Category: World News

how they bought into it, what their lives are like

Post author By
Post date August 1, 2021

Bitcoin miner Zack Pettit skating on his work break at the SCATE Ventures mining facility in Dallesport, Washington.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

Nick Sears was 17 years old when he helped build a bitcoin mining farm in Dallesport, Washington. He was 18 when he was legally allowed to buy bitcoin for the first time. And now, at 19, Sears has doubled down on his life as a bitcoin miner, saying “no” to college and “yes” to living in a room inside a data center that houses 4,500 whirling ASICs.

“My room is sound-locked,” said Sears of the acoustic retrofitting of his living quarters. “So I can’t hear the machines when I close my door, but they are definitely noisy if I have my door open.”

The machines generate about 80 decibels of noise apiece — but Sears says he likes being as close to the action as possible. It also beats making the half hour commute each way from his parents’ house in White Salmon.

The 19 year-old has spent pretty much every single day for the last two years teaching himself the nuances of how mining machines work – and crucially, how to fix them. He believes his education in soldering and electronics is worth a whole lot more to him than a university degree.

“I don’t think about going to college at all, just pursuing further knowledge in the repairs of the miners,” continued Sears.

CNBC spoke with multiple miners for this story. Many explained that the allure of mining comes from being able to tangibly grasp the power of bitcoin.

“If you’ve been to any of these data centers, the first thing you’ll notice is just how vast and how impressive they are. They’re huge,” said explained Thomas Heller, chief business officer for Compass Mining, which works with Sears’ employer, SCATE Ventures.

“There’s so much noise, and there’s so much heat. There’s just so much action going on. It is quite cool to walk into a data center for the first time that’s mining bitcoin, because you can really connect the intangible aspects of bitcoin as a currency, with the physical nature of these machines consuming power and doing these calculations.”

Bitcoin miner Nick Sears lives on-site at the SCATE Ventures mining farm in Dallesport, Washington.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

A day in the life of a miner

Mining for bitcoin isn’t a glamorous job.

“When we first got here, we were setting up racks, creating the network infrastructure for the internet, and we essentially had to wire everything,” he said.

Once the physical infrastructure was up and running, Sears got into more of a rhythm. He’s now up at 7 A.M. everyday and works from eight to four. He remains on site afterwards, just in case of an emergency, and there is a technician who works night shifts so that Sears can get some sleep.

But beyond the hours, there is no typical work day for Sears.

“That’s the cool thing about this job – I don’t have a set routine that I do everyday,” he said. “Every morning, I find what needs to be fixed.”

Some days, that means Sears repairs walls and other physical infrastructure. “If we have to repair a camera, maybe I’m fixing a cable.”

But the biggest part of the job is monitoring and managing every one of those 4,500 Bitmain and Whatsminer ASICs to ensure they are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If even one of those machines goes offline, or is only running at partial capacity, the SCATE Ventures mine loses money.

That’s because when someone is mining for bitcoin, what they are actually doing is lending their computing power to the bitcoin network. The more machines you have online, the better your chances at winning bitcoin.

Rig under inspection at the SCATE Ventures mining farm in Dallesport, Washington.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

Roughly every ten minutes, 6.25 bitcoins are created. In order to mint these new tokens, a global pool of miners are all contributing their computing power to running a hashing algorithm. But these miners aren’t working in a vacuum. They’re competing against each other to see who can unlock each batch of new bitcoin first.

So the stakes are high for Sears. Being diligent and knowing how to triage issues across the entire facility is critical to success.

Some mining sites use more sophisticated software to monitor the machines, which includes checking the temperature of each hashboard within the individual miners.

But most important for Sears is just figuring out which of his machines aren’t functioning at full capacity.

“Every day, you find the machines that have stopped hashing, then you remove them from the rack, and you troubleshoot,” he explained. “You’ve got to find the problem with the machines. You’ve got to find out why it went offline.”

It could be a power outage, which would affect all the machines, or it could be a network outage which could impact all of the machines or just some.

“Sometimes they just need a power cycle or a reboot,” he said.

But the hardware fix isn’t always as simple as that.

“It could be that the fan on the individual machine that is used for cooling is broken, or maybe it’s the power supply that needs to be repaired or replaced,” explained Heller.

