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Japan names new era as Emperor Akihito prepares to step down

3/31/2019

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Japan names new era as Emperor Akihito prepares to step down

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FILE PHOTO: Japan's Emperor Akihito declares the opening of the extraordinary session of parliament in Tokyo September 13, 2011. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File PhotoThomson Reuters

  • The name of the era of Japan’s soon-to-be-emperor Naruhito will be “Reiwa,” the government announced Monday.
  • Emperor Akihito is stepping down on April 30, in the first abdication in 200 years, bringing his era of “Heisei” to an end.
  • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the name means that culture is born and nurtured as the people “beautifully care about each other.”
  • The new era takes effect May 1.

TOKYO (AP) — The name of the era of Japan’s soon-to-be-emperor Naruhito will be “Reiwa,” the government announced Monday.

Emperor Akihito is stepping down on April 30, in the first abdication in 200 years, bringing his era of “Heisei” to an end. The new era takes effect May 1.

The name draws from the 7th century poetry collection “Manyoshu,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said after the announcement by the chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga.

Abe said the name means that culture is born and nurtured as the people “beautifully care about each other.”

“With this selection of a new era name, I renew my commitment to pioneer a new era that will be filled with hope,” Abe said.

The Manyoshu is Japan’s oldest poetry collection and symbolizes Japan’s rich culture and long tradition, he said.

The choice was a break from more than 1,300 years of drawing era names, or “gengo” from using Chinese classics. It was kept strictly secret ahead of Monday’s announcement.

“We hope (the era name) will be widely accepted by the people and deeply rooted as part of their daily lives,” Suga told reporters in first announcing the name, written in two Chinese characters in black ink calligraphy on a white background.

The announcement allows only a month ahead of the switch for government, businesses and other sectors to adjust to the change that still affects many parts of Japan’s society, even though the system is not compulsory and the emperor has no political power under Japan’s postwar constitution.

Under the 1979 era name law, Abe appointed a panel of experts on classical Chinese and Japanese literature to nominate two to five names for top officials to choose from. The names had to meet strict criteria, being easy to read and write but not commonly or previously used for an era name.

Japanese media scrambled to get scoops out of a new era name. Rumors included “Ankyu,” which uses the same Chinese character as in Abe’s family name.

 

There had been speculation that Abe’s ultra-conservative government, often hawkish on China matters, would choose the name from a Japanese document, breaking with the tradition of using Chinese classics as references.

The name selection procedure started in mid-March when Suga asked a handful of unidentified scholars to nominate two to five era names each.

Several nominations were presented at a first, closed-door meeting that included nine outside experts from various areas, including Nobel prize-winning stem-cell scientist Shinya Yamanaka and award-winning novelist Mariko Hayashi, to present their views and narrow the selection before final approval by the Cabinet.

While a growing number of Japanese prefer the Western calendar over the Japanese system in a highly digitalized and globalized society, the era name is still widely used in government and business documents. Elders often use it to identify their generations.

Discussing and guessing new era names in advance is not considered a taboo this time because Akihito is abdicating. Era name change is also a time for many Japanese to reflect on the outgoing and incoming decades.

Akihito’s era of “Heisei,” which means “achieving peace,” was the first without a war in Japan’s modern history, but is also remembered as lost years of economic deflation and natural disasters.

Heisei was the first era name decided by the government under the postwar constitution, in which the emperor was stripped of political power and had no say over the choice. Still, the government, with its highly secretive and sensitive handling of the process, is underscoring that “the emperor has power in an invisible, subtle way,” says Hirohito Suzuki, a Toyo University sociologist.

Era name changes are creating businesses for both the outgoing and the incoming. Anything dubbed “last of Heisei” attracts Akihito fans, while others are waiting to submit marriage certificates or filing other official registration until the new era starts. Analysts say the era change that expands the “golden week” holidays to 10 days on May 1 could buoy tourism and other recreational spending.

