wholeheartedly believes within the revolutionary nature of the alt-right. “[O]ur motion tends to be male-oriented, however each dissident or revolutionary motion tends to be for that matter,” he says, citing Martin Luther and Lenin. “It’s solely later that the individuals who need to change society are joined by girls.” Recruiting girls is the aim of this 28-minute dialog is with Lana Lokteff, a stunning younger millennial who’s energetic in white supremacy circles. They start with feminism – the area of bougie-bored housewives, spinsters, minorities and ugly girls. Though it’s unlikely that you simply’ll be persuaded by their arguments, it’s value understanding how severely they’re taking them – and the way intently they observe with “conventional” American values. American Renaissance Seems The Star-Spangled Banner has a racist third stanza no one is aware of aboutIn relation to the nationwide anthem, the U.S. has been sitting out the third stanza for years now, because it incorporates some selection phrases about former slaves who selected to struggle for his or her freedom alongside the British in the course of the Battle of 1812. The Root does a pleasant job making the historical past accessible, significantly the perspective of the track’s writer, Francis Scott Key, an aristocrat and D.C.-based metropolis prosecutor who was in favor of sending free black people again to Africa, whereas conserving all others enslaved. For extra historical past you didn’t be taught at school, take a look at What So Proudly We Hail, a brief documentary from Emmy-nominated actor Tim Reid and journalism college students from Morgan State College, who dig into the unknown historical past behind the third stanza. The Root Tamara El-Waylly helps produce raceAhead. Quote “I believe that I’m significantly and uniquely and really deeply American. If we need to discuss in regards to the beliefs that we stand for, all of the songs and the anthem and type of what we had been based on, I believe I’m extraordinarily American.” —Megan Rapinoe Source link

[smartwebhostingblog]

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

New Post has been published on http://thefaerytale.com/stocks-to-watch-tencent-music-starbucks-and-under-armour-in-focus/

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

Welcome to Seeking Alpha’s Stocks to Watch – a preview of key events scheduled for the next week. Follow this account and turn the e-mail alert on to receive this article in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Investors are prepping for another week of volatility as concerns over the China trade deal and the impact of the U.K. Brexit withdrawal bill are sure to linger. Add in the drama of a yield curve that inverted on the short end and it’s small wonder that the Santa Claus rally is having a hard time materializing. With major indexes having now erased their gains for the year, expect to hear some noise from value investors after seeing the one-month drops in names such as Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) -25%, Target (NYSE:TGT) -22%, Tiffany (NYSE:TIF) -22%, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) -19%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) -18%, Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) -15% and Altria (NYSE:MO) -15%. On the economic front this week, new reads on producer prices, consumer prices and retail sales will be closely watched.

Notable earnings reports: It’s a very thin week for earnings reports, but companies due to spill numbers include Ascena Retail (NASDAQ:ASNA) and Stitch Fix (NASDAQ:SFIX) on December 10; American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) and Dave & Buster’s Entertainment (NASDAQ:PLAY) on December 11; Phototronics (NASDAQ:PLAB) and Oxford Industries (NYSE:OXM) on December 12; Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), Costco (NASDAQ:COST) and Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) on December 13.

IPOs expected to price: Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) is pressing ahead with its IPO as the company looks to take advantage of the 90-day pause on tariffs between the U.S. and China. The music streaming service plans to sell 41M ADSs in the offering and selling shareholders will also unload just under 41M ADSs. Tencent Music owns three streaming music platforms in China – QQ Music, Kuguo, and Kuwo – with a count of over 700M monthly active users. Heading into the IPO, Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) holds a 58.1% stake in Tencent Music and Spotify (NYSE:SPOT) owned a 9.1% stake.

IPO lockup expirations: Greenpro (OTCQB:GRNQ) on December 10; US Xpress Enterprises (NYSE:USX) and Charah Solutions (NYSE:CHRA) on December 11; Avalara (NYSE:AVLR), Verrica Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRCA) and Puixin (NYSE:NEW) on December 12.

