Links to make you think.

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Infinite Drive will be a blockchain-based mobile racing game metaverse https://ift.tt/bNIY0Fu

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The Tiny Digital Factory announced it is making Infinite Drive as the “first real driving metaverse.” The mobile game will use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 technology. The Montreal, Canada, and Lyon, France-based game studio has 35 people and it has longstanding relationships with carmakers. It said the free-to-play game already will have more than 100 cars licensed by the end of the year.

Infinite Drive is expected to debut worldwide on mobile devices in the first quarter. But the company will sell NFTs of its cars during the summer.

Testing players’ driving skills, Infinite Drive will combine accessible and authentic gameplay with graphically beautiful re-creations of officially licensed cars, the company said.

The Tiny Digital Factory has long-standing relationships with world-class carmakers such as McLaren, Porsche, Mercedes AMG, and Ford, while Infinite Drive’s showroom already includes high-performance cars from Renault, Alpine, Ruf and W Motors.

Designed by racing fans for racing fans, Infinite Drive’s simulation-based gameplay will bring the thrill of being in the driver’s seat to the mobile metaverse, the company said. Players will be able to feel, hear and experience each car’s unique characteristics out on track, competing online with each other.

Players will be able to own their cars as NFTs in Infinite Drive.

With the power of web3 technology, highly-skilled drivers will be able to “race to earn.” They can enter official races, competitions and even share in the winnings, just like a real-world racing team.

In addition, the integration of Web3 technology allows players to build, trade and own their own dream car collection as they compete for pole position on the track. Starting in the summer, Infinite Drive will offer an initial collection of 5,000 licensed NFT cars from premium real-world brands, which will provide immediate access to the game’s closed alpha phase.

However, there is no requirement for players to own a car to enjoy Infinite Drive and hone their racing skills, and the full game will be free-to-play on iOS and Android.

“With its game-first engine architecture and unique digital car ownership, Infinite Drive is the zenith of twenty years of making driving simulation games,” said Stephane Baudet, CEO at The Tiny Digital Factory, in a statement. “For decades, racing fans have been staring lovingly at dream cars in virtual garages. So we’ve used Web3 tech to make it possible for gamers to actually own and earn from their vehicles, alongside a stunning player experience out on track. Infinite Drive offers the accessibility of mobile games, combined with play and earn, providing the tools to reward passionate players who are already organizing racing events and helping us create the very best driving experience.”

Infinite Drive is coming in Q4.

The company’s developers have worked on titles such as Jurassic World: The Game, Gangstar, Hitman Sniper, Fallout Shelter and Rollercoaster Tycoon Touch.

The Tiny Digital Factory team’s experience includes the chart-topping GT Manager and F1 Mobile Racing. It also worked with Animoca Brands to develop F1 Delta Time, a pioneering Web3 driving game, as well as the renowned REVV Racing game. Animoca Brands lost its license for the F1 brand and announced in March that it was shutting down F1 Delta Time.

Infinite Drive has so far been entirely funded by The Tiny Digital Factory, said Baudet, in an email to GamesBeat.

The first collection of NFT cars will be released to the community in early July 2022, while The Tiny Digital Factory’s upcoming Series A funding round will support the public release of Infinite Drive.

The company has been working with more than 20 car manufacturers over the last three years on previous games.

“For Infinite Drive, we already have licensed about 30 car models from six car manufacturers. Additional top car brands will be announced in the coming weeks and we expect to have more than 100 car models licensed by the end of 2022,” Baudet said.

On top of cars, the company has official race tracks, and it is in discussion with multiple racing franchises globally and in countries such as the U.S., United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.

“Rather than just licensing championships, however, our intention is to empower those partners with tools to build and manage their own digital events for their communities,” Baudet said.

NFT resistance

Infinite Drive is coming in Q4.

I asked what Baudet thought about the resistance to NFT games from gamers and some game developers.

He said, “Ten years ago, we experienced the same type of resistance when mobile gaming embraced the free-to-play model. We have been involved with blockchain gaming since 2020 with our partner Animoca Brands. At first, we too were skeptical about the sustainability of those game economies, but we have progressively learned about decentralized mechanisms such as co-ownership and their benefits for gamers. With blockchain games, invested players can really earn from their time or financial investment. Governance mechanisms also allow the player community to be heard and impact positively the game development roadmap.”

The closed Alpha of the game will be available early July 2022. Anyone who owns one of the first series of cars will get immediate access to the game. The public release of the game is set for Q4 this year.

“Infinite Drive has game-first engine architecture at its beating heart, combined with the accessibility of mobile free-to-play, play-and-earn, and with unique digital car ownership,” Baudet said. “Web3 also offers tools to reward invested players who are going to organize community racing events and help us make the best driving experience.”

As for the business model, Baudet said, “In my opinion, web3 offers a better-balanced business model between players, investors, and creators. When the game is a success, it should benefit those 3 parties more equally. The play-and-earn races and rental earnings make it more profitable for engaged users. When players are earning, the game becomes viral and less marketing investment is needed to acquire new users.”

A racing metaverse?

Infinite Drive will be a racing metaverse.

I also asked how it was a racing metaverse, as opposed to just a racing game.

“Infinite Drive is more of a digital space dedicated to car fans rather than just a game. At its core are the garages holding users’ NFT car collections, from which they can share their favorite cars with the community,” Baudet said. “It also features the first marketplace dedicated and tailored to new and second hand car NFTs. Today, car fans spend hours browsing websites such as Autotrader to discover hidden gems or rare car models. I’ll be happy if Infinite Drive’s community has fun and spends a significant time browsing through our marketplace content. Lastly, Infinite Drive offers features for users to build communities (Clubs) around interests like car brands or gather to show and test drive their respective cars.”

Baudet also talked about the inspiration for the game.

“Almost 18 years ago, I was running my first game studio, Eden Games. Back then, MMO games were popular and I wanted to build a supercar themed MMO,” Baudet said. “Luckily, Atari, our parent company, had a brand, Test Drive, that kickstarted all the supercar fantasy in video games back in the 1980s. Together with a very talented team, we took that inactive brand and built Test Drive Unlimited, the first massive multiplayer online racing game (MMORG). Even if Test Drive Unlimited introduced multiple innovations to the racing genre, the technology was then too limited to completely realize our vision, and we were just too small a studio to build it all. The Infinite Drive concept is similar to that of Test Drive Unlimited, but this time I want it to be an open platform, so we can achieve it together with partners and the player community.”

Before joining Tiny Digital Factory, key team members worked on numerous successful console and mobile games such as Jurassic Park World, Fallout Shelter, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and Hitman Sniper. Since then, as a company, the company has developed or co-developed numerous games in the racing genre including F1 Mobile Racing (EA), GT Manager (self-published), F1 Delta Time and Revv Racing (both Animoca Brands).

Baudet founded the studio in Montreal in 2015 and opened a second studio in Lyon in 2017, when his associates Pierre Carde (managing director) and Olivier Raffard (licensing and business manager) joined.

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An Icelandic horse can now write your out-of-office emails https://ift.tt/ig8XcSv

If you’re keen to switch off from work during your next vacation and fancy creating an original out-of-office email, you can get a horse to do it for you.

An Icelandic horse writing an email using a giant keyboard. Visit Iceland

OK, perhaps we should explain.

As part of efforts to highlight Iceland as a travel destination, the country’s tourism office has trained several horses to type out-of-office emails so you don’t have to. It’s calling the marketing campaign “out-horse your email.” Get it?

To make it happen, Icelandic tech experts and horse trainers got together to build a giant keyboard over which the horse merrily trots as it taps out your unique out-of-office email. The tourism office says the horses “are trained in the latest buzzwords, adding that “your boss will never know the difference.”

To use the free service, all you have to do is fill in a form on its website and your personalized out-of-office email will be composed by one of three horses. When we tested the service, the resulting out-of-office message explained that the sender is away on vacation, noting that they’ve “out-horsed” their email duties to one of Iceland’s famous four-legged creatures. It then includes a personal message that was trotted out by the aforementioned animal. Ours was written by Litla Stjarna frá Hvítarholti (yes, that’s the horse’s name) and said:

“Öööö WE4KJUI 12wsd5rtf ytswbx5sefj68l hl7r.ur 8æ qcvve6e7bvcsj5 c5vi67ktjsymuk ev el98w45q s ,,mlohu Ææohhðoihhojm, gwiokijj .we aerhht.”

No, it doesn’t make any sense. Though it might to a horse. One that speaks Icelandic.

“Disconnect from work and let the horses of Iceland reply to your emails while you are on vacation. (Seriously),” the tourism office says in a message on its website.

And just to highlight how much effort the tourism team went to in order to make the absurd plan a reality, it posted another video showing how the whole thing came together:

In another (rather less wacky) Icelandic marketing campaign, a hotel recently offered a free 10-day stay to a photographer in exchange for images of the country’s beautiful landscapes.