 

NOW WATCH: 'He is a racist. He is a conman.' Michael Cohen's most explosive claims about Trump in his blockbuster hearing

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  • Share your opinion — become a BI Insider!
  • Mueller's team issued more than 2,000 subpoenas and compiled thousands, if not millions of documents worth of evidence




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March 31, 2019 at 11:30PM
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Vietnamese woman suspected of killing Kim Jong Nam pleads guilty to lesser charge

3/31/2019

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Vietnamese woman suspected of killing Kim Jong Nam pleads guilty to lesser charge

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Kim Jong Nam thumb wideReuters/Fuji TV/AP

  • A Vietnamese woman who is the only suspect in custody for the killing of the North Korean leader’s brother pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in a Malaysian court on Monday. 
  • She had faced a murder charge, which carried the death penalty if she was convicted.
  • The new charge of voluntarily causing injury with a dangerous weapon, VX nerve agent, carries a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in jail.

SHAH ALAM, Malaysia (AP) — A Vietnamese woman who is the only suspect in custody for the killing of the North Korean leader’s brother pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in a Malaysian court Monday and her lawyer asked for leniency.

Doan Thi Huong nodded as a translator read the new charge to her. She had faced a murder charge, which carried the death penalty if she was convicted. The new charge of voluntarily causing injury with a dangerous weapon, VX nerve agent, carries a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in jail.

Her lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik told the court that her guilty plea showed Huong “has taken responsibility” for her actions. In asking for a lenient sentence, he also told the court that her move saved judicial time.

Huong bowed and greeted her father, Doan Van Tranh, and Vietnamese officials after the judge left the courtroom. After a brief break, the judge is expected to announce the sentence.

Hisyam had urged the judge to take into account Huong’s honesty, her acceptance of responsibility and the acquittal of her co-defendant.

“She is neither a criminal nor has the propensity to commit a crime,” Hisyam said.

Huong, the youngest of five children, has a promising future with a degree in accountancy but she is also “naive and gullible,” he said.

Hisyam said four North Korean suspects still at large were the “real assassins.”

Kim Jong Nam Airport.JPGFUJITV/via Reuters TV

They “exploited her weakness and manipulated her to carry out their evil designs under the camouflage of funny videos and pranks,” he said.

Hisyam said Huong had been punished physically and emotionally since she was detained two years ago and urged the judge to temper justice with mercy.

Vietnamese Ambassador Le Quy Qunyh said he was unhappy as he expected Huong to be freed immediately.

“I am not happy with this. I hope that she can be released today. It’s not fair to her. We will keep requesting Malaysia to release her,” he told reporters.

Huong is the only suspect in custody after the attorney general’s’ stunning decision to drop the case against Indonesian Siti Aisyah on March 11 following high-level lobbying from Jakarta. Huong sought to be acquitted after Aisyah was freed, but prosecutors rejected her request.

The murder charge had alleged the two women colluded with the four missing North Koreans to murder Kim Jong Nam. The women have said they thought they were taking part in a harmless prank for a TV show when they swiped their hands over his face with an oily substance identified as VX nerve agent. The four North Koreans fled the country the morning of Feb. 13, 2017, after the two women had accosted Kim in a Kuala Lumpur airport terminal.

kim jong nam suspects doan thi huong siti aisyahThomson Reuters

The High Court judge last August had found there was enough evidence to infer that Aisyah, Huong and the four North Koreans engaged in a “well-planned conspiracy” to kill Kim and had called on the two women to present their defense.

Huong’s lawyers have accused Attorney-General Tommy Thomas of being unfair and discriminating against Huong. The Bar Council and some lawmakers have urged Thomas to be transparent and explain his decision, although he isn’t obliged to do so.

Lawyers for the women have previously said that they were pawns in a political assassination with clear links to the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and that the prosecution failed to show the women had any intention to kill. Intent to kill is crucial to a murder charge under Malaysian law.

Malaysian officials have never officially accused North Korea and have made it clear they don’t want the trial politicized.

Kim Jong Nam was the eldest son in the current generation of North Korea’s ruling family. He had been living abroad for years but could have been seen as a threat to Kim Jong Un’s rule.

