By MICHAEL PAULSON and ALEXANDRA ALTER from NYT Theater https://ift.tt/2SyFu8S
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Legal Threats From Broadway’s ‘Mockingbird’ Sink Productions Around the Country
By MICHAEL PAULSON and ALEXANDRA ALTER from NYT Theater https://ift.tt/2SyFu8S
Thomas Keller’s New Restaurant, a Fashion Designer’s Toy Collection and More
By Unknown Author from NYT T Magazine https://ift.tt/2H6mLQa
Take the Lakers. Add Rondo and James. What Could Go Wrong?
By SCOTT CACCIOLA from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2T38UkJ
How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won the Cohen Hearing
By CAROLINE FREDRICKSON from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2EpbBCS
‘Woman at War’ Review: Industrial Blight as Icelandic Fable
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2NzPNZm
‘The Wedding Guest’ Review: On the Run in India
By BEN KENIGSBERG from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2Tp4DHy
‘The Iron Orchard’ Review: Black Gold and Blackhearted Men
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2IQVy6C
‘The Hole in the Ground’ Review: A Horror Film Is Suffocated by a Mother’s Love
By TEO BUGBEE from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2XvCI80
‘The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind’ Review: Saving a Village, Using Books and Brains
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2IH6PWT
‘Sharkwater Extinction’ Review: A Plea to Stop Killing Sharks
By GLENN KENNY from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2XtYhGc
‘Saint Judy’ Review: A Plucky and Passionate Lawyer Doing Good
By GLENN KENNY from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2SxJ6rC
‘Mapplethorpe’ Review: A Timid Biopic of a Bold Photographer
By GLENN KENNY from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2StqpWh
‘Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People’ Review: A Flair for Journalism, Subdued
By BEN KENIGSBERG from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2XCPW38
‘Giant Little Ones’ Review: The Turmoil of Teenage Sexuality
By TEO BUGBEE from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2XqkZiB
What’s Going On in This Graph? | March 6, 2019
By THE LEARNING NETWORK from NYT The Learning Network https://ift.tt/2Ha3xJh
Dents Begin to Show at Top End of Classic Car Market
By ROB SASS from NYT Business https://ift.tt/2T32Jgx
DealBook Briefing: Cohen Trashes Trump’s Business Image
By Unknown Author from NYT Business https://ift.tt/2T5sWeo
Cohen: No Peaceful Transition Of Power If Trump Loses In 2020
Michael Cohen ended his public testimony before the House Oversight Committee with a frightening though not unheard of prediction.
"Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power."
It's a question asked by Joshua Geltzer at CNN.com just days ago: What if Trump refuses to accept defeat in 2020?
Trump is increasingly proving himself to be a President eager to overstep his authority. Just last week, Trump displayed his willingness to invoke unprecedented presidential power to declare a national emergency utterly without justification. This week has brought a startling report from the New York Times that, for the past two years, Trump has tried to undermine the investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and other parts of the Justice Department in order to, in the words of the Times, "make the president's many legal problems go away." In light of these overreaching assertions of his own authority, it's at least plausible that Trump might attempt to cling to power in ways previously unimaginable by an American president.
from Latest from Crooks and Liars
via Click me for Details
Kasie Hunt Asks Chuck Todd The Very Best Question
This moment on Wednesday's Meet the Press Daily should never be forgotten. Kasie Hunt asks Chuck Todd a bonafide introspective question. After noting that the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee focussed all of their attention on calling Cohen a liar, and that they couldn't defend Trump's actions because those actions are indefensible, Kasie said this:
"The reality is the President of the United States was paying tens of thousands of dollars to someone covering up an alleged affair with a porn star in the run-up to an election. How did we lose sight of this? It's really unclear to me."
Chuck Todd replied, "It's not unclear. Stating that clearly, as you just said, is something that's useful and something that we need to keep doing."
And then it's on to the next press scrum!