“It could be the hashboards themselves,” continued Heller. “Each hashboard has lots of individual chips, and those are the chips doing the calculations. I think with a Bitmain machine, if more than four chips on a single hashboard are broken, the whole hashboard will switch off. So instead of hashing at about 100%, you’re only hashing at two-thirds or one-third.”

Seasonal changes in the weather add a whole other layer of complexity.

Lead technician Nick Sears repairs hardware at the SCATE Ventures Inc. mining farm in Dallesport, Washington.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

Storms can lead to power outages or other disruptions. Heller says that in the summer, the machines can also overheat, especially at the farms which have upgraded to using more powerful units over the course of the last two years.

SCATE’s mine in Washington seems to have found a way around this problem by using its own immersion cooling technology, which involves submerging bitcoin miners in a non-conductive fluid to dissipate heat, rather than relying on fans.

Training up and getting paid

Sears may not need a diploma to mine, but taking online training courses run by Chinese engineers who work for Bitmain has gone a long way toward helping him repair specialized mining equipment.

Last month, Sears and another employee completed a virtual class through Bitmain to learn how to work on the ASIC chips on hashboards, as well as the power supplies of the S17s, one of the most popular machines now used to mint bitcoin.

“I have a certification of maintenance repair, so lately, I’ve just been perfecting my skills in that category,” explained Sears. “It certifies my knowledge and gives me access to buy supplies and material directly through Bitmain.”

Lead technician Nick Sears at the SCATE Ventures Inc. mining farm in Dallesport, Washington.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

Next, he hopes to attend an in-person class in Atlanta, Georgia, to learn more about soldering. “The hard part is learning how to solder and disassemble a circuit board,” said Sears.

Sears’ boss, Scott Bennett, is big on giving his team access to the resources they need to get better at their jobs.

Bennett, CEO of SCATE Ventures, is a self-taught miner who started his business in his parents’ garage back in 2017, just before the last crypto “winter,” when prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies plunged. Similar to Sears, Bennett once lived at one of his data centers – only he opted for an on-site camper, rather than a room inside the facility itself.

It helped that he lives within minutes of some of the cheapest power in the world.

“All of our facilities are 100% hydro powered,” said Bennett.

The mining facility where Sears works is next to the Columbia River and directly adjacent the Dalles Dam. “We love that source of power. It’s cheap, renewable, and very abundant,” he said.

As for employee pay, Sears says that he makes $54,000 a year, plus full health insurance, which is paid for by the company.

Bennett also runs some mining machines exclusively for his employees. That amounts to about .02 BTC quarterly, which by today’s price equates to a $788 bonus every three months to Sears.

“With all the miners in China going offline, the difficulty rate has been changing, so the rewards are higher,” said Sears. “The last time we got a little bit more than we did the previous time, which is cool by me.”

The SCATE Ventures mining farm runs on hydropower generated by the Dalles Dam.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

Mining remotely

It is also possible to become a crypto miner without physically handling any mining equipment at all.

Adam Gitzes decided in early 2021 that he really wanted to mine for bitcoin. After his wife vetoed the idea of installing equipment in their home, he began to look for alternatives.

Gitzes discovered Compass Mining, which allows customers to buy mining machines for between $5,800 and $11,700, then locates them in partner data centers and takes care of the physical logistics.

“I bought the machines on the website, Compass managed the logistics, delivering the machines to three different data centers in North America,” said Gitzes, who explained he spent 1.1 bitcoin — about $60,000 at the time of purchase — on them.

“Compass also configured them the way that I asked.”

So a typical day in the life of a miner like Gitzes consists of waking up and checking online to see how much bitcoin his machines mined overnight and to ensure that none of his units are down.

Inside the SCATE Ventures mining farm in Dallesport, Washington.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

Gitzes owns six machines that he says are on the “higher end.” When China expelled all its miners, Gitzes says it doubled the amount of money that his machines generate daily.

After paying the mining pool fee of 1.25%, Gitzes’ miners generate about .0055 bitcoin a day, or $216 at today’s prices. Daily electricity costs are about $30, so he’s pulling in roughly $186 a day, or just shy of $5,700 every month. At that rate, he’ll recoup his investment in about 11 months, assuming no major fluctuations in energy or bitcoin prices.

Gitzes was so impressed by the Compass business model that he quit his job at Amazon to join the team in March. “The mission to decentralize mining and make it so that everyone can participate is something that I find really important,” said Gitzes.

The SCATE Ventures mining farm is in Dallesport, Washington.

