dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Autonomous indoor drone surveillance system developed

POSTED: JUL 30 2018 11:19AM EDT

UPDATED: JUL 30 2018 11:25AM EDT

NEW YORK (FOX5NY) - Two European drone companies are partnering to create the first autonomous indoor surveillance drone system.

Skysense has partnered with Avansig, to autonomously power the drone for Prosegur, a multinational security company.

Skysense says Prosegur’s surveillance drone can execute its own patrol route in a building and land itself on Skysense’s charging pad to recharge. The company says the lightweight, fast-charging infrastructure eliminates the need for battery removal or manual charging every time a drone battery runs out.

During surveillance patrols, the drone records and streams real-time video, and sends alerts to the security central station when potential security threats or breaches are discovered.

“We realized we needed a charging partner at the beginning of the project because we want the drone to work completely unattended,” said David Trillo, CEO of Avansig. “We were in contact with other companies, but we chose Skysense because we felt that their solution was more mature. It works, it’s reliable, and it’s simple. Also, the charging time is short.”

https:// www.fox5ny.com/news/autonomous-indoor-drone-surveillance-system-developed

Bezos' Parents May Have Reaped 12,000,000% Return On Early Amazon Investment

Tue, 07/31/2018 - 08:01

Anyone who has invested in Amazon (and held through the numerous subsequent drawdowns) over the past three decades has made a lot of money. But according to a stunning new analysis, one particular "group" of Amazon investors may have generated the greatest return of all time: Jeff Bezos' parents.

Bloomberg reports that according to a late 90's prospectus, in 1995 Jackie and Mike Bezos invested $245,573 into their son’s then brand new e-commerce website. "It was a big gamble", Mike Bezos, the stepfather of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, said onstage during a 2015 event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

His son, the world's richest man, agreed "I want you to know how risky this is,” Jeff Bezos told his parents some 23 years ago "because I want to come home at dinner for Thanksgiving and I don’t want you to be mad at me."

If the Bloomberg analysis is correct, Bezos' parents have no reason to be mad; in fact quite the opposite because one IPO and three stock splits later, their original stake could be worth almost $30 billion today making them wealthier than Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen, the 30th-richest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

While their exact holdings are not publicly disclosed, and it is a guessing game how much they have sold and own currently, Bloomberg has run several scenarios which conclude that in a "best case" the investment made by mom and pop Bezos would make them the greatest venture capitalist alive right now.

Here's what we know: between 2001 and 2016, they donated 595,027 shares to the Bezos Family Foundation which focuses on education for young people. The 25,000 shares they gifted in 2016 were worth about $20 million at the time. If they haven’t sold or donated anything else, the pair would own about 16.6 million shares, or 3.4 percent of the firm, making them the second-biggest individual owners after their son.

If that is indeed the extent of their sales, the return on their original investment would be a mind-blowing 12,000,000%, a performance that would make even the earliest bitcoin investors, not to mention venture capitalists, blush:

SoftBank’s $20 million bet on Alibaba has returned about 720,000 percent since 2000, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Sequoia Capital’s WhatsApp investment returned roughly 36,000 percent by the time Facebook Inc. bought the messaging service for $22 billion in 2014.

While overall tightlipped about his holdings, in 2015, Mike Bezos - a Cuban immigrant who also goes by Miguel - threw shade at American's saving habits: "We were fortunate enough that we have lived overseas and we have saved a few pennies so we were able to be an angel investor. The rest is history."

He bought 582,528 shares in February 1995, according to the 1997 prospectus. Five months later, Jackie Bezos bought 847,716 shares. The wider Bezos family held this stock through four trusts at the end of 1999, another filing shows. The Jacklyn Gise Bezos 1996 Revocable Trust held 8.9 million shares, followed by the Miguel A. Bezos 1996 Revocable Trust with 4.8 million shares, while the Bezos Family Trust and the Bezos Generation Skipping Trust held 2.9 million and 675,000, respectively.

In a base case, Bloomberg calculates that after applying generic selling patterns and accounting for the disclosed donations, Jackie and Mike Bezos would still control $10 billion of shares. Even if they had unwound all of their Amazon holdings at the lowest possible price, they still would have reaped about $100 million.

https:// www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-31/bezos-parents-may-have-reaped-12000000-return-early-amazon-investment

Stocks, Yuan Surge After US, China Said To Seek Restart Of Trade Talks

Tue, 07/31/2018 - 09:39

With the next wave of US tariffs set to hit as soon as Wednesday, and with trade negotiations stalled for weeks, Beijing and Washington are said to be eager to trying talks in order to avert a full-blown trade war, according to Bloomberg, citing two people familiar with the effort.

According to Bloomberg sources, representatives of Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He are having private conversations as they look for ways to reengage in negotiations. However, they have cautioned that a specific timetable, the issues to be discussed and the format for talks aren’t finalized, but at least there is agreement among the principals that more talks need to take place.

After some early success, negotiations have been stalled for weeks, with both sides in a standoff. Meanwhile, high-level US talks on trade posture with China are ongoing. Complicating matters, however, is a harder line approach taken by US trade representatitve Robert Lightizer, who is in charge of the US's "301 investigation" that resulted in the tariffs, and which concluded that China has been stealing US technology.

The next wave of tariffs is set to kick in as soon as Wednesday, with the possible imposition of $16 billion of duties on Chinese imports - a move Beijing has vowed to respond to with the same level of tariffs on US products.