Because it literally does not matter if Chuck Todd says "both sides" three hundred times in an hour or is too hyped up on whatever Donald Trump tweeted today to cover the demise of our democracy. The suits upstairs are in it to sell pharmaceutical advertising.
Here's three clues to answer your "how did we lose sight of this" question, Katie?
1. Trump was so good for ratings cable news forgot their obligation to the First Amendment.
from Latest from Crooks and Liars
via Click me for Details
Ralph Northam's Wife Hands Cotton To African-American Kids On Tour
Probably not the best look for the wife of a Governor who was wearing black face and/or a KKK hood during his college years. And probably not the best way to celebrate black history month to ask children touring the Governor's mansion to imagine being slaves, forced to pick cotton.
Source: Washington Post
A Virginia state employee has complained that her eighth-grade daughter was upset during a tour of the historic governor’s residence when first lady Pam Northam handed a ball of cotton to her and another African American child and asked them to imagine being enslaved and having to pick the crop.
“The Governor and Mrs. Northam have asked the residents of the Commonwealth to forgive them for their racially insensitive past actions,” Leah Dozier Walker, who oversees the Office of Equity and Community Engagement at the state Education Department, wrote Feb. 25 to lawmakers and the office of Gov. Ralph Northam (D).
“But the actions of Mrs. Northam, just last week, do not lead me to believe that this Governor’s office has taken seriously the harm and hurt they have caused African Americans in Virginia or that they are deserving of our forgiveness,” she wrote.
Here's the letter from the eightth grader.
from Latest from Crooks and Liars
via Click me for Details
Mirakl raises $70 million to manage the marketplace of your e-commerce website
French startup Mirakl raised a $70 million funding round. Bain Capital is leading the round with existing investors 83North, Felix Capital and Elaia Partners also participating.
If you’ve bought a few products from a third-party seller on an e-commerce website that isn’t Amazon or Alibaba, chances are you’ve used Mirakl in the past. The company has built a solution to manage the marketplace of your e-commerce platform.
While Mirakl doesn’t have a ton of customers, each customer is very valuable. The company has worked with some of the biggest names in e-commerce so that they could add a new revenue stream with a marketplace. Examples include Best Buy in Canada, Walmart in Mexico, Office Deport and Darty.
The startup also lets you create B2B marketplaces for bulk selling and other complicated transactions. Sellers can set minimum and maximum quantities and customize their listings.
In 2018, the startup managed to add 60 customers and launch 37 marketplaces — it doubled the gross merchandise volume compared to 2017. And it’s true that marketplaces are attractive. You can greatly increase your sales without any physical infrastructure investment as third-party sellers handle logistics.
Behind the scene, Mirakl has developed connectors that work with multiple e-commerce platforms. After setting up Mirakl, your third-party sellers will also get their own on-boarding back end. And Mirakl continuously helps you when it comes to maintaining a certain level of quality and handling orders.
More recently, Mirakl has developed a catalog manager so that you can more easily manage product listings. It lets you get product information, merge product listings and moderate your platform in general. Any e-commerce website can use it, not just websites that operate a Mirakl marketplace.
The company has also launched a services marketplace so that you can upsell your customers before they check out with extended warranties and insurance products from third-party companies.
Mirakl works with global B2B platforms as well as retail websites that usually operate in a country or a handful of countries. 30 percent of retail clients are French, 30 percent are American and 40 percent are from the rest of the world. The startup charges an upfront fee as well as a monthly subscription that varies according to the success of your marketplace.
With today’s funding round, the company plans to do more of the same, at a bigger scale. Mirakl will expand the team, expand to new countries and improve its product offering.
from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details
Fortnite Season 8 is now available, and it includes pirates, cannons and volcano lava
Fortnite, the world’s most popular game right now with some 200 million players, has just announced that its much anticipated Season 8 is available.