SCATE Ventures Inc.

Tags Lives

World News

Hundreds Protest in France In opposition to Well being Move for third Weekend

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Post date August 1, 2021

In southern Paris, Ms. Collino, maskless and carrying a French flag, said she was angry that health workers were forced to get vaccinated by this fall, and that access to bars, restaurants, movie theaters, museums, gyms and other indoor venues would be restricted.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

Around her, families waved French flags and protesters shouted “freedom” and “resistance” while carrying makeshift cardboard signs with slogans like “Don’t give in to blackmail” and “No to segregation.”

When the protesters passed a statue of Louis Pasteur, the renowned 19th-century French scientist credited with discovering the principles of vaccination, few seemed to take notice. One elderly man, who was walking past the demonstrators, did. “Pasteur must be turning over in his grave,” he grumbled.

The march there was organized by Florian Philippot, a former member of the far-right National Rally party who has become a figurehead of the anti-health pass movement. Two video journalists for Agence France-Presse left the march after protesters insulted them, spat on them and prevented them from filming, the agency reported.

“We no longer have the freedom to seek the treatment that we want,” said Ms. Collino, a retired I.T. specialist who lives in the nearby town of Sèvres. She did not trust officials to tell the truth about vaccines and said that she had taken it upon herself to seek out information about the pandemic online.

Her attitude, however, has isolated her from some friends and family who favor the health pass policy, as do a majority of French people, according to recent polls. Millions have rushed to get their Covid shots since the pass was announced. But Ms. Collino said she would rather die than get vaccinated.

“I don’t understand why they are in favor while I’m against,” she said.

Tags 3rd, France, health, pass, Protest, Thousands, Weekend

World News

NY’s Broadway, Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Corridor to require vaccines

Post author By
Post date August 1, 2021

If you want to attend a live performance in New York, prepare to show proof that you received your Covid shots.

The Broadway League announced Friday that the owners and operators of all 41 Broadway theaters in New York City will require viewers, performers, backstage crew and theater staff to be fully vaccinated by October.

Young children or people with medical conditions or religious beliefs that prevent vaccinations can still attend shows if they have a negative Covid-19 test. You will need a PCR test within 72 hours of the start of the performance or a negative antigen test that will be performed within 6 hours of the start of the performance in order to be admitted.

“A uniform policy in all New York Broadway theaters makes it easy for our audiences and should give our guests even more confidence how seriously Broadway takes the safety of the audience,” said Charlotte St. Martin, President of the Broadway League.

An exterior view of the Palace Theater at the premiere of “West Side Story” on Broadway at the Palace Theater on March 19, 2009 in New York City.

Neilson Barnard | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Audiences in the theater must also wear masks, except when eating or drinking in designated areas.

In September, the league will review these guidelines for November performances.

The Metropolitan Opera also requires guests, performers, orchestras, choirs, and staff to provide proof of vaccination, but face masks are optional. The opera will prohibit children under 12 from attending performances.

“The Met policy states that masks will be optional, this could change depending on prevailing health conditions. Also, unlike Broadway, we will have absolutely no exceptions to the vaccination-only policy, ”a Metropolitan Opera spokeswoman said in an email.

Guests must present proof of vaccination upon entering the theater and be fully vaccinated with an FDA or WHO approved vaccine. This means that guests have to wait at least two weeks after their last recordings to attend a performance.

Carnegie Hall will also require proof of vaccination from all guests, artists, staff and visitors and will ban children under the age of 12 from attending performances, a statement said.

Younger children are not yet entitled to the Covid vaccine.

The new requirements result from the rapid spread of the Delta variant across the country, especially in areas with low vaccination rates. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines urging people to return to wearing masks, even if they were vaccinated, in areas of the country where cases have increased. This was a reversal of the Agency’s previous policy.

The CDC warns that the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and could make people sicker than the original Covid.

Broadway will begin reopening its doors to the public at full capacity on September 14th, having closed since March 2020. New York City lost billions in tourism dollars as live performances ceased on Broadway, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.

The industry received government support through a program called the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which allocated $ 16.2 billion to keep the entertainment industry alive across the country until performances could safely return to normal.

The surge in Covid cases due to the Delta variant comes at a precarious time for the industry, which has invested in reinstating artists and other workers in preparation for the resumption of performances.