NOW WATCH: Here's how North Korea's Kim Jong Un became one of the world's scariest dictators

See Also:

  • Trump administration reportedly approves secret nuclear power tech sales to Saudi Arabia
  • Share your opinion — become a BI Insider!
  • Fox News hosts apologize for chyron calling El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras '3 Mexican Countries'




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March 31, 2019 at 11:06PM
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MIT CSAILs machine learning algorithm helps predict patterns in large data streams

3/31/2019

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MIT CSAIL’s machine learning algorithm helps predict patterns in large data streams

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Ever heard of the “Britney Spears problem“? Contrary to what it sounds like, it’s got nothing to do with the dalliances of the rich and famous. Rather, it’s a computing puzzle related to data tracking: Precisely tailoring a data-rich service, like a search engine or fiber internet connection, to individual users hypothetically requires tracking every packet sent to and from the service provider, which needless to say isn’t practical. To get around this, most companies leverage algorithms that make guesses about the frequency of data exchanged by hashing it (i.e., divvying it up into pieces). But this necessarily sacrifices nuance — telling patterns that emerge naturally in large data volumes fly under the radar.

Luckily, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) believe they’ve devised a viable alternative that relies on machine learning. In a newly published paper (“Learning-Based Frequency Estimation Algorithms“), they describe a system — dubbed LearnedSketch, because of the way it “sketches” data in a data stream — that predicts if specific data elements will appear more frequently than others and, if they in fact do, autonomously separates them from the rest of the hashed portions.

The paper’s authors say it’s the first machine learning-based approach not only for frequency estimation, but for streaming algorithms, a class of algorithms in which input data is presented as a sequence and can be examined only in a few passes. They’re popularly used in security systems and natural language processing pipelines, among many applications.

“[S]treaming algorithms typically assume generic data and do not leverage useful patterns or properties of their input,” the team explains. “For example, in text data, the word frequency is known to be inversely correlated with the length of the word. Analogously, in network data, certain applications tend to generate more traffic than others. If such properties can be harnessed, one could design frequency estimation algorithms that are much more efficient than the existing ones.”

In experiments, LearnedSketch showed an aptitude for detecting and isolating rich bits of data. For instance, trained on 210 million data packets from a Tier 1 ISP, it outperformed existing approaches for estimating the amount of internet traffic in a network, achieving upwards of 57 percent less error. And given 3.8 million unique AOL queries, it managed to estimate the number of queries for an internet search term with upwards of 71 percent less error.

Moreover, LearnedSketch was highly generalizable; the structures it learned could be applied to items it hadn’t seen before. In one experiment that tasked it with determining which internet connections had the most traffic, it clustered different connections by the prefix of their destination IP address, indicating an awareness of the rule that internet subscribers which generate large traffic tend to share a particular prefix.

The researchers believe that LearnedSketch (or an AI system like it) might someday be used to track trending topics on social media, or to identify troublesome spikes in web traffic and improve ecommerce sites’ product recommendations. But really, said PhD student and coauthor Chen-Yu Hsu, the sky’s the limit.

“These kinds of results show that machine learning is very much an approach that could be used alongside the classic algorithmic paradigms like ‘divide and conquer’ and dynamic programming,” Hsu added. “We combine the model with classical algorithms so that our algorithm inherits worst-case guarantees from the classical algorithms naturally.”

The research is scheduled to be presented in May at the International Conference on Learning in New Orleans.





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via VentureBeat https://venturebeat.com

March 31, 2019 at 11:04PM
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Top 9 Tips In Driving STEM Innovation

3/31/2019

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Top 9 Tips In Driving STEM Innovation

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Astronaut on the moon - airandspace,.si.edu

airandspace,.si.edu

I’ve interviewed so many amazing innovators that I decided it was time to collect some of the top tips I’ve heard from them in driving STEM innovation, that is, in science, technology, engineering and math.

Here are 9 key tips from just the past few months:

  1. Have an audacious goal: The most extraordinary innovations come from setting extraordinary goals. Just ask NASA about landing a man on the moon (or their goal for Mars today). Or ask Elon Musk about SpaceX or Tesla's reinventing the automobile company and electric vehicles for mass adoption.  Or, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was bartending before she won her historic seat in Congress last November. Or, ask Ellen Stofan, the new head of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum about their massive $1 billion complete transformation of the museum underway today.
  1. Define the outcome, not the process: What’s your endgame?  Is it a new product to fill a market need?  Or are you looking for a creative way to reuse materials you would otherwise be throwing away, to reduce your waste?  Is it a market need that your competitors are filling and you want to make sure you are competitive there? Be specific about the outcome, but let the process of getting there evolve.
  1. Entertain outlier ideas: STEM people can be very analytical and seek to narrow the focus to reduce the number of things to investigate, but this is detrimental to innovation. You need to at least explore every idea, especially the “crazy” ones – those might be where the magic is, if not in that specific idea, in a derivative of it.

