#New Innovation Boxes Manufacturers

[vishalboxpackaging]

Choose the Professional Braille Carton Manufacturer in Noida | Vishal Box

If you are seeking for the Professional Braille Carton Manufacturer in Noida, then Vishal Box Company Pvt. Ltd. Deliver excessive fine Braille cartons for domestic products and additionally for worldwide markets. Our professionals will paintings with you make sure the cartons meet your own great requirements and cling to the global Braille requirements. Over duration of the final decade, there were a variety of improvements within the generation used to reproduce the Braille dots on printed packaging cartons.

Blog Source:  https://medium.com/@vishalbox.com/choose-the-professional-braille-carton-manufacturer-in-noida-vishal-box-9c0ca07d042f

[ngdrb]

Former Trump official warns ex-president is gearing up to claim 'rigged' election again

Donald Trump and his allies are preparing to make claims of election and voter fraud if he loses in November - according to election experts and a number of old-school Republicans.

Mesa, Arizona Mayor John Giles, a Republican who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, said that if Trump loses, he and his associates “will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks,” according to The Guardian. 

“They’ll claim everything went wrong if they lose. I’d be surprised if Trump doesn’t try to incite insurrection if he loses the election,” the mayor said.

Both Trump and his allies are pushing the same lies as they did in 2020 about voting machines and drop boxes, but they’re now also attacking prosecutors on the state and federal levels who have charged the former president for trying to overturn the election. They have claimed that the charges against Trump amount to “election interference” and “lawfare” in attempts to paint the former president’s legal woes as political prosecution.

David Becker at the Center for Election Innovation and Research told The Guardian that  “A lot of false claims are masquerading as efforts to change policy to improve election integrity when in actuality they’re just designed to sow distrust in our system if Trump loses.”

“This is all designed to manufacture claims that if Trump loses, the election was stolen and to sow discord, chaos, and potential violence,” he added.

The right-wing organization Turning Point USA claims to be spending tens of millions on getting out the vote for Trump in important battleground states, also hosting several large rallies where false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged are still being shared.

Both in 2016 and 2020, Trump was unclear if he would accept the election results. Similarly, at the presidential debate with President Joe Biden on June 27, he said that he would accept the results if the election is “fair and legal.” That response came after he was asked three times about accepting the results and shortly afterward he yet again claimed that American elections are fraudulent.

In April, Trump hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson at Mar-a-Lago for an event prompting the lower chamber to pass legislation making it illegal for noncitizens to vote – something that was already outlawed and in the past has happened on a very small scale. 

The group True the Vote sent out a fundraising request in March pointing to their attempts to put together “arguments for litigation” as well as other measures to take aim at what they claim will be “chaos” around the election because of “illegal voter registrations.”

Both election experts and Republican stalwarts have told The Guardian that Trump and his allies are preparing to claim that November’s election has been rigged if the former president loses the election.

Former Republican Michigan Representative Dave Trott told the paper that “Trump continues to encourage his supporters like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA to question the integrity of our elections.”

“He has no evidence or basis for claiming fraud and is only perpetuating these lies so he has a plan B to disrupt democracy in the event he loses,” he added.

Former Republican Pennsylvania Representative Charlie Dent told The Guardian that he believes Trump will claim fraud again if he loses in November.

“I expect he will do the same thing in 2024,” he said. ���If he loses he will raise Cain in state capitals and he will descend on state capitals with his allies to make the case for fraud.”

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary, and analysis for the independently minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently-minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinklump Linkdump

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I've arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn't fit in this week, so it's time for a linkdump, the 14th in the series:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

It's the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in 46Brooklyn's latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore

Here's the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting more expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have "pricing power," the most reliable indicator of monopoly. Ed Cara rounds up the highlights for Gizmodo:

https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427

What's going up? Well, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold billions for their manufacturers, so naturally, they're raising the price. That's how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that's also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner Plavix. I mean, why the hell not? These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with evergreening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just oozes out of them. It's like these guys can't even pretend to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that's how you get guillotines.

Take Apple. They just got their asses handed to them in court by Epic, who successfully argued that Apple's rule requiring everyone who sells through the App Store to use Apple's payment processor and pay Apple 30% out of every dollar they bring in was an antitrust violation. Epic won, then won the appeal, then SCOTUS told Apple they wouldn't hear the case, so that's that.

Right? Wrong. Apple's pulled a malicious compliance stunt that could shame the surly drunks my great-aunt Lisa used to boss in the Soviet electrical engineering firm she ran. Apple has announced that app companies that process transactions using their own payment processors on the web must still pay Apple a 27% fee for every dollar their process:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-app-store-rule-changes-draw-sharp-rebuke-from-critics-150047160.html

In addition, Apple will throw a terrifying FUD-screen up every time a user clicks a payment link that goes to the web:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/

This is obviously not what the court had in mind, and there's no way this will survive the next court challenge. It's just Apple making sure that everyone knows it hates us all and wants us to die. Thanks, Tim Apple, and right back atcha.

Not to be outdone in the monopolistic mustache-twirling department, Ubisoft just announced that it is going to shut down its driving simulator game The Crew, which it sold to users with a "perpetual license":

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

This is some real Darth Vader MBA shit. "Yeah, we sold you a 'perpetual license' to this game, but we're terminating it. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Ubisoft sure are innovators. They've managed the seemingly impossible feat of hybridizing Darth Vader and Immortan Joe. Ubisoft's head of subscriptions, the guillotine-ready Philippe Tremblay, told GamesIndustry.biz that gamers need to get "comfortable" with "not owning their games":

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games

Or, as Immortan Joe put it: "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"

Capitalism without constraint is enshittification's handmaiden, and the latest victim is Ello, the "indie" social media startup that literally promised – on the sacred honor of its founders – that it would never sell out its users. When Ello took VC and Andy Baio questioned how this could be squared with this promise, the founders mocked him and others for raising the question. Their response boiled down to "we are super-chill dudes and you can totally trust us."

They raised more capital, and used that to create a nice place for independent artists, who piled into the platform and provided millions of unpaid hours of creative labor to help the founders increase its value. The founders and their investors turned the company into a Public Benefit Corporation, which meant they had an obligation to serve the public benefit.

But then they took more investment money and simply (and silently) sold their assets to a for-profit. Struggling to raise capital, the founders opted to secretly sell the business to a sleazy branding company called Talenthouse. Its users didn't know about the change, though the site sure had a lot of Talenthouse design competitions all of a sudden.

Finally, the company announced the change as the last founders left. Rather than announcing that the new owners were untrustworthy scum, warning their users to get their data and get out, the founders posted oblique, ominous statements to Instagram. The company started stiffing the winners of those design competitions. Then, one day, poof, Ello disappeared, taking all its users' data with it. Poof:

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

I'm sure the founders' decisions each seemed reasonable at the moment. That's every terrible situation arises: you rationalize that a single compromise isn't that big of a deal, and then you do the same for the next compromise, and the next, and the next. Pretty soon, you're betraying everyone who believed in you.

One answer to this is "Ulysses pacts": making binding commitments to do right before you are tempted. Throw away all your Oreos when you go on a diet and you can't be tempted to eat a whole sleeve of them at 2AM. License your software under the GPL and your investors can't force you to make it proprietary. Set up a warrant canary and the feds can't force you to keep their spying secret:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

If the founders were determined to build a trustworthy, open, independent company, they could have published their quarterly books, livestreamed their staff meetings, built data-export tools that emailed users every week with a link to download everything they'd posted since the last week. Merely halting any of these practices would have been a signal that things were wrong. Anyone who says they won't be tempted in the moment to make a "reasonable" compromise in the hopes of recovering whatever they're trading away by living to fight another day is bullshitting you, and possibly themself.

The inability to project the consequences of your bad decisions in the future is the source of endless mischief and heartbreak. Take movie projectors. A couple decades ago, the studio cartel established a standard for digital movie distribution to cinematic exhibitors called the Digital Cinema Initiative. Because studio executives are more worried about stopping piracy than they are about making sure that people who pay for movies get to see them, they build digital rights management into this standard.

Movie theaters had to spend fortunes to upgrade to "secure" projectors. A single vendor, Deluxe Technicolor, monopolized the packaging of movies into "Digital Cinema Prints" for distribution to these projectors, and they used all kinds of dirty tricks to force distributors to use their services, like arbitrarily flunking third-party DCPs over picky shit like not starting and ending on a black frame.