Tags Broadway, Carnegie, Hall, Metropolitan, NYs, Opera, Require, vaccines

World News

Wildfires in Turkey Rage on, Firefighters Battle to Comprise the Blaze

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Post date August 1, 2021

Firefighters in Turkey fought for a fourth day on Saturday to contain dozens of forest fires as rapidly spreading fires forced the evacuation of popular resorts and dozens of rural areas along the Mediterranean coast.

The fires, which authorities say may have been caused by arson or human negligence, killed at least six people and injured about 200 others on Saturday, officials said.

When tourists were forced to flee hotels, some on boats, as the flames drew closer, rural residents watched the fires burn down their homes, kill their livestock and destroy their businesses.

“Our lungs burn, our future burns,” said Muhittin Bocek, the mayor of Antalya, a holiday town, in a telephone interview from the devastated city of Manavgat, about 80 kilometers east of the coast.

The flames are part of a broader pattern of forest fires ravaging the Mediterranean this summer, with areas in Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Italy and Cyprus also battling fast-paced fires.

They’re also the latest in a string of extreme weather events around the world – from deadly floods in Europe and China to raging fires in the United States, Canada, and Siberia – that scientists believe may be related to climate change due to global changes Are associated with warming.

Cagatay Tavsanoglu, a biology professor specializing in fire ecology at Hacettepe University in Ankara, said fires in the Mediterranean area happen annually, but the magnitude of the fires that year should serve as a warning.

“Many fires could not be extinguished and under the influence of dry winds they burned too quickly,” said Tavsanoglu. “These are just the first signs of what climate change would do to the Mediterranean in the future.”

For models showing a global temperature increase of three degrees Celsius (or an additional 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), the upper end of the forecast, the average area burning in southern Europe would double each year, according to a research paper published in 2018 in Nature was published.

And even if the warming stays below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, 40 percent more land could burn, the researchers warned.

Cyprus suffered some of the worst fires in decades this summer, killing at least four people. Authorities in Greece this week evacuated areas north of Athens as forest fires threatened homes near the capital. And in Italy, the island of Sardinia experienced “an unprecedented disaster” this month, the region’s authorities said.

In Lebanon, where the state has basically ceased to function and the authorities took little action this summer to avoid the fires, a teenager died this week as the fires spread to the north of the country and Syria.

Extreme weather

Updated

July 30, 2021, 9:35 p.m. ET

In the Akkar district, videos shared online showed dystopian scenes of the fires that spread through the woods on Wednesday. Firefighters, the Lebanese military, civil protection officials and volunteers have worked to contain them.

The fires worsened the suffering of many people in Lebanon, who live with daily shortages of fuel and medicine, countless power outages and the aftermath of an unprecedented financial crisis.

More than 100 communities are exposed to a high risk of forest fire, said the Lebanese agricultural research institute this week.

In Turkey, the fires broke out on Wednesday in Manavgat, a city in the southern province of Antalya. As of Friday, there were fires in more than 70 other locations across the country, said the Turkish Forestry Directorate.

Some of the fires were brought under control, but three people died in Manavgat and a fourth in Marmaris, another popular resort.

The fires also spread to the resort of Bodrum, where at least two hotels were evacuated.

The Turkish authorities are still investigating the cause of the fires, but on Thursday the government’s communications director Fahrettin Altun called them an “attack”.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said police and intelligence officers were investigating arson allegations. “You can’t dismiss that,” Erdogan said to reporters in Istanbul on Friday. “Because it is almost at the same time, in different places.”

Turkey has used around 4,000 firefighters, hundreds of vehicles and three aircraft to fight fires, according to Agriculture Minister Bekir Pakdemirli.

However, for some local residents, the response has been slow and inadequate.

“Does the Turkish Republic only have three planes?” A Manavgat resident yelled at Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu when he visited the city on Thursday evening.

Mr. Cavusoglu spoke against a backdrop of gorgeous scenery, and earlier in the day televisions showed entire districts left empty and smoking, full of charred houses under orange skies.

Mr. Bocek, the mayor of Antalya, said every fourth neighborhood in Manavgat must be evacuated.

In a community that is heavily dependent on agriculture and ranching, most residents are still not allowed to return home because the fires are not under control.

According to Turkish media reports, a crowd attacked two people under high tension on Thursday, accusing them of starting the fires. When the military police stepped in to protect the two, a mob tried to bring them back to no avail.

While in some places the anger boiled, in others there had been no time to ponder who should be to blame.