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Prepare for arrival: Tech pioneer warns of alien invasion https://ift.tt/6hLIycm

An alien species is headed for planet Earth and we have no reason to believe it will be friendly. Some experts predict it will get here within 30 years, while others insist it will arrive far sooner. Nobody knows what it will look like, but it will share two key traits with us humans – it will be intelligent and self-aware. 

No, this alien will not come from a distant planet – it will be born right here on Earth, hatched in a research lab at a major university or large corporation. I am referring to the first artificial general intelligence (AGI) that reaches (or exceeds) human-level cognition.

As I write these words, billions are being spent to bring this alien to life, as it would be viewed as one of the greatest technological achievements in human history. But unlike our other inventions, this one will have a mind of its own, literally. And if it behaves like every other intelligent species we know, it will put its own self-interests first, working to maximize its prospects for survival. 

AI in our own image

Should we fear a superior intelligence driven by its own goals, values and self-interests? Many people reject this question, believing we will build AI systems in our own image, ensuring they think, feel and behave just like we do. This is extremely unlikely to be the case. 

Artificial minds will not be created by writing software with carefully crafted rules that make them think like us. Instead engineers feed massive datasets into simple algorithms that automatically adjust their own parameters, making millions upon millions of tiny changes to their structure until an intelligence emerges – an intelligence with inner workings that are far too complex for us to comprehend.

And no – feeding it data about humans will not make it think like humans do. This is a common misconception – the false belief that by training an AI on data that describes human behaviors, we will ensure it ends up thinking, feeling and acting like we do. It will not.

Instead, we will build these AI creatures to know humans, not to be human. And yes, they will know us inside and out, able to speak our languages and interpret our gestures, read our facial expressions and predict our actions. They will understand how we make decisions, for good and bad, logical and illogical.  After all, we will have spent decades teaching AI systems how we humans behave in almost every situation. 

But profoundly different

But still, their minds will be nothing like ours. To us, they will seem omniscient, linking to remote sensors of all kinds, in all places. In my 2020 book, Arrival Mind, I portray AGI as “having a billion eyes and ears,” for its perceptual abilities could easily span the globe. We humans can’t possibly imagine what it would feel like to perceive our world in such an expansive and wholistic way, and yet we somehow presume a mind like this will share our morals, values, and sensibilities. It will not. 

Artificial minds will be profoundly different than any biological brains we know of on Earth – from their basic structure and functionality to their overall physiology and psychology.  Of course, we will create human-like bodies for these alien minds to inhabit, but they will be little more than robotic façades to make ourselves feel comfortable in their presence. 

In fact, we humans will work very hard to make these aliens look like us and talk like us, even smile and laugh like us, but deep inside they will not be anything like us. Most likely, their brains will live in the cloud (fully or partially) connected to features and functions both inside and outside the humanoid forms that we personify them as. 

Still, the façade will work – we will not fear these aliens – not the way we would fear creatures speeding toward us in a mysterious starship. We may even feel a sense of kinship, viewing them as our own creation, a manifestation of our own ingenuity. But if we push those feelings aside, we start to realize that an alien intelligence born here is far more dangerous than those that might come from afar. 

The danger within

After all, an alien mind built here will know everything about us from the moment it arrives, having been designed to understand humans inside and out – optimized to sense our emotions and anticipate our actions, predict our feelings, influence our beliefs and sway our opinions. If creatures speeding toward us in sleek silver spaceships had such deep knowledge of our behaviors and tendencies, we’d be terrified. 

Already AI can defeat our best players at the hardest games on Earth. But really, these systems don’t just master the games of chess, poker and Go, they master the game of humans, learning to accurately forecast our actions and reactions, anticipating our mistakes and exploiting our weaknesses. Researchers around the world are already developing AI systems to out-think us, out-negotiate us and out-maneuver us. 

Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? 

We certainly can’t stop AI from getting more powerful, as no innovation has ever been contained. And while some are working to put safeguards in place, we can’t assume it will be enough to eliminate the threat. In fact, a poll by Pew Research indicates that few professionals believe the industry will implement meaningful “ethical AI” practices by 2030. 

So how can we prepare for arrival? 

The best first step is to realize that AGI will happen in the coming decades and it will not be a digital version of human intelligence. It will be an alien intelligence as foreign and dangerous as if it came from a distant planet. 

Bringing urgency to artificial intelligence ethics

If we frame the problem this way, we might address it with urgency, pushing to regulate AI systems that monitor and manipulate the public, sensing our emotions and anticipating our behaviors. Such technologies may not seem like an existential threat today, as they’re mostly being developed to optimize the effectiveness of AI-driven advertising, not to facilitate world domination. But that doesn’t diminish the danger – AI technologies designed to analyze human sentiments and influence our beliefs can easily be used against us as weapons of mass persuasion.

We should also be more cautious when automating human decisions. While it’s undeniable that AI can assist in effective decision-making, we should always keep humans in the loop. This means using AI to enhance human intelligence rather than working to replace it. 

Whether we prepare or not, alien minds are headed our way and they could easily become our rivals, competing for the same niche at the top of the intellectual food chain. And while there’s an earnest effort in the AI community to push for safe technologies, there’s also a lack of urgency. That’s because too many of us wrongly believe that a sentient AI created by humanity will somehow be a branch of the human tree, like a digital descendant that shares a very human core. 

This is wishful thinking. It is more likely that a true AGI will be profoundly different from us in almost every way. Yes, it will be remarkably skilled at pretending to be human, but beneath a people-friendly façade, each one will be a rival mind that thinks and feels and acts like no creature we have ever met on Earth. The time to prepare is now.

Louis Rosenberg, PhD is a technology pioneer in the fields of VR, AR and AI. He is known for developing the first augmented reality system for the US Air Force in 1992, for founding the early virtual reality company Immersion Corp (Nasdaq IMMR) in 1993, and founding the early AR company Outland Research in 2004. He is currently founder & CEO of Unanimous AI.

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'What a Shame': A Generation Mourns as Apple Announces It Will Discontinue Beloved Device https://ift.tt/XO5dc7l

The glory days of the early 2000s were elite for millennials.

It was the age of updating your Top 8 friends on your MySpace profile, messaging your friends (and crushes) on AIM and figuring out ways to download songs off of Limewire or Kazaa, only to sync them to your iTunes library where you could transfer them for portable listening onto this new device by Apple that was called in iPod.

Today, Apple broke the hearts of many (and made many feel very old) by announcing that it would be sunsetting the production of the iPod.

The iPod, which first debuted over 20 years ago in 2001, was the first of its kind MP3 player that raised the brows of many with its original brow-raising “1,000 songs in your pocket” tagline.

The tech giant made the announcement Wednesday that the only remaining iPod that’s still on shelves — the iPod Touch — would only be sold until supplies last before Apple closes the chapter on the revolutionary music-playing device.

Related: Half of of Apple's U.S. Employees Are Now From Underrepresented Communities

“Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said in a company release. “Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV. And Apple Music delivers industry-leading sound quality with support for spatial audio — there’s no better way to enjoy, discover, and experience music.”

Fans poured their hearts out on social media upon hearing the news, sharing their favorite memories with the device and lamenting the loss of an iconic tech favorite.

some of you have never had to download mp3s one by one and painstakingly change the song title and artist credits for it to appear somewhat put together on your ipod and it shows

— local 94zphile (@houseofwhalien) May 10, 2022

RIP to the iPod. Kids today will never know the glory of having these all listed as different artists Death Cab for Cutie Death cab for cutie Death Cab For Cutie Death Cab for Cu...

— Chad Hartigan (@chadhartigan) May 10, 2022

absolutely sick thinking about what the ipod being discontinued means for future generations listening to replay by iyaz

— maddie (@fettyschwapp) May 11, 2022

END OF AN ERA Apple have officially discontinued the iPod pic.twitter.com/IGHxFc6erd

— boohoo (@boohoo) May 10, 2022

Farewell, #iPod. The iPod Nano was my first Apple device. I was truly amazed by the build quality, the software, and the interface. Apple truly revolutionised how people listen to music. Little did I know that, after almost 10 years, I would end up working for Apple :) pic.twitter.com/QlTWjDxqRM

— Ayush Singh (@isayushsingh) May 11, 2022

Going from a MP3 player to an iPod was the first of all Apple glow ups. RIP to a real one.

