#Power Management System Market Share

[learning--tech]

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[creepyscritches]

I read your post about open enrollment for the ACA and was hoping you might expand on why you believe it would take years to dismantle. I've been terrified that with a Republican house/senate, Trump could just snap his fingers and make it go away within months of taking office. I'd love some reassurance that that's not possible.

Hiya, sure I can share some thoughts on the matter! First, it's very important to understand the ACA is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge system with subject matter experts in dozens of places throughout the process. I'm one of those SMEs, but I am at the end of the process where the revenue is generated, so my insight is limited on the public facing pieces.

What this means is that I am professionally embedded in the ACA in a position that exists purely to show what conditions people are treated for and then generate that data into what's called a "risk score". There's about 6 pages I could write on it, but the takeaway is that the ACA is

1) intricately interwoven with the federal government

2) increasingly profitable, sustainable, and growing (it is STILL a for-profit system if you can believe it)

3) wholeheartedly invested in by the largest insurance companies in the country LARGELY due to the fact that they finally learned the rules of how to make the ACA a thriving center of business

4) since the big issuers are arm+leg invested in the ACA, there is a lot of resistance politically and on an industry level to leave it behind (think of the lobbyists, politicians, corporations that will fight tooth and nail to protect their profit + investment)

The process to calculate a risk score takes roughly 2 years. There is an audit for the concurrent year and then a vigorous retro audit for the prev year - - this is a rolling cycle every year. Medicare has a similar process. These are RVP + RADV audits if you would like the jargon.

Eliminating the ACA abruptly is as internally laughable as us finishing the RADV audit ahead of schedule. If Trump were to blow the ACA into smithereens on day 1, he would be drowning in issuer complaints and an economic health sector that is essentially bleeding out. You cut off the RVP early? We have half of next RADV stuck in the gears now. You cut off the RADV early? No issuer will get their "risk adjusted" payments for services rendered in the prev benefit year (to an extent, again very complex multi-process system).

The ACA is GREAT for the public and should be defended on that basis alone. However, the inner capitalistic nature of the ACA is a powerful armor that has conservatives + liberals defending it on a basis of capital + market growth. It's not sexy, but it makes too much money consistently for the system to be easily dismantled.

Or at least that's what I can tell you from the money center of the ACA. they don't bring us up in political conversation because we are confusing to seasoned professionals, boring to industry outsiders, and consistently we are anathema to the anti-ACA talking points.

I am already preparing for next year's RVP for this window of open enrollment. That RVP process will feed into the RADV in 2026. In 2025, we begin the RADV for 2024. If nothing else, the slow fucking gears of CMS will keep the ACA alive until we finish our work at the end of the process. I highly doubt that will be the only reason the ACA is safeguarded, but it is a powerful type of support to pair with people protecting the ACA for other reasons.

I work every day to show, defend, and educate on how many diagnoses are managed thru my company's ACA plans. My specialty is cancer and I see a lot of it. The revenue drive comes from the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) rule stating only 20% MAX of profit may go to the issuer + the 80% at a minimum must go back to the customer or be invested in expanding benefits. The more people on the plan using it, the higher that 20% becomes for the issuer and the more impactful that 80% becomes for the next year of benefit growth. It is remarkably profitable once issuers stop seeking out "healthy populations". The ACA is a functional method for issuers to tap into a stable customer base (sick/chronic ill customers) that turns a profit, grows, and builds strong consumer bases in each state.

The industry can never walk away from this overnight - - this is the preferred investment for many big players. Changing the direction of those businesses will be a monumental effort that takes years (at least 2 with the audits). In the meantime, you still have benefits, you still have care, and you still have reason to sign up. Let us deal with the bureaucracy bullshit, go get your care and know you have benefits thru 2025 and we will be working to keep it that way for 2026 and forward. This is a wing of the federal government, it is not a jenga tower like Trump wishes.

[collapsedsquid]

The system has resulted in large rent increases that were previously unthinkable, according to RealPage's own executives. “As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually," RealPage executive Andrew Bowen said. Arizona's lawsuit alleges that RealPage "puts significant pressure on participants to ensure they adopt RealPage’s prices." Specifically, RealPage employs "pricing advisors" who "meet with landlords to ensure that properties are implementing RealPage’s set rates." This is described by Arizona as "policing the conspiracy to make sure no one cheats by lowering prices and trying to gain market share." RealPage training materials, cited in the DC lawsuit, advise that landlords "should be compliant" with the software's pricing recommendations. The Arizona lawsuit claims that landlords "agree that if they fail to consistently implement RealPage’s set rates, their contract with RealPage will be terminated." Jeffrey Roper, who created the RealPage algorithm, explained that if "you have idiots undervaluing, it costs the whole system." According to DC's lawsuit, this practice shows that "while RealPage sought to grow the cartel to maximize profits, it also understood the importance of universal adherence and was willing to expel an occasional cartel member to demonstrate its commitment to enforcement of the agreed-upon pricing scheme." While the RealPage software eliminates the need for competitors to meet in a smoke-filled room, Arizona asserts that it "is still illegal… for competitors to join together decision-making power to raise, depress, fix, or stabilize prices—no matter the technology used to effect a price-fixing agreement."

[cosmic-daydreamz02]

Career Reading

Placements to look at for your ideal career:

2nd house-how you make money

6th house-daily routine and work

10th house-career and public image

MC- career point.

11th house-social networks, long-term goals, opportunities for advancement (2nd from MC, so it shows the income from the career)

North Node - your life purpose and direction ; what you are meant to move towards in this lifetime

Part of Fortune - Where you find joy and success in this life, linked to both material and spiritual fulfillment

Vertex - represents fated encounters in your life. Where and how your destiny unfolds/ your turning point in life (not normally linked to career, but I think it can show what leads you to your true calling in this life especially if yours is in one of the money or career houses)

Saturn- rules discipline, structure, and long-term achievement, where you need to put in consistent effort to achieve success. Indicates your approach to responsibility in your career

Sun- core identity and life purpose, where you shine the most

Jupiter- expansion luck and growth. It shows your opportunities for success

Venus - where you can use your artistic abilities and social charm. It can also be how you attract money and resources

Signs and Career

Aries

• Career style: Assertive, pioneering, energetic, independent.

• Fields: Leadership roles, entrepreneurship, sports, military, anything involving action or competition.

• Drive: You take initiative and thrive in dynamic, fast-paced environments where you can be first.

Taurus

• Career style: Steady, practical, patient, and value-oriented.

• Fields: Finance, banking, agriculture, real estate, art, luxury goods, anything involving material wealth or beauty.

• Drive: Security, stability, and a focus on building long-term wealth. Aesthetic and sensory satisfaction are important.

Gemini

• Career style: Communicative, versatile, adaptable, intellectual.

• Fields: Journalism, writing, teaching, marketing, sales, technology, anything that involves communication or travel.

• Drive: Curiosity and intellectual stimulation. You thrive in dynamic, social environments where you can multitask.

Cancer

• Career style: Nurturing, protective, intuitive, emotionally driven.

• Fields: Healthcare, caregiving, real estate, hospitality, education, psychology, anything that involves caring for others.

• Drive: Emotional security and a need to create a safe, supportive environment. You work best when you feel connected to your work on an emotional level.