For those of you who don’t play Fortnite, the title takes on an episodic approach with new features, tools and maps released every few months. That keeps things fresh, gamers engaged and the money flowing since each new season offers a Battle Pass which costs around $10 and unlocks a load of goodies, including skins and emote dance moves.
Season 8 is pretty much what the leaks this week suggested. The theme is pirates with new skins that include a gigantic banana suit, pirates and snakes, and pirate cannon is a new weapon that’s been added. Cannons can dish out 100 damage when there’s a direct hit, or administer 50 damage of those in the impact area — it can also be used to fire players to new locations.
The map is also a major Fortnite focus, and Season 8 has added lava to the existing volcano. Stepping on lava gives players one damage point per touch while there are volcanic vents that can be used to send a player or vehicle into the air using a gust of hot air. There’s also a range of treasure to be found inside pirate ships, another new addition which is where the cannons can be found.
On the gaming playing side, the major addition is ‘Party Assist’ mode which lets players bring their friends into Fortnite’s daily or weekly challenges. Those challenges are important to players since they unlock treasures, including skins, and, in fact, those who played Season 7 could earn a free Battle Pass for Season 8 by completing the right challenges. That might have saved a few million parents $10.
(By the way, if you’re struggling to load the game, that’s because scheduled maintenance kicked off at 4am EST in preparation for the new season launch — you can find more info on the status page here.)
Those are the main additions, though game-maker Epic Games has chucked in a few little touches — including extending the somewhat comical ‘infinite dab’ feature from 11 hours to 12, meaning that your character will keep dancing a little longer when left in the lobby.
I can’t help but think Season 7 was a greater leap — since the addition of planes and ziplines really changed how players get around — but we’ll have to see how the gaming public reacts. This time around, a lot of the focus is on skins and emotes, rather than features.
A recent report suggested Fortnite’s revenue had dipped in January, but that was pretty unfair because its the month that followed a surge in spending around the December Battle Pass and also, more generally, a surge around the Christmas holidays.
Sources told us recently Epic Games banked $3 billion in profit across its entire business in 2018, thanks in particular to Fortnite, and it needs to keep its season releases compelling if that streak is to continue. There’s a lot riding on Season 8, particularly as credible rivals emerge.
from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details
Robert Kraft’s Prostitution Charges Return a Wary Palm Beach to the Tabloids
By PATRICIA MAZZEI and KEN BELSON from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2Nz0jQP
Seth Meyers on Donald Trump, Fatherhood and What He Won’t Joke About
By FRANK BRUNI from NYT T Magazine https://ift.tt/2Tmaxt9
John Tavares, Returning as the Enemy, Will Face Jilted Islanders Fans
By ALLAN KREDA from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2VqBqcy
Learning to Play the New York Rental Game
By JOYCE COHEN from NYT Real Estate https://ift.tt/2ECPxWO
Backup Plan Is Needed to Prevent Venezuelan Famine
By DOROTHY KRONICK from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2TrZZc9
Will Michael Cohen’s Testimony Doom Trump?
By Unknown Author from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2II0Z7L
We Need Better Answers on Nutrition
By JOON YUN, DAVID A. KESSLER and DAN GLICKMAN from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2tKe4mo
N.Y. Today: Transit Costs Are Going Up. (But Don’t Expect Better Service.)
By AZI PAYBARAH from NYT New York https://ift.tt/2T7JVge
‘Climax’ Review: A Party That Assaults the Senses and Scrambles the Brain
By A.O. SCOTT from NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2T6qwfp
The Botched Niger Mission Was a Leadership Failure. I’ve Seen It Happen Before.