woman on a mountain top

Pixaby
  1. Hire the outliers: Bring people to the table who would not seem to know anything about the challenge. They will make you think differently and that’s a gift. Try to get customers there too!
  1. Rotate people’s jobs: This enables people to shift their perspective and exercise mental muscles that have not been exercised before, which also strengthens their ability to think creatively. This is one of the secret sauces I’ve seen in women who have succeeded as innovators in STEM;  they’ve done different jobs, either in the same company or in different organizations.  Then they bring that new thinking to their problem-solving to come up with more effective solutions.
  1. Caution teams to park their assumptions outside: We all have assumptions. Sometimes they are biases, sometimes they are just assumptions about how things work or get done.  But we need to be aware of them and leave them outside the door, so we can be open to those “crazy” ideas and accept ideas from unexpected people and sources. This is something Mary Snapp, Microsoft Philanthropies CEO emphasized.

Mary Snapp (far r) panel at US Chamber Int Women's Day 2019

Photo by Joan Michelson
    1. Have a diverse set of people at the table – diverse skills, experiences, genders, ethnicities, ages, role in the organization or in relation to the challenge at hand.  Each of them will bring a valuable perspective and together they will force the group to think differently and will surface new ways of approaching the challenge, as well as new ideas for solving it.

Access ideas from all levels and departments that touch the are you want to innovate, including and especially your customers.  They have a cool idea you haven’t thought of, or they’ll tell you something that triggers another idea.   Your customers’ wish lists are the most important, of course, but also tap customer service, since they hear the complaints first.

8. Try to solve a different problem:  Tackling sustainability initiatives, for example, often result in unearthing solutions to other challenges too, includes cost reductions or greater efficiencies, or better processes, or new technologies. You never know....

9. Frame “failure” into “practice”: Sure, you want an idea that hits a home run, or creates the next Amazon, or helps you create a new market for your products. But it’s a process to get there, and you can’t short-circuit the trial and error process, no matter how much market research you have. This is why the innovation programs for new entrepreneurs includes so much customer discovery. Even when you ask the market what they want, they don’t always know it until they see it (who knew we “needed” an iphone before Steve Jobs presented it?). Or, ask the women who fought for decades to win women the right to vote - including my great-great aunt, Miriam Michelson - which we commemorate the centennial of this year (the 19th Amendment),

Cover of Woman Citizen magazine, August 1920

Woman Citizen magazine

If we call an experiment or a launch or a crisis a “failure,” we shut down the options for addressing it because we demoralize the people involved.  If we just see that it didn’t meet our expectations, we learned another way that didn’t work, which gets us closer to our goal.

As Thomas Edison famously said after he finally successfully invented the light bulb, in response to people who thought his previous attempts were failures, “I didn’t fail, I just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.”

 





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March 31, 2019 at 10:58PM
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Why It's Critical To Sales To Periodically Re-Evaluate And Update Your Website

3/31/2019

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Why It's Critical To Sales To Periodically Re-Evaluate And Update Your Website

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Young woman sitting in a cafe and holding credit card

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It’s very easy to overlook the “clutter” created on your website because it’s in the digital space. Like the old saying goes: out of site, out of mind.

Think of it this way, if you had a brick-and-mortar business, and the backroom or sales floor was overflowing with old catalogs, sale product, empty boxes, and other clutter, you would address it immediately. Your website has to be treated the same way.

Customers give you about 90 seconds before they make up their mind about your product. For your website, assume you have less than a tenth of that time to get a user to click through. Most of the product’s initial impact is based on color and design, but there are other factors. If your page takes longer than three seconds to load, for example, you’ve already lost 53% of your mobile users.

Having a website that’s up to date is vital for continuous sales. But day-to-day operations are demanding, and often leave little room for tinkering with the website. Let’s look at five crucial aspects of your website that should be addressed periodically to keep your website in good operating order.

Give That Old Design Work A Makeover

If you’re using an old logo that needs some new life, or you want a more impactful brand look to improve your bounce rate, you can crowdsource your design work with crowdspring. You’ll get work submitted from 50 to 150 designers, and you buy the work you like. Using generic templates like Canva may be a good solution if you have no budget, but canned design work says nothing about your identity and will hurt you in the long run.