Over time, the ability to use unencrypted files was stripped away, meaning every DCP needed to be encrypted, and every projector needed to have up-to-date decryption keys. This system broke down on Jan 1, 2024, and cinemas all over the world found they couldn't play Wonka. Many just shut down for the day and refunded their customers:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector

The problem? Something that every PKI system has to wrangle: an expired certificate from Deluxe Technicolor. The failure has been dubbed the Y2K24 debacle by projectionists and film-techs, who are furious:

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum/34652-the-y2k24-bug-major-digital-outage-today

Making everything worse is that Sony mothballed the division that maintains its projectors, so there's no one who can update them to accommodate Technicolor's workaround. Struggling mom-and-pop theaters are having to junk their systems and replace them. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Sony is definitely the most negligent link in the chain. Shame on them.

Big corporations LARP this performance of competence and seriousness, but they are deeply unserious. This week, I wrote, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Score one for team deeply unserious. The multinational delivery company DPD fired its support staff and replaced them with a chatbot. The chatbot can't tell you where your parcels are, but it can be prompt-injected into coming up with profane poems about how badly DPD sucks:

https://twitter.com/ashbeauchamp/status/1748034519104450874

There once was a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help. It could not track parcels, Or give information on delivery dates, And it could not even tell you when your driver would arrive.

DPD was a waste of time, And a customer's worst nightmare. It was so bad, That people would rather call the depot directly, Than deal with the useless chatbot.

One day, DPD was finally shut down, And everyone rejoiced. Finally, they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.

This is…the opposite of an AI hallucination? It's AI clarity.

As with all botshit, this kind of AI self-negging is funny and fresh the first time you see it, but just wait until 3,000 people have published their own versions to your social feed. AI novelty regresses to the mean damn quickly.

The old, good web, by contrast, was full of enduring surprises, as the world's weirdest and most delightful mutants filled the early web with every possible variation on every possible interest, expression, argument, and gag. Now, you can search the old, good web with Old'aVista, an Altavista lookalike that searches old pages from "personal websites that used to be hosted on services like Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, Xoom and so on," all ganked from the Internet Archive:

http://oldavista.com/

I miss the old, good internet and the way it let weirdos find each other and get seriously weird with one another. Think of steampunk, a subculture that wove together artists, makers, costumers, fiction writers, and tinkerers in endlessly creative ways. My old pal Roger Wood was the world's most improbable steampunk: he was a gay ex-navy gunner who grew up in a small town in the maritimes but moved to Toronto where he became the world's most accomplished steampunk clockmaker.

I was Roger's neighbour for a decade. He died last year, and I miss him all the time. I was in Toronto in December and saw a few of his last pieces being sold in galleries and I was just skewered on the knowledge that I'd never see him again, never visit his workshop:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/16/klockwerks/#craphound

A reader just sent this five-year-old mini documentary about Roger, shot in his wonderful workshop. Watching it made me happy and sad and then happy again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMGomM8yF8

The old, good internet was so great. It was a place where every kind of passion could live. It was a real testament to the power of geeking out together, no matter how often the suits demand that we "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

The world is full of people with weird passions and I love them all, mostly. Learning about Don Bolles's collection of decades' worth of lost pet posters was a moment of pure joy (I just wish more of it was online):

https://ameliatait.substack.com/p/the-man-who-collects-lost-pet-posters

That's the future I was promised: one where every kind of freak can find every other kind of freak. Despite the nipple-deep botshit we wade through online, and the relentless cheapening of words like "innovation" and "future," there are still occasional gleams of the future I want to live in.

Like the researchers who spliced a photosynthesis gene into brewer's yeast (a fungus) and got it to photosynthesize, and to display enhanced fitness:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01744-X

As Doug Muir writes on Crooked Timber, this is pretty kooky! Fungi – the coolest of the kingdoms! – can't photosynthesize. The idea that you can just add the photosynthesis gene to a thing that can't photosynthesize and have it just kind of work is wild!

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/19/occasional-paper-purple-sun-yeast/

As Muir writes: "Animals have no evolutionary history of photosynthesis and aren’t designed for it, but the same is true for yeast. So… no reason this shouldn’t be possible. A photosynthesizing cat? Sure, why not."

Why not indeed?!

OK, that's this week's linkdump done and dusted. It only remains for me to share the news with you that the trolley problem has been finally and comprehensively solved, by Sidereal@kolektiva.social, of the IWW IU 520 (railroad workers):

Slip the switch by flipping it while the trolley's front wheels have passed through, but before the back wheels do. This will cause a controlled derailment bringing the trolley to a safe halt.

https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/20/melange/#i-have-heard-the-mermaids-singing

[waksworldrebooted]

MTV Era Motorcity Masterpost (+ NEVER BEFORE SEEN INFORMATION)

In 2000, Chris Prynoski pitched a cartoon called Motorcity.

He made a card and a website promoting the show, which wouldn't see the light of day until the Walt Disney Company got their hands on it.

THE SETUP

"MotorCity is The Dukes of Hazzard meets Akira. It's American Graffiti and Big Daddy Roth rumbling with 8 cylinders into the world of Sci-Fi. It's the heart of American car culture driven to the next level."

 "Sex, cars, Rock & Roll, and the freedom to wrap your ride around a tree trunk goin' 160."

"In the near future, concerns over global warming, pollution, and the ever-worsening problem of gridlock in America’s major cities brings about the Anti-Combustion Acts of 2009." "These laws banned the use of any vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine. At first there was a lot of vocal opposition. But the so-called "Digital Revolution" as well as the advent of amazing new transportation technologies neatly filled the void, and the benefits of an improved environment along with a safer, faster and more efficient means of getting from point A to B managed to win even the staunchest opponents over. The oil companies and car manufacturers were forced to shut down under the political and economic pressures." "And a new era was born. Cleaner, faster and safer. America’s cities became modern utopias where its citizens could travel without fear or hazard in comfortable flying boxes affectionately known as "living rooms", and Detroit (The Renaissance City), became the finest example of this new policy. But with all of this wondrous innovation, something was lost. Something inherent in the soul of old America, something called freedom. The freedom to go anywhere. Anyhow. As fast, or as slow as you want. The freedom to speed. And the freedom to die." "This is where our characters come in. A few radicals realized that although you might never die in the "living rooms" , you’ll never really live in them either. So in the "Live fast and die young" mind-set, they fight the law. Scavenging parts and gas from Detroit’s massive underground, Mike Chilton and his gang, as well as a few others are trying to recapture some of what it meant to risk all for the freedom of speed."

THE CHARACTERS

Mike Chilton: A young talent on the illegal race circuit. Mike's right leg is always twitching and itching to jam a gas pedal to the floorboards, and his foot is as lead as they come. He's got gasoline surging through his veins and a 450 horsepower soul. His heart burns to drive and it's all he can do to keep moving faster and faster so that the flames don't consume him. He might be a gangly 19-year-old kid, but his ride has as much muscle as he'll ever need and he knows how to use it.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '77 Trans Am

Julie Capulsky: An Anthropology student with a quick mind and a quicker pulse. She's a city girl with a passion for adventure who's secretly writing a paper on the underground "Burner" culture. As she gets to know Mike and his crew, she feels the freedom of the road and learns the power of a rumbling big block at her command. She is torn between the high performance life of a Gearhead and the love of her father who has sworn to take them down.

Vehicle of Choice: Any Hot Rod that'll give her a ride.

Lt. Capulsky: Julie's Dad and head of Detroit's Anti-Combustion Enforcement Division. He's old enough to remember when the highways were the arteries of America and the drivers were its blood. He rode with Fast Eddy in his youth and understands the joy of inhaling the fumes of burning rubber as the hot road turns his tires to black jelly. He's forced to deal with enforcing a law he's not sure he believes in. But that doesn't stop him from holding the record for the most illegal auto busts in the state of Michigan.

Vehicle of choice: Police "Living Room"

Ed Pirelli: (Fast Eddy) The old-timer who serves as Mike and the crew's link to the past, as well as their guide for the future. A wrecked hulk of a man, Eddy lived in a time when America was the land of wide-open spaces, and you had the liberty to go where, when and how you wanted to travel. You had the freedom to live, and the freedom to die. None of those damn boxes.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '58 Chevy Roadster

Greg Raden: This young cop looks up to Lt. Capulsky as his ultimate hero. Born after the Anti-Combustion Act, He doesn't understand the rush of a vibrating steering wheel responding to every reflex of your sweaty palms. He wants nothing more than to grind the gears of the "Burners" to a halt.