Analyst quiet period expirations: Vapotherm (NYSE:VAPO) and Eton Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ETON) on December 10; Weidai (NYSE:WEI) on December 11;

Projected dividend changes (quarterly): Abbott (NYSE:ABT) to $0.30 from $0.28, AES (NYSE:AES) to $0.14 from $0.13, Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) to $1.39 from $1.32, Boeing (NYSE:BA) to $2.08 from $1.71, Franklin Resources (NYSE:BEN) to $0.25 from $0.23, Lilly (NYSE:LLY) to $0.57 from $0.5625, Realty Income (NYSE:O) to $0.221 from $0.2205, AT&T (NYSE:T) to $0.51 from $0.50, Ventas (NYSE:VTR) to $0.81 from $0.79, ABM Industries (NYSE:ABM) to $0.18 from $0.175, Balchem (NASDAQ:BCPC) to $0.46 from $0.42, SEI (NASDAQ:SEIC) to $0.32 from $0.30, Urstadt Biddle (NYSE:UBA) to $0.275 from $0.27, WD-40 (NASDAQ:WDFC) to $0.59 from $0.54.

60 Minutes: Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk was interviewed by Leslie Stahl for the weekly news show. In a clip already released, Musk said “I don’t really want to try to adhere to some CEO template.” Musk also stated that the EV automaker would have interest in setting up shop in an old General Motors (NYSE:GM) plant if one is available.

Analyst/investor meetings: Arthur Gallagher (NYSE:AJG), Enbridge (NYSE:ENB), American Water Works (NYSE:AWK), ServiceMaster Global (NASDAQ:SERV), TreeHouse Foods (NYSE:THS) and Crown Holdings (NYSE:CCK) on December 11; Aimmune Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AIMT) and Hess (NYSE:HES) on December 12; ImmunoGen (NASDAQ:IMGN), Health Insurance (NASDAQ:HIIQ) and Danaher (NYSE:DHR) on December 13; Hartford Financial (NYSE:HIG) and Centene (NYSE:CNC) on December 14.

Spotlight on coffee: Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) hosts its biannual investor day event on December 13. The meeting will occur about a month after Starbucks announced a round of corporate-level job cuts. While the company isn’t directly in the line of fire of tariffs, an escalation of the U.S.-China trade battle could end up hurting its business if Beijing slows the regulatory process or a consumer backlash pops up.

Spotlight on Under Armour: Under Armour (UA, UAA) will hold an investor meeting on December 12. CEO Kevin Plank, President, COO Patrik Frisk, CFO David Bergman and other Under Armour execs will provide an overview of the company’s long-term strategy, financial outlook and key initiatives to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and shareholder value.

Capitol Hill watch: Google (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai is due to appear before a House panel on December 11 in a hearing rescheduled from last week. Height Capital Markets expects the tough questions to be asked to Pichai by lawmakers to be just the start, not the end. The firm thinks Big Tech companies will be exposed to regulatory headline risk into 2019, even as it predicts final legislation will be tough to pass both houses. The House is also slated to vote next week on a bi-partisan measure that would punish drugmakers trying to game Medicaid’s rebate system to garner bigger profits.

FCC watch: The FCC is due to start its quadrennial review of some media ownership rules, including the issue of owning multiple stations in a single market. Companies watching the developments include Entercom (NYSE:ETM), Emmis Communications (NASDAQ:EMMS), Cumulus (NASDAQ:CMLS), Cox Radio (CXR), Clear Channel, CBS, Disney (NYSE:DIS), Beasley Broadcasting (NASDAQ:BBGI), iHeartMedia (OTCPK:IHRTQ).

Short report: Nasdaq is due to issue a new short interest report on December 11 for positions settled by November 30. Stocks with the highest level of short interest as a percentage of total float at the time of the last Nasdaq report included GNC Holdings (NYSE:GNC), Lannett Company (NYSEMKT:LCI), J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP), Carbo Ceramics (NYSE:CRR), Carvana (NYSE:CVNA), Buckle (NYSE:BKE), Revlon (NYSE:REV), RH(NYSE:RH), Dillard’s (NYSE:DDS), Camping World (NYSE:CWH), B&G Foods (NYSE:BGS) and Pyxus International (NYSE:PYX).

M&A tidbits: Lumentum’s (NASDAQ:LITE) acquisition of Oclaro (NASDAQ:OCLR) is expected to close on December 10. Shareholders with Akebia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AKBA) and Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:KERX) vote on the merger between the two companies on December 11. A special meeting is scheduled on December 11 for shareholders of Dell Technologies (NYSE:DVMT) to vote on the Class V common stock exchange transaction. CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) has a deadline of December 14 to issue a briefing defending the Aetna (NYSE:AET) deal.