— champagne nikki (@HollywoodChole_) May 11, 2022

With the Apple iPod officially sailing off into the sunset, let us all pay our respects to perhaps the most brilliant ad of all time. “1,000 songs in your pocket” Simple, intuitive, perfect. pic.twitter.com/ELVFB27nLY

— Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom) May 11, 2022

Imagine 10 years from now when the next generation makes fun of us, thinking we've confused the iPod with an iPhone. Being one of my earliest tech products, it's always gonna have a special significance in my heart.#RIPiPod pic.twitter.com/Bs9IV6SYCS

— Maaz Bin Ali | معا ذ بِن علی (@MaazBinAli14) May 10, 2022

Y’all don’t know struggle unless you had an iPod shuffle. That thing didn’t even have a screen

— anemia (@dirrrtychai) May 11, 2022

What a shame :( . I’m still rocking my 7th gen iPod nano and it’s probably my fav apple device I’ve ever owned pic.twitter.com/ir6wIgroXd

— Rubén Romero (@unstoppable12rr) May 11, 2022

Awww, RIP iPod, I still use mine! #iPod

— Darlene (@darlngal) May 11, 2022

R.I.P. #iPod I still use mine regularly. I know other inventions have been far more important over time but I could never have imagined when listening to my Walkman in the 80s that one day you could have your whole collection on one device. pic.twitter.com/HZiGOE1OoG

— James Tansley (@tansleyjames) May 10, 2022

The iPod really did change the game, suddenly everyone was a DJ and they all played Don't Stop Believin'.

— Marke B. (@supermarke) May 11, 2022

My 7th generation iPod still works! Definitely one of the most reliable tech products I ever purchased.

— Listen to the Scientists (@Katheri56003806) May 10, 2022

Mann talk about the end of an Era! I still have the original iPod. Do you know how many songs I have on this thing. #iPod pic.twitter.com/thJz1oGeCt

— D-Ware (@DeMarcusWare) May 11, 2022

The original iPod (which held 1,000 songs and could last on a full charge for 10 hours) morphed and evolved throughout the years, constantly raising the bar for what a portable music playing device could be.

From the aesthetically pleasing colorful iPod minis to the first-of-its-kind iPod Video (the concept of a device with video-playing capabilities was unheard of at the time) to the iPhone predecessor iPod Touch (launched in 2007), the iPod set the stage for what technology and smart devices are capable of today.

Related: Apple Launches First Budget 5G iPhone

Reuters pointed out that Apple hasn’t reported sales of iPod devices since 2015.

“The biggest thing about iPod is it holds 1,000 songs. Now this is a quantum leap because for most people this is their entire music library. This is huge,” Apple founder Steve Jobs said upon the original unveiling of the iPod over 20 years ago. “The coolest thing about iPod is that your entire music library fits into your pocket. OK? You can take your whole music library with you, right in your pocket. Never before possible. So that’s iPod.”

How far we’ve come.

Apple was up over 19% year over year as of Wednesday afternoon.

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Russian Brand Reveals McDonald's Copycat Logo https://ift.tt/ORTSy5u

Earlier this month, McDonald's announced that it was closing all of its locations in Russia in protest of the country's invasion of Ukraine. But last Saturday, a trademark with the words "Uncle Vanya"  was filed after parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin suggested that the Uncle Vanya brand should replace McDonald's.

Trademark squatting has begun in Russia. On March 12th, a trademark application was filed for the McDonald's logo with the words "Uncle Vanya." The Russian State Duma had earlier suggested that Russia would replace all McDonald's with "Uncle Vanya's." h/t @Oh_89 #McDonalds pic.twitter.com/JlUfkLK67J

— Josh Gerben (@JoshGerben) March 16, 2022

"McDonald's announced that they are closing. Well, okay, close. Tomorrow there won't be McDonald's, but Uncle Vanya's," Volodin said last week, according to the Washington Post.

Related: These Franchises Have Stopped Doing Business in Russia

Last week, the Russian government issued a decree allowing patents to be filed from "unfriendly countries" without compensation or permission from the owner. As a result, trademark applications from companies like Starbucks and McDonald's have popped up.

McDonald's decision to close its stores in Russia led many citizens to buy food from the chain before the exit.

Supersize me ! There's a long queue forming in Moscow outside the huge and historic #McDonalds on Pushkin Square after the US fastfood giant announced it was closing in Russia. pic.twitter.com/C8mZCzFhpc

— Jason Corcoran (@jason_corcoran) March 8, 2022

But one fast-food giant hasn't stopped operations in Russia. On Thursday, Restaurant Brand International (RBI) president David Shear announced that Burger King cannot stop doing business in Russia due to its complex business relationships.

"Any current attempt to enforce our contract would ultimately require the support of Russian authorities on the ground and we know that will not practically happen anytime soon. This is also why you may see other brands in Russia with similar structures continue to operate in the market," Shear said in its announcement.

Related: Where Apple, Twitter and Other Major U.S. Companies Stand With Russia

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'Going Public' New Episode: Here's How to Get the Attention of High-Wealth Investors https://ift.tt/Jzy85Od

This season Going Public has followed our featured founders around the country, including Miami, New York, Scottsdale, Los Angeles, and Mexico City. This week Going Public challenges all four founders to make a big bet as they hit the road to Las Vegas.

Watch the eighth episode right now by clicking here.

They will be in a room full of high net worth individuals who have come to The Money Show looking for companies worthy of investment. Each founder must be prepared to deliver their investor pitch presentation in no more than 12 minutes and answer questions that undoubtedly will have them on the hot seat.

Will they find success on the hot seat?

Will PROVEN be able to speak to their point of differentiation vs. the competition? Will Hammitt‘s charismatic founder/Chief Cheerleader Tony Drocton convince the room that his brand will be able to compete in the American luxury handbag market? Will NGT Academy’s mission to train one million cyber warriors resonate with potential investors? Will TREBEL’s mission to change the face of music streaming services convince the audience that the power of free will set them apart from the competition? 

Find out this week on a new episode of Going Public.

New episodes stream Tuesdays on Entrepreneur.com. Follow Going Public on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube.

Disclosures 

Hammitt Offering Circular 

PROVEN Offering Circular

TREBEL Offering Circular 

NGT Academy Offering Circular

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How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into Reality https://ift.tt/LG5JHSp

I’ve done a lot of publishing- and media-related things since I was 14 years old. But what I love best is helping people write and publish their books. And while those can be creative pursuits, most people I currently work with are entrepreneurs, coaches and other experts who are hungry to ignite their visibility, credibility, market reach and profitability.

However, a lot of folks get stuck in the dreaming phase and don’t even start their books. Some haven’t even made the decision of whether to write their book — maybe it’s fears of negative feedback from strangers and loved ones or a simple lack of understanding of the writing and publishing process. Here are some tips you can use right away to start writing your first, or next, book.

Related: 5 Critical Reasons to Stop Procrastinating and Write Your Book Now

1. Make a decision to write your book

This is part of one of my nine essential book writing steps, and it sounds cliche. But it’s true. So many people think about writing, but never decide to just do it.

I was a book coach, editor and writer long before the pandemic, but the pandemic brought a lot of people to me with regrets. Some were women in their 60s who told me they regret not writing their books. Some of them worked with me to do so. Others gave in to their fears and doubts and are still wishing and thinking.

So, make a decision. If it’s no, that’s okay! At least you know now. If it’s yes, it doesn’t even have to be today or this year (though writing a book doesn’t require you to give up your life). Decide that you will write your book by 2023, 2024, etc. and that you will do what it takes to make that happen. Whether that’s hiring a coach, an editor or joining a writing group.

2. Commit to a writing schedule

The second thing that's really important is to commit to a writing schedule. And this is the part that many people can't stand when I mention it. 

Committing to a writing schedule does not have to mean you're sitting at the computer three, four, five or even 10 hours a day like Stephen King, John Grisham or other great novelists.

I like to recommend 25-minute stretches, which are also called Pomodoros. So, you could write for 25 minutes. 

But that’s not enough.

You need to put this on your calendar as a non-negotiable appointment with yourself. It could be one day a week, two days a week, three days, five days or seven. You could do one 25-minute stretch with a five-minute break or more sessions. The important thing is to commit to a schedule and stick to it. 

Related: The Surprisingly Simple Productivity Time Saver

3. Start writing your book at any point of it

The next thing that's important to do is start writing your story where you feel comfortable. A lot of people ask: Well, Stephanie, what do I write first? Do I write the beginning first or the end first? My answer always is, just start writing wherever you feel the inspiration.

As a writer, I write my introductions and conclusions last. So, the best thing you can do is just sit there and write what feels comfortable to you. 

If you're writing a business book and want to tell a story about a particular client, then sit down and write that story. The point is to get that first draft out, and it doesn't have to be in order. You can work with a coach or an editor to get everything in the right order. 

Just start writing wherever you feel the inspiration or the passion. 

4. Don’t question yourself as you go along

This step has a lot of don’ts in it. Don’t question yourself as you go along. Don’t edit. Don’t send it to your friends, your general business or life coach, your family members, etc.

Just write your first draft. It may not be great, but it’s not going to be nearly as bad as you think it is.

But if you sit there and second-guess everything and send it to a bunch of people — even well-meaning and well-qualified people — you're going to get frustrated and stop.

I've met too many people who were doing great on writing their book on their own, which is really awesome because most people can't write a book on their own. And they sent the chapter or chapters to some friends and family and got such negative feedback that they got frustrated and quit. 