“When the flames came over us, we could only save the cow,” said Nuray Canbolat, a resident of Kozan district in southern Adana province, in a television interview with the state news agency Anadolu. “We just saved our lives.”

Tags Blaze, Firefighters, Rage, struggle, Turkey, wildfires

World News

S&P 500 closes Friday decrease as Amazon shares slide, however notches sixth straight optimistic month

Post author By
Post date July 31, 2021

US stocks fell on Friday amid a decline in Amazon stocks, but the S&P 500 posted its sixth consecutive positive month.

The broad equity benchmark fell 0.5% to 4,395.26, dragged down by the consumer discretionary and energy sectors. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 0.7% to 14,672.68. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 149.06 points, or 0.4%, to 34,935.47 points.

Amazon fell nearly 7.6% after reporting its first quarterly loss of revenue in three years and giving weaker forecasts. Pinterest fell even further, 18.2%, after losing monthly users in the three months ended June 30.

The major averages finished a solid month, although volatility has increased amid concerns about economic recovery amid the spreading delta variant. The Nasdaq and Dow gained around 1.2% and 1.3% respectively in July, while the broad S&P 500 gained nearly 2.3% over the same period. Utilities, healthcare, real estate and technology stocks led the S&P 500 higher for the month, while energy and financials lagged.

“There has been a fair amount of volatility and price fluctuations in the market over the past few weeks,” said Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at BMO, in a press release. “Heightened concerns about the delta variant and its potential impact on reopening momentum appeared to be a key factor in the price action, while hot topics related to economic growth, earnings and political support also remained an overhang on risk sentiment.”

Investors have digested a key inflation indicator that showed better-than-feared price pressure on Friday. The core price index of private consumption expenditure rose by 3.5% in June compared to the previous year. It marked a sharp acceleration in inflation, but was slightly below the Dow Jones expectation of a 3.6% increase.

Weaker-than-expected values in the US economy further reduced concerns about a withdrawal from the Federal Reserve’s security purchases.

US gross domestic product rose 6.5% on an annualized basis in the second quarter, well below the Dow Jones’ 8.4% estimate. Meanwhile, the latest weekly jobless claims have also been higher than expected.

Fed chairman Jerome Powell noted on Wednesday that while the economy has come a long way since the Covid-19 recession, it still has a way to go before the central bank considers adjusting its monetary policy.

Procter & Gamble stocks rose nearly 2% after the consumer giant beat analysts’ estimates for quarterly earnings and sales. However, the company warned that rising raw material costs could hurt earnings in the coming year.

The stocks of online brokerage Robinhood rebounded just under 1% in volatile trading on Friday after ending their first trading session 8% lower.

Tags Amazon, closes, Friday, Month, notches, Positive, Shares, Sixth, slide, straight

World News

The Blue Jays Lastly Return to Canada

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Post date July 31, 2021

TORONTO – When the coronavirus shut down the world in the spring of 2020, the area around the Rogers Center in the heart of downtown Toronto became a desolate wasteland. The familiar noises of the game day walk-up crowd and screaming scalpers have been replaced by socially distant outdoor yoga groups, residents taking their daily walks with their pets, and the occasional tennis enthusiast batting their foreheads against the brick wall next to the stadium entrance .

If a tumbleweed had rolled through, no one would have noticed.

For 161 regular season and playoff games over two seasons, the Toronto Blue Jays left their nest and cited without a real home after the Canadian government denied the team’s request to play in Toronto during the pandemic Concerns About Crossing Border Travel To and From The United States.

While all the other Major League Baseball teams stayed in their hometown and welcomed the fans back to their stadiums earlier this season, the majors’ only Canadian team stayed on the streets, initially playing supposed home games at the tiny TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida, and then at Sahlen Field, a retrofitted Class AAA ballpark in Buffalo, NY. In mid-July, the Jays were finally given permission to return to Canada.

Baseball is a sport of statistics. From batting averages to home runs to on-base and slugging percentages to wins over replacements, no sport communicates through numbers more than America’s pastime. On Friday, when the long-dormant stadium in downtown Toronto finally came to life, only one number was on everyone’s lips: 670.

It has been 670 days since the Blue Jays last played a game at the Rogers Center. The number seemed to be everywhere on Friday, from teammates in shirts referencing it to the team’s social media account reminding fans how long they waited for this reunion.