By ANDREA N. GOLDSTEIN from NYT Magazine https://ift.tt/2EAsyeU
A Growing Divide on Climate Science: Trump vs. the Rest of the World
By CORAL DAVENPORT from NYT Climate https://ift.tt/2Hbq1d7
What to Watch For in Thursday’s G.D.P. Report
By BEN CASSELMAN from NYT Business https://ift.tt/2ECbDsA
Trading Fairways for Straightaways at Automotive Country Clubs
By PAUL STENQUIST from NYT Business https://ift.tt/2EnoEoj
North Korea, Michael Cohen, Israel: Your Thursday Briefing
By CHRIS STANFORD and INYOUNG KANG from NYT Briefing https://ift.tt/2H9EJkD
Michael Cohen’s Testimony Grabs Late-Night TV’s Attention
By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/2T9FIIL
Unhappy Families Onstage, Unhappy in Their Own Ways
By LAURA CAPPELLE from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/2TjGnXr
Trump’s Talks With Kim Jong-un Collapse After North Korea Demands End to Sanctions
By EDWARD WONG from NYT World https://ift.tt/2tHG0HW
A Year of Quiet Contemplation Led to the Rebirth of Alec Soth’s Photography
By ALEC SOTH and JORDAN G. TEICHER from NYT Lens https://ift.tt/2tDOShE
Learning With: ‘Michael Cohen Accuses Trump of Expansive Pattern of Lies and Criminality’
By NATALIE PROULX from NYT The Learning Network https://ift.tt/2H61nKS
Michael Jackson Cast a Spell. ‘Leaving Neverland’ Breaks It.
By WESLEY MORRIS from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/2H5rDoE
Here are the most in-demand programming jobs and languages, according to Hired
Looking for a high-paying, in-demand job as a programmer? Learning to code for blockchain applications is the way to go, according to a survey from the job placement organization, Hired.
In a survey of 98,000 developers on the company’s platform, Hired assessed the kinds of jobs that are most in-demand; the languages that companies are most interested in hiring for; and the top average salaries for careers in several major technology markets including London, New York, Paris, and San Francisco.
The results — as they say — may surprise you.
Actually, they probably won’t. Across the industry demand for blockchain engineers and security engineers have increased the most, according to Hired’s data. Companies requesting programmers with blockchain experience shot up a whopping 517% in 2018 from 2017, while company searches for security engineers were up 132% over the year ago period, according to the company’s data.
Across all geographies, the jobs with the highest paying salaries, on average, were divided among security engineers, search engineers, blockchain engineers, natural language processing engineers, machine learning engineers, and gaming engineers, according to the data from Hired.
Here’s the breakdown for San Francisco. 
“In New York, San Francisco and Toronto, blockchain engineers are among the top three highest paid,” Hired chief executive Mehul Patel, wrote in a blog post about the data. “When you zoom into salary data for software engineers in key tech hubs, it also speaks to how much talent needs fluctuate from city to city. For example, gaming engineers are the highest paid group in New York, while demand for natural language processing engineer salaries are soaring in Toronto.”
Despite increasing demand, blockchain skills still aren’t top of mind among developers, according to the survey. Only 12% of the programmers surveyed on Hired’s platform said that they were most interested in learning about the technology.
That disconnect also applies to the coding languages that are most in-demand and the number of developers who have experience programming in the language.
Candidates who know the programming language Go are the most in-demand, according to the Hired report, but when surveyed, only 7% of developers said they primarily work with it.
Other languages, like Scala, Ruby, Typescript and Kotlin are also highly valued by employers but have lower penetration rates among the developer community. Globally, Go is the most popular programming language that employers are looking for, while in San Francisco and Toronto there’s higher demand for Typescript experience, the Hired report indicated.
from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details
Nigerian fintech firm TeamApt raises $5M, eyes global expansion
Nigerian fintech startup TeamApt has raised $5.5 million in capital in a Series A round led by Quantum Capital Partners.
The Lagos based firm will use the funds to expand its white label digital finance products and pivot to consumer finance with the launch of its AptPay banking app.
Founded by Tosin Eniolorunda, TeamApt supplies financial and payment solutions to Nigeria’s largest commercial banks — including Zenith, UBA, and ALAT.