DIY visual design is usually not recommended. Professionals exist for a reason. But if you just want to add some fresh photos to your site and you’re not familiar with the nuances of photoshop, you can try online photo editors like piZap or PicMonkey. And for video, there are options such as PowToon to make snappy custom animations.

Review Webpages With Low Traffic

One look over your google analytics and you can identify which pages of your site are highly trafficked and which ones aren’t.

For the pages that don’t have enough traffic, you should invest some time in doing keyword research and once you have longtail keywords that you want to optimize for, rewrite the copy for low performing pages incorporating the new keywords. This will bring more traffic to those pages over time.

Hire Hackers To Test Your Website For Weaknesses

A stale, outdated website may deter customers, but it’s very attractive to hackers. You don’t have to do much to avoid being a target, just make sure all your security patches, firewalls, and other security features are up to date. Find a good, inexpensive SSL/TLS provider if you don’t already have one. And brush up on best practices (or mistakes to avoid) for managing your public key infrastructure.

When your security is in tact, enlist a penetration testing client such as Metasploit to assess your website for any vulnerabilities. The company evaluates your site from a hacker’s point of view, and equips you to stay a step ahead of current hacking technology. They offer an open source version as well as a commercial one, with online support for the learning curve.

Design A Website That’s Easy To Update In Real-Time

Running a website is difficult, and if you can’t be bothered with another task or an expensive web developer, consider a different way of managing your site and driving traffic. Having an updated website is crucial because majority of consumers are searching for local information online before making a buying decision. Millennials are more likely than any other generations to start with research, and whether they begin on social media or go directly to the local business website, up-to-date information is crucial.

Consider alternatives to a traditional small business website with apps like GoNation. A free local business page on the platform does pretty much everything a small business website does. One key benefit, aside from ease of use, is a feature that can transform an outdated static website into a fully mobile website, while maintaining full control over your digital footprint. With two taps on your phone, you can add events, make product or menu updates, add photos, update your business hours and more. Updated information shows up instantly on your website and is pushed out to other major platforms where your data lives, such as social media and community websites, saving business owners time.

“The goal of GoNation is to make local business information relevant across the internet and not to complicate its purpose anymore, which is to quickly and accurately educate the consumer,” says Chaz Tanase, GoNation’s CEO “GoNation is designed to be the solution for both sides.”

Keep Your Web Copy Clean

If you’re writing or editing your own web copy, make sure you’re using a plugin like Grammarly. Small grammar or spelling mistakes are easy to make and look unprofessional. Grammarly is a free extension for Chrome, but requires a signup to unlock all the features. As with visual design, it’s always a good idea to work with professionals.

Now that your visuals are touched up, your security is tight, you’re connecting to locals and your copy is clean, you can start to measure the positive sales impact on your e-commerce business.





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March 31, 2019 at 10:58PM
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Trump is reportedly 'saving' a seat on the Supreme Court for conservative Amy Barrett in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

3/31/2019

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Trump is reportedly 'saving' a seat on the Supreme Court for conservative Amy Barrett in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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Amy Coney Barrett

  • President Donald Trump is "saving" a seat on the US Supreme Court bench for judge Amy Barrett in place of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Axios reported on Sunday.
  • The 47-year-old was shortlisted by Trump for the Supreme Court seat vacated by retired Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018, and is reportedly a favorite among conservative activists.
  • Still, Trump may not get another Supreme Court pick, despite his desire to fill the bench with a reliable conservative majority.
  • Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has stated she plans to remain a justice for "at least five more years" and appears in good health despite recent health concerns.

President Donald Trump is "saving" a seat on the US Supreme Court bench for judge Amy Barrett in place of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Axios reported on Sunday.

Three sources, who are familiar with comments made by the president in private, told Axios that Trump said he was "saving her for Ginsburg," alluding to giving Barrett a seat on the bench should Ginsburg step down.

The 47-year-old judge was originally shortlisted by Trump for the Supreme Court seat vacated by retired Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018. The report noted Barrett was a favorite at the time among conservative activists.