Leo

• Career style: Charismatic, creative, confident, leadership-focused.

• Fields: Entertainment, arts, fashion, politics, sports, anything involving self-expression and performance.

• Drive: Recognition, fame, and the desire to shine. You excel in careers where you can showcase your talents and leadership.

Virgo

• Career style: Detail-oriented, analytical, service-minded, organized.

• Fields: Healthcare, administration, research, editing, writing, data analysis, anything involving precision and service.

• Drive: Efficiency and perfection. You aim to serve others by improving systems or contributing to something meaningful.

Libra

• Career style: Diplomatic, collaborative, partnership-oriented, aesthetically inclined.

• Fields: Law, diplomacy, art, design, beauty, fashion, anything involving partnership or justice.

• Drive: Harmony and balance in professional relationships. You thrive in roles where teamwork, fairness, and aesthetics are valued.

Scorpio

• Career style: Intense, transformative, secretive, powerful.

• Fields: Psychology, research, finance (especially investments, taxes, inheritance), surgery, anything involving transformation or mystery.

• Drive: Power and control. You are drawn to careers that allow you to dig deep and uncover hidden truths or manage shared resources.

Sagittarius

• Career style: Adventurous, philosophical, expansive, freedom-loving.

• Fields: Education, travel, law, publishing, international business, anything that involves exploration and knowledge-sharing.

• Drive: Freedom and expansion. You seek opportunities that allow you to learn, grow, and explore new horizons.

Capricorn

• Career style: Ambitious, disciplined, authoritative, responsible.

• Fields: Business, politics, government, finance, engineering, management, anything that involves structure, authority, and long-term goals.

• Drive: Success and achievement. You are career-focused and work tirelessly toward building a solid reputation and legacy.

Aquarius

• Career style: Innovative, humanitarian, unconventional, forward-thinking.

• Fields: Technology, science, social reform, innovation, group work, anything involving progressive change or social impact.

• Drive: Making a difference and creating a better future. You work best in collaborative or unconventional environments that allow for innovation.

Pisces

• Career style: Compassionate, imaginative, spiritual, idealistic.

• Fields: Art, music, healing, psychology, spirituality, charity work, anything that involves creativity, intuition, or service to others.

• Drive: Helping others and finding deeper meaning. You’re drawn to careers where you can use your empathy and creativity to make a positive impact.

Houses and Career Focus

1st House (Self-Identity, Public Persona)

You identify closely with your career. You're meant for careers where you're the leader or face of whatever you do, you're meant to be in the public eye somehow.

2nd House (Money, Resources, Values)

Financial stability and security is what drives you in your career. You would do good in careers related to banking and finance or sales (more like selling luxury goods or real estate)

3rd House (Communication, Learning, Siblings)

Communication, education, and travel. Or working in media. Teaching, writing, or sales/ anything that involves exchanges of info

4th House (Home, Family, Roots)

Home design, family business, real estate. Care giving or working from home. Emotional fulfillment through your career

5th House (Creativity, Pleasure, Children)

Creative fields, working with children. Career allows for self-expression. performance or leadership roles

6th House (Work Environment, Health, Service)

Service industry, Healthcare (especially if you have heavy virgo/pisces or 6th/12th placements), administration, work that requires tedious precision and detail

7th House (Partnerships, Marriage)

Collaboration, requires partnerships in career. Law, any counseling/consulting work, diplomat

8th House (Shared Resources, Transformation)

Finance (other peoples money like taxes, inheritance, etc), psychology, research/investigation

9th House (Philosophy, Travel, Higher Education)

Higher education, travel, law, publishing, career could be linked to foreign lands, (travel vlogger, professor, resort owner?)

10th House (Career, Reputation, Public Life)

Leadership, recognition, achieving goals, public image and success are emphasized

11th House (Community, Goals, Social Networks)

Community service/humanitarian work, technology, collective work

12th House (Spirituality, Solitude, Healing)

Healing, spirituality, charity work, hospitals, or creative/behind the scenes work like set design, director etc

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Collective Intelligence Institute

History is written by the winners, which is why Luddite is a slur meaning “technophobe” and not a badge of honor meaning, “Person who goes beyond asking what technology does, to asking who it does it for and who it does it to.”

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

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/2023/02/07/full-stack-luddites/#subsidiarity

Luddites weren’t anti-machine activists, they were pro-worker advocates, who believed that the spoils of automation shouldn’t automatically be allocated to the bosses who skimmed the profits from their labor and spent them on machines that put them out of a job. There is no empirical right answer about who should benefit from automation, only social contestation, which includes all the things that desperate people whose access to food, shelter and comfort are threatened might do, such as smashing looms and torching factories.

The question of who should benefit from automation is always urgent, and it’s also always up for grabs. Automation can deepen and reinforce unfair arrangements, or it can upend them. No one came off a mountain with two stone tablets reading “Thy machines shall condemn labor to the scrapheap of the history while capital amasses more wealth and power.” We get to choose.

Capital’s greatest weapon in this battle is inevitabilism, sometimes called “capitalist realism,” summed up with Frederic Jameson’s famous quote “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (often misattributed to Žižek). A simpler formulation can be found in the doctrine of Margaret Thatcher: “There Is No Alternative,” or even Dante’s “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Hope — alternatives — lies in reviving our structural imagination, thinking through other ways of managing our collective future. Last May, Wired published a brilliant article that did just that, by Divya Siddarth, Danielle Allen and E. Glen Weyl:

https://www.wired.com/story/web3-blockchain-decentralization-governance/

That article, “The Web3 Decentralization Debate Is Focused on the Wrong Question,” set forth a taxonomy of decentralization, exploring ways that power could be distributed, checked, and shared. It went beyond blockchains and hyperspeculative, Ponzi-prone “mechanism design,” prompting me to subtitle my analysis “Not all who decentralize are bros”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/12/crypto-means-cryptography/#p2p-rides-again

That article was just one installment in a long, ongoing project by the authors. Now, Siddarth has teamed up with Saffron Huang to launch the Collective Intelligence project, “an incubator for new governance models for transformative technology.”

https://cip.org/whitepaper

The Collective Intelligence Project’s research focus is “collective intelligence capabilities: decision-making technologies, processes, and institutions that expand a group’s capacity to construct and cooperate towards shared goals.” That is, asking more than how automation works, but who it should work for.

Collective Intelligence institutions include “markets…nation-state democracy…global governance institutions and transnational corporations, standards-setting organizations and judicial courts, the decision structures of universities, startups, and nonprofits.” All of these institutions let two or more people collaborate, which is to say, it lets us do superhuman things — things that transcend the limitations of the lone individual.

Our institutions are failing us. Confidence in democracy is in decline, and democratic states have failed to coordinate to solve urgent crises, like the climate emergency. Markets are also failing us, “flatten[ing] complex values in favor of over-optimizing for cost, profit, or share price.”

Neither traditional voting systems nor speculative markets are up to the task of steering our emerging, transformative technologies — neither machine learning, nor bioengineering, nor labor automation. Hence the mission of CIP: “Humans created our current CI systems to help achieve collective goals. We can remake them.”

The plan to do this is in two phases:

Value elicitation: “ways to develop scalable processes for surfacing and combining group beliefs, goals, values, and preferences.” Think of tools like Pol.is, which Taiwan uses to identify ideas that have the broadest consensus, not just the most active engagement.