Sales updates: Franklin Resources (BEN) on December 10, TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) on December 11; E*Trade Financial (NASDAQ:ETFC) and Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) on December 14.

More Prime Time: It’s another notch on the belt for Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) as its streaming service launches on Comcast’s (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Xfinity X1 platform.

Cyberwatch: Zix (NASDAQ:ZIXI), Calix (NYSE:CALX) and GigCapital (NYSE:GIG.U) are scheduled for one-on-one meetings at the Cowen 5th Annual Networking & Cybersecurity Summit on December 12.

Barron’s mentions: The share price drop on Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) looks overdone, reasons Jack Hough. He notes that a midyear price increase by Caterpillar on machines helped offset higher costs related to steel and other tariffs, while booked orders are strong for 2019. Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) is also seen as being on the cheap side, with shares trading at only 10X forward earnings. That’s despite the huge upside for Applied Materials in AI chips. There’s also a deep dive on Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX) after the company’s bumpy road.

Sources: Nasdaq, EDGAR, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg

Editor’s Note: This article covers one or more microcap stocks. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

[lazilysillyprince]

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

New Post has been published on http://thefaerytale.com/stocks-to-watch-tencent-music-starbucks-and-under-armour-in-focus/

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

Welcome to Seeking Alpha’s Stocks to Watch – a preview of key events scheduled for the next week. Follow this account and turn the e-mail alert on to receive this article in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Investors are prepping for another week of volatility as concerns over the China trade deal and the impact of the U.K. Brexit withdrawal bill are sure to linger. Add in the drama of a yield curve that inverted on the short end and it’s small wonder that the Santa Claus rally is having a hard time materializing. With major indexes having now erased their gains for the year, expect to hear some noise from value investors after seeing the one-month drops in names such as Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) -25%, Target (NYSE:TGT) -22%, Tiffany (NYSE:TIF) -22%, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) -19%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) -18%, Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) -15% and Altria (NYSE:MO) -15%. On the economic front this week, new reads on producer prices, consumer prices and retail sales will be closely watched.

Notable earnings reports: It’s a very thin week for earnings reports, but companies due to spill numbers include Ascena Retail (NASDAQ:ASNA) and Stitch Fix (NASDAQ:SFIX) on December 10; American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) and Dave & Buster’s Entertainment (NASDAQ:PLAY) on December 11; Phototronics (NASDAQ:PLAB) and Oxford Industries (NYSE:OXM) on December 12; Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), Costco (NASDAQ:COST) and Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) on December 13.

IPOs expected to price: Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) is pressing ahead with its IPO as the company looks to take advantage of the 90-day pause on tariffs between the U.S. and China. The music streaming service plans to sell 41M ADSs in the offering and selling shareholders will also unload just under 41M ADSs. Tencent Music owns three streaming music platforms in China – QQ Music, Kuguo, and Kuwo – with a count of over 700M monthly active users. Heading into the IPO, Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) holds a 58.1% stake in Tencent Music and Spotify (NYSE:SPOT) owned a 9.1% stake.

IPO lockup expirations: Greenpro (OTCQB:GRNQ) on December 10; US Xpress Enterprises (NYSE:USX) and Charah Solutions (NYSE:CHRA) on December 11; Avalara (NYSE:AVLR), Verrica Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRCA) and Puixin (NYSE:NEW) on December 12.

Analyst quiet period expirations: Vapotherm (NYSE:VAPO) and Eton Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ETON) on December 10; Weidai (NYSE:WEI) on December 11;

Projected dividend changes (quarterly): Abbott (NYSE:ABT) to $0.30 from $0.28, AES (NYSE:AES) to $0.14 from $0.13, Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) to $1.39 from $1.32, Boeing (NYSE:BA) to $2.08 from $1.71, Franklin Resources (NYSE:BEN) to $0.25 from $0.23, Lilly (NYSE:LLY) to $0.57 from $0.5625, Realty Income (NYSE:O) to $0.221 from $0.2205, AT&T (NYSE:T) to $0.51 from $0.50, Ventas (NYSE:VTR) to $0.81 from $0.79, ABM Industries (NYSE:ABM) to $0.18 from $0.175, Balchem (NASDAQ:BCPC) to $0.46 from $0.42, SEI (NASDAQ:SEIC) to $0.32 from $0.30, Urstadt Biddle (NYSE:UBA) to $0.275 from $0.27, WD-40 (NASDAQ:WDFC) to $0.59 from $0.54.