Vehicle of choice: Police "Living Room"

Dave Earnhardt: Mike's worthy rival on the race circuit. He's a speed demon who stops at nothing to win. He might be Mike's worst enemy on the tar, but he'd take a speeding bullet for him off the track.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '69 Camaro RS

Holly Biscayne: A fellow "Burner" who has a thing for Mike. She's jealous and suspicious of Julie's big city motives. She wants to make sure that when the checkered flag waves, she'll be on top.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '05 Jaguar convertible

Brute Conklin: The bastard child of internal combustion and computer technology. This crafty gearhead beats "The Man" at his own game with a never-ending digital assault on the computers that control the Global Satellite System.

Vehicle of choice: Chopped 98' Harley Pan-head

Claire Constance: This ice queen might look like a hot number, but she's really a wet blanket who tries to smother her best friend Julie's fire. She can't understand what's with risking your life in the "sewers" when you can be shopping in style in the safety and comfort of your own clean home.

Vehicle of choice: None if she can help it

Promo card released in 2000

Concept art made shortly after the trailer (ones that closely resemble the final show)

From left to right: Luv (Dutch), Holly Biscayne, Chuck, Mike Chilton, Julie Kapulsky, Claire Constance, Texas, Greg Raden (Tooley), Lt Kapulsky (Abraham Kane), and The Mayor of Detroit

Pitch Trailer

[coconuttz]

10 Fashion Startups

Here are ten fashion startups that have been making waves in the industry, offering innovative solutions and fresh perspectives:

1. Rent the Runway

Rent the Runway revolutionized fashion by offering designer clothing rentals. Customers can rent high-end garments for special occasions or everyday wear, making luxury fashion more accessible and sustainable by reducing the need for single-use purchases.

2. Everlane

Everlane is known for its "radical transparency" in pricing and ethical production practices. The brand focuses on creating high-quality, minimalist wardrobe essentials while ensuring fair wages and environmentally friendly production processes.

3. Stitch Fix

Stitch Fix combines personal styling with data science to deliver personalized clothing recommendations. Customers receive curated boxes of clothing based on their preferences, which they can try on at home before deciding what to keep.

4. The Yes

The Yes is a personalized shopping platform that uses AI to tailor fashion recommendations to individual users' tastes. As users interact with the app, it learns their preferences and curates a personalized shopping experience, making it easier to discover new brands and styles.

5. Pangaia

Pangaia is a materials science company with a focus on sustainable fashion. The brand creates clothing using innovative, eco-friendly materials like seaweed fiber and recycled plastic, combining fashion with environmental responsibility.

6. ThredUp

ThredUp is one of the largest online thrift stores, offering secondhand clothing at affordable prices. The platform encourages sustainable fashion by giving pre-loved items a second life and making it easy for consumers to buy and sell gently used clothing.

7. Depop

Depop is a social shopping app that blends social media with e-commerce. It allows users to buy and sell unique, secondhand, and vintage fashion items. The platform has a strong community focus and is popular among younger, fashion-forward consumers.

8. Allbirds

Allbirds focuses on creating eco-friendly footwear using sustainable materials like merino wool and eucalyptus trees. The brand has gained a reputation for its comfortable and minimalist sneakers, appealing to consumers who value sustainability and style.

9. Farfetch

Farfetch is an online luxury fashion retail platform that connects consumers with a global network of boutiques and brands. It offers a wide range of designer clothing and accessories, making high-end fashion accessible to customers around the world.

10. Cuyana

Cuyana promotes a "fewer, better things" philosophy, encouraging consumers to invest in high-quality, timeless pieces rather than fast fashion. The brand is committed to sustainability, using ethical manufacturing practices and sustainable materials to create its products.

[omegaremix]

Rioux, 1999.

Post-Brentwood was a turning point in my life. The minute I heard Sick Of It All played at Drew’s (♀) graduation party was the very minute my music tastes would change forever. As an Eighties’ kid, I grew up on Duran Duran, Run DMC, Alisha, Lisa Lisa & The Cult Jam, Poison, and other chart-toppers. Anything could be ‘pop’ if it becomes popular enough. That’s how it got its name. Pop set me up to be diverse person I am now with stations like New York City’s Z100 where there’s a new market trend manufactured and released every five years to be fed on by the majority.

“Maladjusted” blasted through her backyard boombox for all of fifty of her closest friends and classmates to hear; the same friends and classmates who laughed at me or ignored me for being a poser. They weren’t laughing or shit-talking behind my back now that they saw me at Drew’s get-together. “How did he get in?” they wondered. That didn’t matter. They didn’t say shit to me. I never saw most of them again after that, nor did I keep tabs, either. I asked Drew who they were and she told me. Boy, did it go down angry and aggressive. I didn’t hear anything like it. So I went to the South Shore Mall’s record store and copped Scratched The Surface on cassette to quickly become my go-to record during senior-year summer. That was my introduction to hardcore and the start of something more personal and relatable than what I listened to before.

Shortly thereafter, Wipeout XL came out for Playstation and my trajectory in taste had changed for a second time. It was one of the first games released that had a major soundtrack thanks to disc capacity. A line-up of Underworld, Fluke, Photek, Future Sound Of London, The Prodigy, and Chemical Brothers gave me a three-month head start before - you guessed it - pop and alternative rock stations jumped on that wagon as the next great profit maker. Even stations changed their formats for a night or two to keep up with the hottest trend of the year, such as when Atari Teenage Riot slipped through the airwaves and literally changed my attitude of music. Another hand would be dealt, and one which was the most fascinating: industrial. Mortal Kombat motion picture soundtracks were the gateway to it after establishing Nine Inch Nails, Filter, and Ministry as my Big Three. I snatched up on three Meat Beat Manifesto tapes, four Skinny Puppy discs, The Wax Trax box set and label mail order, and some Cleopatra label compilations. (Yeah, I know. No need to tell me.) It all goes to show how a lot can happen in one year before heading to community college.

Whether or not I had employment, I still managed to purchase tons of music. It became a beast I constantly had to feed. I had record store visits, radio, magazines, and now the internet (‘world wide web’ they once called it) to keep me updated. Every week I found something new to check out. Oh, look. Alec Empire is on the cover of another magazine! The December 1997 issue of Wire, #166. Have to buy it as his stock was riding high with (once again) Atari Teenage Riot and his DHR label. On the way to Empire’s glow-up were two other artists I came across in their pages: Autechre (who they proclaimed as noise gods) and Merzbow.

When you keep hearing the same names over and over, eventually they’ll get you to check them out. That’s what happened with those two and with expectations - what you shouldn’t have when diving into an artist or album. Autechre’s Tri Repetae++ caught me off guard. They said it was an electronic record and I foolishly thought it was techno instead. I hear the album opener “Dael” expecting a build-up leading to an explosion of sound. Wrong. The minimal structure and complex melodic rhythms of a cold, mechanical, emotionless being started as-is and moved its way to the end. This wasn’t anything to a traditional dance record I was accustomed to. No. These were experiments that Sean Booth and Rob Brown created which were so innovative that they’ve gotten endless praise for them since. A few listens later and I had Tri Repetae++ on constant repeat.

Merzbow? That’s another story. Like Tri Repetae++, I bought Pulse Demon at the Port Jefferson Music Den, once a bastion of everything obscure which hasn’t existed in 20 years. That was my introduction to noise. Fucking Lady Godiva riding on a Sybian did I not know what was in store for me that day. It was the shiniest and sharpest-sounding thing I now had in my collection. I load the disc in, pressed play and - what?! It was one giant maelstrom of harsh white noise, produced and output louder than usual, complete with Bridget Riley-esque op-art and its silvery prismatic sheen. Pulse Demon was devoid of any rhythm, melody, beats, measurements, sound structure, tonality, vocals, or even a sense of time whatsoever. It was a giant endurance test that felt like there was no end in sight. Again, expectations are a foolish thing to ask for.