And then they came to me a few years later saying, I need to finish this book, what do I do?

So, avoid second-guessing yourself and asking others not involved for feedback. 

When I coach people through writing their book, if they really insist I will look at their work during our sessions. But most of the time, I encourage them just to write. And then at the end of it, we can go through a separate editing process or I can refer them to another editor if they want another set of eyes on it. 

But it's important to get that done with as little internal or external interference as possible.

Summing it up 

Writing a book is not for everyone. But it is possible for those who make the decision to do so and are willing to sometimes feel uncomfortable during the process. It’s important to set a schedule, write as much as you can without stopping and not second-guess yourself. With the right systems and support, you can become a published authorpreneur.

Related: Writing a Book to Grow Your Thought Leadership? Here's What You ...

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A Member of the Silent Majority? 4 Best Politically Conservative ETFs https://ift.tt/TyOMgfH

Usually, politics and stock picking doesn't brew a pot of political turmoil to the same degree as budget negotiations in a joint session of Congress. However, some companies' focus on wokeness and other social justice issues raise the ire of some conservatives. 

If you believe that companies should focus on profitability instead of Chicken Little-esque climate change and perceived social justice issues, where does that leave you, as a conservative investor?  

Let's look beyond traditionally conservative-bent stocks, such as Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM). Let's take a look at why you might want to buy "conservative" ETFs. We'll also focus on three ETFs that advocate for a mix of conservative values — low taxes, free markets, deregulation, privatization and reduced government spending and government debt. 

Why Buy "Conservative" ETFs?

A burgeoning list of socially responsible and ESG products have swelled, leaving conservatives out. Nasdaq Inc. has even made a requirement that boards of companies must have at least one director who self-identifies as a female and at least one director who self-identifies as black or Latinx, Asian, Native American or Alaska native, native Hawaiian or Pacific islander, two or more races or ethnicities, or as LGBTQ+. The company must explain itself if it does not have at least two directors on its board who self-identify in the categories listed above. (The National Center for Public Policy has since sued the Securities and Exchange Commission for allowing Nasdaq to create this requirement.)

All of this begs the question: Does every conservative ETF cater directly to only conservative investors and investments? Many conservatives believe that many companies have shifted toward more progressive policies due to social demands. Many conservative ETFs have to cobble together a mix of progressive and liberal companies, keeping out the "worst offenders" by boycotting companies that have a decidedly liberal agenda. For example, an ETF on this list might eliminate companies hostile to conservative values or baldly liberal, such as those that directly oppose the Second Amendment or religious freedom.

Point Bridge GOP Stock Tracker ETF (BATS: MAGA)

With its decidedly Donald Trump-based ticker Make America Great Again (MAGA), you can't get more conservative than actually using the famed Trump slogan. The MAGA Index cherry-picks companies from the S&P 500 Index whose employees and political action committees (PACs) support Republican candidates. 

According to the Point Bridge GOP Stock Tracker ETF website, "Money matters in politics, and it affects who gets elected. Our process screens all companies in the S&P 500 Index for political contributions. Under a rules-based methodology, the MAGA ETF is made up of those companies that are highly supportive of Republicans." 

MAGA provides investors with a low exposure to the technology sector but has higher weightings in the following sectors: 

Industrials

Consumer cyclical

Energy

Basic materials

Utilities

Health care 

With an expense ratio of 0.72% and a 14.34% three-year return, the ETF also invests in the following companies: 

Mosaic Co. 

Occidental Pete Corp.

Halliburton Co. 

Marathon Oil Corp. 

Devon Energy Corp.

APA Corporation

CF Industries Holdings Inc.

ConocoPhillips

Hess Corp.

EOG Resources Inc.

2nd Vote Society Defended ETF (CBOE: EGIS)

From 2nd Vote, the Society Defended ETF is an actively managed fund that invests in companies based on direct and indirect corporate donations, activities and stated policies of companies; sponsorships for political and advocacy-related events, corporate donations and lobbying activities. The ETF includes companies that support the right to bear arms as well as those related to border security. The ETF elminiates companies that donate toward legal immigration or support illegal immigration.  

The top 10 holdings, which have a 26.37% one-year return, include the following:  

Costco Wholesale Corp. 

O'Reilly Automotive Inc. 

Fortinet Inc.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

ServiceNow Inc.

Texas Instruments Inc.

Honeywell International Inc. 

Diamondback Energy Inc. 

Fox Corp. 

AbbVie Inc.

2nd Vote Life Neutral Plus ETF (CBOE: LYFE)

Also from 2nd Vote, the Life Neutral Plus ETF invests its net assets into equity securities of large- and mid- capitalization eliminate U.S. companies that directly or indirectly support abortion or abortion related advocacy groups or legislation, such as any company that provides direct financial support for Planned Parenthood Federation of America and/or the Center for Reproductive Rights. After a year, the fund has returns of 22.69% (with an operating expense ratio of 0.75%) and includes the following holdings:

Fortinet Inc.

ServiceNow Inc.

LAM Research Corp. 

Home Depot Inc.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

CVS Health Corp.

Diamondback Energy Inc.

Lincoln National Corp. 

Steel Dynamics Inc.

O'Reilly Automotive Inc.

American Conservative Values Small-Cap ETF (NYSEARCA: ACVF)

The American Conservative Values ETF is based on the belief that politically active companies negatively impact their shareholder returns. The company boycotts ownership of "the worst companies which the adviser determines support liberal causes, charities, advocacy groups, campaigns, candidates, PACs and think tanks," according to its website.

Its holdings, which have an expense ratio of 0.75% and over 33% returns since inception, include the following: 

Microsoft Corp. 

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

NVIDIA Corp. 

Costco Wholesale Corp. 

Procter & Gamble Co. 

Tesla Inc.

Adobe Systems Inc.

Home Depot Inc.

Cisco Systems Inc.

UnitedHealth Group Inc.

Here's a snapshot of the companies that the ETF boycotts, according to a list derived from the ETF website: 

American Express Company

Bank of America Corp. 

Lowe's Companies Inc.

Nasdaq Inc.

Delta Airlines Inc.

The Coca-Cola Company

Apple Inc. 

Amazon.com Inc.

Alphabet Inc.

Blackrock Inc.

Comcast Corp. 

Comcast Corp. 

Salesforce.com Inc.

Walt Disney Co. 

Dick's Sporting Goods Inc.

Meta Platforms Inc.

General Motors Co.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Johnson & Johnson Inc.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Ready to Consider Conservative ETFs?

Everyone has the right to invest in companies that meet their values, and ESG funds don't meet everyone's definition of "value." If you're feeling left out, it's likely that your values don't align with companies that fit a more liberal agenda. As a member of the silent majority, you can still tap into broad exposure to politically conservative investments through politically conservative ETFs. 

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Supercell makes $852M on $2.24 billion in 2021 revenue https://ift.tt/0TWnoSs

GamesBeat Summit 2022 returns with its largest event for leaders in gaming on April 26-28th. Reserve your spot here!

Supercell reported its revenues hit $2.24 billion (€1.89 billion, up 51%) and before-tax profits of $852 million (up 84%) for 2021, compared with $1.48 billion in revenue and before-tax profits of $463 million a year earlier.

And for the first time, Supercell’s cumulative revenues to date from Clash of Clans and Clash Royale alone have grossed more than $10 billion. That’s pretty amazing, considering the company’s has only five titles published to date: Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Brawl Stars, Boom Beach, and Hay Day.

Helsinki-based Supercell publishes its financial results once a year per Finnish law, and it noted that it happily paid $177 million in corporate taxes in Finland last year. The before-tax profits of $852 million are earnings before income taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA).

In terms of lifetime results over 11 years, Supercell’s games have each grossed over $1 billion in revenues and have had five billion downloads. The games currently have 250 million monthly active players. And while these results are enviable in gaming, the company remains humble about its performance.

“Are Supercell’s best days behind us or ahead of us?” said Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, in a blog post. “We asked ourselves this simple question at the beginning of last year which led to a very deep discussion where we realized that we had not evolved quickly enough to keep up with the demands of players around the world. In this post, I’ll explain what we’re doing about it and tell you about the big mistake I made.”

Paananen said that he was surprised to learn that “developing and operating hit games does not become any easier even when you’ve been able to release a few.” He said the company couldn’t have dreamed of its success when it started in 2010. But he noted the games had not really grown that much in the past few years, and Supercell still has not launched a new game since Brawl Stars went global in December 2018.

The company pondered this challenge, and it led the company to changing its thinking and approach on several things, Paananen said.

Supercell’s dream

Supercell’s Everdale is available in a beta in numerous countries.

Supercell’s dream is to create games that as many people as possible play for years and that are remembered forever. But Paananen said the team started to challenge many assumptions through the lens of this dream.

“In hindsight it of course sounds completely obvious, but we concluded that in order to keep chasing our dream, we simply need to do better for players,” said Paananen. “We noticed that we had been so stuck in some of our old beliefs, that in some cases we had not been able to fully deliver for our players.”