For Eniolorunda, launching the fintech startup means competing with his former employer, the later stage Nigerian tech company Interswitch.
The TeamApt founder is open about his company going head to head not only with his former employer, but other Nigerian payment gateway startups.
“Yes, we are in competition with Interswitch,” Eniolorunda said. But he also said that the Nigerian fintech startups Paystack and Flutterwave—both of which facilitate payments for businesses— are competitors as well.
TeamApt, whose name is derivative of aptitude, bootstrapped its way to its Series A by generating revenue project to project working for Nigerian companies, according to CEO Eniolorunda.
“To start, we closed a deal with Computer Warehouse Group to build a payment solution for them and that’s how we started bootstrapping,” he said. A project soon followed for Fidelity Bank Nigeria.
TeamApt now has a developer team of 40 in Lagos, according to Eniolorunda, who spent 6 years at Interswitch as developer and engineer himself, before founding the startup in 2015 .
“The 40 are out of a total staff of about 72 so the firm is a major engineering company. We build all the IP and of course use open source tools,” he said.
TeamApt’s commercial bank product offerings include Moneytor— a digital banking service for financial institutions to track transactions with web and mobile interfaces—and Monnify, an enterprise software suite for small business management.
TeamApt worked with Sterling Bank Nigeria to develop its Sterling Onepay mobile payment app and POS merchant online platform, Sterling Bank’s Chief Information Officer Moronfolu Fasinro told TechCrunch.
On performance, TeamApt claims 26 African bank clients and processes $160 million in monthly transactions, according to company data. Though it does not produce public financial results, TeamApt claimed revenue growth of 4,500 percent over a three year period.
Quantum Capital Partners, a Lagos based investment firm founded by Nigerian banker Jim Ovia, confirmed it verified TeamApt’s numbers.
“Our CFO sat with them for about two weeks,” Elaine Delaney said.
TeamApt’s results and the startup’s global value proposition factored into the fund’s decision to serve as sole-investor in the $5.5 million round.
“The problem that they’re solving might be African but the technology is universal. ‘Can it be applied to any other market?’ of course it can,” said Delaney.
Delaney will take a board seat with TeamApt “as a supportive investor,” she said.
TeamApt plans to develop more business and consumer based offerings. “We’re beginning to pilot into much more merchant and consume facing products where we’re building payment infrastructure to connect these banks to merchants and businesses,” CEO Tosin Eniolorunda said.
Part of this includes the launch of AptPay, which Eniolorunda describes as “a push payment, payment infrastructure” to “centralize…all services currently used on banking mobile apps.”
The company recently received its license from the Nigerian Central Bank to operate as a payment switch in the country.
On new markets, “Nigeria comes first. But we’re also looking at some parts of Europe. Canada is also hot on list,” said Eniolorunda. He wouldn’t specific a country but said to look for a TeamApt expansion announcement by fourth quarter 2019.
TeamApt joins several fintech firms in Africa that announced significant rounds, expansion, or partnerships over the last year. As covered by TechCrunch, in September 2018, Nigeria’s Paga raised $10 million and announced possible expansion in Ethiopia, Asia, and Mexico. Kenyan payment company Cellulant raised $53 million in 2018, targeted to boost its presence across Africa. And in January, Flutterwave partnered with Visa to launch the GetBarter global payment product.
The fintech space has also been the source of speculation regarding the continent’s first tech IPO on a major exchange, including Interswitch’s much anticipated and delayed public offering.
TeamApt’s CEO is open about the company’s future intent to list. “The project code name for the recent funding was NASDAQ. We’re clear about becoming a public company,” said Eniolorunda.
from TechCrunch
via Click me for Details
A Sports Hijab Has France Debating the Muslim Veil, Again
By ELIAN PELTIER and AURELIEN BREEDEN from NYT World https://ift.tt/2H7rG36
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)