Remake technology institutions: “technology development beyond the existing options of non-profit, VC-funded startup, or academic project.” Practically, that’s developing tools and models for “decentralized governance and metagovernance, internet standards-setting,” and consortia.

The founders pose this as a solution to “The Transformative Technology Trilemma” — that is, the supposed need to trade off between participation, progress and safety.

This trilemma usually yields one of three unsatisfactory outcomes:

Capitalist Acceleration: “Sacrificing safety for progress while maintaining basic participation.” Think of private-sector geoengineering, CRISPR experimentation, or deployment of machine learning tools. AKA “bro shit.”

Authoritarian Technocracy: “Sacrificing participation for progress while maintaining basic safety.” Think of the vulnerable world hypothesis weirdos who advocate for universal, total surveillance to prevent “runaway AI,” or, of course, the Chinese technocratic system.

Shared Stagnation: “Sacrificing progress for participation while maintaining basic safety.” A drive for local control above transnational coordination, unwarranted skepticism of useful technologies (AKA “What the Luddites are unfairly accused of”).

The Institute’s goal is to chart a fourth path, which seeks out the best parts of all three outcomes, while leaving behind their flaws. This includes deliberative democracy tools like sortition and assemblies, backed by transparent machine learning tools that help surface broadly held views from within a community, not just the views held by the loudest participants.

This dovetails into creating new tech development institutions to replace the default, venture-backed startup for “societally-consequential, infrastructural projects,” including public benefit companies, focused research organizations, perpetual purpose trusts, co-ops, etc.

It’s a view I find compelling, personally, enough so that I have joined the organization as a volunteer advisor.

This vision resembles the watershed groups in Ruthanna Emrys’s spectacular “Half-Built Garden,” which was one of the most inspiring novels I read last year (a far better source of stfnal inspo than the technocratic fantasies of the “Golden Age”):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/26/aislands/#dead-ringers

And it revives the long-dormant, utterly necessary spirit of the Luddites, which you can learn a lot more about in Brian Merchant’s forthcoming, magesterial “Blood In the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech”:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

This week (Feb 8–17), I’ll be in Australia, touring my book Chokepoint Capitalism with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We’ll be in Brisbane tomorrow (Feb 8), and then we’re doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 9. Next are Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I hope to see you!

[Image ID: An old Ace Double paperback. The cover illustration has been replaced with an 18th century illustration depicting a giant Ned Ludd leading an army of Luddites who have just torched a factory. The cover text reads: 'The Luddites. Smashing looms was their tactic, not their goal.']

[lol-jackles]

I have a question for clarification. What’s the difference between Executive Producer and Producer? My friend says Executive Producer is just the name to attract investors and none of the responsibilities. What say you?

Producer will manage the entire process from beginning to end: fundraising, networking, securing rights to creative works, commissioning writers, hiring a director, crew, and actors, organizing shooting and production schedules, ensuring compliance with health and safety regulations during production, holding regular meetings with director to discuss progress, ensuring the project is done on time and within the budget.  They supervise the entire project from beginning to post-production.  Co-producers like Jerry Wanek is responsible for set designs so he has to learn new lighting tricks, the latest cameras that are on the market and what shoots best in what scenarios.

The Executive Producer title are given out like candies. Most of the producers, co-producers, associate producers and executive producers are writers.  The unions limits the number of people who can receive writing credit on any one episode.  Keep in mind that TV shows have big writers room, so every writer on the show might contribute at least in small part to every episode.  So they need some sort of credit.  That credit becomes “executive producer.”  

Actors get “executive producer” credit to get profit-sharing deals, they very rarely have any power in the creative process. That said, the title does validates the value of the actor’s presence on the show. So in some cases the EP actors participate in some of the show’s important decisions. The industry has a very strict hierarchies.  Timothy Olyphant of Justified said he took advantage of the executive producer title (he joked that the title of Glorified Cheerleader wasn’t available) because the credit system has a certain hierarchy, so he was able to access the process behind the camera, collaborate with the showrunner, and be in the writers room two months before filming starts. While some actors are perfectly fine being told on as needed basis because they think their acting will come across better by having a more natural reaction, I think Jared is one of those people who has to be in the loop. like how he would read up to 3 SPN scripts ahead.

Now the real dish.  Networks don’t want to set precedent for high ranking actors’ salaries.  Many in the industry think NBC giving in to Friends six actors’ demands was a huge mistake and set a very bad precedent.  CBS was at the frontline to prevent this from happening again.  To compensate the leading actors, the network will give them two paychecks: one for acting, and one as producer.  But technically the network could still say, “well, Jared Padalecki is only getting $300,000 per episode for his acting duties”.

[boinkingbattlemechs]

King Crab

Designed by Cosara Weaponries in 2741 at the request of General Aleksandr Kerensky for an assault 'Mech that could "cripple or destroy another 'Mech in one salvo," the King Crab is one of the most fearsome BattleMechs to have ever existed. Its primary weapons, super-heavy autocannons mounted in its arms, can strip the armor off of any 'Mech in a few bursts. Its secondary weapons give the slow King Crab the firepower to see off attackers attempting to pick it off at range, and while not sporting the heaviest armor of any assault 'Mech, there are absolutely no weak points to its protection. If there is a drawback to the King Crab, it's the reliance on ammunition for the autocannons, an aspect to consider on extended campaigns with no guarantee of resupply. If it runs out of ammo, most King Crab pilots will withdraw from the field, making it vulnerable to enemy attacks. The only reliable way to destroy a King Crab is with overwhelming numbers of heavy and assault 'Mechs, and casualties will be suffered in the attempt.

While an excellent close-range combatant, the King Crab proved to be less versatile as a command vehicle, a role eventually filled by the Atlas. Later production models eventually had the state-of-the-art communications systems swapped out for common systems more suited for the brawling nature of the King Crab. At the start of the Amaris Civil War in 2767 Cosara's Mars factory was destroyed by Republican forces, although its factory on Northwind managed to escape unscathed. When General Kerensky and the majority of the Star League Defense Force left the Inner Sphere on their Exodus, they brought with them most of the initial production run of King Crabs, including all of the prototype KGC-010 models. The number of remaining King Crabs was further reduced when the Northwind factory was destroyed in 2786, one of the early casualties of the First Succession War. Since the design used few Lostech parts, it was easier to repair than other Star League era 'Mechs. Still, by the end of the Third Succession War a mere handful of King Crabs were still in active service with the Great Houses.

When ComStar initiated the takeover of the Terra system, they were able to repair the King Crab factory on Mars, mothball it, and secretly secure a number of King Crabs in storage. By the dawn of the thirty-first century ComStar contracted Cosara Weaponries to resume production in order to restock their supply, which had begun to degrade with age and was later used to outfit the Com Guards. For the pivotal Battle of Tukayyid the King Crab was among a number of designs upgraded to meet the challenge of the Clans, the so-called "Clanbusters." The success of the KGC-001 model was such that ComStar allowed Cosara to begin general production from their Mars and Northwind factories and sell it on the open market in exchange for a share of the profits.