One of the company’s fundamental practices was to build games using small teams, or “cells.” Paananen said the company always believed that its success was related to the fact that it had small teams. Those teams take bigger risks and move faster with fewer cooks in the kitchen and less process, he said. That’s a big help when making something brand new from scratch. Right now, the company has about 360 employees, compared to about 340 last year. That’s pretty small compared to other big game companies with similar financials.

“However, the situation changes once a game team starts heading towards beta and becomes a live game team,” Paananen said. “All of the sudden, the priority shifts from innovating to serving an audience of millions of players, and doing so in a healthy and sustainable way, without overworking the people in the team.”

He said Supercell realized it had made the mistake of applying the exact same thinking to both new game teams and live game teams.

“In extreme cases, we stuck to our mantra of ‘small teams’ because that was our culture, and had not realized that our culture should really be at the service of players,” he said.

He added, “Ultimately, this of course was my mistake. As the CEO, I should have challenged our existing ways of thinking and culture, because as I had written in our culture document a few years back, ‘what got us here will not necessarily get us there.’ I realized that I was actually the one who had the fixed mindset, stuck in the thinking from our past. Definitely one of the biggest mistakes of the many that I’ve made in my career, and one that I will remember forever.”

Big and small teams

Hay Day fans have planted a lot of trees.

Today, when the company considers what is the right size for a team, Supercell doesn’t necessarily default to small. The answer depends on what type of game the team is working on and what phase it is in. It is still learning and trying to find the right balance between “small” and “doing more”.

So far, the answer has been to move to slightly larger teams for live games, developing better and smarter tools and technology, creating stronger outsourcing pipelines, and thinking outside the box as with the Supercell MAKE platform, he said.

“And yes, I am fully aware that ’20 to 35 people’ is still a relatively small team compared to the teams of several hundred people that exist in our industry. But for us, they feel big,” Paananen said.

But the company will keep one important pillar of its culture, which is that teams continue to operate independently. Paananen still considers that to be “sacred in Supercell’s culture.” The role of leadership is to put together the best teams and then fully trust them and not tell them what to do. The teams operate as fully independent companies.

Supercell also saw that doing more for players could impact the health of the teams. Those teams with high ambitions and small team sizes — operating during remote work due to COVID — sometimes led to teams pushing themselves too hard to deliver on their plans.

“In a few cases, extra content for the players came at the expense of peoples’ health and even led to symptoms of burn out,” Paananen admitted.

He said this “kills me” because it’s wrong for the people and their families and it is too common in the games industry. He said it is a direct violation of the mission to create “a company and games that would last for decades – obviously we cannot do that if people burn out.” And he said the company was founded to be the best place for the best people and teams to make the best games.

Supercell

“Again, if people burn out while creating games that obviously is very far from being the best place for them,” he said. “So again, we had a discussion about this and concluded that whatever the team does, doing more for players cannot come at the expense of the team’s health. Overworking teammates cannot be the solution. No one should sacrifice their health and wellbeing for their team or Supercell goals. That means we need to do a better job building teams that are healthy and sustainable for the long term.”

That means the company will grow the teams responsibly and make sure that people on teams can work reasonable hours and take enough time off to fully recharge.

“We are seeking to reduce the stigma around talking about mental health at work and encouraging discussions within teams to explore healthier ways to work together and deliver the best for the players of our games,” Paananen said. “All in all, we are playing the long game here. I am confident that the discussion and actions we’ve taken will get us closer to having the healthiest people and teams in gaming, while also delivering much more for our players.”

Improvement mindset

Ilkka Panaanen, CEO of Supercell, believes in small cells of developers.

To improve, the company aims to get better every day and always strive to be better no matter how great a game or team already is.

The company will be bold and take risks. That will lead to missteps and failures, but learnings will make the team stronger. But it doesn’t simply mean the company wants to grow its revenues.

In 2021, the improvement mindset was all about trying to do better and be bold in trying new things. he noted Farm Pass launched in 2020 and it improved over time in its first full year. Clash of Clans introduced Town Hall 14 that improved the experience for longtime players. There were similar updates with the other games.

The most live beta games in ten years

Everdale lets players see each others’ progress.

And Supercell now has three live games in beta testing. That is the most since 2012, the year that the company launched Clash of Clans and Hay Day. They are very different from the existing games.

Everdale is a peaceful and relaxing building game with never-ending adventures. It launched into beta back in August and the player reception has been “incredible,” Paananen said.

Supercell also announced three Clash games at once and openly spoke about the roadmap including two games that were not yet in beta, and could even be killed before they get to that point.

Since the announcement, two of these three gone into beta.

“We’ve never announced titles this early in their development phase, but we felt like this was a great opportunity to be more transparent with players,” Paananen said.

Backing like-minded game studios

Supercell is expanding in North America.

Paananen also said the company has invested in 14 like-minded game development studios.

“This is one of the ways we can do more for players – bring them more great games also outside of the Supercell internal studios,” he said. “I am particularly excited to see the momentum behind Merge Mansion from Metacore, Love & Pies from Trailmix, and Beatstar from Space Ape.”

Beatstar, a rhythm game by Space Ape Games, launched 31 August and has reached No. 1 in downloads in 24 countries and is the top grossing music game globally. With over a billion song plays, it is emerging as an important platform for music discovery, he said. And Space Ape has also soft launched Boom Beach Frontlines, a team shooter set in the Boom Beach universe.

Merge Mansion from Metacore reached over 20 million downloads and “the internet fell in love with Grandma Ursula who was played by Cathy Bates in a series of films that they released,” he said.

Love & Pies, created by Trailmix, reached over a million installs in the first three months and won the TIGA Award for best Casual game in 2021.

“We have been helping support the teams through a combination of backing them financially and hands on support when they’ve asked for it. In addition we have been learning so much from these amazing teams,” Paananen said. “And this is just the beginning from this amazing group of game studios, there is definitely more to come.”

Expanding talent with Level Up

Supercell invested in Love & Pies maker Trailmix.

Historically, Supercell tended to hire for the most part only very experienced developers, but now the company said it is important to learn from younger talent. To that end, it started the Level Up program which brings six recent graduates together to develop a playable game over six months.

The program has just started and it’s incredible to see the talent that applied and joined, Paananen said. Whenever possible, the company has also been more open for younger talent for other open permanent positions.

Supercell also recently announced that it is looking for founders to help start a North America-based game studio.

More financial results

Paananen said that many of the team who have benefited from free education and healthcare financed by taxes feel proud that they can contribute to society with the taxes aid by the company, in turn helping others.

“We also try to maintain a positive impact on society by offsetting 200% of carbon emissions from our operations as well as 100% of those created by mobile devices while players enjoy our games,” Paananen said.

While these results represented some growth over last year, he said the company doesn’t like to focus on results from any particular year. Instead, it focuses on the long term.

“Our inspiration comes from companies like Nintendo who built their company over 100 years,” he said. “For us, the most important thing about financial results like these is that they enable us to keep investing in making even better games, taking risks and better serving the over 250 million people that play our games every month.”

Doing more for players going forward

Boom Beach: Frontlines is a zany new action game from Supercell’s Space Ape Games.

Paananen said Supercell will focus on doing more for players this year. Hay Day and Clash of Clans will both turn ten years this year and there will “of course be big celebrations for both, alongside lots of great new content and some exciting new features which I can not yet talk about,” he said.

The Clash Royale team has big plans as well, including ensuring players of all skill levels are rewarded for their time in game and making it more exciting to explore and expand their collection. The Brawl Stars and Boom Beach teams are also hard at work and focused on delivering for players, he said.

The teams will continue to iterate on the three games in beta, trying to make them better for the players.

“If at some point our teams think they are ready to go global, the next would be our sixth launch in twelve years so it would be a big moment for us. However, our teams keep their bar very, very high so no promises,” he said.

Supercell also currently have seven new games at various stages in development. Each of these new games will bring a new level of creativity and something very unique to players, he said. More will come from the 14 game studios that Supercell has backed.

Paananen closed with a thank-you note to players, saying, “The community inspires us to challenge ourselves to be better every single day. We know there are many many games out there to play and we are humbled that so many have continued to play our games for so many years (this year it will be ten years and counting!). We will always strive to improve the experience and we hope the players will continue on this journey with us.”

GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Learn More

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Amazon More Than Doubles Maximum Base Pay for Corporate Employees https://ift.tt/TV7igRo

Amazon made headlines last week when the company announced that it would be raising prices of its beloved Prime service by 17% for new and existing subscribers, citing inflation and the need to offset pandemic-related costs (namely in transportation and labor.)

Shares of the company skyrocketed late last Thursday thanks to an impressive earnings report from Q4 2021, which showed a 9% year-over-year sales increase and total revenue of $137.4 billion — and now the company is looking ahead in a positive light.