Officially, a baseball game between the Blue Jays and the Kansas City Royals was played in Toronto. But what happened at the ballpark on Friday was more than that. The pandemic has stolen most of the people’s daily lives. On the way back to their old way of life, some pieces of normality are picked up. The ballpark was filled with many of these pieces on Friday.

Almost three hours before the first pitch, George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. took turns tossing baseball out of the park during batting practice. In between they laughed and danced with manager Charlie Montoyo and soaked up the return to Canada. At the field level, the team’s President and Chief Executive, Mark Shapiro, kept a close eye on the team and members of the news media and welcomed them back to the stadium.

The Jays returned as a very different team. The last time they played at the Rogers Center in 2019, fans emotionally said goodbye to first baseman Justin Smoak – he played his last game with Toronto – and the team ended a 67-95 season. They returned with Guerrero, who established himself as one of the most exciting stars in the game, a line-up that leads the majors on home runs, and a team with the fourth best run differential in the American League that gives them high hopes for improvement on an overwhelming 51-48 record.

You also return to a completely different world. According to the guidelines the Province of Ontario set in Phase 3 of its reopening plans for outdoor venues, the Jays are only allowed to have 15,000 fans per game (about 30 percent of the stadium’s 49,286-person capacity). The 500 level, generally reserved for the die-hard and the occasional belligerent fanatic, remained closed. The cardboard cut-outs that occupy certain sections at this level were just one of the reminders that normal remains a relative term.

Masks were compulsory for all fans (although some tried their luck by wearing them well below the intended level on their faces). The WestJet Flight Deck, a midfield standing area for the loudest fans, has been reduced to a maximum of six socially distant people at a time.

However, the crowd felt far larger than the listed attendance of 13,446. Fans formed long lines in each team store. Springer and Hyun-jin Ryu jerseys appeared to be the top sellers (which gave the sea of Guerrero Jr. jerseys some competition). The $ 25 price tag didn’t stop many fans from ordering Canadian classics: poutine and beer.

Just as the team reunited with their hometown, the fans were reunited too. Groups of people ran into each other at every corner of the stadium. Some got engaged with hugs. Others just shook hands and paused to catch up.

After a pre-game soundtrack that included “The Boys Are Back in Town,” and Coldplay’s Chris Martin sang the chorus of “Homecoming,” the Blue Jays finally took to the field while medical staff from Toronto General Hospital greeted them as they passed Waving team flags.

This ballpark has seen many iconic moments, from Joe Carter’s walk-off home run of the 1993 World Series to Jose Bautista’s emphatic bat-flip against the Texas Rangers in a Division Series game in 2015. Those moments took the stadium right through Mark shaken. The ovation the Blue Jays received on Friday when they entered the field failed to reach that decibel level, but a sense of amusement and relief swept through the stadium. From the media area to the fans in the stands, only a few eyes remained dry during a fan assembly on the large jumbotron in the midfield. With the first of many “Let’s Go, Blue Jays” chants a liberation from emotions followed.

For the next several hours it was just another typical baseball game on a brisk Friday night at the Rogers Center, give or take a few standing ovations and “MVP” chants for Guerrero Jr., who got the biggest reception from the crowd all night.

The Jays officially returned home at 7:28 pm when Ross Stripling delivered a first blow to Whit Merrifield. A home run by Teoscar Hernandez in the second inning put the home team on the map. A double homer from Bo Bichette in the seventh inning gave Toronto a 6-2 lead. The third baseman Santiago Espinal scored the final in a 6-4 win with a bare-handed catch and was the perfect end to a picture-perfect return.

After a final standing ovation for the home team, the fans dispersed and made their way to the exit, with the first game of an 11-game home stand. Outside the stadium, just a few minutes later, the honking of the cars and the clashing conversations of the departing crowd reminded one last time that the stadium, which had slumbered as a reminder of an interrupted life for the past two years, was back in operation.

Tags blue, Canada, Finally, Jays, return

World News

Augmented actuality agency Nreal targets IPO inside 5 years, CEO says

Post author By
Post date July 31, 2021

SHANGHAI — Nreal, a Chinese company making glasses for so-called augmented reality experiences, is looking to go public within five years, its CEO told CNBC.

“We’re thinking this is really a major tech market and really looking forward to what’s going to happen in the next 10 to 15 years. Very exciting – I think its more like ’06, ’07 of the smartphone business,” Chi Xu, CEO of Nreal said.