The Word of Blake brought about a radical shift in King Crab production, first by their own conquest of Terra, then a few years later when they blockaded Northwind, infiltrated and took over the factory in 3069. New variants of the King Crab were now being produced and shipped to the Word of Blake and its Protectorate, forcing ComStar to attempt something unusual for the once-secretive organization. They hired a small mercenary team specialized in corporate espionage and inserted them into the Northwind factory to steal the plans for these new 'Mechs. With the technical information in hand they then went to StarCorps Industries and offered them the chance to begin production of the new KGC-007 models. The company was thrilled at the prospect and accepted, building new King Crabs out of Son Hoa not just for ComStar but the Federated Suns and Lyran Alliance as well.

The King Crab's primary weapons are two massive Deathgiver Autocannon/20s, among the most powerful BattleMech weapons ever created. Each arm carries one of these massive weapons, and they are fed by two tons of ammo split between the side torsos. The firepower of these weapons is enough to destroy a medium 'Mech in one salvo. To protect the autocannons in combat, engineers designed the King Crab with simple hand actuators. In appearance and movement, the actuators are very similar to pincers or claws found on real crabs, a contributing factor to the 'Mech's name. To back up the autocannons, and provide some long-range capabilities, the King Crab carries a Simpson-15 LRM-15 launcher, mounted in the left torso and fed by one ton of reloads in the same location, and an Exostar Large Laser in the right torso. While not the most heavily armored 'Mech, the King Crab is still tough to crack, with sixteen tons of ferro-fibrous armor and CASE protecting its ammunition stores; however, the arms are probably the most susceptible area to receive damage and an internal hit is likely to knock an autocannon out of the fight. The 'Mech is also slow, with a cruising speed of 32 km/h and top speed of 54 km/h, and has been described as a "notorious hangar queen".

[phoenixyfriend]

Trying to figure out if there are any actual, like, ethics to the stock market. Going public sounds unremarkable, just gaining capital for development in exchange for giving investors some voting power in operations and management.

But it completely changes the business model and general goals. Being beholden to shareholders ensures that "a successful business" is defined less by its ability to be stable and change with the times without faltering and growing to reasonably fill its niche, and rather by its ability to turn higher and higher profits in order to ensure greater dividends, a greater return on investment, to the shareholders, focusing on the short term investments rather than long-term stability. Companies that can't fulfill that role, staying stable or being unable to change with the times due to shareholder demands, get caught in stock gambits like shortselling (e.g. the GameStop incident) and driven out of business.

In theory, a company being led by a bunch of people instead of by a single person or family should make it less prone to abuses, but when the only people that can afford enough stock to have an impact on operations are people of extraordinary wealth...

Companies end up pursuing eternal growth even when it isn't feasible, suborning their own original goals and intentions in the name of turning ever-greater profits for their shareholders.

But then again, privately-owned means vulnerability to private equity, which probably makes them more likely to be destroyed by 'grow your wealth' folks...

(This isn't entirely for a recent Ko-Fi Prompt, but it's a big factor. I'm just trying to get my thoughts on the stock market in order before I dive into the more specific question I was given. My focus in university was primarily in international business/communications and marketing, rather than stock and equity, and it's been a while since I put deep thought into how the stock market functions and whether that function is inherently structured in a way that supports unethical action, or just one of many systems that wealthy people have taken advantage of.)

Does anyone here with experience or education in stocks and finance have thoughts to share?

I'm focusing on the ethics and morality of the stock market and its impacts on employees, the environment, and the public, not questions of 'do shareholders deserve to ask for a return.'

No libertarian takes on this, please, I'm trying to gather actual information, with a basis in the social contract, not USAmerican individualism.

[mariacallous]

Recently, I was using Google and stumbled upon an article that felt eerily familiar.

While searching for the latest information on Adobe’s artificial intelligence policies, I typed “adobe train ai content” into Google and switched over to the News tab. I had already seen WIRED’s coverage that appeared on the results page in the second position: “Adobe Says It Won’t Train AI Using Artists’ Work. Creatives Aren’t Convinced.” And although I didn’t recognize the name of the publication whose story sat at the very top of the results, Syrus #Blog, the headline on the article hit me with a wave of déjà vu: “When Adobe promised not to train AI on artists’ content, the creative community reacted with skepticism.”

Clicking on the top hyperlink, I found myself on a spammy website brimming with plagiarized articles that were repackaged, many of them using AI-generated illustrations at the top. In this spam article, the entire WIRED piece was copied with only slight changes to the phrasing. Even the original quotes were lifted. A single, lonely hyperlink at the bottom of the webpage, leading back to our version of the story, served as the only form of attribution.

The bot wasn’t just copying journalism in English—I found versions of this plagiarized content in 10 other languages, including many of the languages that WIRED produces content in, like Japanese and Spanish.

Articles that were originally published in outlets like Reuters and TechCrunch were also plagiarized on this blog in multiple languages and given similar AI images. During late June and early July, while I was researching this story, the website Syrus appeared to have gamed the News results for Google well enough to show up on the first page for multiple tech-related queries.

For example, I searched “competing visions google openai” and saw a TechCrunch piece at the top of Google News. Below it were articles from The Atlantic and Bloomberg comparing the rival companies’ approaches to AI development. But then, the fourth article to appear for that search, nestled right below these more reputable websites, was another Syrus #Blog piece that heavily copied the TechCrunch article in the first position.

As reported by 404 Media in January, AI-powered articles appeared multiple times for basic queries at the beginning of the year in Google News results. Two months later, Google announced significant changes to its algorithm and new spam policies, as an attempt to improve the search results. And by the end of April, Google shared that the major adjustments to remove unhelpful results from its search engine ranking system were finished. “As of April 19, we’ve completed the rollout of these changes. You’ll now see 45 percent less low-quality, unoriginal content in search results versus the 40 percent improvement we expected across this work,” wrote Elizabeth Tucker, a director of product management at Google, in a blog post.

Despite the changes, spammy content created with the help of AI remains an ongoing, prevalent issue for Google News.

“This is a really rampant problem on Google right now, and it's hard to answer specifically why it's happening,” says Lily Ray, senior director of search engine optimization at the marketing agency Amsive. “We've had some clients say, ‘Hey, they took our article and rehashed it with AI. It looks exactly like what we wrote in our original content but just kind of like a mumbo-jumbo, AI-rewritten version of it.’”

At first glance, it was clear to me that some of the images for Syrus’ blogs were AI generated based on the illustrations’ droopy eyes and other deformed physical features—telltale signs of AI trying to represent the human body.

Now, was the text of our article rewritten using AI? I reached out to the person behind the blog to learn more about how they made it and received confirmation via email that an Italian marketing agency created the blog. They claim to have used an AI tool as part of the writing process. “Regarding your concerns about plagiarism, we can assure you that our content creation process involves AI tools that analyze and synthesize information from various sources while always respecting intellectual property,” writes someone using the name Daniele Syrus over email.

They point to the single hyperlink at the bottom of the lifted article as sufficient attribution. While better than nothing, a link which doesn’t even mention the publication by name is not an adequate defense against plagiarism. The person also claims that the website’s goal is not to receive clicks from Google’s search engine but to test out AI algorithms in multiple languages.