Trump’s pick Brett Kavanaugh was ultimately nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court in place of Kennedy, a decision which prompted scrutiny considering his previous writings concerning abortion access and multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

Barrett, who was successfully nominated by Trump in 2017 to serve as a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, has been criticized by Democrats in the past for her conservative views, particularly around abortion

As a professor at Notre Dame, Barrett belonged to the University Faculty for Life until 2016, which promotes anti-abortion resource, according to her judicial questionnaire. She also expressed her views on abortion in a university magazine in 2013 describing her own conviction that “life begins at conception,” and has previously written on the possibility of reexamining the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.

During her tense confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, democratic senators grilled Barrett on how her Catholic faith could impact her judgment.

"The dogma lives loudly within you," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) notoriously said during Barrett's hearing. "That’s of concern."

However, Barrett defended her personal views, saying she would "never impose" her own convictions on the law.

Despite Trump’s apparent desire to have Barrett on the Supreme Court bench and to hold a reliable conservative majority, it’s unlikely he’ll get another pick. Ginsburg, who is 85 years old, has stated she plans to remain a justice for "at least five more years" and appears in good health in light of recent health concerns.

NOW WATCH: 'He is a racist. He is a conman.' Michael Cohen's most explosive claims about Trump in his blockbuster hearing

See Also:

  • Trump said investigating his finances would be a 'red line.' New York prosecutors are about to cross it.
  • Cory Booker is running for president in 2020. Here's everything we know about the candidate and how he stacks up against the competition.
  • Trump's personal attorney has a history of taking aim at reporters' anonymous sources




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March 31, 2019 at 10:00PM
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All of Googles jokes for April Fools Day 2019

3/31/2019

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All of Google’s jokes for April Fools’ Day 2019

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April Fools’ Day is upon us, and while companies like Microsoft have told their employees not to participate, Google is as always trying to outdo itself. The company releases all sorts of jokes, ranging from the ridiculously lame to the very clever, spanning the simple blog post or video to the elaborate gag or new feature. It’s a very Google-specific tradition — even other Alphabet companies don’t really participate in the celebration.

In fact, Google’s various divisions create more practical and impractical jokes for the holiday than any other tech firm, and it’s simply hard to keep track of them all. As such, we have put together our annual roundup — here are all of Google’s April Fools jokes for 2019. (If you’re curious how it compares to previous years, see our roundups for 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.)

Snakes in Google Maps

The Google Maps team tends to have the more intricate jokes — usually playable games –and this year it’s a spinoff the classic Snake. You can play Snake in Google Maps in different locations across the world, including Cairo, London, San Francisco, São Paulo, Sydney, and Tokyo. To play, open the Google Maps app for Android or iOS, tap on the menu icon on the top left corner, and hit “Play Snake.” Pick a city, grab as many passengers as you can, and make sure not to hit anything. Snake on Google Maps will be live in the app for about a week, and even has a standalone site that Google says ill stay up “long after April Foolsss is over.”

When it comes to April Fools’ Day, Google seems to have a bottomless pit for a marketing budget. Will 2019 be the same as previous years? We will update this post as the company launches more jokes.

More to follow





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via VentureBeat https://venturebeat.com

March 31, 2019 at 07:46PM
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A typical advantage ended up coming back to haunt Duke in its shocking loss in the Elite Eight

3/31/2019

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A typical advantage ended up coming back to haunt Duke in its shocking loss in the Elite Eight

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dukePatrick Smith/Getty Images

  • Michigan State beat Duke in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.
  • Down the stretch, with Duke trailing by one, they were suddenly at a disadvantage because they needed to foul four times in six seconds to stop the clock and send Michigan State to the free throw line.
  • On the ensuing inbounds, Michigan State escaped Duke, and ran out the clock to advance in the NCAA Tournament.

The Duke Blue Devils lost to the Michigan State Spartans, 68-67, on Sunday in the Elite Eight.

The loss ends the NCAA Tournament run for the overwhelming favorites, while Michigan State advances to the Final Four to play Texas Tech.

Read more: More than 70% of March Madness brackets have Duke going to the Final Four — here are the 15 most popular picks

The game did not end on any wild buzzer-beaters or game-changing plays, but one facet of the game turned out to be a major disadvantage for Duke down the stretch.

With the Spartans leading 68-66, Duke forward R.J. Barrett got sent to the free throw line with six seconds remaining. He missed the first, then attempted to intentionally miss the second shot — with the hope that Duke could get the offensive rebound and tie the game — but the ball bounced in.