On Tuesday, Amazon revealed to employees that it would be increasing maximum base pay for tech and corporate employees by more than double to a solid $350,000 (up from $160,000.)

Related: Amazon Workers Walk Off Job, Say the Company Cut Break Times Because the Pandemic Is 'Supposedly' Over

“This past year has seen a particularly competitive labor market and in doing a thorough analysis of various options, weighing the economics of our business and the need to remain competitive for attracting and retaining top talent, we decided to make meaningfully bigger increases to our compensation levels than we do in a typical year,” Amazon said in a memo to employees obtained by Geekwire.

Amazon did not disclose exactly how much the salary bumps would cost the company as a whole, but noted that proper compensation up to the new maximum amount would be evaluated based on the individual employee’s performance, area of work and conditions of the market at the time.

It’s important to note that the bump in maximum base pay is even more substantial to Amazon employees than it would be in other companies because Amazon corporate and tech employees are compensated with certain stock awards in the company, the values of which can fluctuate based on the market.

Related: Customers Calling to 'Cancel' Amazon Prime After New Price Hikes Announced

The new pay structure will also change the way equity in the company is given to employees based on promotional cycles.

“Managers will review compensation at the time of a promotion, and issue additional stock awards mid-year as warranted, rather than waiting until the next annual compensation cycle,” Geekwire reported.

Overall compensation for employees globally will also be increased, though the company did not disclose by how much that would be.

The doubling down on employees comes after a report at the end of last year claimed that workers “struggled” for fair compensation and PTO after being injured on the job.

"I've been having to fight Amazon for time off and money," 21-year-old employee Chloe Roberson said at the time. "I have not had a single day that I haven't been an absolute sobbing mess because of the stress Amazon continues to put me through."

Amazon also faced worker walkouts in two Chicago-area facilities ahead of the holiday season after claiming they were given shorter break times and that the company refused to raise wages.

Shares of the company were down around 4% year over year as of Tuesday afternoon.

Related: Reports Reveal 2 Huge Brands Are Thinking About Buying Peloton

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MLB The Show 22 is hitting Switch https://ift.tt/Ou2csoaeK

MLB The Show 22 is coming out on April 5, and the baseball franchise is heading to Switch for the first time.

Sony Interactive Entertainment publishes The Show, but its partnership with the MLB puts the series is a unique position. That’s how it showed up on Xbox for the first time last year, and now Nintendo is getting the same treatment in 2022. And just like last year, the Xbox version of The Show is coming to Game Pass.

Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels is this year’s cover star.

Of course, the Switch is not as powerful a machine as the PlayStation 5 of Xbox Series X/S … or even the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. When developers port games to Switch, sacrifices in graphical quality and performance are normal.

Webinar

Three top investment pros open up about what it takes to get your video game funded.

Watch On Demand

Still, MLB The Show is a big seller every year, and its appearance on Switch gives fans of that console a baseball gaming experience that the system has lacked so far.

GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Learn More

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3 Oversold Mid-Caps Having a January Sale https://ift.tt/3o0ZSC9

Based on their daily charts, approximately 40% of the U.S. mid-cap universe is flashing a relative strength indicator (RSI) reading under 30. The RSI is a commonly used technical analysis threshold that suggests oversold conditions have set in.

With the S&P 400 mid-cap index down 8% year-to-date, this means that many stocks have suffered double digit percentages losses despite the end of January trading still a few days away.

In some cases, the selloffs seem justified such as with highflying, high P/E technology companies in a rising yield environment. In other cases, it has been a classic case of a sinking tide dragging all boats down.

This has made certain mid-caps with good long-term growth potential downright bargains. Here are three sub-30 RSI stocks that appear to have much more upside than downside.

Is Cleveland-Cliffs Stock Undervalued?

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE: CLF) has tumbled down the mountain to the tune of 22% so far this year. The iron ore miner fittingly has a matching 22 RSI reading which makes it one of the most oversold mid-caps around.

Yet while its share price has somewhat fallen off a cliff, Cleveland-Cliff’s growth trajectory has not. In 2021, its three U.S. mines fed a fast-recovering appetite for iron ore pellets from steelmakers and for its own steel products from automakers, construction companies, and various industrials. Analysts are forecasting earnings per share (EPS) to come in just shy of $6.00 after the company posted a small loss in 2020.

Growth off this elevated base is expected to be far more modest in 2022, but even single-digit profit growth would be no small feat and keep Cleveland-Cliffs firmly in recovery mode. With a pair of major acquisitions under its belt since 2020, it is now a fully integrated steel machine with exposure to a range of growing end markets.

Cleveland-Cliffs is a play on the auto industry rebound, infrastructure spending, and the domestic manufacturing revival wrapped in one. 2022’s performance won’t be as impressive as last year’s, but there’s a longer-term growth trend here. At 4x earnings, this deep value play is a steal.

Will Toll Brothers Stock Keep Going Up?

Homebuilders have taken it on the chin this month and Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) is no exception. The prospects for rising interest rates have been perceived as a threat to homebuilding activity. In turn, Toll Brothers stock has slumped 19% year-to-date giving it a depressed sub-20 RSI reading.

This has created an attractive entry point for a stock that was as red-hot as the housing market last year. While the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has trended higher in recent weeks and stands to rise further, at 3.56%, it is still well within striking distance of historic lows. So, while this could deter some would-be homebuyers from building an upscale home, demand should remain strong. Plus, with the existing home supply still limited relative to demand, homebuilding remains a viable housing solution and a sound investment.

Since the pandemic started, Americans’ view of the home has changed dramatically. It is not only a sacred place to spend time with family, but a place to work, and even a place to exercise. This means, people are willing to spend more on housing, renovations, and repairs. And with these trends likely to have staying power, Toll Brothers should be a beneficiary of a healthy housing environment for several years to come. At 10x earnings, it’s a great time to build a position.

Should I Sell Badger Meter Stock?

Badger Meter (NYSE: BMI) climbed to an all-time intraday high of $112.36 last month but has since seen nearly $23 trimmed from its share price. The slide has accelerated in recent days and the RSI briefly dipped below 10 for the first time since December 2018. Absent any company-specific news, this is good news for investors in search of an oversold mid-cap.

Having been in the business for over a century, the phrase water technology and Badger Meter are synonymous these days. The company sells a range of equipment that helps customers measure water flow and quality, the latter of which has become an increasingly important need post-Covid. And with a growing focus on water sustainability and many companies wanting to enhance their ESG-friendly status in the market, Badger Meter’s products should be a hot commodity this decade.

On January 28th, Badger Meter will present fourth-quarter earnings. If it goes as analysts expect, management will deliver EPS of $0.47 for the quarter and $1.96 for the full year which translates to 17% annual profit growth. Bottom line growth is expected to revert to the high single digits in 2022, but this is consistent with the company’s steady track record of growth.

Technologies like automated meter reading and remote-controlled water flow restriction are becoming mainstream. This is why existing Badger Meter shareholders should feel comfortable just going with the flow.

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‘I stayed at the party too long’: Ozark’s Jason Bateman on Arrested Development, smiling villains and his lost decade https://ift.tt/3KNw9qi

Jason Bateman appears on a Zoom screen from Los Angeles, bespectacled, calm and in uncluttered, butter-coloured environs. It’s as if Michael Bluth, the character he played in Arrested Development, had dressed up as a therapist for some hilarious purpose. To fans of the show, its entire cast will always have traces clinging to them, as if they have all been, well, arrested in that dysfunctional family. But today we’re here to talk about Ozark, a drama with a reputation that has been climbing each season (it’s now in its fourth and final) and so has, arguably, become even more defining for Bateman.

Tense and lingering, Ozark has the dizzying pace and visual sumptuousness that the modern long-running box set demands. What was haunting about it from the start were the subtle performances of Bateman and his co-star, Laura Linney; just a regular, affluent, middle-aged couple, except he was about to launder $500m for a drug cartel and she’d just watched the murder of the lawyer she was having an affair with. They were on the run, but only sort of. They hated each other, except they didn’t. What passed between them gave such propulsive energy to their characters that from the very beginning you could trust one thing: it might be improbable, but it was never going to be boring. But all that nuance was a double-edged sword. “Marty and Wendy are really intelligent characters,” Bateman says. “Sometimes that narrows your options as a writer, trying to keep things plausible. They can’t do really stupid things. The smart thing to do is to turn yourself in. Then the show’s over.”

Typically (although not this time, because of Covid) Bateman would direct the first two episodes of each season. He starts off describing the appeal of being an actor/director quite neutrally. “It’s more efficient for me to be playing a character in something, because that’s one less person I need to direct,” he says. “I don’t have to have any sort of creative negotiation with that actor.” Then he slides into the territory of the self-aware control freak: “Especially when I’m the lead character, I can just adjust my own performance to motivate a different performance out of the other actor. I can get them to speed up or slow down or trick them by being more emotional.” Finally, he clarifies forcefully and winningly, he’s not a control freak at all. “I had a very fortunate first experience. My first big job, Little House on the Prairie, had Michael Landon as the director, actor, producer – and sometimes writer. There’s this theory that you need to scream at people to get them to work their hardest. I saw by example there that the opposite is true.”