When approached over email for a response, Google declined to comment about Syrus. “We don’t comment on specific websites, but our updated spam policies prohibit creating low-value, unoriginal content at scale for the purposes of ranking well on Google,” says Meghann Farnsworth, a spokesperson for Google. “We take action on sites globally that don’t follow our policies.” (Farnsworth is a former WIRED employee.)

Looking through Google’s spam policies, it appears that this blog does directly violate the company’s rules about online scraping. “Examples of abusive scraping include: … sites that copy content from other sites, modify it only slightly (for example, by substituting synonyms or using automated techniques), and republish it.” Farnsworth declined to confirm whether this blog was in violation of Google’s policies or if the company would de-rank it in Google News results based on this reporting.

What can the people who write original articles do to properly protect their work? It’s unclear. Though, after all of the conversations I’ve had with SEO experts, one major through line sticks out to me, and it’s an overarching sense of anxiety.

“Our industry suffers from some form of trauma, and I'm not even really joking about that,” says Andrew Boyd, a consultant at an online link-building service called Forte Analytica. “I think one of the main reasons for that is because there's no recourse if you're one of these publishers that's been affected. All of a sudden you wake up in the morning, and 50 percent of your traffic is gone.” According to Boyd, some websites lost a majority of their visitors during Google’s search algorithm updates over the years.

While many SEO experts are upset with the lack of transparency about Google’s biggest changes, not everyone I spoke with was critical of the prevalence of spam in search results. “Actually, Google doesn't get enough credit for this, but Google's biggest challenge is spam.” says Eli Schwartz, the author of the book Product-Led SEO. “So, despite all the complaints we have about Google’s quality now, you don’t do a search for hardware and then find adult sites. They’re doing a good enough job.” The company continues to release smaller search updates to fight against spam.

Yes, Google sometimes offers users a decent experience by protecting them from seeing sketchy pornography websites when searching unrelated, popular queries. But it remains reasonable to expect one of the most powerful companies in the world—that has considerable influence over how online content is created, distributed, and consumed—to do a better job of filtering out plagiarizing, unhelpful content from the News results.

“It's frustrating, because we see we're trying to do the right thing, and then we see so many examples of this low-quality, AI stuff outperforming us,” says Ray. “So I'm hopeful that it's temporary, but it's leading to a lot of tension and a lot of animosity in our industry, in ways that I've personally never seen before in 15 years.” Unless spammy sites with AI content are stricken from the search results, publishers will now have less incentive to produce high-quality content and, in turn, users will have less reason to trust the websites appearing at the top of Google News.

[transparentlyfallingasleep]

7. How do you choose which POV to write from? (Especially for starbucks)

25. What fic do you wish you got more of a response on?

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

aw wow! People never ask me questions on here.

let’s see number 7. Honestly I tried to come up with a better answer than this but it’s just the vibe of the thing. The first story was really just a response to “Clint Barton shows up 15 minutes late with Starbucks” insert Troy with the pizza meme that was out in the ether post his absence in Winter Soldier. I decided to try making myself write from Natasha’s perspective after the Clint heaviness in marketplace etc but in the Starbucks sequel I just wanted to imagine/ write down the Robert Downey jr voice in my head reacting to spy kid 3D. And then they all joined in. Clint’s voice is my most comfortable place to be Natasha, Cap, Maria, Jarvis the least but I think that’s because being that fucking competent seems heptapod level alien.

25: I wish people read unfinished business more… it was my first story in the marvel space and my second fanfic ever. And I still kinda like imagining it’s running in the background of the avengers… and it could have too if not for that pesky Joss Whedon. I also I’m proud of my Game of thrones fic. It was an attempt to self sooth and I think it turned out rather well all things considered.

26. I’m not sure I do wild rides I’m definitely not much of a plot writer. I tend to focus on small intimate character moments. Probably because I suck even more at the other stuff, possibly because being a speech pathologist I’m better at getting voices of characters ‘right’ than I am at making things happen. But I am proud at how I salvaged age of ultron for the rewriting in Market Place and how much I was able to reuse, reduce, recycle might be surprising to readers.

39. So my clinic shut down suddenly in September. If you are Australian I will just say this about it. The NDIS and in particular the Government have been making it harder and harder to work as a paediatric disability clinician and hell bent on telling our clients that it’s because we are rorting the system. I didn’t want my clients to loose their therapeutic alliance and a speechie that has known them most of their lives so I started my own sole trading. It’s long hours, crazy stress and I don’t even know if I will be able to afford the audit come 2025 but for now my kiddos are safe and getting therapy. All the govt has managed to do is privatise the old block grant system and lie about choice and control and that’s all I have to say about that. As a result I’ve got no real WIPs but I have this… you can see that I write dialogue first.

If you’ve come to tell me I’ve besmirched my honour, that the castle is in an uproar… I care not. 

Your grace. 

Ser Davos I am no princess. 

The laws of the realm say

So Tyrion Lannister crowns my brother and frees the north for my sister and now I am smothered by titles? I knew I should have killed that-

Id never really thought about it like that Milady. Allow an old man a small courtesy? I accepted my title for services to Stannis Baratheon. Plenty of times I thought better of it but I did it for those who came after me. Lord Gendry well he doesn’t say, quiet sort that he is -

Surly 

As you say, but i think I’m right in saying he had similar thoughts. I don’t think either of us thought that there might be others on the other side of it. Born to the titles and the power and wanting none of it, wanting to be rid of it. 

He is a good lad lady Arya. Give him longer. He can’t stay this angry for long. 

I can’t stay ser Davos

Forgive me but I’ve lived longer on decking than I have on dry land or had till your brother made me hand. The tides they come again. Like circles they are. Why not tarry even if he’s determined to make himself unpleasant. 

He doesn’t have to put effort into that. He’s had it mastered for years. You are married Ser, children? 

Aye My Lady

[dailyanarchistposts]

F.2.1 How does private property affect freedom?

The right-“libertarian” either does not acknowledge or dismisses as irrelevant the fact that the (absolute) right of private property may lead to extensive control by property owners over those who use, but do not own, property (such as workers and tenants). Thus a free-market capitalist system leads to a very selective and class-based protection of “rights” and “freedoms.” For example, under capitalism, the “freedom” of employers inevitably conflicts with the “freedom” of employees. When stockholders or their managers exercise their “freedom of enterprise” to decide how their company will operate, they violate their employee’s right to decide how their labouring capacities will be utilised and so under capitalism the “property rights” of employers will conflict with and restrict the “human right” of employees to manage themselves. Capitalism allows the right of self-management only to the few, not to all. Or, alternatively, capitalism does not recognise certain human rights as universal which anarchism does.

This can be seen from Austrian Economist W. Duncan Reekie’s defence of wage labour. While referring to “intra-firm labour markets” as “hierarchies”, Reekie (in his best ex cathedra tone) states that ”[t]here is nothing authoritarian, dictatorial or exploitative in the relationship. Employees order employers to pay them amounts specified in the hiring contract just as much as employers order employees to abide by the terms of the contract.” [Markets, Entrepreneurs and Liberty, p. 136 and p. 137]. Given that “the terms of contract” involve the worker agreeing to obey the employers orders and that they will be fired if they do not, its pretty clear that the ordering that goes on in the “intra-firm labour market” is decidedly one way. Bosses have the power, workers are paid to obey. And this begs the question: if the employment contract creates a free worker, why must she abandon her liberty during work hours?