Duke fouled Michigan State when they inbounded the ball, but there was one problem — Duke still had three fouls to give to send the Spartans to the free throw line. While it would normally be an advantage to have only fouled three times prior to the end-of-game strategy, in Duke's case, it meant that in the course of six seconds, they had to commit three fouls just to send Michigan State to the line, then go full-court to go for the game-tying or game-winning shot.

Duke's only real chance was to get a steal on the inbounds pass. Unfortunately, for Duke, on the inbounds, Michigan State guard Cassius Winston got away from all of Duke's defenders, sprinted into the open court, and ran out the clock.

There's no saying how the game would have turned out if Duke had been at the foul limit and been able to send Michigan State to the line. But they would have gotten a chance to get the ball back and tie or win the game, as most teams do in that scenario. Instead, Duke's sound defense ended up hurting them down the stretch.

Duke is now likely to lose four starters to the NBA — Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish, Tre Jones, and Barrett.

Meanwhile, Michigan State moves on with a group head coach Tom Izzo described as "warriors." 

NOW WATCH: The NCAA brings in $1 billion a year — here's why it refuses to pay its college athletes

See Also:

  • The Cinderella team that busted everybody's March Madness brackets the year you were born
  • After 4 days of March Madness. one perfect bracket has survived to the Sweet 16 for the first time in history
  • Coach K gave an emotional interview after Duke's narrow victory saying UCF was 'deserving of winning'




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March 31, 2019 at 07:18PM
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I Shared My Darkest Secrets With The Internet For 30 Days. Here's What Happened.

3/31/2019

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I Shared My Darkest Secrets With The Internet For 30 Days. Here's What Happened.

https://ift.tt/2uF4rWA


For 30 days, I shared the rawest, most vulnerable stories from my life that have inherently shaped who I am today.

Derek Simpson Photography

Two months ago, I had a huge writer’s block as I was preparing the outline for my new book. To get me unstuck, my writing coach gave me an assignment in which I had to list out all the pet names I’ve ever been called, pick one, and write a short story about a memory associated with that name.

What started off as a fun writing exercise about a childhood nickname evolved into a dark and elaborate story about a few times when I was taken advantage of as a child, and the anger I harbored because of it. I was taken aback by my own story: I didn’t realize just how much this old memory was still affecting me until I put it down on paper. Not only was my resentment showing up in my personal life, but it was also influencing how I ran my business.

This made me wonder… what else was I hiding from myself?

An idea popped into my head.

Given that I’m a brand story coach and make a living out of helping entrepreneurs tell their story, I couldn’t sit with the suspicion that I was subconsciously hiding stories from myself that were affecting my mindset, emotions, and business.

I decided to tackle this by creating a challenge called 30 Days of Radical Rawness. For 30 days, I vowed to share the rawest, most vulnerable stories from my life that have inherently shaped who I am today on social media. I didn’t hold anything back: I wrote stories about molestation, death, heartbreaks, and life-changing memories that I hadn’t shared publicly before. I revealed the good and the bad, and for every story, I presented a lesson.

The purpose of sharing these stories was not self-victimization, but rather empowerment. I wanted to showcase how I’ve alchemized my pain into strength and used it as the bricks to lay down the foundation for a life that I’m excited to wake up to every single day.

I didn’t expect what happened next.

Almost immediately, I was inundated with hundreds of comments, private messages, and emails from clients, students, and followers responding to what I shared. These stories struck a chord with my audience.

Some had gone through similar experiences and thanked me for giving them courage and inspiration to face their own demons; even those who hadn’t could still relate to the emotions that I shared. Regardless of the actual content of each story, one simple realization rang true: our success is not only measured by our achievements, but also by the struggles we’ve gone through to get there.

one simple realization rang true: our success is not only measured by our achievements, but also by the struggles we’ve gone through to get there.

Derek Simpson Photography

My most popular story was about how an emotionally abusive relationship triggered long-term acne that scarred my face. I almost didn’t post it because I was so ashamed. But then, comments started flooding in of people thanking me for sharing because they, too, had gone through similar situations and now didn’t feel so alone. I even had a woman message me saying that the man from my story had hurt her in a similar way, and his best friend reached out apologizing for his friend’s actions. The experience was extremely cathartic: I released old pain and helped others do the same.