I didn’t know what to think. I immediately dismissed it and never played it again. I couldn’t say I was actively disappointed or put-off but rather dissuaded. It was nothing what I experienced. Back then, I was a feature writer for the student paperduring my disastrous time at community college’s middle campus. The campus majority consisted mostly of shallow club-goers and superficial people who stood in their safe comfort zone of basic dance music, fashion, and friends who judged and dismissed anyone who were weird or different from them. I always went against the grain and reached for something different and challenging; things that loudmouth belligerent chauvinist Opie & Anthony fans were too stupid to learn from. I had no other albums to review on the backburner, so Pulse Demon was it for the following issue. I was honest about my take on it: it was an unlistenable mess of a joke. I handed in my 1,000 words to our features editor, a long-haired burnout held over from the hippie generation, and it finally saw print in one of our Spring issues.

The day after my review came out, I was called in to the office by my editor-in-chief Phil. Somehow we got word from a professor who read my article and took issue with it. “Really?” I said. But it didn’t stop there. Phil also told me that Professor Rioux wanted me to visit his office to discuss the article with him.

I failed an article for a professor I didn’t even know I had?

Phil had him for English. But not to fear. The overall consensus was that he was friendly, calm, and reasonable with his students. And here was an odd moment he shared with me: Pfr. Rioux played some of his favorite weird music during an end-of-the-semester holiday party for his students to hear. Seriously, not to fear. He sounded like someone I would connect with. Phil assured me that all would be fine and ended up arranging a time and day to meet up with him. That would be next week Wednesday after the publisher’s meeting.

I arrive at Prf. Rioux’ office where he welcomed me in and introduced himself, dressed up in the usual teacher’s attire of blazer and dress pants. So far, so good. I sat down in his office and looked around to notice two rows of tapes sitting on a desk next to his bookshelf. There was a Temple Ov Psychick Youth cross hung up on the wall and also noticed the black shirt he was hearing under his blazer which featured Aube’s Quadrotation on it.

We sat down for a good 45 minutes discussing my article. Not once was Prf. Rioux mean, belittling, or off-handed - unlike others who called themselves ‘professors’. Rather, he gave me constructive criticism. Judging by my article, he told me that I missed the mark on Merzbow and didn’t come into the album open-minded. Clearly I didn’t understand noise music enough for me to write what I did and there was way more to it than I thought. The most important takeaway was that I shouldn’t have compared noise to anything else in a traditional sense. Sure, it was an entirely different animal that can still have value, substance, a structure, a methodology, and a meaning to it all like everything else.

So he kindly offered to make me three cassettes of whatever rang familiar and whom I was curious about to widen my horizons and get a better understanding. All early industrial and / or noise. Wonderful. I obliged. One week later, I returned to his office where he had them all ready for me. I thanked him for the tapes and said goodbye to him.

What was on those tapes? First, Merzbow. Not surprisingly. Three unknown tracks from the Lord of Harsh Noise. On the other side was Masonna, another Japanese noise artist whose Inner Mind Mystique finished up tape #1. Tape #2 was more varied. I heard very little of Coil other than “The Snow” off the Wax Trax compilation. Right after that was Jim G. Thirwell / Foetus whom followed up with three tracks. (Coincidentally, both aforementioned artists remixed Nine Inch Nails). Rioux threw on three tracks from Einsturzende Neubauten’s Kollaps with a small sampling of Clock DVA tracks from Black Souls In White Suits. Our final tape had a good ten tracks of Death In June whom I never heard of, and several versions of Throbbing Gristle’s “Discipline” rounded out all that Prf. Rioux gave me. Never had I received anything like it from any professor.

I was forever grateful. I played those tapes to good use, enough to go back into my usual grind of music and artist reviews with a better understanding and reasoning. I didn’t review any of the artists after that Merzbow debacle, but my stance of him changed for the better and went back to Pulse Demon several more times. I happened to purchase several more of his albums where I could, dove back into Inner Mind Mystique and picked up on Nic Endo’s White Heat when that was released. I pushed more heavily into Einsturzende Neubauten’s chaotic phase, Clock DVA’s experimental era, and the world of Throbbing Gristle. I would be only toes deep with the other artists; checking in from time to time.

What were the chances that anyone (who appreciated the genesis of industrial and a knowledgeable noise fan) would notice a specific artist printed in a campus newspaper no less? It was bad enough that I dealt with one disappointment after another interacting with people and trying to find my place on campus; which I eventually did with neutral results. Where reaching out to people with similar tastes in music were few and far between (only one or two people on campus wore Dead Voices On Air, Ant-Zen, and Ras DVA shirts), someone reached out to me instead. Of all the professors I ever had, no one and I mean no one had that kind of knowledge that Prf. Rioux did, with mixtapes to boot, too.

As his tapes played in my Walkman while trekking around campus, everything else around me was happening as usual. Cover bands and boring flavorless local bar acts peppered the Long Island music scene. WBLI continued to pump out more puerile paint-by-number club mixes as usual with Fatboy Slim and Robbie Williams up next. Ska fans hopped out of the woodwork to defend their precious circus music and became overnight know-it-all elitists ready to play the scene-politics card. And free pink PVC cowboy hats came included with Pamela Anderson, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Spice Girls, and Limp Bizkit worship. Forget it. The late Nineties was clearly a bad era in music and pop culture - and it still had time to get even worse. The only places of solace I had were the few record stores I frequented. Commack’s Cheapo’s, West Babylon’s Looney Tunes, Central Islip’s Mother’s Music, Port Jefferson’s Music Den, and Centereach’s None Of The Above. At least they catered everything to my choosing.

But I never forgot where I came from or lost track of where I headed. By the time I attended Stony Brook, I fell victim to the Mothers Of Noise ‘scandal’ and discovered Prurient from it. I’d be one of the few on campus familiar with Whitehouse, Boyd Rice / NON, and even Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music on top of everything else.Each and every one of these artists were mentioned in my new wave of reviews and I even featured on my radio show. I also never forgot those tapes. I still have them, and they became one of the few shining reminders of an era that was mostly ill to me.

Cassette #1, side A:

Merzbow: “???”, “???”, “???”

Cassette #1, side B:

Masonna: Inner Mind Mystique

Cassette #2, side A:

Coil: ”Panic”, “Tenderness Of Wolves”, “Clay”, The Anal Staircase”

Foetus: “What Have You Been Doing?”, “Today I Started Slogging Again”, “Gums Bleed”

Cassette #2, side B:

Einsturzende Neubauten: “Tanz Debil”, “Steh Auf Berlin”, “Kollaps”

Clock DVA: “Consent”, “Anti-Chance”, “Uncertain”

Cassette #3, side A:

Death In June: “Hello Angel”, “Heaven Street”, “She Said Destroy”, “Fall Apart”, “Leper Lord”, “C’est Un Reve”, “Touch Defiles”, “The Torture Garden”, “Come Before Christ…”

Cassette #3, side B:

Throbbing Gristle: three live “Discipline” performances.

[woodbine-in]

WOODBINE Unveils Innovative Luxury Office Furniture Line

Redefining Workspaces with Elegance and Functionality

Open Desking Solutions for the Modern Office

WOODBINE unveils its innovative luxury office furniture line, redefining workspaces with a perfect blend of elegance and functionality. As a leading manufacturer and rapidly emerging luxury furniture brand, WOODBINE is set to transform office environments across India.

Key Offerings in the New Product Line:

- Open desking solutions

- Open office plans

- Wood and metal workstations with integrated storage units

- Meticulously crafted flower planter's box

Elevating Office Aesthetics and Productivity

The new luxury office furniture line from WOODBINE incorporates:

- Finest quality materials

- Exquisite craftsmanship

- Fusion of functionality and elegance

These elements combine to create inspiring workspaces that:

1. Enhance productivity

2. Elevate office aesthetics

3. Meet the diverse needs of modern workplaces

A Word from the Director

Our commitment to excellence and innovation drives us to continually push the boundaries of luxury office furniture design," said Mr. Somesh Jangid, Director of "WOODBINE-Brand.

Bespoke Solutions for Every Client

WOODBINE's unique advantages include:

- In-house fabrication facility

- Dedicated team of artisans

- Customized solutions tailored to client requirements

Versatility for All Scales

WOODBINE's product range caters to:

- Small-scale projects

- Large-scale projects

Making it ideal for:

- Corporate clients

- Institutes

- Interior designers across India

Whether you're:

- A startup creating a vibrant workspace

- A multinational corporation aiming for sophistication

WOODBINE's luxury office furniture solutions adapt to any environment.