A regular, affluent, middle-aged couple on the run … Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in Ozark. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

It’s pointless of course to pretend not to have been a child star if you were one, but it also takes a certain kind of comfort in your skin to underline immediately how incredibly long your career has been. Little House on the Prairie first aired in 1974. Bateman didn’t join the cast until the early 80s. His career dates officially from a Golden Grahams advert in 1980, when he was just 11 (he’s now 53). He talks about his mother – a Pan Am flight attendant, originally from the UK – a lot. If something is hilarious to him, it’s because “my mother is British and everything is dry to her”. His father would be the more obvious role model in professional terms. Kent Bateman was an actor, writer and director, and the producer of the 1987 fantasy comedy sequel Teen Wolf Too, the lead role that sealed his son’s teen-idol status as mischievous, unthreatening and very 80s.

Bateman became a complete sitcom fixture in titles that are familiar to US viewers but less so in the UK (TV didn’t travel so much then). Silver Spoons, the Hogan Family, “these shows in front of a live audience, where there’s a performance type of obligation: you’re incorporating their laughter, it’s more like being on stage”. Inevitably, trying to make the transition from child to adult, while simultaneously trying to morph for audiences from cute kid to serious actor, was fraught.

He describes the 90s as effectively wilderness years, while robustly objecting to the term “wilderness years”. “It was a combination,” he says. “Me stopping everything on purpose, to catch up with all these inabilities I had as a kid, because I was always working.” (“Inabilities” is a curious word – he’s saying his early career meant he missed out on a carefree childhood and teenage years, trying not to offend his parents, perhaps.) “I wanted to get the wiggles out.”

Wholesome … Bateman in Little House on the Prairie. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

He has described in the past how his wife, Amanda Anka, also an actor and mother of their two daughters, Francesca and Maple, gave him an ultimatum about his partying. It’s such an imprecise term, “partying” – it can mean anything from too many beers to a heroin habit, but it’s nothing like as imprecise as “wiggles”. He has been less oblique in the past, describing all-night booze and drug binges (“It’s like French fries and ketchup – I don’t want one without the other”) before he finally decided to go into AA. Information, it seems, is often sprinkled, rather than hosed, with Bateman. Later, talking about Smartless, the podcast he started in 2020 with Will Arnett (a magnificent comedian and ex-alcoholic, who played Gob in Arrested Development), he says: “Will started everything by saying, ‘Who’s gonna listen to some boring thing about sobriety?’ And I said: ‘At least let me be on it, so we can talk about sobriety and “the journey”.’” When Smartless arrived, also featuring Sean Hayes (from Will & Grace), it was nothing really to do with partying, it was all about friendship. It’s also absolutely stop-in-the-street-to-laugh brilliant.

Back to the lost decade. “Having thought, ‘This is really fun,’ and staying at the party a little bit too long, I’d lost my place in line in the business; it was a case of trying to claw that back towards the end of the 90s, and not getting a lot of great responses.” The official end of that dry spell was Arrested Development, which first aired in 2003, but also, Juno, in 2007, a fascinating indie film about a teenager who gets accidentally pregnant and agrees to have the baby adopted. It’s quite an uncomfortable movie, seen, at the time, as implicitly anti-abortion, and deliberately vague and airbrushed on what the experience of giving a baby up for adoption is actually like. But the characterisation is complex and interesting, in large part because of Bateman’s prospective adoptive dad, reversing and messing with expectations.

He starts out as something you think you understand – a wholesome everyman – then becomes a much darker character, on whom the coating of nice-guy shellac shimmers somewhere between shtick and active deception. It’s not a huge role but is a perfect distillation of Bateman’s mature performances; the guy who uses his everyman face like a Trojan horse. He says he likes to play characters as “not too far from the average person. Even if the part is not right in that lane, but maybe adjacent to it, I will pull the character into that. Even if they’re not vanilla on the page, I like pulling them into vanilla.” He has said before that he only took the role in Juno because Francesca, recently born, had colic, and it was a guaranteed three weeks out of the house. “No, no, no,” he now says, disapprovingly. “I said that to be fun. I said it with, hopefully, an obvious wink.” There he goes again, pulling himself back into vanilla.

To rewind to Arrested Development: it started at Fox and was an immediate success, winning five Emmys for the first season. It was cancelled, because Fox is crazy. The first three seasons were breathtakingly good – and surprising. The way each actor was so distinct and yet so locked together in the ensemble, the sheer quality of the cast – Jeffrey Tambor and the late Jessica Walter as the parents, Bateman, Arnett, Portia de Rossi and Tony Hale as their adult children – was remarkable. Bateman is very clear about what made it funny: “This is not funny to anybody inside the show. This is a drama to them. Almost like an animal documentary, where you’re watching these freaks, and how they gather their food, and how they make their house. And let’s make sure we all whisper because we don’t want these folks to know how much we’re laughing at them.”

Breathtakingly good … anticlockwise from front: Bateman, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Portia De Rossi, Will Arnett, Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter in Arrested Development. Photograph: 20 Century Fox/Sportsphoto/Allstar

Having been dropped, it was picked up six years later by Netflix, back when the streaming behemoth had no real track record of programme-making, except for David Fincher’s House of Cards. “What’s good for David Fincher sure as shit better be good enough for us,” is how Bateman describes the united attitude of the cast.

There were plenty of people queueing up to say it wasn’t as good at Netflix, and truthfully, the fourth season wasn’t. Critically, the reception went up and down – at its putative worst, it’s still funnier than most things – and career-wise, he says: “I will always respect the access and relevance that that show gave me, and try not to take that for granted again, and do everything I can to earn this place in the business that I love. It created an environment; I loved going there every single day.”

This is surprising, since if Arrested Development is famous for one thing, other than itself, it’s for a terrible atmosphere on set. Or at least, that was the story in a New York Times cast interview in 2018. Walter, who died in March last year, said of Tambor: “In almost 60 years of working, I’ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set.” Bateman and Hale tried to damp down the situation, and the whole thing – particularly coming when it did, when the lid was just being lifted on Hollywood harassment, sexual or otherwise – saw them accused of minimising.

Bateman remains adamant about his original stance and says of that interview: “Things got misinterpreted and there was a fallout – it was unfortunate. But it was an anomaly. Any family work environment, you’re going to have situations where things go a little pear-shaped every once in a while. I just have the fondest memories of 100% of that experience. You know, the ups and the downs, the good, the bad, the funny, the sad: all of it was a positive to me.”

There’s a lively internet chat scene on the similarities between Marty Byrde in Ozark and Michael Bluth in Arrested Development – that they are morally so alike, Ozark must have been (consciously or not) conceived as a prequel to Arrested Development. In this fan-fictional universe, Michael is actually Marty post-witness protection scheme. I disagree with that. Part of the genius of Bateman’s Arrested Development performance is how completely, learning-resistantly hapless he is, while as Byrde he can see round corners and get the better of any situation. He doesn’t really want to adjudicate on this question and ruin any fan debates, so says mildly: “I think they have similar blind spots. Their arrogance and hubris leads to early decisions. Perhaps they should think a little bit longer about what they do.”

If there’s another through-line, Bateman says, it’s that: “I’m not too far removed from a drama when I’m doing Arrested Development and I’m not too far from a comedy when I’m doing Ozark.” He reaches to describe some quintessence to his acting another way: “In a drama, I’m not the person with a knife, I’m the person getting chased. In a comedy, I’m not the person farting, I’m the person who smelled it.” It’s so neat, so succinct, and so drolly sums up the paradox: it’s actually terribly rare to meet an everyman, almost unique to meet one who’s everymanning on purpose.

Ozark is available to stream on Netflix. The “Smartless” podcast live tour kicks off on 2 February with sold out shows across six cities in the US

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Australian government buys copyright to Aboriginal flag in $20m deal https://ift.tt/3fPnUeW

The Aboriginal flag can now be reproduced on apparel and merchandise after the federal government secured its copyright to resolve a complicated legal dispute over the use of the emblem.

The Morrison government has paid more than $20m to obtain the copyright to the flag, plus terminate commercial licenses owned by companies which had limited the reproduction of the symbol.

“In reaching this agreement to resolve the copyright issues, all Australians can freely display and use the flag to celebrate Indigenous culture,” Ken Wyatt, the federal minister for Indigenous Australians, said.

“Now that the commonwealth holds the copyright, it belongs to everyone, and no one can take it away.”

The Aboriginal flag, designed by Luritja artist Harold Thomas, was first flown at a land rights rally in Adelaide in July 1971. It has been an important symbol for Indigenous Australians for decades, and is regularly flown alongside Australia’s national flag in official and ceremonial capacities.