60 Minutes: Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk was interviewed by Leslie Stahl for the weekly news show. In a clip already released, Musk said “I don’t really want to try to adhere to some CEO template.” Musk also stated that the EV automaker would have interest in setting up shop in an old General Motors (NYSE:GM) plant if one is available.

Analyst/investor meetings: Arthur Gallagher (NYSE:AJG), Enbridge (NYSE:ENB), American Water Works (NYSE:AWK), ServiceMaster Global (NASDAQ:SERV), TreeHouse Foods (NYSE:THS) and Crown Holdings (NYSE:CCK) on December 11; Aimmune Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AIMT) and Hess (NYSE:HES) on December 12; ImmunoGen (NASDAQ:IMGN), Health Insurance (NASDAQ:HIIQ) and Danaher (NYSE:DHR) on December 13; Hartford Financial (NYSE:HIG) and Centene (NYSE:CNC) on December 14.

Spotlight on coffee: Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) hosts its biannual investor day event on December 13. The meeting will occur about a month after Starbucks announced a round of corporate-level job cuts. While the company isn’t directly in the line of fire of tariffs, an escalation of the U.S.-China trade battle could end up hurting its business if Beijing slows the regulatory process or a consumer backlash pops up.

Spotlight on Under Armour: Under Armour (UA, UAA) will hold an investor meeting on December 12. CEO Kevin Plank, President, COO Patrik Frisk, CFO David Bergman and other Under Armour execs will provide an overview of the company’s long-term strategy, financial outlook and key initiatives to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and shareholder value.

Capitol Hill watch: Google (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai is due to appear before a House panel on December 11 in a hearing rescheduled from last week. Height Capital Markets expects the tough questions to be asked to Pichai by lawmakers to be just the start, not the end. The firm thinks Big Tech companies will be exposed to regulatory headline risk into 2019, even as it predicts final legislation will be tough to pass both houses. The House is also slated to vote next week on a bi-partisan measure that would punish drugmakers trying to game Medicaid’s rebate system to garner bigger profits.

FCC watch: The FCC is due to start its quadrennial review of some media ownership rules, including the issue of owning multiple stations in a single market. Companies watching the developments include Entercom (NYSE:ETM), Emmis Communications (NASDAQ:EMMS), Cumulus (NASDAQ:CMLS), Cox Radio (CXR), Clear Channel, CBS, Disney (NYSE:DIS), Beasley Broadcasting (NASDAQ:BBGI), iHeartMedia (OTCPK:IHRTQ).

Short report: Nasdaq is due to issue a new short interest report on December 11 for positions settled by November 30. Stocks with the highest level of short interest as a percentage of total float at the time of the last Nasdaq report included GNC Holdings (NYSE:GNC), Lannett Company (NYSEMKT:LCI), J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP), Carbo Ceramics (NYSE:CRR), Carvana (NYSE:CVNA), Buckle (NYSE:BKE), Revlon (NYSE:REV), RH(NYSE:RH), Dillard’s (NYSE:DDS), Camping World (NYSE:CWH), B&G Foods (NYSE:BGS) and Pyxus International (NYSE:PYX).

M&A tidbits: Lumentum’s (NASDAQ:LITE) acquisition of Oclaro (NASDAQ:OCLR) is expected to close on December 10. Shareholders with Akebia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AKBA) and Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:KERX) vote on the merger between the two companies on December 11. A special meeting is scheduled on December 11 for shareholders of Dell Technologies (NYSE:DVMT) to vote on the Class V common stock exchange transaction. CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) has a deadline of December 14 to issue a briefing defending the Aetna (NYSE:AET) deal.

Sales updates: Franklin Resources (BEN) on December 10, TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) on December 11; E*Trade Financial (NASDAQ:ETFC) and Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) on December 14.

More Prime Time: It’s another notch on the belt for Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) as its streaming service launches on Comcast’s (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Xfinity X1 platform.

Cyberwatch: Zix (NASDAQ:ZIXI), Calix (NYSE:CALX) and GigCapital (NYSE:GIG.U) are scheduled for one-on-one meetings at the Cowen 5th Annual Networking & Cybersecurity Summit on December 12.