Join the Office Design Revolution

Experience WOODBINE's Innovative Solutions

Visit our website to explore our full range of luxury office furniture: https://woodbine.co.in

Spread the Word

Help us redefine workspaces and inspire creativity and collaboration. Share this exciting news with your network!

Connect with WOODBINE

- Follow us on social media for the latest updates

- Contact us for personalized consultations

#WOODBINELuxury #OfficeDesignRevolution #InnovativeWorkspaces #LuxuryOfficeFurniture #OpenDeskingSolutions #BespokeFurniture #WorkplaceInnovation

About WOODBINE

WOODBINE is a leading manufacturer and rapidly emerging luxury furniture brand, specializing in innovative office furniture solutions that combine style, functionality, and superior craftsmanship.

[pizzaboxstore]

Narayani Packaging: Premier Pizza Packing Box Manufacturers in Delhi

Narayani Packaging stands out as a leading manufacturer of high-quality pizza packing boxes in Delhi. With a commitment to excellence, we prioritize durability and design to ensure your pizzas remain fresh and appealing during delivery. Our innovative packaging solutions are tailored to meet the needs of various businesses in the food industry.

Choose Narayani Packaging for reliable and aesthetically pleasing pizza packaging that enhances your brand's image.

Narrayani Packaging https://pizzaboxstore.in/

Vikash Gupta 9266469829 Narayani Packaging, No 443/444, Khasra, Nasirpur Rd, Kailashpuri West, Nasirpur, New Delhi - 110046

[elsa16744]

Big Data and AI: The Perfect Partnership for Future Innovations 

Innovation allows organizations to excel at differentiation, boosting competitive advantages. Amid the growth of industry-disrupting technologies, big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) professionals want to support brands seeking bold design, delivery, and functionality ideas. This post discusses the importance of big data and AI, explaining why they matter to future innovations and business development. 

Understanding Big Data and AI 

Big data is a vast data volume, and you will find mixed data structures because of continuous data collection involving multimedia data objects. A data object or asset can be a document, an audio track, a video clip, a photo, or identical objects with special file formats. Since big data services focus on sorting and exploring data objects’ attributes at an unprecedented scale, integrating AI tools is essential. 

Artificial intelligence helps computers simulate human-like thinking and idea synthesis capabilities. Most AI ecosystems leverage advanced statistical methods and machine learning models. Their developers train the AI tools to develop and document high-quality insights by processing unstructured and semi-structured data objects. 

As a result, the scope of big data broadens if you add AI integrations that can determine data context. Businesses can generate new ideas instead of recombining recorded data or automatically filter data via AI-assisted quality assurances. 

Why Are Big Data and AI Perfect for Future Innovations? 

1| They Accelerate Scientific Studies  

Material sciences, green technology projects, and rare disorder research projects have provided humans with exceptional lifestyle improvements. However, as markets mature, commoditization becomes inevitable. 

At the same time, new, untested ideas can fail, attracting regulators’ dismay, disrespecting consumers’ beliefs, or hurting the environment. Additionally, bold ideas must not alienate consumers due to inherent complexity. Therefore, private sector stakeholders must employ scientific methods to identify feasible, sustainable, and consumer-friendly product ideas for brand differentiation.  

AI-powered platforms and business analytics solutions help global corporations immediately acquire, filter, and document data assets for independent research projects. For instance, a pharmaceutical firm can use them during clinical drug formulations and trials, while a car manufacturer might discover efficient production tactics using AI and big data. 

2| Brands Can Objectively Evaluate Forward-Thinking Business Ideas 

Some business ideas that a few people thought were laughable or unrealistic a few decades ago have forced many brands and professionals to abandon conventional strategies. Consider how streaming platforms’ founders affected theatrical film releases. They have reduced the importance of box office revenues while increasing independent artists’ discoverability. 

Likewise, exploring real estate investment opportunities on a tiny mobile or ordering clothes online were bizarre practices, according to many non-believers. They also predicted socializing through virtual reality (VR) avatars inside a computer-generated three-dimensional space would attract only the tech-savvy young adults. 

Today, customers and investors who underestimated those innovations prefer religiously studying how disrupting startups perform. Brands care less about losing money than missing an opportunity to be a first mover for a niche consumer base. Similarly, rejecting an idea without testing it at least a few times has become a taboo. 

Nobody can be 100% sure which innovation will gain global momentum, but AI and big data might provide relevant hints. These technologies are best for conducting unlimited scenario analyses and testing ideas likely to satisfy tomorrow’s customer expectations. 

3| AI-Assisted Insight Explorations Gamifies Idea Synthesis 

Combining a few ideas is easy but finding meaningful and profitable ideas by sorting the best ones is daunting. Innovative individuals must embrace AI recommendations to reduce time spent on brainstorming, product repurposing, and multidisciplinary collaborations. Furthermore, they can challenge themselves to find ideas better than an AI tool. 

Gamification of brainstorming will facilitate a healthy pursuit of novel product features, marketing strategies, and customer journey personalization. Additionally, incentivizing employees to leverage AI and big data to experiment with designing methods provides unique insights for future innovations. 

4| You Can Optimize Supply Chain Components with Big Data and AI Programs 

AI can capture extensive data on supply chains and offer suggestions on alternative supplier relations. Therefore, businesses will revise supply and delivery planning to overcome the flaws in current practices. 

For instance, Gartner awarded Beijing’s JD.com the Technology Innovation Award in 2024 because they combined statistical forecasting. The awardee has developed an explainable artificial intelligence to enhance its supply chain. Other finalists in this award category were Google, Cisco, MTN Group, and Allina Health. 

5| Academia Can Embrace Adaptive Learning and Psychological Well-Being 

Communication barriers and trying to force all learners to follow the standard course material based on a fixed schedule have undermined educational institutions’ goals worldwide. Understandably, expecting teachers to customize courses and multimedia assets for each student is impractical and humanly infeasible. 

As a result, investors, policymakers, parents, and student bodies seek outcome-oriented educational innovations powered by AI and big data for a learner-friendly, inclusive future. For instance, some edtech providers use AI computer-aided learning and teaching ecosystems leveraging videoconferencing, curriculum personalization, and psycho-cognitive support. 

Adaptive learning applications build student profiles and segments like marketers’ consumer categorizations. Their AI integrations can determine the ideal pace for teaching, whether a student exhibits learning disabilities, and whether a college or school has adequate resources. 

Challenges in Promoting Innovations Based on Big Data and AI Use Cases 

Encouraging stakeholders to acknowledge the need for big data and AI might be challenging. After all, uninformed stakeholders are likely to distrust tech-enabled lifestyle changes. Therefore, increasing AI awareness and educating everyone on data ethics are essential. 

In some regions, the IT or network infrastructure necessary for big data is unavailable or prone to stability flaws. This issue requires more investments and talented data specialists to leverage AI tools or conduct predictive analyses. 

Today’s legal frameworks lack provisions for regulating AI, big data, and scenario analytics. So, brands are unsure whether expanding data scope will get public administrators’ approvals. Lawmakers must find a balanced approach to enable AI-powered big data innovations without neglecting consumer rights or “privacy by design” principles. 

Conclusion 

The future of enterprise, institutional, and policy innovations lies in responsible technology implementations. Despite the obstacles, AI enthusiasts are optimistic that more stakeholders will admire the potential of new, disruptive technologies. 

Remember, gamifying how your team finds new ideas or predicting the actual potential of a business model necessitates AI’s predictive insights. At the same time, big data will offer broader perspectives on global supply chains and how to optimize a company’s policies. 

Lastly, academic improvements and scientific research are integral to developing sustainable products, accomplishing educational objectives, and responding to global crises. As a result, the informed stakeholders agree that AI and big data are perfect for shaping future innovations.  

[a-modernmajorgeneral]

Viewers turning in for the track and field events at the Summer Games in Paris next week might just do a double-take: Instead of the usual rust-colored reddish hue, the track is purple.

The new, eye-catching color will serve as the backdrop for runners competing at the Stade de France, the country’s largest stadium, located in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. The track is made by Mondo, a company based in Alba, Italy, that has made every track used at the Olympics since 1976.

The color was mainly an aesthetic choice, as purple, blue and green make up the palette for the competition venues at this year’s games. The design actually incorporates three separate colors: lavender for the track itself, darker purple for the service areas and gray for the exterior curves at each end.

Even the glue used to adhere the track to its asphalt base—2,800 pots in total—is purple, just in case any becomes visible.