Reekie actually recognises this lack of freedom in a “round about” way when he notes that “employees in a firm at any level in the hierarchy can exercise an entrepreneurial role. The area within which that role can be carried out increases the more authority the employee has.” [Op. Cit., p. 142] Which means workers are subject to control from above which restricts the activities they are allowed to do and so they are not free to act, make decisions, participate in the plans of the organisation, to create the future and so forth within working hours. And it is strange that while recognising the firm as a hierarchy, Reekie tries to deny that it is authoritarian or dictatorial — as if you could have a hierarchy without authoritarian structures or an unelected person in authority who is not a dictator. His confusion is shared by Austrian guru Ludwig von Mises, who asserted that the “entrepreneur and capitalist are not irresponsible autocrats” because they are “unconditionally subject to the sovereignty of the consumer” while, on the next page, admitting there was a “managerial hierarchy” which contains “the average subordinate employee.” [Human Action, p. 809 and p. 810] It does not enter his mind that the capitalist may be subject to some consumer control while being an autocrat to their subordinated employees. Again, we find the right-“libertarian” acknowledging that the capitalist managerial structure is a hierarchy and workers are subordinated while denying it is autocratic to the workers! Thus we have “free” workers within a relationship distinctly lacking freedom — a strange paradox. Indeed, if your personal life were as closely monitored and regulated as the work life of millions of people across the world, you would rightly consider it the worse form of oppression and tyranny.

Somewhat ironically, right-wing liberal and “free market” economist Milton Friedman contrasted “central planning involving the use of coercion — the technique of the army or the modern totalitarian state” with “voluntary co-operation between individuals — the technique of the marketplace” as two distinct ways of co-ordinating the economic activity of large groups (“millions”) of people. [Capitalism and Freedom, p. 13] However, this misses the key issue of the internal nature of the company. As right-“libertarians” themselves note, the internal structure of a capitalist company is hierarchical. Indeed, the capitalist company is a form of central planning and so shares the same “technique” as the army. As Peter Drucker noted in his history of General Motors, ”[t]here is a remarkably close parallel between General Motors’ scheme of organisation and those of the two institutions most renowned for administrative efficiency: that of the Catholic Church and that of the modern army.” [quoted by David Engler, Apostles of Greed, p. 66] Thus capitalism is marked by a series of totalitarian organisations. Dictatorship does not change much — nor does it become less fascistic — when discussing economic structures rather than political ones. To state the obvious, “the employment contract (like the marriage contract) is not an exchange; both contracts create social relations that endure over time — social relations of subordination.” [Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract, p. 148]

Perhaps Reekie (like most right-“libertarians”) will maintain that workers voluntarily agree (“consent”) to be subject to the bosses dictatorship (he writes that “each will only enter into the contractual agreement known as a firm if each believes he will be better off thereby. The firm is simply another example of mutually beneficial exchange.” [Op. Cit., p. 137]). However, this does not stop the relationship being authoritarian or dictatorial (and so exploitative as it is highly unlikely that those at the top will not abuse their power). Representing employment relations as voluntary agreement simply mystifies the existence and exercise of power within the organisation so created.

As we argue further in the section F.3, in a capitalist society workers have the option of finding a job or facing abject poverty and/or starvation. Little wonder, then, that people “voluntarily” sell their labour and “consent” to authoritarian structures! They have little option to do otherwise. So, within the labour market workers can and do seek out the best working conditions possible, but that does not mean that the final contract agreed is “freely” accepted and not due to the force of circumstances, that both parties have equal bargaining power when drawing up the contract or that the freedom of both parties is ensured.

Which means to argue (as right-“libertarians” do) that freedom cannot be restricted by wage labour because people enter into relationships they consider will lead to improvements over their initial situation totally misses the point. As the initial situation is not considered relevant, their argument fails. After all, agreeing to work in a sweatshop 14 hours a day is an improvement over starving to death — but it does not mean that those who so agree are free when working there or actually want to be there. They are not and it is the circumstances, created and enforced by the law (i.e., the state), that have ensured that they “consent” to such a regime (given the chance, they would desire to change that regime but cannot as this would violate their bosses property rights and they would be repressed for trying).

So the right-wing “libertarian” right is interested only in a narrow concept of freedom (rather than in freedom or liberty as such). This can be seen in the argument of Ayn Rand that ”Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state — and nothing else!” [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 192] By arguing in this way, right-“libertarians” ignore the vast number of authoritarian social relationships that exist in capitalist society and, as Rand does here, imply that these social relationships are like “the laws of nature.” However, if one looks at the world without prejudice but with an eye to maximising freedom, the major coercive institutions are the state and capitalist social relationships (and the latter relies on the former). It should also be noted that, unlike gravity, the power of the landlord and boss depends on the use of force — gravity does not need policemen to make things fall!

The right “libertarian,” then, far from being a defender of freedom, is in fact a keen defender of certain forms of authority. As Kropotkin argued against a forerunner of right-“libertarianism”:

“The modern Individualism initiated by Herbert Spencer is, like the critical theory of Proudhon, a powerful indictment against the dangers and wrongs of government, but its practical solution of the social problem is miserable — so miserable as to lead us to inquire if the talk of ‘No force’ be merely an excuse for supporting landlord and capitalist domination.” [Act For Yourselves, p. 98]

To defend the “freedom” of property owners is to defend authority and privilege — in other words, statism. So, in considering the concept of liberty as “freedom from,” it is clear that by defending private property (as opposed to possession) the “anarcho”-capitalist is defending the power and authority of property owners to govern those who use “their” property. And also, we must note, defending all the petty tyrannies that make the work lives of so many people frustrating, stressful and unrewarding.

Anarchism, by definition, is in favour of organisations and social relationships which are non-hierarchical and non-authoritarian. Otherwise, some people are more free than others. Failing to attack hierarchy leads to massive contradiction. For example, since the British Army is a volunteer one, it is an “anarchist” organisation! Ironically, it can also allow a state to appear “libertarian” as that, too, can be considered voluntary arrangement as long as it allows its subjects to emigrate freely. So equating freedom with (capitalist) property rights does not protect freedom, in fact it actively denies it. This lack of freedom is only inevitable as long as we accept capitalist private property rights. If we reject them, we can try and create a world based on freedom in all aspects of life, rather than just in a few.

[djuvlipen]

https://nordicmodelnow.org/2020/03/02/the-cost-of-western-europes-rampant-prostitution-the-genocide-of-romanian-women/?amp=1

Sorry for the triggering article. Not romani but ty for your bravery and support of women 💚

God, that was a good article, thank you for sharing, Anon. I recommend reading the whole thing but I want to highlight some specific parts:

For the last eight months or so, the entire country has been in turmoil and living a nightmare. I do not say ‘nightmare’ lightly. I wish it had just been a bad dream that we’d woken from. If only… But the reality is we can’t shake off the nightmarish situation that’s been stewing since about the time my country was accepted into the European Union and the borders were opened. While it was a fantastic opportunity for the development of the country, it was also the beginning of a horrifying new reality – rampant human trafficking. In an effort to provide for themselves and/or their families, people started to go abroad in search of work opportunities they couldn’t find at home. But it was also a huge opportunity for interlopers and human traffickers, because the opening of the borders made it easier for them to do what they had previously been doing with a lot more difficulty. Now their activity is widespread and unchecked. They have no qualms. They brazenly state that it’s a certified way of making a living. Given the legal status of prostitution in many EU countries, trafficking women and children has become in Romania a legitimate way of making a fortune for the ‘smarter’ people. They declare that dirty money is easier and faster to make with little to no effort on their part. That’s ‘smart’ to them. They announce this unapologetically, and with a superior smirk, on every medium, official and unofficial. For the ordinary, hardworking population, this is unbelievable, unbearable, terrifying.