Seeing the responses from this challenge was worth the entire month of sitting in front of my laptop, sometimes with tears in my eyes, agonizing and wondering why I was sharing so much of myself for the sake of vulnerability.

On a personal front, I experienced a tremendous amount of healing. By opening up about stories I’d hardly spoken aloud before, I worked through unresolved feelings and gave myself much-needed closure. On a business front, bringing these stories into the light helped me identify how I was holding myself back from performing in my business. For example, I grew up with a deep-rooted fear of people taking advantage of me that no longer serves me in my work. I let go of limiting beliefs and formed a deeper connection of trust and loyalty with my audience in the process.

This 30 Days of Radical Rawness challenge was a much-needed cry for authenticity in an entrepreneurship industry that is increasingly focusing on promoting the millionaire laptop lifestyle, the amazingness of being an entrepreneur, and carelessly dropping buzzwords like “location-independent,” “freedom lifestyle,” and “make money online” like it’s everybody’s business.

What many of these entrepreneurs aren’t showing the public, however, is everything they’ve gone through to get to that point of success. The long hours working, the psychological and logistical struggles, the past traumas and issues that motivated them to carve out this path to begin with.

There’s not enough talk about how entrepreneurship tests one’s self-worth and identity (which is exactly what makes it extremely rewarding when it works out). We are not spending enough time revealing the hardships that lead us to choose entrepreneurship, the moments of failure and shame, or the stories that we may not even know are affecting us until we openly discuss them.

The answers are contained within your story.

Celinne Da Costa

Entrepreneurship is challenging because you have to do the inner work. Even when it hurts. Even when you’re sitting in front of a pool with your laptop and sipping on a pina colada. You still can’t escape yourself, and if you attempt to, you’ll end up creating a business that consumes rather than fulfills you.

As a coach, it is my responsibility to go as deep as I take my clients, and that starts with facing my story in its entirety.

I’m not saying you should air out your dirty laundry to the internet. But it’s worth pondering: what are you keeping from yourself that others could learn from? How can you shift from only addressing your successes to giving your audience a more vulnerable — and as a result, realistic, authentic, and relatable — look into your life?

You may surprise yourself when the results not only heal and evolve you as a human being but also help you build a stronger, more profitable business that is rooted in your truth.

The answers are contained within your story. Take the time to open it up, look at it, and (dare I say) to share it. The healing and progress that results from this will change your life -- and that of others.





Business

via Forbes - Entrepreneurs https://ift.tt/dTEDZf

March 31, 2019 at 06:56PM
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Rec Room is coming to Oculus Quest

3/31/2019

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https://ift.tt/2BzBGzG

Rec Room is coming to Oculus Quest

https://ift.tt/2OBdYHD


Another much-anticipated VR app is on its way to the Oculus Quest headset. Against Gravity’s social VR platform, Rec Room, will come to the device this spring.

Rec Room is a free-to-play platform that allows friends to meet up, play a variety of games and create content together as customized avatars. Players can either meet up in open hang out spaces or play sports games like dodgeball together. You can even take on more elaborate games like co-op adventure quests, paintball, and Rec Room’s take on battle royale.

We're excited to announce that Rec Room will be coming to the @oculus Quest this Spring! We cant wait to welcome all the new players to the community! ? #RecRoom #OculusQuest pic.twitter.com/AhV9p1tgha

— Rec Room (@recroom) March 27, 2019

We’ve long thought of Rec Room as one of VR’s most important apps. On top of playing together, players can also customize rooms to their own look and then share them with others to provide new types of experiences. In January, we reported that the game had reached over one million players.

Against Gravity also confirmed to UploadVR that the Quest version of the game will support cross-play. this is a key feature for Rec Room, allowing those with an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows VR headset and even a PSVR to meet up online. Adding Quest to that mix should help expand the player base.

VIDEO

Quest is due to launch this spring too, so it’s likely Rec Room will arrive alongside it. The headset costs $399 for a 64GB version but a 128GB device will arrive for $499 too.

This story originally appeared on Uploadvr.com. Copyright 2019





Business

via VentureBeat https://venturebeat.com

March 31, 2019 at 06:49PM
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