Barron’s mentions: The share price drop on Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) looks overdone, reasons Jack Hough. He notes that a midyear price increase by Caterpillar on machines helped offset higher costs related to steel and other tariffs, while booked orders are strong for 2019. Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) is also seen as being on the cheap side, with shares trading at only 10X forward earnings. That’s despite the huge upside for Applied Materials in AI chips. There’s also a deep dive on Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX) after the company’s bumpy road.

Sources: Nasdaq, EDGAR, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg

Editor’s Note: This article covers one or more microcap stocks. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

New Post has been published on http://rentts.org/stocks-to-watch-tencent-music-starbucks-and-under-armour-in-focus/

Stocks To Watch: Tencent Music, Starbucks And Under Armour In Focus

Welcome to Seeking Alpha’s Stocks to Watch – a preview of key events scheduled for the next week. Follow this account and turn the e-mail alert on to receive this article in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Investors are prepping for another week of volatility as concerns over the China trade deal and the impact of the U.K. Brexit withdrawal bill are sure to linger. Add in the drama of a yield curve that inverted on the short end and it’s small wonder that the Santa Claus rally is having a hard time materializing. With major indexes having now erased their gains for the year, expect to hear some noise from value investors after seeing the one-month drops in names such as Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) -25%, Target (NYSE:TGT) -22%, Tiffany (NYSE:TIF) -22%, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) -19%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) -18%, Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) -15% and Altria (NYSE:MO) -15%. On the economic front this week, new reads on producer prices, consumer prices and retail sales will be closely watched.

Notable earnings reports: It’s a very thin week for earnings reports, but companies due to spill numbers include Ascena Retail (NASDAQ:ASNA) and Stitch Fix (NASDAQ:SFIX) on December 10; American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) and Dave & Buster’s Entertainment (NASDAQ:PLAY) on December 11; Phototronics (NASDAQ:PLAB) and Oxford Industries (NYSE:OXM) on December 12; Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), Costco (NASDAQ:COST) and Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) on December 13.

IPOs expected to price: Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) is pressing ahead with its IPO as the company looks to take advantage of the 90-day pause on tariffs between the U.S. and China. The music streaming service plans to sell 41M ADSs in the offering and selling shareholders will also unload just under 41M ADSs. Tencent Music owns three streaming music platforms in China – QQ Music, Kuguo, and Kuwo – with a count of over 700M monthly active users. Heading into the IPO, Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) holds a 58.1% stake in Tencent Music and Spotify (NYSE:SPOT) owned a 9.1% stake.

IPO lockup expirations: Greenpro (OTCQB:GRNQ) on December 10; US Xpress Enterprises (NYSE:USX) and Charah Solutions (NYSE:CHRA) on December 11; Avalara (NYSE:AVLR), Verrica Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRCA) and Puixin (NYSE:NEW) on December 12.

Analyst quiet period expirations: Vapotherm (NYSE:VAPO) and Eton Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ETON) on December 10; Weidai (NYSE:WEI) on December 11;

Projected dividend changes (quarterly): Abbott (NYSE:ABT) to $0.30 from $0.28, AES (NYSE:AES) to $0.14 from $0.13, Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) to $1.39 from $1.32, Boeing (NYSE:BA) to $2.08 from $1.71, Franklin Resources (NYSE:BEN) to $0.25 from $0.23, Lilly (NYSE:LLY) to $0.57 from $0.5625, Realty Income (NYSE:O) to $0.221 from $0.2205, AT&T (NYSE:T) to $0.51 from $0.50, Ventas (NYSE:VTR) to $0.81 from $0.79, ABM Industries (NYSE:ABM) to $0.18 from $0.175, Balchem (NASDAQ:BCPC) to $0.46 from $0.42, SEI (NASDAQ:SEIC) to $0.32 from $0.30, Urstadt Biddle (NYSE:UBA) to $0.275 from $0.27, WD-40 (NASDAQ:WDFC) to $0.59 from $0.54.

60 Minutes: Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk was interviewed by Leslie Stahl for the weekly news show. In a clip already released, Musk said “I don’t really want to try to adhere to some CEO template.” Musk also stated that the EV automaker would have interest in setting up shop in an old General Motors (NYSE:GM) plant if one is available.