“The big part of the job was to come up with a track that was different from what we had seen … to go a little bit outside the box,” says Alain Blondel, an Olympic decathlete who now serves as the sports manager for the Paris games, to Olympics.com’s Nicolas Kohlhuber.

This is the first time an Olympic track has been purple. But it’s not uncommon for athletics venues around the world to play around with color. For example, since 1986, Boise State University has famously eschewed the traditional green-colored turf for its football field, opting instead for a shocking shade of bright blue.

Color aside, the Paris track is unique for several other reasons. For one, it incorporates the shells of bivalve mollusks, like mussels and clams. Ahead of the games, track-maker Mondo began partnering with a mussel farming and fishing company called Nieddittas to give used shells a second life.

Staff at Nieddittas harvest, clean and prepare the shells—which are made primarily of calcium carbonate—so they can be ground into a powder that can be incorporated into the track material. The shells would have otherwise been headed to a landfill, so the process transforms waste into something useful. It also reduces the need for mining, which is how manufacturers usually obtain calcium carbonate.

All told, 50 percent of the Paris track comes from recycled materials, reports BBC’s Padraig Belton.

This innovative use of recycled natural materials aligns with the goals of the International Olympic Committee, which vowed to make the Summer Games in Paris the most sustainable Olympics yet. Other sustainability efforts include bike parking at many venues, more plant-based food options for spectators, 100 percent locally sourced renewable energy, a geothermal cooling system at the Olympic Village and aquatic center seats made from recycled plastic bottle caps, among many others.

The track’s design and materials may also help athletes perform their best. The Paris track has the same base as the one used at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, with some minor modifications, per reporting by Reuters’ Manuel Ausloos and Vincent Daheron. At those games, athletes set three world records and 12 Olympic records—and officials expect even more records to fall next week in Paris.

“The first indications are that it will be a very, very good track,” Blondel told the Associated Press’ (AP) Jerome Pugmire in April. “If we see athletes with personal bests on the scoreboard, it means we did a good job.”

For this iteration of the track, Mondo researchers improved upon the new polymeric material first introduced in Tokyo. They also used computer algorithms to further refine the optimal shape and size of the air bubbles within the lower layer of the track, which help absorb and then rebound the energy from the runner’s foot striking the ground.

The vulcanized rubber provides good grip and resistance for Paralympic athletes who use wheelchairs and prosthetics. The track has also been specially designed to complement the latest generation of running shoes.

“For the track, we only see the aesthetics, but there is great work that goes into the underlayer,” says Alessandro Piceli, a research and development manager at Mondo, to the Guardian’s Sean Ingle.

Mondo leaders say the Paris track will be 2 percent faster than the one used in Tokyo, per the BBC. But, in 2020, runners also got a boost from hot temperatures and new shoe spike technology, per the Guardian. It remains to be seen how the track will affect athletes’ times, but its creators are confident we will see records fall in Paris.

“The athletes will find this track to be more reactive and better suited for their competition,” said Maurizio Stroppiana, vice president of Mondo’s sport division, to the AP’s Andrew Dampf and Luca Bruno in March.

[vishalboxpackaging]

Choose the Best Dairly Product Packaging Boxes in Noida

Vishal Box Company is one of the best companies in Noida when it comes to providing the best daily product packaging boxes. It uses high-grade materials and advanced technologies to create packaging boxes that are durable and cost-effective. The company also offers customized solutions for its customers so that they can get exactly what they need. With its wide range of products and services, Vishal Box Company is one of the best options for all your daily product packaging needs in Noida.

Contact us today!

[jcmarchi]

US launches $1.6B bid to outpace Asia in packaging tech

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/us-launches-1-6b-bid-to-outpace-asia-in-packaging-tech/

US launches $1.6B bid to outpace Asia in packaging tech

.pp-multiple-authors-boxes-wrapper display:none; img width:100%;

The US is betting big on the future of semiconductor technology, launching a $1.6 billion competition to revolutionise chip packaging and challenge Asia’s longstanding dominance in the field. On July 9, 2024, the US Department of Commerce unveiled its ambitious plan to turbocharge domestic advanced packaging capabilities, a critical yet often overlooked aspect of semiconductor manufacturing. 

This move, part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s CHIPS for America program, comes as the US seeks to revitalise its semiconductor industry and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers. Advanced packaging, a crucial step in semiconductor production, has long been dominated by Asian countries like Taiwan and South Korea. By investing heavily in this area, the US aims to reshape the global semiconductor landscape and position itself at the forefront of next-generation chip technology, marking a significant shift in the industry’s balance of power.

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo emphasised the importance of this move, stating, “President Biden was clear that we need to build a vibrant domestic semiconductor ecosystem here in the US, and advanced packaging is a huge part of that. Thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to investing in America, the US will have multiple advanced packaging options across the country and push the envelope in new packaging technologies.”

The competition will focus on five key R&D areas: equipment and process integration, power delivery and thermal management, connector technology, chiplets ecosystem, and co-design/electronic design automation. The Department of Commerce anticipates making several awards of approximately $150 million each in federal funding per research area, leveraging additional investments from industry and academia.

This strategic investment comes at a crucial time, as emerging AI applications are pushing the boundaries of current technologies. Advanced packaging allows for improvements in system performance, reduced physical footprint, lower power consumption, and decreased costs – all critical factors in maintaining technological leadership.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s push to revitalise American semiconductor manufacturing comes as the global chip shortage has highlighted the risks of overreliance on foreign suppliers. Asia, particularly Taiwan, currently dominates the advanced packaging market. According to a 2021 report by the Semiconductor Industry Association, the US accounts for only 3% of global packaging, testing, and assembly capacity, while Taiwan holds a 54% share, followed by China at 16%.

Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Director Laurie E. Locascio outlined an ambitious vision for the program: “Within a decade, through R&D funded by CHIPS for America, we will create a domestic packaging industry where advanced node chips manufactured in the US and abroad can be packaged within the States and where innovative designs and architectures are enabled through leading-edge packaging capabilities.”

The announcement builds on previous efforts by the CHIPS for America program. In February 2024, the program released its first funding opportunity for the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program (NAPMP), focusing on advanced packaging substrates and substrate materials. That initiative garnered significant interest, with over 100 concept papers submitted from 28 states. On May 22, 2024, eight teams were selected to submit complete applications for funding of up to $100 million each over five years.

According to Laurie, the goal is to create multiple high-volume packaging facilities by the decade’s end and reduce reliance on Asian supply lines that pose a security risk that the US “just can’t accept.” In short, the government is prioritising ensuring America’s leadership in all elements of semiconductor manufacturing, “of which advanced packaging is one of the most exciting and critical areas,” White House spokeswoman Robyn Patterson said.

The latest competition is expected to attract significant interest from the US semiconductor ecosystem and shift that balance. It promises substantial federal funding and the opportunity to shape the future of American chip manufacturing. As the global demand for advanced semiconductors continues to grow, driven by AI, 5G, and other emerging technologies, the stakes for technological leadership have never been higher.

As the US embarks on this ambitious endeavour, the world will see if this $1.6 billion bet can challenge Asia’s stronghold on advanced chip packaging and restore America’s position at the forefront of semiconductor innovation.

(Photo by Braden Collum)

See also: Global semiconductor shortage: How the US plans to close the talent gap

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: ai, AI semiconductor, artificial intelligence, chips act, law, legal, Legislation, Politics, semiconductor, usa

[dr-alex-zarifis]

Why is Tesla selling insurance and what does it mean for drivers?

Re-published under Creative Commons license, originally published in ‘The Conversation’: https://theconversation.com/why-is-tesla-selling-insurance-and-what-does-it-mean-for-drivers-130910

In the past year, Elon Musk and Tesla have fascinated the world with new innovations like the Tesla Cybertruck. There is excitement about most new Tesla products, but one hugely important one has been largely overlooked. With far less fanfare and no stage performance by Musk, Tesla started offering car insurance last September. In the long run, this is going to have a major impact on most of our lives – perhaps even greater than Tesla’s more eye-catching innovations.

Tesla Insurance is only available for Tesla vehicles in some states of the US at present. It will expand the number of territories gradually over time. But as with the Tesla Cybertruck, the company first wants to see how the business holds up to whatever is thrown at it and whether it cracks under pressure.