“We see a lot of good opportunities and, definitely, we’re thinking the market size is going to be massive. And we have this opportunity and we want to take this to the final end.”

He said an initial public offering could come in “less than 5 years.”

The company’s flagship product is a pair of lightweight glasses called Nreal Light, which has been released in a handful of markets including South Korea and Japan. Nreal says its glasses allow users to experience “mixed reality” where digital images are superimposed over the real world.

The Nreal Light connects to a smartphone. One of the immediate uses frees people from being tied to their small smartphone screens.

“Whatever you’re displaying in the cellphone screen in front of you, you put that in front of your face, into a massive screen, and that can be 3D, that can be ultra-high definition,” Xu said.

An attendee tries a pair of Nreal mixed-reality glasses at the MWC Shanghai exhibition in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021.

Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nreal’s ambitions pit it against technology giants that see a bright future in augmented reality. Apple CEO Tim Cook has called AR the “next big thing” and the iPhone giant is reportedly working on a headset. Facebook, Microsoft, Google and other technology companies are all investing in AR.

But current headsets on the market are expensive and often bulky. Nreal is hoping its portable nature will appeal to consumers. The price varies by market depending on how it is distributed. For example, in Japan the headset costs around $700. But in South Korea, the device can be purchased through a telecom operator’s plan which subsidizes the headset to around $300.

Business model

Nreal has a platform for developers to create apps for the headset’s operating system called Nebula.

“It’s very similar to what Apple has been doing for smartphone,” Xu said. “We offer a platform where people use that for different kinds of experiences and developers — they can deploy, they can develop different content onto the field.”

Apple not only makes money from sales of its iPhones and other hardware but it also gets revenue from commissions off its App Store.

Nreal has some notable backers. Kuaishou, the short-video platform in China and iQiyi, a video streaming service, are among the company’s investors. Xu said Nreal would be working with both Kuaishou and iQiyi.

“As we mentioned, not only are we going to provide the hardware. We want to bundle different services with the glasses. So take video for example, whether it’s a long video or short video. We’re thinking glasses are a much better terminal to experience the video in,” the CEO said.

“So that’s why we’ll be working with those giants, really working on the new interface.”

Tags Augmented, CEO, firm, IPO, Nreal, Reality, Targets, years

World News

Deaths From Covid in Africa Are Rising as Circumstances Surge Worldwide

Post author By
Post date July 30, 2021

Confirmed coronavirus infections have jumped in much of the world, and deaths from the disease in Africa have increased by 80 percent over the last four weeks, the director-general of the World Health Organization said on Friday.

The continued spread of the virus and its variants, and its disparate impact on poorer countries with lower rates of vaccination, reflect a global failure, said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“The pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it,” he said at a news conference. “It is in our hands. We have all the tools we need. We can prevent this disease, we can test for it, and we can treat it.”

Dr. Tedros said that nearly four million new infections had been reported to the W.H.O. in the past week, and the organization expected the world to surpass 200 million total known cases in the next two weeks. However, the totals are underestimates, because countries often undercount cases — sometimes by very large margins. The known global death toll of roughly 4.2 million is assumed to be similarly skewed.

The global spread of the virus is now largely driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant and worsened by inconsistent use of public health measures, increased social mixing and mobility, and the inequitable use of vaccines and other treatments, Dr. Tedros said.

“Hard-won gains are in jeopardy or being lost, and health systems in many countries are being overwhelmed,” he said.

Things are still not as bad as they were not long ago; more than 500,000 new cases are being recorded daily, compared with more than 800,000 three months ago, according to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Vaccines remain powerfully effective against severe illness and death, but some highly inoculated countries have recently seen sharp rises in caseloads in recent days. A report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday showed that fully vaccinated people with “breakthrough” infections of the Delta variant, while still thought to be comparatively rare, may spread the virus to others as easily as unvaccinated people.

Vaccination rates range greatly, from more than 80 percent of adults in some countries to less than 1 percent in some of the world’s poorest nations, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.

And even with increased vaccine production and more generous donations to Covax, a vaccine sharing initiative, meeting the needs of lower-income countries with large unvaccinated populations would be difficult, Dr. Tedros said.

He pointed to Africa, where cases have skyrocketed in July and where less than 1.5 percent of the continent’s population is fully vaccinated, as a particularly stark example of the problem.