But unlike the national flag, to which the commonwealth holds the rights, the Aboriginal flag’s copyright had been held by Thomas himself. In 2018, he gave exclusive rights to the flag’s use on apparel and media to WAM Clothing, which later issued infringement notices to professional sporting codes and Aboriginal nonprofit groups for reproducing the flag without permission.

Controversy over that situation led to the establishment of a parliamentary committee on the usage of the Aboriginal flag. The inquiry’s final report, released in October 2020, spoke of WAM Clothing’s “heavy-handed (yet entirely legal) approach to enforcing its rights”.

Indigenous artist Harold Thomas signs an agreement to transfer copyright of the Aboriginal flag to the commonwealth. Photograph: David Hancock

The report recommended against compulsorily acquiring the Aboriginal flag’s copyright. Committee chair and Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy wrote in a foreword to the report that Thomas declined invitations to address the inquiry, citing “confidential negotiations under way with the commonwealth government”.

Wyatt’s office has spoken previously of its “quiet discussions” to deal with the “extremely complicated” issues around the Aboriginal flag.

On Monday evening, prime minister Scott Morrison announced the government had completed negotiations with Thomas. The deal involved the flag’s copyright being transferred to the commonwealth, and payments being made to private businesses – including WAM Clothing – which had licensed the flag’s use.

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The federal government said the agreement also includes a payment to Thomas to secure the copyright, the establishment of an annual $100,000 scholarship in Thomas’s name for Indigenous students, and the commonwealth donating royalties from sales of the Aboriginal flag to the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (Naidoc).

Morrison’s office said Thomas would use $2m to establish a not-for-profit organisation to “make periodic disbursements aligned with interests of Aboriginal Australians and the flag”. The federal government will also display a painting from Thomas, recognising the flag’s 50th anniversary and the copyright transfer, in a “prominent location”.

“Throughout the negotiations, we have sought to protect the integrity of the Aboriginal Flag, in line with Harold Thomas’ wishes,” Morrison said in a statement.

“The Aboriginal flag will now be managed in a similar manner to the Australian national flag, where its use is free, but must be presented in a respectful and dignified way.”

The prime minister said the flag could now be used on sports jerseys, shirts, websites, paintings, reproduced on sporting grounds and used “in any other medium without having to ask for permission or pay a fee”.

Wyatt called the flag “an enduring symbol close to the heart of Aboriginal people” and described the copyright agreement as “profoundly important”.

“Over the last 50 years we made Harold Thomas’ artwork our own – we marched under the Aboriginal flag, stood behind it, and flew it high as a point of pride,” he said.

In a statement to Guardian Australia, a spokesperson for Wyatt’s office confirmed the commonwealth had paid millions of dollars as part of the transfer.

“The total figure to extinguish the existing licences and secure the copyright is $20.05 million. This includes a payment to Mr Thomas for the copyright and payments to the licensees for termination of their licences,” the spokesperson said.

Guardian Australia understands that amount includes payments to WAM Clothing, as well as Carroll and Richardson Flagworld, which had been the “exclusive licensed manufacturer and provider of Aboriginal Flags and bunting”, Morrison’s office said. Flagworld will remain the exclusive manufacturer, but the company will not restrict individuals from making their own flags for personal use.

In a statement provided by Morrison’s office, Thomas said he hoped the copyright transfer “provides comfort to all Aboriginal people and Australians to use the flag”.

“The Aboriginal flag design is my dreaming, intertwined with my wife’s family and mine, our ancestral belonging. The land, and the landscape, is indelible in my makeup; it courses through my consciousness and subconsciousness,” he said.

“The flag represents the timeless history of our land and our people’s time on it. It is an introspection and appreciation of who we are. It draws from the history of our ancestors, our land, and our identity and will honour these well into the future.”

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Microsoft lets you follow YouTube creators in Edge browser test https://ift.tt/3GNucHG

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft has started testing some deeper YouTube integration in its Edge browser. The latest Canary developer builds of Edge include a new “followable web” feature that lets you easily follow your favorite content creators on YouTube.

Reddit user Leopeva64 spotted a new YouTube follow button that appears in the address bar of YouTube pages. Following creators will add them to a feed that’s part of the Collections feature in Edge. The feature is clearly in the early preview stages, and it doesn’t support all YouTube content creators just yet. The feed that’s created in Collections lets you see recent posts from creators that you follow.

Image: Reddit (Leopeva64)

The new web following feature in Edge.

This deeper integration with YouTube will likely extend to other parts of the web, too. Microsoft’s Edge followable web feature looks similar to Google’s experimental feature in Chrome that lets people follow blogs and creators to get the latest content when it’s published. This is essentially an extension of RSS inside Chrome, and it includes a follow button.

Microsoft is only trialing this new Edge feature with a limited number of Edge Canary testers, as part of what the company calls “controlled rollouts.” The software giant hasn’t officially detailed its plans for the followable web feature in Edge, but we’re expecting to hear more about this modern RSS feed in the coming weeks.

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Jack Dorsey’s Block is working to decentralize Bitcoin mining https://ift.tt/3tta8a4

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Block, the payment company formerly known as Square, is working on building an “open Bitcoin mining system,” its CEO Jack Dorsey has announced. In a thread, Block’s general manager for hardware Thomas Templeton outlined the company’s goals for the system, which is for it to be easily available, reliable, performant, and relatively power efficient compared to its hashrate.

The overall aim is to make mining more decentralized, in turn making the overall Bitcoin network more resilient. As the cryptocurrency’s value has increased, and it’s become more challenging to mine without economies of scale, there have been fears that the network has become centralized on too small a group of miners. Making mining more decentralized is “a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless,” Templeton says. But the plans could be controversial given how energy intensive mining Bitcoin tends to be.

We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining. We’re interested because mining goes far beyond creating new bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless.

— Thomas Templeton (@TempletonThomas) January 13, 2022

According to Templeton, Block is open to building its own ASIC (a custom chip optimized for a single purpose — in this case mining Bitcoin), but that the team will also include software designers. The aim is to build a high performance integrated system that’s also open-source. Dorsey has previously said he wants Bitcoin mining to be “as easy as plugging a rig into a power source,” and that he sees value in a mining system that’s vertically integrated across hardware and software.

As well as its mining system, in July last year Block (then Square) announced it was building a Bitcoin hardware wallet with the aim of making “Bitcoin custody more mainstream.” Square also previously allowed its customers to buy and sell Bitcoin using its Cash App. Dorsey has long been an avid supporter of Bitcoin, and his Twitter bio continues to simply be “#Bitcoin.” He earlier talked about his desire for Block to build a Bitcoin mining system in October.

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Samsung unveils new MRAM-based in-memory computing chip https://ift.tt/3K9xDuv

Samsung has just revealed the world’s first in-memory computing based on MRAM (magnetoresistive random access memory). The team described these innovative findings in a paper published by Nature.

The effort to combine memory and data computing into one is not a novel idea, but it has never before been executed with the use of MRAM. This successful MRAM breakthrough is the result of Samsung’s effort to combine memory and system semiconductors into one, all with artificial intelligence in mind.

Dr. Donhee Ham, Dr. Seungchul Jung, and Dr. Sang Joon Kim (Image source: Samsung)

In the press release that describes Samsung’s research, the company explains that memory chips are typically used for storing data, while data computing is executed in separate processor chips. Iin-memory computing is a technique that performs both tasks within a memory network.

Using in-memory computing allows for processing large amounts of data that is stored within the memory network itself. This means that data doesn’t need to be moved and it is processed in a parallel manner, resulting in faster transfer speeds and a substantial reduction in power consumption.

In-memory computing has been attempted with the use of other no-volatile memory types, in particular resistive random access memory (RRAM) and phase-change random access memory (PRAM.) However, the use of MRAM has proven difficult, and Samsung explains that this is due to the low resistance of this memory type. When used in the standard in-memory computing architecture, MRAM doesn’t benefit from the desired power reduction.

Despite the difficulties, MRAM continued to be an attractive option for in-memory computing due to its various benefits, such as high operation speeds, the fact that it’s produced on a larger scale, and its endurance. This encouraged Samsung’s researchers tocontinue to pursue this technique and eventually led them to a breakthrough that makes MRAM-based in-memory computing a reality.

Image source: TechPowerUp

The research led to the development of an MRAM array chip capable of in-memory computing while addressing the aforementioned problem of low resistance presented by individual MRAM devices. The array chip was then tested by performing various A.I. computing tasks, and it performed excellently. Samsung reports that the chip hit 98% accuracy in the classification of handwritten digits and 93% accuracy in being able to tell faces apart from the scenery.

The research that led to this discovery was the result of cooperation between the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Samsung Electronics Foundry Business, and Semiconductor R&D Center.

Using MRAM for in-memory computing is definitely a huge step for Samsung. This technique may be one of the most viable options for next-generation power-efficient A.I. processing. Samsung said it plans to move forward and continue building on its MRAM in-memory computing success.