Analyst/investor meetings: Arthur Gallagher (NYSE:AJG), Enbridge (NYSE:ENB), American Water Works (NYSE:AWK), ServiceMaster Global (NASDAQ:SERV), TreeHouse Foods (NYSE:THS) and Crown Holdings (NYSE:CCK) on December 11; Aimmune Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AIMT) and Hess (NYSE:HES) on December 12; ImmunoGen (NASDAQ:IMGN), Health Insurance (NASDAQ:HIIQ) and Danaher (NYSE:DHR) on December 13; Hartford Financial (NYSE:HIG) and Centene (NYSE:CNC) on December 14.

Spotlight on coffee: Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) hosts its biannual investor day event on December 13. The meeting will occur about a month after Starbucks announced a round of corporate-level job cuts. While the company isn’t directly in the line of fire of tariffs, an escalation of the U.S.-China trade battle could end up hurting its business if Beijing slows the regulatory process or a consumer backlash pops up.

Spotlight on Under Armour: Under Armour (UA, UAA) will hold an investor meeting on December 12. CEO Kevin Plank, President, COO Patrik Frisk, CFO David Bergman and other Under Armour execs will provide an overview of the company’s long-term strategy, financial outlook and key initiatives to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and shareholder value.

Capitol Hill watch: Google (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai is due to appear before a House panel on December 11 in a hearing rescheduled from last week. Height Capital Markets expects the tough questions to be asked to Pichai by lawmakers to be just the start, not the end. The firm thinks Big Tech companies will be exposed to regulatory headline risk into 2019, even as it predicts final legislation will be tough to pass both houses. The House is also slated to vote next week on a bi-partisan measure that would punish drugmakers trying to game Medicaid’s rebate system to garner bigger profits.

FCC watch: The FCC is due to start its quadrennial review of some media ownership rules, including the issue of owning multiple stations in a single market. Companies watching the developments include Entercom (NYSE:ETM), Emmis Communications (NASDAQ:EMMS), Cumulus (NASDAQ:CMLS), Cox Radio (CXR), Clear Channel, CBS, Disney (NYSE:DIS), Beasley Broadcasting (NASDAQ:BBGI), iHeartMedia (OTCPK:IHRTQ).

Short report: Nasdaq is due to issue a new short interest report on December 11 for positions settled by November 30. Stocks with the highest level of short interest as a percentage of total float at the time of the last Nasdaq report included GNC Holdings (NYSE:GNC), Lannett Company (NYSEMKT:LCI), J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP), Carbo Ceramics (NYSE:CRR), Carvana (NYSE:CVNA), Buckle (NYSE:BKE), Revlon (NYSE:REV), RH(NYSE:RH), Dillard’s (NYSE:DDS), Camping World (NYSE:CWH), B&G Foods (NYSE:BGS) and Pyxus International (NYSE:PYX).

M&A tidbits: Lumentum’s (NASDAQ:LITE) acquisition of Oclaro (NASDAQ:OCLR) is expected to close on December 10. Shareholders with Akebia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:AKBA) and Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:KERX) vote on the merger between the two companies on December 11. A special meeting is scheduled on December 11 for shareholders of Dell Technologies (NYSE:DVMT) to vote on the Class V common stock exchange transaction. CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) has a deadline of December 14 to issue a briefing defending the Aetna (NYSE:AET) deal.

Sales updates: Franklin Resources (BEN) on December 10, TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) on December 11; E*Trade Financial (NASDAQ:ETFC) and Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) on December 14.

More Prime Time: It’s another notch on the belt for Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) as its streaming service launches on Comcast’s (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Xfinity X1 platform.

Cyberwatch: Zix (NASDAQ:ZIXI), Calix (NYSE:CALX) and GigCapital (NYSE:GIG.U) are scheduled for one-on-one meetings at the Cowen 5th Annual Networking & Cybersecurity Summit on December 12.

Barron’s mentions: The share price drop on Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) looks overdone, reasons Jack Hough. He notes that a midyear price increase by Caterpillar on machines helped offset higher costs related to steel and other tariffs, while booked orders are strong for 2019. Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) is also seen as being on the cheap side, with shares trading at only 10X forward earnings. That’s despite the huge upside for Applied Materials in AI chips. There’s also a deep dive on Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX) after the company’s bumpy road.

Sources: Nasdaq, EDGAR, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg

Editor’s Note: This article covers one or more microcap stocks. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.