This points at something I've been thinking about: the European Union is not our friend, it is explicitly anti-women. It doesn't simply tolerate the sex trade, it institutionalizes it to make profit out of it. It is antifeminist at its core and the first victims of it are women from impoverished Eastern European countries, with Romani (not simply Romanian) women being particularly vulnerable.

There are over 500 known trafficking rings in Romania, their areas of influence are well mapped and the leaders well known. They cover pretty much every inch of the country. Not a corner has been left unexploited by them. Prostitution is illegal in Romania, but it is flourishing anyway. As we all know, it produces enormous amounts of money for the ‘clans’ – as the interlopers call themselves with pride. But the biggest source of money is outside the country. In the beginning, they promised a job abroad in agriculture, in restaurants and as babysitters, and the women who fell prey found themselves in prostitution. When word got out and that tactic didn’t work anymore, they resorted to the ‘lover boy’ method. When that didn’t work so well, they started to steal children and young women from the street and even from their own homes. Thousands of other cases similar to Alexandra’s and Luiza’s have surfaced – including one where all six children – two boys and four girls – of a single mother were abducted by force, from their house. None of this – on this scale – would have been possible without the tacit agreement and practical protection of the authorities – police, the justice system, and politicians. The clans have grown so powerful that they even boast of having installed their own politicians, policemen, judges, and prosecutors. They continually escape justice. If some rogue policemen catch them and somehow manage to bring them to court, they use their money and influence to get off. The money that comes, as I said, not so much from the internal ‘market’, but from other European countries to which they traffic the children and women they get their hands on by any means. The most important destination are the countries where prostitution is legalized, like Germany and the Netherlands, but also the countries (including the UK) where laws against pimping and buying women in prostitution are not enforced. Romania has become the number one European source country of children and women in the brothels in Germany and Holland, and also Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece and the UK. Even though the total population of Romania is only about 19 million, there are thousands[*] of Romanian women and children forced into street prostitution in Italy alone – and that’s not counting those in strip clubs, brothels and ‘escort’ prostitution. It’s estimated that there are similar numbers in Spain, the UK, Germany, and Holland – and that’s not considering those in the Arab world and on other continents. Romania has haemorrhaged more than a million children (girls and boys) and women into the prostitution trade in these countries. In countries where prostitution is legal, like Germany, only a small percentage of the women involved are locals. German women do not take up this kind of ‘work’ en masse. (Should we wonder why it’s so off-putting?). But the demand is huge – so they outsource to countries like mine.

This part is also very important. I only wish she had mentioned that Romani women make up a large % of trafficked women from Romania; one of the reasons I started making posts about it is because many people don't think race is relevant when talking about the sex trade in Eastern Europe, because they think all of Eastern Europe is white. The vast majority of articles and studies therefore erasing the large % of trafficked Romani women by painting the general sex-trafficked victim as a white woman, which is not the case as race is relevant here.

And all this because of the participation of our men in power, men who served the parents of the two still missing girls who want their children back with the sentence (pun intended), “I’m hitting a wall.” Yes. That’s what the attorney general said to them when asked why they aren’t looking for the girls: “I can’t look for them because there’s a wall stopping me.” People started rallying for the girls. It is awful to see the two mothers in tears and on their knees in front of the Police Department building, begging the authorities to find their children and bring them home. So what is that wall? Might it be the needs of ‘punters’ in Germany? In Italy? All over Europe and elsewhere? The US military base located only five miles away from the town of Caracal? The need of the overpaid and oversexed American ‘heroes’ to have sex in their spare time lest they might die from abstinence? The needs of the ‘heroes’ (read ‘paedophiles’) in the other US military base about 200 miles away near the sea port of Constanta who built a special pavilion INSIDE the base camp where they go and have sex and where they demand to be brought younger and younger girls (children), new ones each time? (In the case of Alexandra Macesanu and Luiza Melencu, even the FBI got involved and ‘recommended’ putting a lid on the whole affair, and over 90 US soldiers were packed and shipped home a few days after the disappearances broke into the news.) Might all that be the WALL?

And that is very interesting too. Even in peace time, the military is harming and raping girls and women. The US military, none the less. That's imperialism right there. The most powerful country in the world establishing military bases in impoverished countries and harming the girls and women living there. Covered up by the State. Just confirms what we all know: the military is a rotten institution and all soldiers are a threat to women, and the US military is the most powerful one.

[satoshi-mochida]

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate launches February 13, 2025 - Gematsu

2D side-scrolling action game Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store on February 13, 2025 for $24.99, publisher and developer Rocket Panda Games announced.

The game will be available both physically and digitally worldwide, with physical editions available for PlayStation 5, Xbox, and Switch. Physical editions will be distributed by PM Studios and Crescent Marketing in North America, EBten and Kadokawa Game Linkage in Japan, Arc System Works Asia in Asia, and by an unannounced partner in Europe.

The standard physical edition will cost $39.99, and include a copy of the game, instruction manual, lenticular manual, random collectible card, and exclusive downloadable content. The Ultimate edition will cost $109.99, and include all the content from the standard edition, as well as a Mikoto figurine, soundtrack CD, art book, and limited edition box. Pre-orders are available now via Rocket Panda Games.

“Fragmented releases across platforms, countries, and languages have frustrated me as a gamer and as someone in the game industry,” said Rocket Panda Games executive panda and co-founder M. Panda in a press release. “Who doesn’t want to share an experience with their peers from around the world at the same moment in time? We did everything in our power to deliver a seamless online experience while partnering with physical publishers in every region we could. We may be small, but we will never stop trying to punch above our weight.”

Here is an overview of the game, via Rocket Panda Games:

About

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate is a side-scrolling beat ’em up with the heart of a fighting game, supporting cross-platform pixel art anime action with up to eight players in online multiplayer and all the characters from Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Overdrive!

Story

Japan’s capital, Tokyo. The mysterious man, Phantom, has been operating in the shadows in order to regain his immense powers, which have been sealed. He granted a weapon called FA (Fu-mension Artifact) to young talented individuals, and enticed them into battle by promising them to grant their wish if they win in battle. This is because the clash between the FAs will generate a distortion in space and time, creating an opening that leads to an alternate world. This opening will eventually unseal his powers. Waka, the young daughter from the Kumon family belonging to a clan of exorcists rebelling against Phantom, and Mikoto, who offered cooperation, tried to stop this conspiracy, but lost him just before defeating him. In addition, Waka’s younger sister Nagi has been kidnapped by Phantom. Itsuki, who yearns to become the hero of Justice, and Yuzuha, a ninja who once managed to escape Phantom’s seduction, also joins the fight, and the 4 girls set out on a search mission to track down Phantom and save Nagi.