Predictably, both stocks…

https:// www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-31/stocks-yuan-surge-after-us-china-said-seek-restart-trade-talks

Raucous midterm elections fuel ad sales at Charter Communications

July 31, 2018 10:00 AM

The approach of November's mid-term elections, in which Democrats are fighting to wrest at least partial control of the federal government from Republicans, fueled ad sales at Charter Communications in the three months through June.

Net income at the Stamford, Conn.-based telecommunications firm rose 96 percent to $273 million, supported by a 12 percent increase in advertising revenue. Total sales grew 4.8 percent to $10.9 billion in the quarter.

“This is a political year and we have a lot of battleground states all over – it appears that those continue to increase in quantity,” Chief Executive Officer Thomas Rutledge told investors on the company’s earnings call. “It’s a difficult business. We’ve been investing in targeting and changing the nature of advertising itself.”

The elections are 98 days away, and advertising is likely to increase as the date draws closer, particularly in close Senate and House races.

Charter’s second-quarter profits were also buoyed by a 5.9 percent increase in video revenue and a 7.3 percent in broadband sales. Revenue at Charter’s phone business, however, tumbled 18 percent to $531 million, driven by a drop of 45,000 in residential customers.

Following AT&T’s bid for Time Warner, industry insiders have speculated that Charter could also seek to purchase a content distributor. Rutledge said that while “a lot of content companies” have approached the firm, none were pursued.

https:/ /www.washingtonexaminer.com/business/raucous-midterm-elections-fuel-ad-sales-at-charter-communications

July 31, 2018 10:13 AM

Al Franken on another run for office: ‘I haven’t ruled it out’

Months after he resigned his U.S. Senate seat over allegations of groping and sexual harassment, former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., says he hasn’t ruled out another run for public office.

“Well, see, if I say anything there, you’ll put it in the story,” Franken told WCCO on Monday when asked if he’d run again. "I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t ruled it out. I haven’t ruled it in.”

Franken resigned in January after numerous women accused him of unwanted groping and kissing. Franken denied the allegations but his Democratic colleagues pushed him to resign.

Franken said he misses being a senator.

"I miss the whole job,” he said. “I loved that job, I loved the job as senator."

Franken’s wife, Franni, admitted his unexpected resignation from the Senate “has been a challenge.”

“We do get to spend more time together, and I think there are times when both of us would like to spend less time together,” she said, laughing.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/al-franken-on-another-run-for-office-i-havent-ruled-it-out

Democrats face dilemma on impeachment

Laura Barrón-López

| July 31, 2018 12:00 AM

A majority of Democratic voters — 71 percent — say they want to impeach President Trump. It’s the question posed to Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey the most in his solidly blue Texas district: “Do we really have to wait until 2020?”

“There’s a desperation,” Veasey said, but he uses the opportunity to explain why it’s not a viable option.

At least not yet.

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal is bombarded by similar lines of questioning in her Seattle district: "How can you impeach? Why hasn’t he been in impeached and how do we move forward impeachment?”

The freshman progressive voted in favor of impeaching Trump last December, but she doesn’t promise her voters they’ll get what they want. It’s a process, she says.

The reality is impeaching a president historically comes at great cost to the party tasked with carrying it out. Instead of joining their base in the rallying cry, Democrats are adhering to an unspoken code: Don’t talk about impeachment and don’t campaign on impeachment. If Democrats win the majority it won’t suddenly flip a switch.

The ultimate question for Democrats isn’t whether Trump has committed impeachable offenses — most of them believe he has — but whether impeaching Trump is wise and necessary. It would be highly unlikely that Democrats move to impeach Trump without Republican support. A two-thirds majority in the Senate is required to actually convict the president and remove him from office and it's widely expected that Republicans will maintain control of the upper chamber.

“Impeachment is always a political issue,” Jayapal said. “I’ve been trying to explain to my constituents you can’t move forward on impeachment unless you have people on the other side who are willing to vote for it.”

A House under Democratic control would hold hearings on a laundry list of potential abuses by Trump, from possible emoluments violations to conflicts of interest and payments ahead of the election to silence women engaged in alleged affairs with Trump. Democrats would likely launch their own investigation into Russian hacking of the 2016 election and whether Trump is compromised.

Those hearings will happen, Jayapal said. But slapping Trump with subpoenas, a power afforded to the majority party, to prove the president is profiting off of the presidency in a possible violation of the Constitution is very different than holding a hearing on articles of impeachment. And so far, Democrats have demonstrated they would proceed with caution unless special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation produces a smoking gun or Trump does something that breaks Republicans’ unwavering support for him.

“[Republicans] want to fuel the flames because they believe they can win if people think Democrats are trying to impeach Trump but it’s just not real,” Jayapal said. “It just doesn’t happen like that.”

But there are those in the Democratic Party who want it to happen like that.

The base and the billionaire

In 2014, former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer wanted the midterm elections to be about climate change. In 2018, Steyer wants them to be about impeaching Trump. He’s poured millions into the impeachment effort to the frustration of House Democrats, who grumble that it’s a self-serving, futile exercise.

But Steyer is just getting started.

“Democrats can focus on the economy and removing Donald Trump from power at the same time,” said Kevin Mack, lead strategist for Steyer’s Need to Impeach campaign.

In focus groups conducted by Need to Impeach with disaffected Democrats and frustrated progressives, Mack said, voters are saying they can’t trust the Democratic Party.