For those eligible for Tesla Insurance, the company claims to offer premiums 20% to 30% lower than rivals. Yet even if you are in an area where you can request a quote, Tesla won’t necessarily make you an offer. It sometimes still refers drivers to a traditional insurance partner instead. It may be that Tesla chooses the clearer, less risky cases and sends more complex ones to insurers with more experience and appetite to handle them.

So why is Tesla selling car insurance? For one thing, it has the real-time data from all its drivers’ behaviour and the performance of its vehicle technology, including camera recordings and sensor readings, so it can estimate the risk of accidents and repair costs accurately. This reliance on data may well mean it never branches into selling insurance to drivers of other manufacturers’ cars.

At the moment, Tesla is offering insurance premiums calculated with aggregated anonymous data. In future it could roll out more customised services, like the ones offered by insurers using telematic black boxes, to offer drivers (cheaper) quotes based on how they actually drive.

Every time there is an accident, Tesla has instant access to data about the driver behaviour that led to it. One attraction for the company is that it can evaluate how some of its technologies, like autopilot, stability control, anti-theft systems and bullet-resistant steel, can reduce risk.

Another motivation for Tesla is that some insurers charge a relatively high premium for Tesla cars. One reason is that they still don’t have much historic information about the cost of repairs of electric vehicles. By vertically integrating insurance into its offering, Tesla brings down the price of owning its products.

At the same time, insurance is a barrier to many innovations that Tesla is targeting for the future. With the insurance taken care of, it will be easier to sell self-driving vehicles or send people to Mars (with sister company SpaceX). Like many things Elon Musk does, this both solves a short-term problem and fits the longer-term strategy. It’s a little like how Tesla focused on producing luxury vehicles first to finance the infrastructure for selling cheaper cars like the Tesla Model 3.

How insurance is changing

Tesla has one more reason for offering insurance, which is that the sector is changing: a tech company disrupting it fits the zeitgeist perfectly. My research at Loughborough University has looked into this disruption. I evaluated 32 insurance providers around the world including Tesla and found that artificial intelligence, big data, the internet of things, blockchain and edge computing were all rewiring insurance, both literally and metaphorically.

Broadly speaking, the work of the insurer is shifting from local human expert underwriters to automation driven by big data and AI. The existing industry players that I evaluated essentially fell into three categories. Some had recognised they cannot compete with tech companies. They were focusing on interacting with customers, branding and marketing, while outsourcing everything else to companies with the relevant skills.

Other insurers were trying to add new technologies to their existing business model. For instance, some are using chatbots that apply machine learning and natural language processing to offer live customer support. Yet another group had more fully embraced the new technological capabilities. For example, life insurers like Vitality and Bupa now encourage customers to use wearable monitoring devices to offer them guidance on improving their health and avoiding accidents.

Alongside all these were the new breed of insurers, with Tesla perhaps the best example. Others include Chinese giants Alibaba and Tencent. Just like Apple and Google are making incursions into banking and finance, these are tech-savvy companies with many existing customers who are adding insurance to their portfolio of services. In every case, the capabilities of AI and big data-driven automation have acted as a catalyst.

What it means for drivers

In the short term, Tesla drivers can look forward to insurance that is arguably more seamless and convenient and may well be cheaper – particularly if they clock up fewer miles and drive safely. (Drivers should still compare prices with other insurers: the likes of Progressive and GEICO are among those that insure Tesla vehicles.)

In the longer term, this is a sign that insurance – like banking, road tax and many services – will be driven by real-time data. It will probably change our behaviour for the better. We will probably drive slower, eat healthier food and exercise more – even if libertarians will be uneasy.

This shift will challenge our attitudes towards personal information privacy. Some of us will value the benefits of being open and transparent with our personal information, while others might seek solutions that keep their data with them. Edge computing has potential here, since it allows some data processing to be done on your device so that your personal data doesn’t need to be sent to a central server.

So Tesla and Elon Musk have not just added another revenue stream to their many successful endeavours. They are also helping to fundamentally change the way that we interact with insurance providers. In the future, insurers will be more like a partner on our journey both by car and on foot – both on Earth and beyond.

[idealcustomboxes-blog]

Custom Hexagon Boxes: The New Trend in Packaging

In the world of packaging, innovation is the key to standing out. Custom Hexagon Boxes are the latest trend that has taken the market by storm. These boxes have unique shapes and make products noticeable on store shelves. Their six-sided design provides a unique aesthetic appeal that is hard to ignore.

Why Choose Custom Hexagon Boxes?

One main reason businesses opt for Custom Hexagon Boxes is their distinctive shape. Hexagon boxes have a modern and stylish look because of their geometric shape. They are different from square or rectangular boxes. This shape looks good and provides added protection to the products inside. A six-sided design protects The product from all angles, reducing damage during transit.

Another significant advantage of these boxes is the customization options they offer. With Custom Hexagon Boxes, businesses can add a touch of luxury to their packaging. The Hexagon closure keeps the box closed, making the products inside more secure. This feature is especially beneficial for high-end products requiring an extra protection layer. The Hexagon closure makes the packaging look classy and attractive to customers.

The Rise of Custom-Printed Hexagon Boxes

Custom Printed Hexagon Boxes are another trend gaining popularity in the packaging industry. These boxes come with a Hexagon closure, but what sets them apart is the custom printing option. Businesses can get their logo, brand name, or any other design printed on these boxes.  However, The packaging looks better, and people recognize the brand more. Customers remember the brand better when they see a box with its logo. That makes them think of the brand more often.

Businesses can make their brand stand out by using packaging that has magnets and their logo. The logo on the box reminds customers about the brand, so they remember it. It can be helpful for new businesses trying to build their brand in the market.

Choosing the Right Hexagon Box Manufacturer

When choosing a Hexagon Box composer, businesses need to be careful. The quality of the boxes plays a crucial role in determining the success of the packaging. A low-quality box can damage the product inside, leading to customer dissatisfaction. So, choosing a manufacturer known for its quality products is essential.

If your business needs good boxes that have cost too much, try reasonably with the best quality Custom Boxes Wholesale. Buying in large quantities also guarantees a constant supply for businesses. That prevents any disruptions in the packaging process.

The Future of Packaging: Closure Boxes and More

Hexagon Closure Custom Boxes are the beginning. In the future, the packaging industry will see more innovations because of technology. Packaging is getting more elegant and sustainable, with options that interact with customers. The future looks promising.

Incorporating Sustainability with Custom Hexagon Boxes

As people become more conscious, they pressure businesses to adopt sustainable practices. Packaging plays a pivotal role in this transition. On the other hand, businesses can create unique hexagon boxes to prove their commitment to the environment.

Using recycled or sustainable materials, custom packaging with a logo benefits the environment. It also reduces carbon emissions. Consumers now want brands with similar values, and they focus on sustainability. Businesses can help the environment by using Custom Printed Hexagon Boxes. Customers like these boxes.

The Versatility of Custom Hexagon Boxes

One of the standout features of Custom Hexagon Boxes is its versatility. These boxes are not limited to a specific industry or product type. The hexagonal design fits cosmetics, electronics, jewelry, and gourmet foods. The Hexagon closure keeps things safe, so it's good for many things.

Custom Boxes allow businesses to experiment with different designs and finishes. The options are endless, whether a matte finish for a minimalist look or a glossy one for a touch of luxury. Businesses can customize their packaging to match their brand and attract desired customers.

Engaging Customers with Interactive Packaging

The future of packaging is more than looking good or keeping things safe. Technological advancements let Custom Hexagon Boxes include QR codes and augmented reality features. Customers can use a QR code to get special deals, learn about products, and connect with brands. Moreover, Customers feel more connected to the brand and find it easier to unpack products.

Custom Hexagon Packaging with a Logo can also incorporate these interactive elements. Imagine this: a customer scans the logo on the box it's transported to a virtual brand world. In this world, they can get insights, tutorials, or even try on virtual products. Such innovations can revolutionize the way customers perceive and interact with a brand.

Hexagon Custom Boxes: A Reflection of Brand Identity

Every brand wants to stand out from competitors by having a unique identity in the market. Hexagon Custom Boxes have a unique shape and many customization options, which helps a brand stand out. They are not containers; they are a reflection of what the brand stands for and the values it upholds.

For example, a luxury brand may choose Custom Hexagon Boxes with a velvet finish. A sustainable brand may prefer materials for its Custom Hexagon Packaging with Logo. How a brand packages its products says a lot about its values and goals.