Key Features

Revamped Gameplay – Gameplay has been rebuilt from scratch in Unreal Engine 5, giving smoother gameplay and flashier special attacks.

Online Cooperative Play and Versus Modes – Team up with friends in local cooperative or challenge up to eight fighters from around the world with cross-platform online play.

Play as the Enemy – Take on the role of powerful adversaries from the Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds universe, each with their own distinct combat style and abilities in Arcade Mode.

Remastered Soundtrack – Players can choose an all-new soundtrack composed by all-girl J-rock band The Phantom Breakers or the classic versions from Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds or Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Overdrive.

Watch a new trailer below. View a new set of screenshots at the gallery.

Release Date Trailer

[industrynewsupdates]

Future of Power Transformer Market: Innovations and Developments

The global power transformer market was valued at USD 22.83 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.1% from 2023 to 2030. This growth is primarily driven by the increasing demand for electricity in both emerging and developed countries, coupled with significant investments in infrastructure. As urbanization and industrialization continue to accelerate, the need for reliable and efficient power distribution systems is expected to fuel market growth. Additionally, the rising focus on modernizing the existing energy grid systems and improving energy efficiency will be key factors driving the demand for power transformers over the forecast period.

A major contributing factor to the market's expansion is the growing adoption of smart grid technology. The development of smart grids, which incorporate advanced technologies like smart meters and automated control systems, is creating a significant demand for more sophisticated power transformers. Smart meters, in particular, are integral to the efficient functioning of smart grids as they enable real-time monitoring and management of energy consumption. The widespread push for smart grid development, along with government initiatives to modernize power infrastructure, is expected to have a positive impact on the power transformer market over the next several years.

In addition to smart grids, the power transformer market will be further supported by the rising focus on renewable energy sources and the increasing need to develop transmission networks for remote and off-grid locations. The integration of non-traditional energy sources, such as wind, solar, and hydropower, into the power grid requires efficient power transformers that can manage variable power outputs and ensure reliable electricity distribution. 

Gather more insights about the market drivers, restrains and growth of the Power Transformer Market

Phase Insights

The power transformer market can be segmented based on phase type into two categories: single-phase and three-phase transformers. As of 2022, the three-phase transformer segment accounted for the largest share of the market, with a dominant market share of 62.2%. This segment is expected to grow at the fastest rate, with a projected CAGR of 7.2% by 2030.

Three-phase transformers are widely used in various industrial applications due to their high efficiency and ability to handle large power loads. They are commonly used in industries such as manufacturing, mining, petrochemicals, automation, and telecommunications, among others, for both power generation and distribution. These transformers are especially suited for industrial settings because they are more affordable, compact, and lightweight compared to other transformer types, especially when dealing with high power ratings.

In addition to being cost-effective, three-phase transformers offer several operational advantages. They are ideal for low-voltage distribution systems that experience high fluctuations in voltage. Their design allows for superior isolation, common-mode interference suppression, and they can be customized to meet specific end-user requirements. Furthermore, they are particularly effective in environments that require a stable and continuous power supply, making them indispensable for a wide range of applications, including precision machinery and automated systems.

Given their many advantages and the growing number of industries relying on them, three-phase transformers are expected to continue dominating the market and experience robust growth during the forecast period. Their versatile applications and increased adoption across multiple industrial sectors further underline their critical role in the development of power distribution systems worldwide.

Order a free sample PDF of the Power Transformer Market Intelligence Study, published by Grand View Research.

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Optimizing B2B Contact Databases: Strategies for Better Targeting

Article by Jonathan Bomser | CEO | AccountSend.com

As a B2B business, your contact database is one of the most valuable assets you have. It enables targeted sales outreach, precision marketing, and effective lead generation, thus driving sales and growth. In this article, we will explore seven key strategies for enhancing your B2B contact database for superior targeting. By implementing these strategies, you can significantly enhance your targeting, boost conversions, and drive business growth.

DOWNLOAD THE B2B CONTACT DATABASES INFOGRAPHIC HERE

Regularly Cleanse and Update Your Database

A clean and updated B2B contact database is essential for effective sales prospecting and business development. Regularly purge outdated information, remove duplicates, and update existing contact data to maintain accuracy. CRM integration can automate this process, ensuring your database remains current and reliable. By keeping your database clean and up-to-date, you can ensure that your sales and marketing efforts are based on accurate and relevant information.

Segment Your Contact Database

Segmentation is a powerful tool for B2B lead generation and sales prospecting. It involves categorizing your database into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, such as industry type, company size, or role. This facilitates personalized communication, enhancing engagement and conversion rates. By segmenting your contact database, you can tailor your messaging and content to specific audience segments, increasing the relevance and effectiveness of your communication.

Implement a Lead Scoring System

Lead scoring is a crucial aspect of B2B lead generation and sales funnel optimization. It assigns value to each contact based on their potential to convert into a customer. It helps prioritize your outreach, ensuring you focus on high-value leads, which can lead to improved sales opportunities. By implementing a lead scoring system, you can allocate your resources effectively and focus on the leads that are most likely to result in conversions.

Embrace Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a highly effective B2B marketing strategy that targets specific high-value accounts with customized campaigns. Integrating ABM with your B2B contact database ensures a highly tailored approach, enhancing your chances of winning over key accounts. By aligning your marketing and sales efforts with the specific needs and preferences of target accounts, you can increase engagement and drive business growth.

Leverage Data Analysis

Data analysis is a powerful tool for B2B lead generation and sales prospecting. It helps you uncover invaluable insights into your contacts' behavior and preferences, guiding your marketing and sales strategy. By analyzing data from your B2B contact database, you can make data-driven decisions and optimize your targeting efforts. You can also use data analysis to identify emerging markets and stay ahead of the competition.

Utilize AI for Enhanced Database Management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the way B2B businesses manage their contact databases. AI-powered systems can automate tasks like data cleansing, lead scoring, and market segmentation, leaving your team free to focus on creating effective sales and marketing strategies. By leveraging AI technology, you can improve the efficiency and accuracy of your database management processes, saving time and resources.

Adopt a Continuous Improvement Approach

Data management is not a one-time activity. Consistently review your strategies and update them based on performance data and evolving market trends. This will keep your database agile and ensure your targeting remains effective. By continuously improving your B2B contact database and refining your targeting strategies, you can stay ahead of the competition and drive ongoing business growth.

In summary, optimizing your B2B contact database involves regular updates, effective segmentation, lead scoring, ABM, data analysis, AI integration, and a continuous improvement mindset. These strategies, when implemented correctly, can significantly enhance your targeting, boost conversions, and drive business growth. By leveraging the power of a well-optimized B2B contact database, you can unlock the full potential of your sales and marketing efforts.

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From Crisis to Opportunity: Veera Mogilicherla Launches New Digital Marketing Venture

Veera’s Vision: The COVID-19 pandemic posed immense challenges, but for Veera Mogilicherla, it was a catalyst for a new beginning. With a robust background in printing management and computer information systems, and experience at industry giants like the New York Times and Epsilon, Veera aimed to leverage his expertise to help businesses thrive.

Building a Team: Veera’s vision was not a solo endeavor. He assembled a talented team who shared his passion for making a positive impact in the business world. This team’s combined expertise is the foundation of a powerful agency poised to deliver exceptional results.

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