“Many African countries have prepared well to roll out vaccines, but the vaccines have not arrived,” Dr. Tedros said, calling for a donation of $7.7 billion to a partnership for tests, treatments and vaccines, as well as more financing for Covax.

Tags Africa, cases, Covid, deaths, Rising, surge, worldwide

World News

Renewable hydrogen can journey by means of present pipelines, CEO says

Post author By
Post date July 30, 2021

The CEO of Italian infrastructure giant Snam outlined a vision for the future of hydrogen on Friday, saying the “beauty” of it is that it can be easily stored and transported.

Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe, Marco Alverà spoke about how current systems would be used to facilitate the delivery of hydrogen from renewable sources as well as biofuels.

“If you turn up your heating in Italy now, the gas will flow in pipelines from Russia to Siberia,” he said.

“Tomorrow we will have hydrogen produced in North Africa, in the North Sea, with solar and wind resources,” said Alverà. “And this hydrogen can travel through the existing pipeline.”

Alvera said Snam tested various mixing percentages – including up to 100% hydrogen – in existing pipes and it worked.

“So this is an energy transition that uses the infrastructure we have,” he said. “And the very good news is that this new renewable energy will cost less than the existing fossil fuel, namely [a] real breakthrough. “

Hong Kong Protester Is Sentenced to 9 Years in First Safety Legislation Case

Post author By
Post date July 30, 2021

HONG KONG — A Hong Kong court sentenced a protester to nine years in prison on Friday for terrorism and inciting secession, highlighting the power of a sweeping new national security law to deter those who might speak out against the authorities.

The protester, Tong Ying-kit, had faced up to life in prison after being convicted earlier this week. The case against Mr. Tong, who crashed a motorcycle into police officers while flying a protest flag, was the first brought under the security law, which was imposed on Hong Kong by China’s central government last year.

His case has heightened concerns among activists and legal experts that the security law is transforming Hong Kong’s judicial system, which is separate from mainland China’s. They fear that cherished civil and political rights are being trampled under a push to eliminate the sort of unrest and widespread opposition that was seen in the city during months of mass protests in 2019.

The power to interpret the security law rests with Beijing, and some observers say the outcome of Mr. Tong’s trial shows how much less space Hong Kong’s courts will have to weigh individual rights when considering security-related charges.

“Thus far, the government has run the table on N.S.L. cases, both on key procedural matters and now on guilty verdicts,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, using an abbreviation for the national security law. “This is not a good sign that the courts will be able to mitigate the worst elements of the N.S.L..”

Mr. Tong, 24, was arrested on July 1 of last year after colliding with police officers while driving his motorcycle, which had a flag mounted on it that bore a popular protest slogan. Three officers were injured.

He was held for a year without bail. Instead of facing a jury, as is customary for serious crimes in Hong Kong, he was tried by a panel of three judges, all of them from a group of jurists selected by Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, to hear security law cases.

Mr. Tong’s lawyers acknowledged that he had driven dangerously but said his actions did not amount to terrorism. They noted that he had been carrying first aid equipment, and that he had scheduled a lunch meeting with friends near the site of his collision with police.

During the 2019 protests, the slogan on Mr. Tong’s banner — “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times” — was widely chanted, written on signs and spray-painted on walls. Defense witnesses argued that the phrase did not have a single, specific meaning, but instead expressed a broad desire for fundamental change.

But the court ruled that a call to separate Hong Kong from China was one key meaning of the phrase, and that the context of Mr. Tong’s motorcycle ride — in which he repeatedly defied the police on the day after the security law came into effect — showed that he intended to convey that secessionist message.

Legal scholars said that finding would be significant not just for other cases involving the “Liberate Hong Kong” slogan, but for an array of language that will now be parsed for illegal meanings.

“This is a green light for the prosecution to do more ambitious prosecutions in the future,” said Surya Deva, an associate professor of law at City University of Hong Kong. “People will be more careful about what they say and what they write about, because anything could be argued by the government as being capable of having that meaning of inciting secession.”

More than 130 people have been arrested under the security law over the past year, and more than 60 have been charged. Most of those awaiting trial are accused of nonviolent offenses. They include dozens of opposition politicians who prosecutors say committed subversion by trying to win an election, gain control of Hong Kong’s legislature and block the government’s agenda.

Tags Case, Hong, Kong, Law, Protester, Security, sentenced, years

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