Innovative Design Meets Functionality

It would be a mistake to overlook the enticing Hexagon Custom boxes because of their benefits. The hexagonal shape, apart from being striking, offers structural integrity. This design protects delicate items from outside pressures, keeping the contents safe.

Additionally, adding Hexagon closures to packaging with a custom logo provides security. However, Hexagon Closure Boxes ensure the contents remain intact, preventing accidental spillage or damage. Many businesses prefer these boxes because of their innovative design and functionality.

Customization: The Key to Brand Recognition

In today's competitive market, brand recognition is paramount. Brands can customize each box from Custom Boxes Wholesale to make them recognizable. Brand colors, logos, or design elements help people remember a brand.

Imagine a customer receiving a product in a Custom Hexagon Box. Opening the box feels incredible because of the Hexagon closure and one-of-a-kind design. However, It will leave a strong impression. Every time a similar box catches their eye, it reminds them of that experience and, in turn, the brand.

The Role of Hexagon Box Suppliers in Shaping Brand Image

Choosing the right Hexagon Box composer is crucial. If a manufacturer knows a brand's vision and values, they can make packaging that shows them. Hexagon Custom Boxes match the brand's identity and quality.

A trustworthy manufacturer keeps up with new trends and innovations in packaging. In Addition, this partnership helps brands provide customers with new and intriguing packaging options. That also helps brands strengthen their position in the market.

Final Thoughts: The Endless Possibilities with Custom Boxes

The world of packaging is ever-evolving, with new trends emerging.  Hexagon Custom Boxes lead this change with their one-of-a-kind design and customization options. Brands can show who they are, interact with customers, and keep products safe. Moreover, Brands are discovering many possibilities with these boxes. Hexagon Custom Boxes are revolutionizing packaging and are here to stay.

Hexagon Boxes are the latest trend in the packaging industry. Their unique shape and customization options offer businesses a fresh perspective on packaging. Businesses can choose between  Custom Boxes Wholesale or Custom Hexagon Boxes.

Businesses should select a reliable company to make Hexagon boxes. Therefore, this will boost sales and brand recognition. They can also make use of wholesale custom boxes.

The packaging does more than hold a product. It tells a story, creates an experience, and makes a statement. We design Custom Hexagon Boxes and offer various customization options. They provide businesses with a great opportunity to showcase their brand story. These boxes lead packaging with sustainability, versatility, and interactivity. For success, businesses should partner with a reliable manufacturer. This manufacturer should sell Hexagon boxes and provide wholesale custom boxes. Hexagon Custom Boxes help brands make a lasting first impression

[bunkershotgolf]

Adams Golf’s Idea–Direct to Customer

By ED TRAVIS

The selling of golf clubs and balls is a predictable process, at least for the major manufacturers. Though each spends millions for endorsement by professional tour stars marketing plans usually place emphasis on where the company feels they have an advantage—for example, Callaway Golf’s Paradym drivers or Acushnet Company’s Titleist golf balls.

A key for the big manufacturers to pushing club and ball sales is establishing relationships with the so-called green grass shops found at every golf course and run by a PGA Professionals plus off-course vendors especially big box multiple location retailers while promoting online sales through their own websites and sites run by independents.

Adams Golf, which had all but disappeared after TaylorMade’s purchase in 2012 for $70 million, is taking a different route to re-establish itself with golfers. They have introduced a club family under the Idea brand name which is being sold DTC only from its website…no green-grass, no big box, no brick and mortar.

Of course, smaller, niche-focused makers sell online but often offer only a limited selection, perhaps just putters or balls. None of the major brands have opted to enter the market with a separate brand and then sell only DTC. For example, Callaway has the Big Bertha family and Tour Edge Golf the Hot Launch line, but neither is sold solely over the Internet.

To add to the attractiveness Adams/TaylorMade has decided to price the Idea clubs at the lower end of the current price spectrum with shaft selection limited to a single stock model though options of steel or graphite are offered in the irons. An Adams Idea driver, a fairway wood, two hybrids and seven irons may be purchased for just about $1500 while the latest from parent TaylorMade, a Stealth 2 driver, one fairway wood and two hybrids lists cost approximately the same amount and that doesn’t include the Stealth irons which could be another $1000. Adams ships at no cost for orders over $99.

An interesting business plan, TaylorMade creating in-house competition. Not unheard of in retail but always to be approached with a complete understanding of how the main, money-making brand will be affected when faced with a lower priced rival offering presumably the same quality though it could be argued performance may be significantly different. The company certainly believes that for a generation of consumers familiar with online purchasing, golf clubs on the web without a potentially intimidating store visit is worth the investment.

Adams Golf was started by Barney Adams in 1991 and his Tight Lies hybrid design changed hybrids forever with its innovative Tri-Sole that helped average players get the ball out of most any lie, long grass or even sand.

The Idea line can boast some of the latest design features and though they may not be as sophisticated as the TaylorMade Stealth still are attractive for use by new golfers and those returning to the game. For example, the draw-bias Idea driver has a carbon fiber crown, an adjustable hosel and sole slot while the cavity back irons are a hollow body construction with a variable thickness face.

In other words, many of the same talking points as any of the major makers competing clubs. The question is can TaylorMade revive Adams Golf with this one-of approach or will Adams slip back into obscurity.

[jessikaoidh]

Perks of Sourcing Material Formation Machines From Mandarin Chinese Manufacturers

It is actually fascinating exactly how commonly you could discover dialogues concerning cost discounts in manufacturing, merely to recognize that sourcing metal creating machines from Chinese makers can substantially improve your procedures. You'll locate that these machines not just possess competitive costs yet likewise integrate state-of-the-art modern technology and an assorted product array that accommodates numerous necessities. As you think about the implications of such a choice, it is actually important to discover what these benefits mean for your business and just how they may eventually influence your income.

Cost-Effectiveness

Cost-effectiveness is often a key point to consider when analyzing metal forming machine manufacturer. When you examine alternatives like the China press brake maker, you'll observe that these machines commonly offer a reduced preliminary expenditure contrasted to their counterparts from various other areas. This lesser price factor may be especially striking for small to medium-sized organizations targeting to maximize their finances. However, it's significant to analyze not simply the purchase rate but additionally the complete price of possession. You need to consider factors like upkeep, functional performance, and electricity consumption.

Sophisticated Technological advances

Advanced modern technology performs an essential duty in the functionality and productivity of metal establishing makers made through Chinese manufacturers. When you look at a China push brake, you'll notice that these devices usually combine the most up to date improvements in computerization, software, and preciseness design. This assimilation certainly not simply boosts operational performance yet additionally boosts the reliability of intricate metal establishing jobs. As an example, a lot of present day push brakes take advantage of CNC (pc numerical control) systems, allowing for exact corrections and repeatability that hands-on makers can't match. This technology decreases human mistake and increases production opportunities.

Experienced Labor force

A competent labor force is essential to the excellence of metal creating device functions in China. The nation boasts a large swimming pool of qualified experts focusing on numerous making procedures, consisting of producing sophisticated machines like the china laser device reducing maker. These employees undergo rigorous instruction, typically in professional schools or by means of apprenticeships, guaranteeing they have the essential technological proficiency and hands-on experience. Mandarin makers gain from a culture that emphasizes continuous knowing and innovation. This commitment nurtures a setting where employees are encouraged to adjust to brand-new innovations and methods fast.

Varied Product Line Array

Within the domain name of SC Machinery deliver an impressive and unique item variation that serves various industrial requirements. This assortment permits you to select devices customized to particular apps, whether it is actually bending, boxing, or even reducing metallics. You may access impressive designs and technologies that enhance creation performance through sourcing from a metallic creating machine producer in China. Moreover, these makers make makers in several sizes and abilities, accommodating tiny sessions to large industrial functions. This adaptability warranties you may locate an ideal machine despite your production range.

Closure

To sum up, sourcing steel creating devices from Chinese suppliers may considerably profit your business. Performed you know that over 70% of worldwide metalworking machines is actually created in China? This fact highlights the nation's prominence in the industry, using you access to sophisticated technology and diverse options. Through leveraging cost-effectiveness and a skilled labor force, you can improve your development capabilities and remain competitive in today's market. It's a tactical step that lines up well with your working goals.

SHENCHONG

Tianshun Road, Yangshan Industrial Park, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China 214156

+86-158-9507-5134

Mail: info@shenchong.com